The Trailbeater

Macchu Picchu - is it all it is cracked up to be

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Colclough) — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 10:47:00 +0000

Is Macchu Picchu all it is cracked up to be? Is the Great Wall of China? Is the Inca Trail? Tikal, Palenque ....

It is an interesting question, we all chase after the big monuments and then have to share them with thousands of others. The question that has always played on my mind has been, am I not better heading for the under-visited alternatives. For example, in New Zealand, Milford Sound is undeniably beautiful in that rugged fjor-land wilderness kind of way, but then loads of people head down there and you have to share the view. Last time I visited I tackled Gertrude's saddle, a stunning 4 hour trek that takes you to a stunning viewpoint over the fjord without any of the crowds. Perfect.

So back to Machu Picchu, is it worth it. Heck, people even head out to Peru solely for the purpose of a Machu Pichu holiday. Well there are alternatives. Choquequirao is known as a sister site, and whilst it isn't quite as dramatically situated it is very rarely visited the trek there is incredible and well having it all to yourself is a big deal after the crowds at Machu Picchu. But then, do you really want to go to Peru and not see Machu Picchu?

Trekking in Morocco

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Colclough) — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 10:36:00 +0000

The Sunday Times ran a feature this week on weekend adventures, including 8 ideas for a long weekend away. I love the idea of this, the active alternative to the rather over done city break. Tips included sea kayaking in Croatia and trekking in Morocco, both trips we offer at Tourdust.

I'd love to see this emerge as a new category, but I guess unless it acquires a moniker (a la glamping, staycation .... yawn!!!!) then it isn't going to fly with journalists.

For what it is worth the promoted trekking trip in Morocco wasn't half bad, but could be so much better. If you are going to spend a weekend in Morocco, then I'd really recommend spending three days tackling Toubkal. You could fly Friday morning on the first easyjet flight from Gatwick to Marrakech, head straight to the Atlas Mountains in time for lunch. You'd head up through the Azzaden Valley on the Saturday, then up early on the Sunday to climb Toubkal and then return to Imlil. I'd usually recommend overnighting in Marrakech and then heading back to the UK on Monday.

You could squeeze it tighter, but Toubkal in two days is a bit of a dull trek missing the best of the mountains., it is also a fairly busy trail. Likewise you could potentially fly back on the last day of the trek, but the albeit small chances of the the road from Imlil to Marrakech being blocked by rock fall or floods mean you'd be better playing safe and leaving some sleeve.

Applications. For life not just for Christmas?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Colclough) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:55:00 +0000

I've been doing a little research into travel applications on Facebook and have been amazed by their apparent failure.

Searching the Facebook application directory for travel applications brings up 200 applications (presumably there are more, I am just seeing the more 'popular' ones). Of those, only:

Just 5 have more than 5,000 monthly users.
Just 45 have more than 1,000 monthly users.

Apparently an active user is defined as "the number of unique daily active users who interact with your application in any way - whether it be by visiting a canvas page, interacting with a profile box, or clicking on a profile tab."

So what is going on? What do these applications do for the various brands that have one (Virgin Atlantic, American Airlines, STA ....). Presumably most get a bit of traction in the early days from the friends and family effect - but beyond that the numbers are so small as to make it an irrelevant marketing channel.

Will mobile applications go the same way? I only have to look at my own use of android OS apps. I must have downloaded over 20 in total, but only actually use 2 regularly (the twitter and Facebook apps) some of the others are good for novelty factor (e.g. google night sky) but but will I interact with them regularly - no.

Thoughts anybody? Do applications deliver positive ROI for brands?

Alternative WTM World Travel Market Guide

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Colclough) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:30:00 +0000

The World Travel Market is in London in a couple of weeks time. We'll be there in force, but figuring out what to do is a mission in itself. Their will be over 5000 exhibitors and dozens of events, so I've bucked the trend of a lifetime and got myself a little organised.

I've just spent the best part of a morning navigating the labyrinth that is the WTM web-site and thought I'd share the juicy bits. So here is my World travel market guide and schedule. Naturally, there is a leaning towards anything e-commerce, adventure travel and responsible travel related:

9 November:

13.00-17.30 WTM Speed Networking. OK it is a horrid concept, but a quick way for us to filter out all the crap and hone in on the few interesting small operators who make it to the WTM. (Meridian Club Lounge)

18.30-.... WTM Fringe Responsible Travel Networking. Organised by Sally from tripbod and Gopi from the fantastic blueyonder (I must disclose that the blueyonder are a Tourdust supplier) this will be a relaxed event featuring the leading lights from the responsible travel world including some fantastic local operators

19.00-....Travtweetup. Aaaaargh, somebody help me decide. There is also a travtweetup organised at the same time as the fringe event above. This one organised by Matt Parsons of TTG is definitely worth a visit to meet the travel twitterati (sorry, couldn't resist it). Location: Abacus, Bank

10 November:

11.00-12.00 Adventure Tourism Industry Trends, Product Development and Marketing. Offering insights on the adventure travel market from some seriously knowledgeable fonts of the adventure travel industry. I will have my networking shoes on for this one with various luminaries from the adventure travel industry attending. Really look forward to catching up with some of the great speakers. (Location: North Gallery room 13)

16.30-17.30 World Tourism Awards We'll be there to see GAP Adventures accept a prestigious World Tourism Award.

18.00-23.00 Travel Blog Camp. The one we have all been waiting for. Darren of travelrants organised a superb event last year and looking at the attendees this will be even better. Pretty much all of the luminaries of the UK travel blogging, ecommerce, trade press and PR worlds collide in a so-so riverside pub, great location, not so great beer. Seriously though huge kudos goes to Darren for single handedly putting on the best event of the massive World Travel Market for free (Location: Doggets Riverside Bar)

11 November

11.00-12.00 Virgin Holidays Responsible Tourism Awards. One of the best travel awards out there because it highlights the best operators around the world, expect to see some fantastic specialist local operators winning prizes alongside the usual Explore, Exodus crowd.

