In the early years of blogging, political sites like Huffington Post, tech blogs such as Gizmodo and Mashable!, and celebrity gossip sites such as Perez Hilton were first to grab the spotlight. But of late, travel has had the hot hand on the Internet. Travel search engines, booking sites, travelogues, and independent travel blogs are multiplying like oversexed bunnies. There are now sites where travel bloggers can converse and others where travel writers can connect with PR firms and editors. Social networking sites are getting into the action in a big way; Twitter is inundated with travel tweets every day, all day.
For those of us trying to make our living as travel writers, it’s frankly hard to stay on top of things, and that is where Travel Insights 100 comes in. Designed to be a forum where a diverse set of travel leaders* can share their points of view, Travel Insights 100 is a platform for discussion, based on research, with thought leaders in travel and tourism around the world. For their first project, the forum surveyed 100 travel leaders around the world to gauge their interest in and use of Twitter. The short presentation below is a summary of results from that survey, All About Twitter, released on September 21, 2009.
This is a first in a series of surveys the group will create during the next year, as it examines the impact that economic, political and social issues have on travel. Travel Insights 100 is a partnership between UpTake, a travel search engine; Tips from the T-List, a community of travel bloggers; and BootsnAll, a leading travel blog network.
*Barbara Weibel is a member of Travel Insights 100
Great info Barbara! Glad to see that I”m not the only one with a love/hate relationship with Twitter! I’d also never heard of the wanderlisting.
Mark – you were part of the survey? Cool!
I’d never heard of Wanderlisting either and will leap over and add myself to the list. It is interesting to see the results from a survey where I participated. Not a lot of surprises but like all these social media tools I think Twitter will have its work cut out to stay relevant and responsive with new tools coming out every few days.
Thanks for the Wanderlisting tip – just put myself on the list
Interesting site. I see it is still developing and it is great to know about it when it is in that stage before everyone starts to know about it.