Wednesday 11 October 2006 by Edward.

Tourists who want to keep in shape and need good routes to walk, run or jog when visiting a new destination can go to WalkJogRun. I clicked on Halifax, Nova Scotia, to find several routes. A 5km route was posted downtown, circling the commons (where the Rolling Stones had a recent concert) and the citadel. Start and finish locations were flagged. A table of leg distances, times and turns accompanied the map. My experience with the map revealed an early release with more work required.

Posted in Maps, BEFORE the visit | 115 Comments »

Thursday 5 October 2006 by Edward.

A website for women solo travellers has been recently launched. It includes travel tips and tools, product reviews, a forum and blog. The workshop link took me to a meeting on 24 October 2006 at Bellevue Community College, Washington, USA, on ‘For Women Traveling Solo’.

Tourist websites such as this will become more specialised with time, meeting nich-market needs.

Posted in Website/Event, BEFORE the visit | 128 Comments »

Tuesday 3 October 2006 by Edward.

Mapping has entered a rennaissance on the internet, and map mashups are feeding the creative juices of map creators. The programmableweb.com is a hotbed of mashups with almost three new map mashups appearing daily. Today, for example, one can find new maps of Starbucks Coffee locations, Golf Courses, Rinks, and “drunkest cities” in the USA. Over the last six months the number of mashups has doubled to over 1,000.
The site lists about 70 mashups on travel. Including, for example:

Hotel Map
20,000 motels and hotels in the USA
UK B&B
UK’s B&B, cheap hotel, and guest house accomodation directory
Broadway shows
A listing of current shows, times, pricing, tickets, direction and parking
GeoWalk
A worldwide travel guide with embedded Wikipedia, Flikr and Google News
MCity
Guide to best underground locations in Melbourne, Australia
Toronto Virtual Tour
A 360 degree photo tour of Toronto landmarks

Posted in Maps, BEFORE the visit | 1 Comment »

Monday 2 October 2006 by Edward.

Business and Leisure trevellers can now print their own airline boarding passes for 18 major airlines from kiosks placed in all Embassy Suites Hotels, reports Travel Industry Wire.

I went online to the Embassy Suites Hotel Raleigh-Crabtree, North Carolina, to check out their kiosk link. Five options were presented: suite check-in, suite check-out, airline check-in, personalised messaging, and coupons for hotel service. The airline option allowed printout of your boarding pass and display of flight information.

Posted in Gadget/Idea/Webtool, BEFORE the visit | No Comments »

Wednesday 27 September 2006 by Edward.

Global competition for tourists demands increasingly engaging websites. High quality video clips, such as those I reported from TurnHere, lead the way. Here are some destinations leading the way with multimedia presentations:

Tourism Massachusetts video and slide mix

Aspen, Colrado panoramic photo and map tour

New York City 24-hour video journey

Florida Keys destination videos

The China Experience

Destination Winnipeg

Send me links to some sites that explore the boundaries of multimedia tourism online.

Posted in Website/Event, Multimedia, BEFORE the visit | 2 Comments »

Tuesday 26 September 2006 by Edward.

The Greater Philadelphia Tourism Marketing Corp has launched their “Sound About Philly” iPOD walking tour. Audio tours take you to unusual and unknown places. Current podcasts include: My Philly, History Unplugged, and Philadelphia Flavorhoods. User-created tours are also available, such as Hands-on Fun, and Literary Philly.

What impressed my about Sound About Philly was its integration with GoogleMap. I clicked on the Philadelphia Flavorhoods podcast and was presented with ten tour segments, each displayed on GoogleMap. I love markets so I clicked on the South Philadelphia Italian Market icon, on 9th and Christian Street. “Joe Bubbles”, a long-time resident, introduces us to a cheese shopkeeper, a cookware merchant and an Italian baker (I yearn for good Italian bread!). The audio clips are more of an area presentation rather than a walking tour, such as the Toronto City Surf tour I noted in an earlier blog post. A neat feature is the “add to custom tour” button. You can create your own audio tour the visit Philadelphia.

Posted in Website/Event, Blogs/Podcast/eInfo, DURING the visit, BEFORE the visit | 1 Comment »

Saturday 23 September 2006 by Edward.

Link to family, friends, colleagues and others to get travel advice, information and ideas, via TripConnect, reports Yahoo.

Posted in Gadget/Idea/Webtool, BEFORE the visit | 3 Comments »

Friday 22 September 2006 by Edward.

A blogsite has been created between RealTravel, a social network of travel experiences, and T4G, an IT business solutions company, reports Yahoo.

Posted in Blogs/Podcast/eInfo, AFTER the visit, DURING the visit, BEFORE the visit | 1 Comment »

Thursday 21 September 2006 by Edward.

UK airlines websites now have a Flybe desktop tool that allows passengers to make changes to their flight plans, reports UK Times Online. It may cost, but the convenience truly improves the tourist booking experience

Posted in Gadget/Idea/Webtool, BEFORE the visit | 1 Comment »

Wednesday 20 September 2006 by Edward.

Apparently realizing the major changes taking place in tourism and in the tourist experience, national newpaper USA Today has relaunched its travel website. Readers will get travel news, planning and booking tools, expert advice — the total tourist experience, before, during and after the trip.

The USA Today website is content rich. It offers, for example:

Information on destinations
A Flight Centre (flight tracker, flight delay map, WiFi airports, and more)
Travel News
Travel and destination deals
Travel Columns

Posted in Website/Event, AFTER the visit, DURING the visit, BEFORE the visit | No Comments »