10.00-13.00 The Get Funded Show. hmmm mixed feelings about this one. Tourdust participated at a previous getfundedshow. Whilst that was fantastic, with exposure and mentoring essentially free, it also didn't quite live up to the pre-show promises in terms ofaudience numbers and attending investors. Now, we are in the unlucky position of needing to seek investment at some stage next year so pitching again would make sense for Tourdust, but frankly at an outrageous £3000 to participate, there is no chance. Basically it is priced so only companies with solid existing funding could afford it. For £3000 I could get close to 10,000 customers to my site through adwords. The shame of it all is that it looks like they have managed to line up some great investors to attend, but if the pay to play fee puts off many other travel startups like ourselves (and many others we know) then those investors aren't going to go away happy. Incidentally I just spotted a great post on this very topic

12.30-13.30 Is this the end of consumer protection as we know it. This promises to be a fascinating discussion about changes to ATOL requirements and the bonding requirements for dynamic packaging. A must for anyone involved in the UK travel industry. (Location: North Gallery Rooms 6&7)

12 November

12.30-13.30 Ask the Engines. Industry managers from Google and Yahoo will be speaking, need I say more? Having said that, my hunch is these guys are here to sell revenue services to travel companies rather than give glaring insights into the latest changes to the search algorithms. My experience of this kind of thing from the past is that they rather state the obvious, however the questions and answers should make the slog up the stairs worthwhile. (North Gallery Rooms 4&5)

13.00-15.00 Advice Clinics. Ask The Experts. Various experts provide tips on topics such as SEO, online marketing etc. I'd recommend hunting out Mark Hodson in particular for his brand of honest sage SEO advice - Mark, in my humble opinion, is about as far as you can get from the evergrowing band of snakeoil salesman operating as SEO agencies.. (Location, South Gallery Rooms 31 & 32)

I'd love to hear in particular if their are any other informal meetups and gatherings planned around the WTM.

In between all the seminars and networking events we'll be ploughing the floors for any signs of small independent local operators. Unfortunately attendees (particularly from the developed countries) tend to be at the more commercial end of the scale, but we hope to find a couple of gems from Asia and Latin America that we have identified. If you want to set up a meeting with us during the event drop us an email at info@tourdust.com

Delivering Great Customer Service Online

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Colclough) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:56:00 +0000

The key to delivering great customer service is by 'surprising and delighting'. How can an online company with online margins surprise & delight?

When the tsunami hit SE Asia, American Express put on extra shifts and called around all their Cardmembers they knew were in the area to make sure they were safe, you'll never see that on an advert.

As a matter of course, Amex cardmembers would call in complaining about a hotel charge on their bill. Generally, the issue was between the hotel and the customer, but Amex would often step in and take the hit. The concept is known as ‘surprise and delight’ and is a great example of how to engender customer loyalty and word of mouth through superior service. There are countless similar examples from other companies such as Nordstrom, and Southwest Airlines.

So how does an online company replicate this customer service and get such brand loyalty? If you strip down the most popular online services, you soon realise that Facebook, Twitter, Spotify and the like don’t have brand loyalty, they are simply a utility and when a better service comes from elsewhere their customers will soon switch.

Clearly there is no way these services can scale human-to-human customer service given their massive user bases and wafer thin margins, so what can they do to build that customer loyalty? Apple and Dopplr both offer a scalable solution. They translate the concept of surprising and delighting online. Marco from Dopplr talked about digital delighters at the Travolution Conference earlier this year, and he is on the money. Digital delighters are effectively little interactions between the brand and the customer that were unexpected and pleased the customer. They needn’t amount to a whole heap of use, but they become a talking point and cause the customer's relationship with the brand to deepen. A good example is the end of year

travel summary that Dopplr provide. Ultimately it isn’t that different to that old Amex Gold Card wheeze where customers were sent a year end statement in the style of a country club account. Provide some talkable statistics and package the data up nicely and bingo. With Apple, their delighter is the superior user experience they deliver through every inter-action with the brand, from the packaging to the device interface. It is all about taking the interaction from the rational to the emotional.

Marketing these ‘delighters’ is no easy thing either. There is no point hitting them hard (as product features or customer service promises) as then every customer will expect them as standard. This would be expensive to implement and in reality customers won’t be pleased without the element of surprise. Instead, you just have to rely on advocates to spread the word for you.

Another great example of an online brand managing fantastic customer service is www.blacktomato.co.uk. Now by all accounts they deliver superb servicing, but it is the little extras that create the ‘talkability’. From their website:

“When you book, our staff will ask what kind of a read you like to take on holiday and the style of music that just has to be on your ipod or hotel entertainment system. Tell us your taste for these essential “arts of travel” and we will send you a selection before you depart, ensuring that the high quality of your experience runs through your headphones and every page.

& again "Mountains of emails, no food in the fridge, you can’t get back into your favourite TV series because you have missed episodes… The first day back after a holiday is often a pretty depressing one.To counter that, our “Back to Reality” service should help. Delivered to your doorstep in a nice shiny envelope, it is our antidote to that nasty first day back feeling. Our kit includes a DVD movie of your choice (selected before you leave) and a copy of The Week to re-introduce you to the real world. So sit back, flop in front of a film and catch up with world events at your own pace.” http://www.blacktomato.co.uk/3618/black-tomatos-essential-extras/

So what should a fledgling web business do to build a superior customer service organisation?

Covet every single customer in the early days. Sod automation, you won’t have enough customers to make it necessary, do it manually to start with and that way you can deliver fantastic customer service and learn how the thing should best be automated later on. If that means you as the founder answering customer’s calls and emails then so be it.

And when it comes to the build, leave some budget aside to deliver a couple of little digital delighters. It doesn’t have to be expensive or technically complicated, just something unexpected and pleasing.

What is the point of blogging?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Colclough) — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 12:13:00 +0000

The time has come to investigate the actual benefits of all that time put into blogging.

I must admit, I have been entirely remiss in my absence of blogging activity recently. Mainly because we are incredibly busy building the best adventure travel site in the world. Still I'm turning over a new leaf and am determined to make sure my blogging activity delivers a positive return.

What have we gained from writing this moderately successful blog?

A tiny amount of SEO juice
Free passes to several expensive industry conferences (the joys of the bloggers pass)
Introductions to contacts within the industry (although arguably twitter is more productive to this end - probably the two in unison is best)
Provided a personality perspective to people who have come to the main Tourdust site and clicked on the blog

I'm fairly sure we've not gained any customers who have found the blog first and then gone on to buy a holiday on Tourdust. This is because we've written a fairly mixed bag of content covering

Opinion on business, ecommerce and the industry
Reporting from events (you know, those events we got the free passes too)
Occasional product related news from Tourdust

So we've decided to be a little more structured about how we go on with this whole game. From now on we are making a concerted effort to blog about adventure travel and cultural travel over at the new Tourdust blog. Please take a look, I think it looks stunning and I'm really proud of James (our developer superstar) for the integration of the blog through the site. e.g. take a look at http://www.tourdust.com/products/europe/france to see it in action. Basically we can bubble up blog posts onto any specific page or combination of pages on the site, making sure we are only ever suggesting relevant blog posts to users as they browse the main site. If you want to know what we'll be writing about in the new Tourdust blog, read this.

Over here at the trailbeater, I intend to keep on blogging. My main objective will be to write about the art of marketing and selling specialist travel experiences, but will probably stretch to cover more general ecommerce and travel topics.

