Travel Websites – Could Do Better?

I’m en route now to Seattle from Las Vegas. Watch out for a post on PubCon 2007 later, but today I just want to wrap up The Travel Convention I attended in Tenerife…..

I had met Paul Evans from LowcostBeds on the plane who gave me a bit of advice:

Be short, be funny (erm thanks Paul) and to not think of the delegates as a bunch of travel agents (very few of them were) but as the travel community.

Just as well really because my part of Riding The Wave was to outline what is going on with Web 2.0, communities and social networking.

It was broad brush, high level 20 minutes, littered with facts, figures and off the wall stories about how the web is changing people’s lives by connecting them in so many different ways, and how companies like Microsoft and Google are helping advertisers connect with those audiences.

This kind of set the scene for Kevin may to go macro and talk about the travel industry, letting the conference know that perhaps they weren’t embracing this new way of doing things, suggesting some things hadn’t changed much.

The screen shots of Expedia’s homepage were telling – not changed in 10 years! Citing a couple of new sites that were doing thing’s slightly differently helped to hammer the point home.

Kevin posted on the Travolution Blog his main bullets and encouraged a discussion which has seen people initially disagree with him but end up talking themselves round – check out the thread here.

The travel industry is a very much a tight knit community – everyone seemed to know each other and boy do they party hard!

Thanks to Kevin, Simon Ferguson and Charlotte Davies for the opportunity to get out there and spread the news.

Thanks also to Dan Robb and Robin Frewer for picking up the dinner tab. Always nice when Google pays!

You can find our travel presentations here.

And if anyone bumps into Paul, let him know I was short, people did laugh, and I hope I’m now an honorary member of their community.

Can’t wait for next year!?