Happy 2010, the start of a new decade!
A new web 2.0 social media hotel review project:
Amsterdam counts 350 hotels and Vincent Van Dijk starts his dedicated blog Amsterdam Slaapt (i.e. Amsterdam Sleeps). Each day of 2010 he will tell us about his adventures in one of those 350 hotels, as each day of 2010 he will be sleeping out of his suitcase in one.
As Vincent uses to live and work in The Hague I’m really curious what his experience will be. Especially as my slogan is always: You should party in Amsterdam, but you should sleep in The Hague!
Nevertheless it is an interesting initiative which I will be following closely as he seems to plan to be reporting in Dutch only.
Here is Victor’s first Tweet as @AmsterdamSlaapt
“On January 1, 2010 I’ll start start the hotel project Amsterdam Sleeps in
the stylish Parkhotel Amsterdam.
About Vincent van Dijk
Vincent van Dijk is a food and life style trend watcher and co owner of The Hague (Scheveningen) based ad agency HBMEO. He is a restaurant spotter for the Dutch Restaurant Guide SpecialBite err SpecialBite.com.
Sources in Dutch: Een jaar slapen in A’damse hotels – AT5 Nieuws and Misset Hotel.
Dang! and then you go wrong. With Clipmarks you can post in one go to various blogs…you have to unmark the box when you don’t want to publish to every blog you author. LOL
Kah Lai is a designer who just graduated from the Dutch design school in Utrecht.
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“Selfportrait’ is a graduation project based on the emotions and suppressed feelings what Ka-Lai has experienced. The chair expresses the designer’s own personality and character.
“In the past I have always found myself to be a quiet and introvert person. I suppressed my own emotions and didn’t dare to show my feelings to other people. I was afraid that people will find me weird if I show them the real me. It felt like there was something growing on me what gets bigger and bigger like a tumor.I always tend to hide away my personality, but on the other hand I wanted nothing more but to open up and just be myself.”
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Just testing a new application:
My main dilemma is I am a two finger typist only and I have a strong desire to share my finds from all over the internet.
I tend to believe my finds are also of interest to my readers.
A decent way of doing this is manually copying and pasting information into a WP post, edit it and then add the url to the original information location. That, however is very time consuming. Even editing a Carnival post takes a lot of time. I simply lack the time to do it that proper!
On the other hand I don’t want to become a “scraper”, someone who simply imports via an RSS import plugin without any original thought or pointer.
Thus far I have tried several approaches, like:
- Sharing reads in my Google reader and putting a Google reader widget here in the side column. Recently I found out through a nifty Firefox Plugin, called firebug, that all widgets take waaay too much time to load. Hence I kicked all widgets from my side box including the Google one. Then I tried to import shares from my Google reader in a separate page…didn’t get it working.
- Earlier, for some time I believed Tumblring (off course there are other services alike Tumblr) was the solution. It even seems possible to Tumblr from your own site, but digging into the necessary code took me too much time and I abandoned the project.
- I have been using the Quickpress plugin for Wordpress. Problem with that is you only can clip and paste one paragraph and can hardly edit it. Moreover Quickpress copies the original title of a post…mostly I don’t want to copy the title at all, because it doesn’t fit in this blog. Finally you always ought to make clear that you clipped something from someone else. Time permitting I solved it by adding b-quotes around somebody elses text.
- The Press it plugin which is part of the Wordpress suite does some things similar to Quickpress. At least you can save the clip as a draft post and then attack it from the Wordpress editor. However, with my lateral approach of everything including blogging, I use to have a constant flow of about 80-100 draft posts lying around here withaout the attention they deserve. Once and for all I want to get rid of them.
- Another approach could be using Stumble to it’s full extent: First stumble, later when you have time look back to what you stumbled and maie it into a decent post…However I am unable to fully grasp it and use it to it’s full possibilities.
- Posting stuff as WIP (work in process) with the intention to later edit and augment it, like I am doing with this post. Actually no way to go at all, because before I edit it again something new comes up every time.
- Then I discovered Amplify and experimented with it for a couple of weeks. I like the way you can order and edit your clips, the header and the way you can add your own thoughts. I simply put up the question if I could use it on my own blog and then one of the Amplify guys directed me to Clipmarks
Why I believe Clipmarks works for me:
- You can create your own header
- While clipping you can very precisely choose the order of your clippings. What you clip first comes first. Usually I want to show a photo or picture first and give comments thereafter.
- The whole clip is clearly visible as a clip. You don’t put your reader on the wrong foot presenting something as your own product.