Please add the new Tourdust blog to your reader at http://www.tourdust.com/blog/posts.rss

Travolution summit write-up

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Colclough) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:31:00 +0000

Interesting insights from Homeaway.com at the Travolution Summit

For those that follow me on twitter (@bencolclough) you would have seen a flurry of messages yesterday about the Travolution summit. The summit was a fantastic event where a bunch of smart people in the world of online travel got together and listened to some great presentations.

For me the highlight of the day was Chief Exec of Homeaway.com. For those that don’t know it yet, Homeaway.com is a huge conglomeration of sites with over 360,000 vacation rental properties on its books. It has serious VC wonga behind it, and has grown aggressively by hoovering up loads of smaller local vacation rental sites. By its own admission it still has only aprox. 10% of global properties on its books. The presentation raised three thoughts for me:

There are still significant untapped niches in travel: Despite the fact that travel is the second most mature online industry (I’m not mentioning the first), there are still untapped niche markets with huge value. So whilst VCs have helped fund countless fancy travel apps and social networks, big money remains on the table for those brave enough to roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty. Consolidating supply of rental homes isn’t necessarily glamorous work but there is money in it, and it meets a real unmet customer need. I would count the adventure travel market which Tourdust.com operates in as another example (and is actually a larger marketplace than vacation rentals worth aprox. $200B globally)
Simple is good: I quote “our sites aren’t special”. Homeaway.com boils down to offering as much product coverage as possible to customers. There truly isn’t anything special about the web site. They even stick with a tried and trusted listings model, owners simply pay aprox $300 per year to list. They are just getting on with the nuts and bolts of meeting an unmet customer need, simply working on getting that sales and marketing machine turning over nicely. A lot of start-ups would benefit hugely (Tourdust.com included) from looking at homeaway.com as a case study of focussing on simplicity not the latest sexy social app which might get us a cheap and dirty traffic spike from Techcrunch or Mashable.
M&A in online businesses: I’m intrigued how an online business can make M&A pay. The theory is that in an ideal market, when you acquire another company you pay fairly for the value of their future revenue streams. So if you can’t squeeze some some extra margins by combining forces then the deal won’t cover its costs (lawyers, financiers etc.). This would typically mean reducing staffing overhead, so combine marketing teams and support functions etc. I can’t see these savings being significant in the online world because HQ teams tend to be very very small. Likewise it doesn’t make sense to shut the old site down due to the google link juice it will have built up over the years. So where are the synergies? Maybe it is simply a case of saving on the sales costs it would take for homeaway to recruit all the properties on the target’s books directly? For example, if it costs Homeaway.com an average of $30 to acquire a new rental home to the network (via sales or marketing channels), then acquiring a site like homelidays with 40,000 properties on its books saves homeaway an investment of only $1.2m in sales & marketing (assuming there is no overlap in the portfolios).

Other highlights of the day for me included:

The presentation by Tripadvisor: What struck me most, despite their obvious success in social media is that they still refer to their review content as "their's". If I had contributed a review to tripadvisor, I would quite firmly believe that content was mine not tripadvisor’s.

Frommer’s research report: The key point they tried to hammer home was that consumer’s want to see information on a destination when they are browsing online travel agents. Add to this that Google doesn’t want you to have the same content as everyone else and you get the crazy result of a million and one different destination articles written about the same topic. How can that add net value to the overall economy?

Social Networks: Works of art or businesses?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Colclough) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 09:24:00 +0000

Are you a business or an artist if you don't have sales or marketing functions that actually create revenue? WAYN.com, the largest travel social network by a country mile is about to relaunch their website - branding, business model, the whole kit and caboodle. Presumably as a result of their struggles to make a decent return on their huge audience (15 million members) and some slowing in growth. The focus on rebuilding the business model is a clear sign of the times and of common-sense returning to the market.

For me, the most interesting change within this announcement is the focus on building a highly targeted advertising network based on travellers answer to the question: "What are you up for doing?". Now, since they scrapped subscription fees, WAYN has been a site which like many others, has relied on easy (but crappy) money via the old affiliate / adwords / display ads revenue sources. What we are seeing here is, thanks to the economy, a more realistic approach to running a business. One that realises the most important function to insource is the bit that drives revenues. They are focusing on driving user content and intent that is directly relevant to paying advertisers and they will presumably (hopefully!) use a sales force to sell these advertising opportunities. If so, they will be following in the wise footsteps of Tripadvisor.com who long ago made the decision to insource their contextual advertising rather than relying on adwords (and they are about the only social network I can think off with a great revenue model).

This is my point, how can you call yourself a business if you are not fully in control of your revenues? Any entrepreneurs out there ruminating a new start-up need to be aware that they're going to have to get their hands dirty and do a bit of old fashioned selling. Unbelievably, I've met a couple of entrepreneurs recently in the London tech scene, who have founded community sites with fantastic traffic (200k - 600k per month) who have absolutely no interest in making it pay. In the words of one, who runs a successful local listing site: "It's going ok I suppose, we've got great traffic growth but we're struggling to get the small businesses on the site to pay." He goes on, "To be honest, I'm not really interested in the commercial side of the business, building a sales force, I just like building cool applications". Is this not the attitude of a high minded artist than a businessman?

So any web startups out there ask yourself, "am I asking any of my users or suppliers to pay me, if not why not?" In most cases I suspect, it will boil down to a reluctance to do the grunt work. With the drying up of investment funds to support the "growth now, revenue later" businesses, I suspect they are going to have to start getting their hands dirty sooner rather than later.

travel inspiration - seeing, watching or reading?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Colclough) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:52:00 +0000

Last week I wrote about the importance of navigation and search in helping travellers find ideas and inspiration for their next trip. Here, I want to talk about the importance of layout and media in inspiring & converting a product view to a desire to purchase.

Yesterday we visited the Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition and it really gave me the travel bug. In analysing what made me want to visit all these places, I concluded it was the stunning photos paired with simple well presented text descriptions that allowed me to quickly dive in and visualise myself travelling wherever the subject of the photo was.

My hypothesis is that photos and simple text create the need state. Further information, such as long descriptions & iteneraries help convert the need state to a purchase. So what about other media formats.

Video as a tool for travel inspiration.

I know some people really like video as a format for travel inspiration, but sometimes I find it can be too personal to the presenter. It is almost like the presenter (and camera crew) is intruding on my imagination and somehow taking the romance out of the (potential) trip. I think this is a very personal viewpoint (I never did like the rough guide TV series) so would love to hear other people's thoughts? Is video more of a conversion or inspiration tool? Incidentally, we did think about having video's on Tourdust and although it didn't make the cut it is still in the pipeline and something I would like to do. A really great example of using video to drive inspiration and purchase is http://travelguru.tv. In this context I can really see the value.

