Are Bloggers the Slaves of the 21nd Century?

A couple of recent articles drew my attention:

Just remembering that GTD (Getting Things Done) author and organizing yourself guru David Allen stopped blogging even before I started this Blog….

High Five (1) The one and Only

The Death of the Travel Blog

Make The Great Escape Logo

The provocative title “The Death of the Travel Blog” drew my immediate attention to the blog “Make The Great Escape”.

Read the post and see for yourself what I mean: A refreshing new approach to travel blogging.

That is what i mean with a Gem. I found it while updating my T-List somewhere between the Technorati backtags, even before Worldhum referred to it, but reminded me to pay some attention to it.

Most certainly the Worldhum attention for a Travel related Blog barely a month old will draw some more attention to them. Now I only hope they keep hanging in.

Added December 23, 2008:
I noted the blog was discontinued. So I deleted all links. From time to time you have to check your old posts and old links… Food for a post about The Dead Travel Blogs Society. This is an analogy to a former life of mine as a Rosarian. Many rose I used to grow died after one or two years and became members of my Dead Roses Society.

Edit June 20, 2009
In my prior edit I left the Worldhum link where it was. It amazes me that Worldhum doesn’t have a linkchecker on its site….now I took the link to Worldhum that in itself links to the dead blog, away from here.

5 Star Luxury Hotels Blog

David Ourisman

When I noticed 5 Star Luxury Hotels Blog I thought: “A star is Born, just what I missed: An easy to access repository of 5 Star Luxury Hotels”.

David J. Ourisman of Travel Horizons started this Blog somewhere in May 2007.

Update: and barely a year after this post David stopped posting…..

Oops and I thought he was from Down Under, but actually he is from the US.

Enjoy!

Update:
Unfortunalely, barely a year after this post David stopped posting…

Last edited by GJE on April 19, 2011 at 11:49 pm

El Blog de un Hotel: A Blog to Market a Hotel Under Construction!

El Blog de un Hotel 01
El Blog de un Hotel (A Hotel’s Blog)

My Blogger friend Albert Barra pointed me to El Blog de un Hotel ie A Hotel’s Blog. [ed: since the opening of the hotel the Blog has been discontinued and removed]

Not that I am able to read or write Spanish, but with the help of Google Translate (Beta) I can at least assume I know a bit about what El Blog de un Hotel is posting about.

I like the concept: The Hotel talks to the reader while being built and is meandering in its posts the same sort of way I am meandering myself in this Blog. It keeps its name and brand and location secret. It will be located in Spain and will open 365 days after the Blog started. As the Blog started September 25, 2007, the hotel will open in September 2008.

The last post shows us interesting Artist Impressions of the mystery hotel’s design like this:

El Blog de un Hotel 02

It features two clever ways of building traffic:

  1. If you Blog about me, I will give you a link back: So Bloggers link to me!
  2. If you guess me out, You may gain a freebie hotel night …..

Both may create their own buzz, or maybe even hype….

I will follow the developments with interest.

Last edit August 2009:
Alas the Hotel is the Madrid Eurostar, but it appears the blog has been wiped.

The landing page says: Translated via Google:

Blog of a Hotel

Hola a todos.
Hello everyone.

Como sabéis ya soy una realidad. As you know I’m already a reality. El pasado 9 de enero abrí mis puertas para empezar a recibir huéspedes. On January 9 I opened my door to start receiving guests. De momento todo va muy bien, pero estoy desbordado de trabajo: coordinando los montajes de las habitaciones, controlando la calidad de mis desayunos, poniendo a punto mi Well Health Club y dando una cálida bienvenida a todos los que ya han querido conocerme.
At the moment everything is going very well, but I am overwhelmed by work: coordinating the assembly of the rooms, checking the quality of my breakfast, my point being Well Health Club and giving a warm welcome to all who wanted to know.

Por todo ello, y lamentablemente, me será imposible seguir manteniendo activa esta bitácora . Therefore, unfortunately, I will be impossible to keep this blog active. Hemos compartido mucho juntos, he aprendido un montón de vuestros comentarios y espero que, a lo largo de este año vosotros también hayáis disfrutado con mis comentarios y descubriendo mis interioridades.
We shared a lot together, I learned a lot from your comments and hope that throughout this year you also you have enjoyed my comments and finding out my insides.

Ya se ha empezado a contactar a los ganadores de los diferentes premios, pero si estáis impacientes, podéis enviar un email a.
Has already begun to contact the winners of the awards, but if you’re impatient, you can send an email to email

Como dicen los humanos, esto no es un adiós sino un hasta pronto.
As the human, this is not a goodbye but a see you soon.

…It was a very nice and creative example of marketing via a blog… I am really surprised they simply threw away all the good work…

Happy Hotelier on WiWiH

After the recent Facebook unpleasantnesses I looked again at WiWiH (Who Is Who in Hospitality). [ed: I checked it in december 2015 and WiWih seems now also part of the Dead Travel Blog society].

Earlier I stayed away from it for the same reason as I stayed away from Hyves (the Dutch My Space alternative), Second Life, My Space, Twitter and other community sites only meant for school going kids….as I should have stayed away from Facebook…..which also originated from a bunch of school going kids….as WIWIH seemingly originates from Maastricht in The Netherlands and seems to have strong ties with the Hotel School of Maastricht.

Looking further into it, I found a professional site that started in March 2006 and still presents itself as being in Beta. It has over 12,000 members who are all related to the hospitality industry.

WiWiH offers its members the possibility to create a free WiWhH Blog or to syndicate their own Blog with WiWih which is a clever feature. However, the navigation of the WiWiH Blogs deserves a bit enhancement.

Guess what? Happy Hotelier is not the only one creating a syndicated Blog WIWIH Blogs | Happy Hotelier on WIWIH:

I found a couple of fellow travel bloggers and T-List members that have a syndicated Blog on WIWIH: [Update: I’ve ltaken away the links of WiWiH]

To name a few.