- If I want to add more obeservations to a clip I can leave the clip as it is and simply add more stuff…the clip remains as it is, a clip
Let’s see how it works.
Coincidentally I got into contact with Bianca Maoua of the Dutch Branch of Travel Counsellors. A thriving franchise that is branching out despite the travel agent walk or kick out all over the world.
It was a very nice first encounter and I do believe this is the future alternative for the High Street Travel Agent.
Off course I’m biased, because I’m so used to the home working travel agent already: In my former life I worked 24/7 and had to change travel itineraries the very last moment (usually between 10 PM and 2.30AM). We then used a lady whose name I’ve forgotten sadly, but who was located in LA and worked there from home and from an office and helped us with airline leg scheduling and Hotel reservations when all Travel Agents here in The Netherlands were closed. This was in the late 80ies and early 90ies, way before Internet, but she had acces to GDS and could work with it and, more importantly knew how to trick the system…the now not permitted reverse your leg trip and so. Later I used a guy wo could tweak the same GDS with … just an embryonal PC…
About Travel Counsellors
Founded : 1994 by Chairman David Speakman
200 staff are located at the company’s Headquarters in the UK headquarters in Bolton. 40 more in overseas offices.
Over 1,000 home based self employed agents, located throughout the UK along with Ireland, the Netherlands, the US, Germany, South Africa and Australia. Further overseas expansion is planned. 83% of the agents are women, 77% have children, 71% are aged between 31 and 50 with an average of 19 years experience. Before joining Travel Counsellors 60% were either managers, deputy mangers or owners of high street / retail travel agencies
The company’s turnover has increased from its 1993 level of £510,000 to £245m for the financial year ending October 31 2008.
What they sell:
Packages represent 20% of total sales, including traditional package holidays from the (UK) big four. Tailor made holidays are about two thirds (65%) of our business, booked either with specialist tour operators or dynamically packaged using our own award winning Phenix system. The remaining 15% consists of cruise and business travel bookings.
Impressive! Even if you are net savvy they can save you tremendous time! They claim their Phenix system makes them better informed than any customer shopping on the internet….
I do permit myself a comment: Their site needs loads of more content! Syndication perhaps?
And a question: Are there genuine travel agent review sites out there?
Added September 23, 2009
Featured in VoyaLinks by Merill of Voyage Gee
Recently, after a testing 6 months with 3 numbers, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines has launched number 4 of its interactive multimedia on-line in-flight magazine iFly. It is available in the Dutch and English language.
It is not KLM’s intention to scrap the paper magazine (yet?), but it is an interesting experiment. The topic presented to the viewer are based on the viewers behavior and interests, for instance the time a viewer spends on a certain topic.
An very interesting format for future blogs and hotel sites as well. Media gurus love the clickrate and time spent on the site….
Update.
I was a bit surprised not having found more on the subject.
Then I found this post of Junta42.com.
After each new issue they send an e-mail to their subscribers.
* After their third issue, KLM has found that iFly is their best marketing tool ever used to sell repeat tickets.
* The average reader spends 20 minutes reading the magazine.
* 20% read the entire magazine.
* Frequent flyers are heavy users of the magazine.
* The click-through rate of iFly is higher than any other online campaign from KLM.
The good people, more precisely P.Ling, at Uptake’s Travel Industry Blog ranked me among their top 15 Hotel Blogs. Thank you P. Ling at Uptake!
For me a reason to look again at one of my favorite posts: Blogging Hotel Insiders. I had 40 Blogging hotel insiders. My choice was a bit wider on the one hand and a bit narrower on the other hand: I did not include some Travel Industry Blogs. In addition there are still a some to be added. So I updated my post and put it in the sidebar as one of my favorite posts.
Then, thanks to @CleverClogs of Clever Clogs – what’s in a name, see below:-) – I found ClusterUrl and as a test put the 15 mentioned by Uptake in a Cluster: Top 15 Hotel Blogs and Bloggers according to Uptake.
About ClusterUrl
ClusterUrl is a simple mash up to avoid having your browser open with umpteen screens. Instead you can put them in a Cluster and refer back to the cluster and share various links with your friends or readers. For the time being I have this one published at the bottom of my sidebar.
Then Amplify found me and had me fiddling around with it. Now what is Amplify? It is a Multi User Wordpress blog where you can dump clippings of sites you are browsing for later reading or for sharing via Twitter. It has some nifty features and it is free. So it is a ClipLog or abbreviated a Clog. As a Dutchman, or inhabitant of Cloggieland as my foreign friends tend to tease me, this new term appeals to me. From now on I’m a Clogger. Look it up! Here is my little Amplify stream.