Travel Writing (journalism) as a tool for travel inspiration.

I asked myself the other day, have I ever been inspired to do something after reading an article in the thousands of travel supplements I have read over the years? and the answer is surprisingly, no! Yet it is still one of first sections I read in the weekend newspapers. I think the main issue here, for me at least, is timeliness. What are the odds that I will read about something in the paper that interests me when I am in that short window of trip planning? Taking that aside I do think that quality written editorial content can work to wet your appetite and build sub-consious demand for activities or destinations that is not converted until later on when you are in the purchase window. Likewise, the ability to search archives online and the multitude of specialist blogs is a huge resource for the traveller.

What about social media for travel inspiration?

We are now seriously considering promoting our tour operator's blogs and twitter streams against their experience listing on Tourdust. We believe that the passion and personality of a small operator is probably their biggest selling point and what better tool to do that? Imagine you are looking at Keith's skiing holiday on his farm in Austria and read his latest tweet (twitter.com/mtb_keith)

Have a great route planned for today, a new pub and a black run

7:26 AM Mar 8th from web

enjoying coffee and cake, a traditional Austrian past time

1:58 PM Mar 7th from web

This timely and instant insight into Keith's life out in Austria might just be the thing to help you really visualise the holiday and get inspired to want to go.

I'd love to hear people's thoughts on what media they prefer as consumers. I'll go first, personally I think big, striking and raw imagery (not too polished) is the key, alongside short punchy descriptions that are personally written and carry across the personality of the experience.

New tools & tricks to inspire independent travellers

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Colclough) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 10:31:00 +0000

Our friends at joobili.com are now in open beta and like us they are trying to move online travel beyond a transactional experience.

Nowadays there is almost too much information when it comes to planning travel online. Generally if you go online looking for inspiration you'll be faced by a complex booking form asking you where you want to go, when you want to go etc. Problem is, at this point you don't know yet! you are looking for something to take your fancy.

How can web-sites meet this "I'm looking for ideas" need?

We think the key is allowing fuzzy higher level browsing that throws up great results on the fly and most importantly that are displayed in a clean & inspiring visual format. For example:

Joobili focuses on timely travel. So you know when you want to get away but you're open to where and what. Joobili lets you know all the cool events & festivals going on around Europe at and around that time, so you can build a trip around them. You get a really good overview of what is available before you dive into the detail.

Tourdust on the other hand focuses on what you want to do or where you want to go. For instance you might be planning a two week trip to South Africa, we can show you some awesome & different stuff to do there and you can then narrow down by activity type or into an area within S Africa. Or you may be a mountain biking enthusiast and are open where you go, we'll show you all the ideas from all over the world to inspire you

The commonality is a user centric approach on travellers who are looking for something a little bit different on their travels. When it comes to planning independent travel the old search forms simply don't work - they're all very well if you want a package holiday to the Costas but simply don't cut the mustard if you are looking for something unique, a little authentic and exciting.

Things I really like about Joobili?

Inspired slider nav feature that allows you to easily scope out your dates and see what takes your fancy
Massive coverage of all of the events and festivals going on across Europe. This isn't just music festivals, it includes loads of off the beaten track local cultural festivals and events too.
Nice community features

Hitting Milestones

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 11:03:00 +0000

I can hardly believe that it is now close to the end of February. It doesn't seems like a second since Christmas and at the same time, I feel a bit like I've aged about 10 years since starting work on Tourdust last summer, most of that since we launched about 6 weeks ago! But, now that the snow has melted and spring feels like it is well and truly on the way, it feels like a good time to take stock and look at some of the milestones that we have reached...

1) We now have over 200 local experience providers on Tourdust offering over 270 individual experiences. For those of you who have been following our progress, you will know that we have pretty much contacted each and every one of these providers ourselves! (In fact, I just found one of my first tweets from 27th November proudly announcing our 20th experience on the site.....). Anyway we now really need to prioritise the development of the referral channel. It will be an interesting experiment to see if businesses will refer other businesses in the same way individuals do on facebook et al. We have seen it happening already with Tourdust informally so fingers crossed. We believe it will work because there are already established networks within the world of small & passionate operators.

2) Had our first piece of press coverage in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago. Not a huge mention, but a mention all the same.

3) Have been covered in several blog reviews, including Alex Bainbridge, Travel Rants

SandWagon, Ineffable and New Bamboo

4) Been showcased as website of the month for Travel Notebook and website of the day for Enterprise Nation.

5) On a personal note, metaphorically speaking we are giving birth to our 'second' baby this year in a couple of weeks. We are expecting our third little girl, making that three kids under 4 plus a start-up. I think we need a holiday!

ALTERNATIVE HALF TERM IDEAS

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Colclough) — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 15:58:00 +0000

Half term already? It can’t be. Not all of us can afford to go ski-ing this year, so how about some day trips out in the UK which might be fun for the family and won’t break the budget….

Alternative London Sight-Seeing – What better way to bring history alive in half term, than with Simon on his silvercane tours of the capital. His vivid tours take you through the scenes of politicians, murderers and scientists and he brings the past alive as he walks. All tours can be totally bespoke, giving you a truly unique experience. Prices start from £90

Winter Wildlife Watching on Mull – Take the family to Mull and spend some time in the company of passionate wildlife guide, David. Your three night stay will be in eco-accommodation, where Joy, David’s wife will cook you delicious breakfasts and dinners. During the day, David will spend the day exploring with you pointing out the hidden and beautiful visitors to this magnificent island. Prices from £270

Rail & Cycling Trips in the North West – Enjoy a ride on the famous Settle Carlisle Railway to its most famous landmark, Ribblehead Viaduct, where your guide will be waiting at the station with bikes and everything you need for your trip. You have the whole afternoon to enjoy the ride back down Ribblesdale but before setting off you might like to visit the fascinating museum, on the station platform, which charts the history of the line and its construction - in particular the building of the famous Ribblehead Viaduct. Prices from £35

All quiet at the Travel Technology Show

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Colclough) — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 11:24:00 +0000

What struck me most from a day spent wandering around the stalls at the travel technology show was how quiet it felt compared to last year. Still, I managed to speak to loads of interesting people and found out about a couple of interesting projects.

Most interesting find: yourtour.com a hugely ambitious project that is the result of years of mathematical research. The site appears to build itenaries on the fly from a database of visitor attractions (sourced from Lonely Planet) and accommodation (sourced from booking.com). You put in your starting point, tell them whether you want a one way trip or round trip and how long and it builds a detailed daily itenerary. It even offers an array of sliding bars to indicate your interest in topics like history, art, nature etc. and ammends the itenerary accordingly. If it works well I can really see this site being a success, but they set very high expectations in their users and the challenge will be in not letting them down.

