Our popular whitepaper "Web 2.0 for the Travel and Tourism Industry" has had a 2007 refresh, and now includes a foreword from Craig Hepburn, Global Webmaster of STA Travel Group.

There is no ignoring, and certainly no denying, the current hype around Web 2.0, in particular here in the UK. Recently, The Guardian (a mainstream UK newspaper) published an interesting feature on Web 2.0 with interviews (and podcasts naturally) with the founders of Wikipedia, Flickr, Technorati, Blogger and other Web 2.0 rock-stars.

Reactive work with a lot of clients in the tourism and travel industries, a sector which has always been at the forefront of Internet technology, and so it is no surprise to see Web 2.0 features rapidly appearing in travel Web sites of well-known brands such as Contiki, STA Travel, Starwood, Lonely Planet and Eurostar.

However, many travel and tourism marketers don’t have the time to sit down and consider how these new horizons relate to their brand, so we thought we’d give you some help!

Our popular whitepaper (or is guidebook a better word?) titled “Web 2.0 for the Travel and Tourism Industry”. With it we aim to demystify some of the more common elements of Web 2.0, and show practical examples of how travel and tourism brands are using these to attract new customers, improve customer loyalty, and drive sales.

The whitepaper covers the following topics (with real-world examples):

• Blogging (Starwood, Eurostar and STA Travel)
  
• Podcasting (Lonely Planet, Orbitz, Virgin Atlantic, The Independent and Heartbeat guides)
  
• Social networking and user generated content (TripAdvisor, Yahoo, Contiki and Sheraton)
  
• Online video (YouTube, Travelistic and MGM Grand Las Vegas)
  
• RSS (Expedia, STA Travel, Virgin Holidays, Orbitz, and Conde Nast)
  
• Tagging (del.icio.us, Flickr and Travbuddy)
  
• Mash-ups and Open API’s (Locale, Virtual Tourism, Blogabond, 43 Places and TripAdvisor)
  
• Wikis (Wikitravel, World66 and TripAdvisor)
  
• AJAX (Kayak, Sidestep, Farecast and Google Maps)

If you are responsible for a tourism Web site or travel Web site, and interested in learning more about how 'Travel 2.0' could relate to you, please complete this form. The whitepaper is 15 pages, and will be emailed to you in PDF format.

Tim O'Neill, Managing Director UK

Labels: Technology, Web Culture and Trends