travel

Are blogs, Facebook & other social media replacing travel publications?

7 Comments

On March 12, leading figures from politics, the media and the travel sector will meet at the first ITB Berlin Media Summit to discuss issues concerning the future of communications in the tourism industry. How will travelers and tourists of the future obtain their information? Will the role of the traditional media as a disseminator of information decline? What future lies in store for travel journalists?

Wolfgang Clement, former Federal Minister of Economics and Labor, and as a trained journalist for many years the editor-in-chief of various daily newspapers, will deliver the keynote address.

Sales of traditional media such as daily newspapers and magazines are plummeting, and social media such as Facebook, which currently has more than 350 million users worldwide, are dramatically changing the way people communicate. Dr Martin Buck, Director Competence Centre Travel and Logistics at Messe Berlin, said, “Changes in the way that the media are used will compel media companies to adopt a new way of thinking. Magazines are disappearing from the market, publications contain fewer pages, the daily papers are clearly losing their appeal, and their readers are turning to the internet. Quality journalism seems to be falling by the wayside. Meanwhile, an uncertain travel industry is asking: How do we reach the consumer? At the ITB Media Summit we want to start people thinking, and provide some answers.”

Benjamin Jost, founder and Chief Executive of TrustYou, a search engine for Internet ratings, says: “The growing popularity of internet rating portals for hotels and travel recommendations via friends and social media have placed traditional forms of advertising and the tourism media under unprecedented pressure.”

© Japan Today

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7 Comments
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are rhetorical questions even necessary?

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Facebook, which currently has more than 350 million users worldwide,

Ahem.Make that 400 million

How do we reach the consumer?

Its 2010.You interact with them on Twitter of course

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Anything is better than the way travel agencies run their business. I get tired of going to an out-of-date agent. Instead of quickly pulling up info on their computer. They go and get a telephone book to find prices and info about a destination. It is like being in the stone ages.

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Oh no, the Internet of doom again! Internet is the new printing press. It's just a change in technologies, same old story again.

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I do think the internet will replace travel publications, but not blogs, Facebook or other social media. The reason is that when you prepare for travel, you want to get a consistent and well-structured overview first. Blogs or social media are too limited, too focused for that task. They will serve to provide point information in a second step, though. Well, probably there will be some overlap like e.g. the Google Earth/Panoramio combination.

Travel books in the traditional paper format are sure a species destined for extinction. They will be replaced by mobile devices, which can hold so much more information, have navigation capabilities, online access to the latest information etc etc.

biglittleman, travel agencies are not the subject here, but who needs them anyway? Even in the dark pre-internet ages, I have never found a reason why I should use them except for some occasional flight booking.

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I HATE The Lonely Planet books!

I have had more than a few bad experiences of friends, on the advice of recent copies, taking us to hotels that have closed down, trains that don't exist and businesses with vastly different prices than those quoted in the book. To use that book requires that I confirm the information on the internet, which negates need for the whole damn guide anyways.

With the wealth of specifically targeted, up-to-date and free information on the internet, who needs to pay anything for travelling? Just print out a copy of whatever you're looking at and it's in a hardcopy format too.

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Magazines are disappearing from the market, publications contain fewer pages, the daily papers are clearly losing their appeal, and their readers are turning to the internet. Quality journalism seems to be falling by the wayside. Meanwhile, an uncertain travel industry is asking: How do we reach the consumer?

From the article, I pose this question: WHY can't quality journalism congregate on the Internet? It's just a different medium. Right? Well, we here at Charlie Claw's (Wasini Island, Kenya) have been reaching our customers with our bloggy-styled website...adding lots of content (pics, 3D videos, etc.) on our Dhow Sailing, Dolphin Spotting, Scuba Diving tours and our Lazy Lagoon Pool. In addition, we do a lot of Tweeting. Thanks to the fabulous features built into WordPress, we're able to effectively reach out to new or repeat customers on the World Wide Web. We now want to get into online booking so that we can make things more convenient for our customers.

Perhaps print media need to re-invent itself.

Cheers!

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