Most interesting observation: Talking to Alex Bainbridge at the TourCMS stand, a chap came round with a bunch of quotes for booking systems that varied from 6 figure sums down to £50 per month for TourCMS. Makes you realise there is still a lot of fat in the travel technology industry. One assumes the more expensive options offer more functionality in some way but then TourCMS is hardly light on functionality. The Software as a service model (SAAS) is clearly the future - and there must be plenty of disruption to come in this industry.

Most amusing sight:

After an insigtful presentation on building a startup Hugo Burge was swamped by startups wanting to chat. A faint plea of "I'm not looking for investments" was the last thing I heard. Seriously though, Hugo made a strong case for bootstrapping and minimising investment in the early days, citing examples of startups who are distracted by both the funding process and the investment. I do agree, but still think that having investment and 'name' backers can help a lot in getting the press to take you seriously - and press is rather important for start-ups.

The best bit of all:

The best bit had to be the opportunity to chat with interesting people. At one point I was sat at a table with a bunch of other startups: Sally from Yoursafeplanet.co.uk, Jared from Joobili.com and James Dunford Wood from WorldReviewer.com. Later on there was bunch of bloggers hanging out at the TourCMS stand: Alex Bainbridge, Kevin May, Guillame Thevenot, Edd McArdle and myself albeit slightly out of place. Which made it worth the train journey alone.

By the way if you're interested all of the above people are on twitter if you want to follow them:

http://twitter.com/worldreviewer

http://twitter.com/travolution

http://twitter.com/alexbainbridge

http://twitter.com/eddmc

http://twitter.com/yoursafeplanet

http://twitter.com/joobili

http://twitter.com/hotelblogs

http://twitter.com/hugoburge

Stand out from the crowds - 3 great alternatives to Skiing

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 11:59:00 +0000

Some snow based holiday ideas for those of you out there looking to escape in the next couple of months.......

It's that time of year when everyone (who still has a job that is) is taking off on their chalet skiing holiday to spend a week queuing for ski lifts, lugging skis around and being out-skiid by precocious 4 year olds. The next few months of dinner parties will be dominated by tales of apres ski and how talented little Johnny is, attacking black runs at the age of 6. So instead of joining the throngs on the slopes this winter, why not try something a bit different?

Riding in Winter Wonderland - Spend the week exploring Southern Transylvania by horseback. Whilst riding through the snow, look out for the wild boar, red deer and lynx that inhabit this magical place. At night time, curl up in front of a roaring fire and listen out for the howling wolves..... (Prices from 850 Euros)

Snow-shoeing the Sierra Nevada - Explore the beautiful Sierra Nevada away from the crowds. Climb some of the peaks for breathtaking views and then descend through the magnificent forests. Trips are entirely tailor made, so no 2 holidays will ever be the same. (Prices from 70 Euros per day)

X-Country Skiing in the Pyrenees - Let James guide you along 130 km of stunning trails in the Pyrenees. The key to his holidays is flexibility, you can potter around at a slower pace, or push yourself, it's up to you. After a hard days work, why not chill out with a glass of vin chaud and enjoy the fantastic views? (Prices from £645)

Tourdust: Are Local Collectives The Future For Authentic Travel?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Colclough) — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 22:02:00 +0000

(We wrote this post for maketravelfair. You can see it in its original format at http://www.maketravelfair.co.uk/2009/01/27/tourdust-are-local-collectives-the-future-for-authentic-travel/)

Everybody has a tale of that time they really got under the skin of a local place and people. For us, it has to be the time we were adopted by Rafi, a Sri Lankan policeman in Kandy. To our shame, with the typical cynicism of the so called experienced traveller, we had spent the day swatting away assorted hawkers selling bits and bobs. In the evening we fell in talking to Rafi at the guesthouse and it soon migrated into a late night drinking session with his buddies, the head of the Sri Lankan navy and the guest house owner. The next day they took us on an escorted (& free) tour of the stunning Sigiriya followed by an unforgettable evening at Rafi’s house. The hospitality was out of this world and truly shamed us English by comparison, ultimately we had an awesome time.

Clearly these sorts of experience are tough to orchestrate but there are some great efforts underway in the tourism industry to promote authentic travel. In our efforts to recruit local operators for Tourdust we’ve come across some fascinating local collectives who are really trying to open up the skin of a place and welcome travellers in.

Local operators, guides or accommodation hosts tend to work within a strong local network. An assortment of accommodation options and interesting experiences in a locale are always going to draw more people than one local kayaking guide no matter how out of this world the kayaking is. We’ve come across a couple of initiatives that take this local network to the next level:

Celes Davar at Earth Rhythms has teamed up with over 50 partners in the Riding Mountain and southern Manitoba region in Canada. Bringing you face to face with chefs, artists, musicians, aboriginal teachers, yoga practitioners, guides, naturalists, agricultural producers, and many other remarkable local people. Its about enabling guests to have direct personal contact with a variety of local and authentic people who are the story-tellers and experience providers.

Robert Etherington from Ballooning In Tuscany runs some highly recommended hot air ballooning over Tuscany and is trying to pull together various locals to promote the village of Montisi. “At the heart of it will be the idea that if you wish to stay in a real, working Tuscan hilltop village with olive groves, vineyards and market gardens you will not be pampered and cosseted and treated like a visiting dignitary, but will have to take your place in the queue like everybody else for your drink, and plan your own itinerary of interesting things to do. There are also organised things to choose from (like ballooning, painting courses, wine tours etc) as well as facilities for rent for those that want to work on something in idyllic surroundings e.g. writing, painting, reading etc.” Robert has already been voluntarily running the website Montisi for a couple of years. It isn’t a question of packaging though: “the old idea of bundling up various activities into “packages” is a well tried one that simply puts some people off, and encourages the attentions of another kind of client that wants to be entertained and told what to do next.”

Two different approaches that beg the question: what is the best way to do this? I think there is some fantastic potential in using collective web tools such as online groups, group blogging platforms and wikis to bring together and promote individual local operators so that the sum of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Ultimately, can the social web allow the small guys to team up, collaborate and compete more effectively than the big guys? We’d love to pull together something like this for Tourdust and we’d love to hear any input & ideas on how to execute it.

Beer and Good Times in Germany

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:06:00 +0000

The last couple of days on Twitter, various people have been tweeting about what they were doing 10 years ago and it has taken me on a very pleasant trip down memory lane. In January 1999 I was a mere 20 years old, feeling pretty invincible and starting to discover the joys of travel.