About Amplify
Amplify was developed by the same company that created Clipmarks.com. Clipmarks, based in New York City, is majority-owned and operated by its employees. Forbes Media holds a minority interest in the company. The Company’s philosophy on information sharing is comprised of three main principles: (i) people can do a better job than algorithms of filtering the massive amount of information that’s available on the web; (ii) serendipitous discovery is often more compelling than information organized by topic; and (iii) limiting the length of shared content allows people to learn about more topics than they would otherwise have time or patience for.
Amplify was created to serve the needs of two audiences that are not the focus of Clipmarks.com: (i) Twitter users; and (ii) Groups.
Post Alia
Both have in common that they draw traffic away from your blog on the one hand. On the other hand it can draw traffic to your blog from the specific community….
The same problem you have with syndicating your content.
A pregnant example of problems with syndication is Uptake’s post. If I look at Technorati, it is not Uptake who links to me, but PhocusWright where they syndicated this post…although tecnorati is fast sliding in oblivion when it continues to behave so wobbly as it does now already for months..Apparently PhocusWright has a higher Technorati ranking than Uptake today… Nowadays Wordpress uses Google for it’s track backs. So in my WP Dashboard Google gives the original track back. You see? I’ll never understand SEO….
March 17, 2009 · 9 comments
in Bed and Breakfast, Been There, Blogging, Design, Germany, Hip Hotels, Hotels, Inspiration, L-List, Luxury, T-List, UK, Web 2.0, Websites, Weekend Hotels
It is really refreshing when you are sitting at a conference with presentations and discussions of travel and hospitality and tech types who only seem interested in their good self or their own product or service and are not outgoing and not interested in the guest, their clientèle, or only maybe in the money of the guest, to get a presentation of a really passionate couple. James Lohan and Tamara Heber-Percy (see also my interview with Tamara) , the husband and wife who founded the Mr and Mrs Smith Collections under the caption: Luxury and Romance meet Technology.
Yes, I agree. It’s all about Respect!
They both come from a completely different background than travel and hospitality. Again their success shows that innovations in this industry frequently come from those outside the industry.
They started out with the production of the Mr & Mrs Smith guides. They described their difficulties with getting the guides published. Never before was a guide produced with one editor and one photographer for all properties. Eventually they decided to pyblish the guide all by themselves. The interesting thing is that added to the guides is a Mr and Mrs Smith membership card which gives the holder some extras as upgrades or a little present from their shop. That gives the brand a tremendous crowd to source from.
They are adamant about the properties being inspected by themselves or a member of their team of +40 in the meantime, because they strongly believe you cannot review a hotel properly without having experienced the look and feel of the place. In addition they sometimes team up with unusual partners for the hotel industry like lingerie brands. They also understand that you sometimes want to stay in a self catering accommodation or luxury chalet, rather than a hotel.
They seamlessly have merged their Blog (in the air since July 2005) into their main site. However Tamara was already out there scoring whatever was said about the brand in 2004: Shortly after I became aware of their guides via a post of my fellow editor Willem Vos at the Dutch language Weekend Hotel Blog she already commented there – note the date of the comment is not correct, as Willem had some problems in 2008 to migrate the blog to his new platform running on Ruby on Rail…whatever that may be, but I know I made the comment already in 2004-.
Here you see some footage of one of the rather unconventional and hilarious ad they presented at the keynote.
If even Gesa Noormann of Escapio says in a comment under Kevin’s Travolution coverage of the presentation:
Thanks Kevin for the fab article. Despite the fact that Mr and Mrs Smith are Escapio’s UK competitor, I can’t deny that their presentation was fantastic!
then you know your presentation was good even if you were dead tired.
Some personal notes:
I don’t understand jot from what Kevin’s caption means: “Corporate Barbarism does not begin at home say The Smiths”, but that could be my Dunglish.
If you are curious to see who the guy behind Escapio is look here. Even if I say it myself, I like the picture.
I think Willem should start talking with the two portfolios mentioned here, Mr & Mrs Smith and Escapio, or alternatively they should start talking with Willem, to see if there are possibilities to team up to cover The Netherlands and Belgium better than they do now separately.
Added March 24, 2009:
Via twitter I got the link of the same video on their site: Mr & Mrs Smith | Get a Room!. It has a bit better quality than the YouTube one
Two Eurostar Trains by 
