Turns out it's not just tourism boards that are hoping to cash in on user-generated content. Concierge.com, a travel website that also hosts content from Condé Nast Traveler, has just added "Member Posts + Reviews," a website section that lets readers contribute, yep, reviews of hotels, restaurants, nightlife, shopping and activities. (Concierge, like Jaunted, is owned by CondéNet.)
It's not the first major travel outlet to embrace user-created content. Budget Travel magazine's website launched My Budget Travel in July--shortly after the magazine published its 10th anniversary issue made up entirely of reader submissions. (Though similar, BT's new web offerings are a bit more social than Concierge's.)
Of course, these aren't the first websites to ask people to contribute. We ask readers for tips, and then there are some others that have been in the user-gen game for what in internet time is ages: You've heard of TripAdvisor, right?
The Pennsylvania Tourism Office has a new website and it's... colorful! It also has lots of audio and photos, and a bunch of trip ideas. (Yes, we liked the brewery tour suggestion.)
The new VisitPA.com is also soliciting stories about tourism in the state from visitors. While user-generated content isn't exactly anovel idea, it does prove that the higher ups are at least cognizant of the web and how much online research people do these days before taking a trip.
Our fave feature? The road trip planner that lets you grab destination and event info from all over the site and aggregate it into a mapped itinerary for your own one-of-a-kind trip.
GenFlyLounge promises everything you already do on, you know, real social networking sites:
Now you can get travel recommendations from fellow students, connect with like-minded travelers, share your travel experiences, photos and videos and have the trip of a lifetime!
The only thing that might make this totally unnecessary site useful is the fact that it promises to deliver student-only deals to members. Worth it? Meh.
Bored to death of the routine of hotel living? Check out the newly launched AirBed & Breakfast.
The website offers listings of people across the world who have accommodations for travelers in their homes. Most times it's pretty modest, think a spot to sleep on the couch and some cereal in the morning. But often, AB&B users have very swanky places where you can lay your head.
Prices vary per night depending on the location, of course, but you're almost guaranteed to save money over a traditional hotel. The host ends up with 97 percent of the rate, and AB&B gets a small transaction fee when a stay is over.
One major problem with tourism board websites is that the content on them can be a little thin--and a little cliche. So how is Oregon spicing up its effort to lure travelers to its coastal cities? By having locals and visitors alike submit photos and stories about the great times they've had there.
The coast's new site--at the easy-to-remember URL VisitTheOregonCoast.com--has dozens and dozens of photos from Flickr along with Google Maps, recommendations of stuff to do from real people and extensive listings of places to stay, complete with links to property websites.
True, we could just search Flickr on our own for, say, Yachats, but then we wouldn't learn that it's actually pronounced YAH-hots!
Dan Gould wouldn't be caught dead in front of a virtual Louvre. Here, he explains why.
I know you're here because, in some way, you love travel, either as a globe trotter yourself or as a voyeur, enjoying others' adventures.
So I feel it's my duty to warn you about Journeys. The "virtual world" is supposed to be a travel guide that duplicates the real world, providing travel advice within the fake world for the real world. Confused yet? Using the internet as a tool to guide your travels makes sense. But wasting time in a virtual copy? Why bother?
All the posts on Jaunted every day make it pretty clear to me that IRL is pretty damn interesting. Forget anyone who says there is nothing left to explore, and that virtual worlds are the next frontier. The world is dynamic and changing, and new secrets and wonders always abound.
So if you're going to spend time in virtual worlds, fly to places that are completely different than the real world. Go pwn n00bs in World of Warcraft, or turn yourself into a cartoon in Second Life, but when it comes time to actually, you know, go somewhere, do me a favor and try meatspace for a change.
There's a new site on the scene in Baltimore. 600block.com offers up a combination of features that lets you know what's going on, where it's happening and where the cool kids are. It's a little like Yelp and a little like Citysearch, but since it's focused specifically on the Charm City it can take things a lot further to keep you plugged in.
Although still technically running as a beta, the site has plenty of opinions on the best restaurants, bars, stores and more. Unique features that set it apart from other sites include the "My Scene" area of the site. Here, users can select their own personal favorites and experiences to show others how they enjoy spending their time and where they run the show.
The site also lists the best deals in town daily, whether that's a steal at a business lunch spot or a restaurant featuring half priced bottles of wine at dinner. You can quickly see who's picking what as a favorite and what new hot spots are being "Scene'd." No word on whether they'll take this idea elsewhere, but for now 600block.com is full of potential.
We declared the American Airlines blog "officially dead" back in June, but at least earlier this summer the archives were still available. Now a UK blogger who follows online media and public relations reports that "AA Conversation" has been completely yanked from Blogger:
I've previously mentioned how I was unsure if the American Airlines [site] was either an awful blog or a parody. ... Was this stopped by the person blogging, perhaps beacuse it was realised [he was] doing a bad job of it?
We'd say yes! But it's not for a lack of trying on the part of AA's Billy Sanez, who wrote the blog posts. We pin the embarrassment on management, which was too busy cooking up frequent flier program cuts and merger schemes to fund a blog that would generate tons of free goodwill for a carrier that desperately needs it.
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