I spent the academic year in a Bavarian town called Passau – which lies on the Austrian / German border and where the Rivers Danube & Inn converge. This beautiful town was a perfect base from where to explore Central Europe and it gave me a real taste for independent and authentic travel. Many people will not have heard of Passau, but it is a place where men still wear Lederhosen at the weekends (and not in an ironic sense) and there are 4 local breweries serving the alcohol consumption of a 50,000 population. Each brewery was beautifully located, with the obligatory beer garden and served good old fashioned Bavarian cuisine, a far cry from the All Bar Ones and Pitcher and Pianos that I was used to back home.

One of the highlights of the year for me, was a beer festival called the Mai Dult. This was a local version of the well known Oktober Fest, organised by the breweries of the town. As a slightly self-conscious 20 year old, I would never have pictured myself dancing on the tables to an oom-pah band, a huge stein of beer in hand, but there I was. Elderly men sat with us at our table teaching us the words to the drinking songs (which still occasionally come out now after a few too many) it was one of those experiences where you felt totally absorbed into the environment and felt you truly belonged to the community.

A few years later, Ben and I went to Munich for the weekend and having told him all about the Maidult, we went to the Hofbrauhaus there to try and recreate the experience. But somehow, being sat in a room with no local people and lots of English speaking tourists, it was all different. There was no dancing on tables, but even if there had been, I don’t think I could have done, it would have seemed too false.

Do I come across as a pretentious travel snob? I hope not, but I do truly believe that you find some of the most authentic and real experiences when you lose your inhibitions and throw yourself into something, rather than expecting an experience by numbers to be delivered to your plate…

What's wrong with the UK tourism industry?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Colclough) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 20:22:00 +0000

(Is this your stereotype of British tourism?)

So when the economic malaise struck (and we were mid development with Tourdust) it become obvious that we needed to focus on promoting British experiences. To promote the best of the authentic and independent experiences on offer in these fair Isles.

First issue was finding them and sure there were a few around the place, but nothing like the concentration you will find in Australia, New Zealand or South Africa. Take a look at the regional tourism boards and it's all hotels, B&Bs and National Trust properties. Surely there had to be more going on?

Next issue was getting them onto Tourdust. Now as long as you are providing the right kind of experience with that essence of authenticity then there really aren't a lot of barriers to entry. No up front cost, minimal cost if you get any business through our site, just a few hours to sign up, add some photos etc - we were even offering to help them do it! Without going into details there were a whole lot more "erm not really interested, maybe when you're successful" responses from English operators in particular than anywhere else. Interestingly Scottish operators had an attitude much more akin to that of our antipodean cousins. Now to be fair there are a whole heap of travel directories out there and as a cynical Englishman myself my first instinct is always to say no, but even so the difference with other countries was so marked. Are we really less open to getting out there and promoting our businesses?

The good news is that there are some fantastic companies out there, we just need more of them. Anyone who reads a Sunday broadsheet travel section will know about all the yurts, glamcamping & eco options and I'm proud to say we've got some really exciting stuff on Tourdust already (vineyard tours, fly fishing, foraging, buschraft, horse riding, birding, kayaking, etc ....).

So here's my thoughts on what needs to be done if we want to have a thriving inbound & domestic independent travel scene in England:

The Tourist boards need to start supporting and highlighting small and independent guides and different places to stay. I had an insightful conversation with one un-named tourism board who admitted that they couldn't feature many of the eco treehouses and yurts that have sprung up because they didn't have a proper rating from some official review board!!
There should be grants available for people setting up innovative small-scale tourism ventures that attract visitors (not just more B&Bs) - thinking about it I think there may already be with the rural tourism grants?
Operators should look to offer stuff at a variety of price points. There's definitely a place for the £300 a night yurt and the whole glamcamping movement, but how about the £70 a night yurt? or half day tours? I was pleasantly surprised for instance to see Seafreedom Kayak offering a nights B&B with a days kayaking from £77 per person. If people are going to be staying here this year because of the economy then we need to give them some reasonably priced options.
We need people to innovate and build on the unique cultural strengths we have to hand. Why isn't someone offering small group tours of the finest real ale pubs and craft brewers? Why aren't there sea kayak operators all other the estuaries and harbours of Devon and Cornwall? Cheese tours of the West Country, Cider, etc. (excuse me the food & wine obsession, I'm a little hungry)

It always maddens me when I hear of tourists visiting and only hitting London, Oxford and Cambridge. It is an entirely historic-sight driven agenda which misses all of the highlights of these stunning islands. It also means that the tourism dollar is concentrated mostly in a couple of large pockets instead of being dispersed into the desperately needy rural communities. Ideas anybody?

NOTE:

I stand corrected, there are some lovely modestly priced yurts out there. It's worth pointing out that I would love to stay at a £300 a night yurt, I just can't afford to. We have a couple of more affordable but trully stunning yurts on Tourdust with Eco retreats and Broome Retreat. Also check out Go-Glamcamping for some very enticing options.

Beta launch of Tourdust

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Colclough) — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 21:16:00 +0000

Finally, the time has come after the best part of a year and a half of midnight planning sessions (and trying to make decisions whilst feeding the kids) to announce the beta launch of Tourdust. We’re inviting you to come kick the tyres at Tourdust.com and let us know what you think. It’s still early days, we only started building content in December (we’ve got 130 experiences online, we’re aiming for way, way more than that, ahem we have our work cut out ….) and we need to fix a few things here and there, but essentially we’re open for business.

So what is Tourdust?

Tourdust is all about discovering authentic travel experiences from passionate locals. We want to become the leading global community site for the long tail of travel, to create this fantastic resource so that any independent traveller, wherever in the world they’re headed, can come to Tourdust and find a couple of awesome local gems that will be the highlight of their trip. Think photo workshops with a professional photographer in beautiful Umbria, stunning eco tree-houses in private pristine forest in South Africa or birding and bushcraft on the Isle of Mull with Jeremy and his Landrover. Whilst there is plenty of competition out there, no-one else is anywhere close to achieving this.

