Archive for Saturday 26 August 2006

Tourism 2.0 podcasting

Evhead.com shares an Alexa ranking and his brief writeup of 30+ podcasting services. These include players such as: Libsyn, Odeo, Podomatic, PodcastPickle, Podshow, PodcastAlley, PodcastingNews, and Podcast.net.

Tourist podcasts come in several flavours: destination podcasts, podcast guides and tourism website podcasts.

Destination podcasts are those that relate to a site or event. Listen to a podcast from Tasmania, Australia, from Edinburgh, Scotland, or Galveston, Texas. Podcast guides are those audio-tours one can take while walking about, such as in Toronto, with CitySurf, in Dublin, Ireland, with iWalks, or in New York’s meat packing district with Soundwalk. Tourism website podcasts are those sites that provide regular (and irregular) podcasts on tourism topics, such as Doc Martin’s Travel Show Podcast, from Melbourne, Australia, Alan Lew’s Geography for Travelers, from Flagstaff, Arizona, and Nick and Andrea’s European iPod Traveller. A tourist podcast directory is shown at Podfeed.net.

Rule 16 “The Rule of Telling Stories”, in the book ‘The 25 Immutable Rules of Successful Tourism’ by Roger A. Brooks and Maury Forman, states that ‘Great stories make the campfire memorable’. Whether by word-of-mouth or via iPOD, the story sells the destination and unearths the nooks and crannies of the world. Great stories develop great bonds with the local community.

|