Tourdust - Making searching for travel ideas pleasurable

A quick search for your next holiday will undoubtedly lead you to a plethora of hideously designed aggregation sites whose priority is only search engine optimisation and getting you to click on an advert. For some reason, despite the sheer volumes of brainpower over at Google towers, these crappy sites are still the ones at the top of your next Google search. Travel is a fun & inspiring product, so when you decide on a rainy winter’s night to go online to check out ideas for your next holiday, why can’t it be a pleasure instead of something that leaves you feeling fuzzy and under-whelmed? So we have put every effort into creating a site which is beautiful and dead simple to use. Big pictures, loads of white space and a cracking user interface – big thanks to Cennydd & Paul over at Clearleft who truly are legends at this stuff and Max at New Bamboo the agile development gurus who built the nuts & bolts of the site. They somehow managed to put up with our tinkering and interfering, something very few of my agency contacts have managed in the past…

Tourdust and the Long Tail

Tourdust is essentially a classic long tail business model. The long tail is a term coined by Chris Anderson to describe the large collective market of small niche products. It has been in the news recently as it’s been challenged by some new research basically claiming there is more money in selling millions of copies of Coldplay’s latest album (which is surprisingly good by the way) than from the combined sales of all the niche bands out there. Our take on this debate is that long tail products can suffer when the sheer variety of choice online (and the frequent pain in sorting through it) means that most of us just follow the crowd and buy the popular items. As we see it, the big challenge for the long tail is how to get it in front of paying customers looking as good as all those big budget products with teams of marketing spods behind them? Some sites are doing a really nice job of this (check out etsy and bigcartel) but there are still a load of awful old travel directory sites somehow getting page views (I won’t name names). With Tourdust, we have tried to take advantage of simple social tools (such as user generated content and social networking) and marry them with a great user experience and visual design to really bring the authentic long tail of travel to life.

Tourdust and responsible travel

Clearly there is a responsible travel / fair trade angle to what we are trying to do here and we have thought long and hard about how much to amplify this. On one hand you can jump on a fashionable bandwagon and benefit from the trend, on the other hand we don’t want people to think we are exclusively for the organic underwear brigade. We’ve decided to focus on what we think is most important to travellers – which is having fantastic experiences on holiday. We know that people are pursuing more authentic experiences on their holidays (even Mintel recognise this) but this is not about people wanting to be more green as much as it is about having memorable experiences which become stories for years to come. People want stories to tell, not about a wine tour with a bus load of irritating tourists but about the great wine enthusiast who took you round the small vineyards in his 4x4, and took the time to share his passion for viticulture and the workings of a vineyard. The fact that we are supporting local communities and economies by putting travellers directly in touch with authentic local businesses is really a happy side effect. Ultimately the only way to get responsible travel mainstream is to make responsible choices as appealing if not more appealing than in their own right!

So what have we done differently with Tourdust?

We’re certainly not breaking any new ground with funky new applications, but we are concentrating on executing right with all the great tools that are already out there.

We have tried to strike a delicate balance between commerce and community by welcoming the businesses themselves into the community with open arms. After all, if we can give them the tools to easily chuck up some inspiring content and to tap into their existing networks of customers and fellow travel businesses, we can create long tail content that is compelling, inspiring and easy to find for customers. With the economy headed the way it is, boy are we glad we didn’t go with that free advertising model….

We have tried to treat our suppliers and customers as intelligent individuals. We want travellers to be able to get a sense for the personality and character of an operator or guide. So we openly encourage operators to promote the name of their business, their contact details and link to their own website (no walled gardens!). Sure, we may lose revenue as customers contact them directly, but then it’s our job to offer a better and safer experience so that if they do go to one of our supplier’s websites to find out more, they will want to come back to us to get in touch with them. After all, they’re only going to go away and try and find them on Google anyway!

We have tried to be a little bit innovative with our enquiry / booking system. Travel sites today seem to be totally polarised, they either rely on passing on plain old emails (which operators usually have to pay to reply to!) or complex booking systems. Some larger sites are even a little devious, taking you through the rigmarole of extracting all of your personal details, a tidy little deposit and only then telling you its going to take a couple of days to check availability! We know from our research that it would be asking a lot of the smaller operators to provide us with a feed of their availability for some kind of live booking system. We are also aware that these are complex and personal products where some buyer / seller interaction is usually called for. So we have built a Facebook message centre like system with some neat functionality to convert the conversation to a formal booking with online payment at the right time. Simply put, there are no barriers to the traveller seeing something they like and quickly popping a message over and a conversation beginning. After all wouldn’t you rather have a conversation with your guide before committing to a two day wilderness experience?

Who are our competition?

The online travel industry is a huge market but there is a lot of competition. Much of the current innovation in the industry is around travel inspiration sites. It seems the industry is barrelling head-long towards producing better and better travel writing and media, both professional and user contributed (Worldreviewer, Travelmuse and Matadortravel are good examples) but what you have is loads of good stories about places and things to do, yet when you actually want to book something, you’re stuck with the likes of Expedia which is fine for faceless hotels or trawling through the Google search listings for the decent stuff. Basically the reader gets all hot under the collar and excited about that great rafting trip (that some traveller has painstakingly written up) and all they will find is a Google ad to some super- commercialised rafting outfit!

Admittedly, there is a swarm of new companies trying to tap the ‘experiences’ / adventure travel angle (viator, isango, adventurelink to name a few) but they are definitely headed more toward the larger operator / bus tours / large groups end of the market.

Of course, there are also some excellent sites pushing responsible travel (responsibletravel and yoursafeplanet for instance) who definitely do overlap with what we are trying to do and are doing a fantastic job of raising awareness of some of the negative impacts of tourism.

Finally there are a couple of really promising emerging sites that are a great way to find a local guide to look after you (leaplocal and ourexplorer), which are definitely complementary to what we are trying to do.

Did we forget to mention Tripadvisor? With 250,000 properties on their database they are, shall we say, a not inconsiderable competition. Primarily focused on accommodation they do have some experiences, I guess we just need to concentrate on really serving our niche well.

The exciting thing is there is so much potential to somehow open-web-ify (I just made that up) Tourdust and marry our content up with much of the above. Definitely watch this space on that one.

The people

Tourdust is a small and authentic business in its own right. We (Anna and Ben Colclough - link to linked in) divvy up the daily running of the business and looking after our young kids. We are now interchangeable to the extent that our kids get confused which of us is Mummy and which is Daddy. We love travelling and were inspired to start Tourdust after having a wonderfully authentic experience in Mongolia (possibly a little too authentic… ask us one day). Ultimately, we are incredibly jealous of all the people we have signed up to Tourdust, because they have this fantastic lifestyle taking people out mountain biking on some beautiful farm or some such and we’d really quite like to be doing the same ourselves one day.

With Tourdust we are taking a step closer. Ben’s previous job was as International Marketing Director for premium cards at American Express and Anna headed up the day-to-day analysis, research and client management at Market Sentinel a social media consultancy. We have collective experience at Unilever, L.E.K. strategy consultants and have had solid prior experience running businesses. Also involved are Peter Sweetman, former European IT Director at BP and Stephen Natrass, former head of responsible travel at Exodus Travel. We’re on the lookout for experienced mentors – so if you want to get involved and think you can add something please do get in touch.

You might think we’re mad to be starting up a travel business at the heart of the direst economic situation since the great depression. Unfortunately, unlike Peter Schiff, we didn’t really see that one coming. Still there are some advantages, being your typical Internet business we are already well prepared for a low income in the early days, every cloud…!

Please, help us in anyway you can. We’re trying to support lots of small businesses, we’re not trying to make a fortune out of it and we try to share out the niceness to suppliers, customers and competitors alike. Is it possible to make a success out of a business whilst being nice to everyone? We are going to try.

Seasons Greetings!

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 12:36:00 +0000

Apologies for the lack of posting on Trailbeater, but as you can imagine Christmas with 2 young children has been all consuming!

I hope all our readers are enjoying the Holiday Season as much as we are. We are in the process of getting the site all ready to launch in January (inbetween teaching our daughter to ride her new bike and eating the turkey leftovers!!)

More from us in 2009, in the meantime, a Happy New Year to you all

Anna & Ben

Dilemmas of integrity

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Colclough) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 20:06:00 +0000

It's a happy event when you first have to ask yourself - is this person right for our site? It has really made us question exactly what we are about.

We're still busy gathering content and I'm proud to say that, a couple of weeks in, we have got some awesome experiences on board, but more of that later. The issue arised because we now have a couple of slightly larger operators wanting to be on the site (i.e. they're not a one man band!). Now there are various characteristics we look for in featuring an operator; they should be independent, authentic, a little off the beaten track, local, not too big and most of all the guide or host should be passionate about what they are doing. At this early stage it becomes really difficult applying these criteria because saying no for the first time is not easy when you are keen to see the site brimming with content. Many sites (ebay for example) have taken the view that you let everybody on and allow the community to filter out the dross. The problem with this approach is that in the early days you need to be very careful about what is up there, because customers are going to come to the site and make a very quick judgement about whether you are just like everybody else or hopefully that there really is something different here. So it's important to really get across what you're doing through the products on the site. They almost need to be exaggerated examples of the vision!

Anyway, we decided that we are sticking to our guns and will definitely be filtering who goes on the site which of course means saying no. However in the cases we came across today we said yes. Ultimately if someone doesn't fit one of the criteria but excels at others then we need to ask ourselves would our customers want to see this persons products on the site, and the answer in this case is a resounding yes.

Anyway to give you a flavour of some of the people who really do fit the bill and excite us, check out Roger Davies who runs A Question of Taste. Roger is a real foodie who lives in Seville and takes his guests on some stomach rumbling tours including a trip to one of the best Iberian Ham producers or a guided tour of the Tapas bars in the City.

(apologies to the vegetarians)

Also take a look at Jim Sutherland. Jim runs a couple of companies nineonesix and pipedtothetop. And I really think pipedtothetop is such a great idea and dare I say a rare bit of innovation in the UK travel industry. Jim is a passionate and experienced hills man and has been guiding for years, but in pipedtothetop he'll guide you up a beautiful Scottish Munro, lay on some fine local Scottish produce for lunch and play the pipes at the top.

Finally, also in Scotland is Jeremy Hastings. I have had some entertaining conversations and emails with Jeremy over the last few weeks and I'm delighted to see him on the site now. Jeremy runs bird tours and wilderness experiences in Islay. Now I can't say I've ever been really interested in birding before, but I would love to do this, Jeremy would be great company, the scenery looks out of this world and there is an abundance of wildlife.

Hopefully in future blogs we'll have the time to be able to interview some of these really fascinating and charismatic people. The problem is the more I find out about them the more I'm jealous of their lifestyle! I spoke to a person last night in New Zealand running kayak tours and he answered the phone on the beach, bearing in mind it was close to midnight in freezing England - it hurt!

My first pitch!

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 09:13:00 +0000

Wednesday night saw a first for me when I pitched our business, Tourdust, at a Next Women event celebrating female internet heroes. It was a pretty packed room and I was given just three minutes to talk about our business and what we are doing. My attendence at the event did present us with a bit of a dilemma - we had originally decided to keep our site password protected until the New Year, so that we could have enought time to build enough content on our site before opening the doors to the world so to speak. However, it seemed daft to be presenting a business to a room full of people when they wouldn't be able to view us, so we decided to go ahead.

My pitch seemed to go down well and what was really encouraging was to speak to so many people there who really seemed to like the idea.

I actually really enjoyed the event. I haven't presented to so many people since my Unilever days, but found that I got a real buzz from it. I guess it really helps when you're talking about something you are very passionate about. In fact, and I never thought I would say this on Wednesday morning before the event, I hope to get the opportunity to do it again (and again and again!!)

Many thanks again to Simone and Jackie for organising the event. Simone has written up about the event on her Next Women site - our first piece of publicity.

For those readers who are keen to check out the site, please feel free to do so, we would love to hear your feedback. However, we are still in very early beta release and so not actively pushing the site - we still have a huge mountain to climb in getting enough products listed before we start our marketing campaign. If you have any suggestions for anyone who might want to feature, then please let me know.

Travel - planning in advance or winging it?

noreply@blogger.com (Ben Colclough) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 11:37:00 +0000

SandWagon has written an excellent article extolling the virtues of travelling without a safety net. The argument being that guide books, travel writing & (to a lesser extent) online user generated content all have their place - but that recommendation of other travellers on the road is far better.

This was at the heart of some research (albeit rudimentary) we did earlier this year when we were thinking of setting up Tourdust. The aim behind Tourdust is to give travellers access to inspiring content about small, independent and authentic travel experiences. The kind of local tours and great accommodation finds that you only usually hear about when you are out on the road. We were worried that we would have trouble changing their habits to research and book these kind of things in advance. We actually found that around 70% of travellers do research 'local activities' in advance and most research is recommendation from friends and family or the operators own websites!

Our conclusion is that even the hardiest of travellers tend to plan a trip around a couple of key cornerstones to their trip. That could be an out of this world eco-treehouse overlooking pristine forest, a twoday desert camping experience or simply a shark diving day-trip. They would then plan a rough itinerary around those cornerstones, and fill in the gaps with more run of the mill stuff (either winging it or booking in advance). And it is these cornerstone experiences which are at the heart of what Tourdust is about.

So, I guess if you are going to plan (and get excited) about what you are going to do when you get there, then things like guide books, blogs, and other user generated content are all great tools. It's just that, like anything, you need to take what is being written with a pinch of salt and try to judge it from the context of the author. It's kind of the same as word-of-mouth recommendations. When a gnarly hostel owner told us that Guatemala could get a bit dodgy we listened because he'd grown up bumming around Afghanistan in the 60s staying with local families on a permanent opium high. If it was a bright eyed graduate on their first ever trip we'd take the warning with a pinch of salt. Even the Lonely Planet is guilty of this: popular destinations for US travellers tend to be written by US writers and tend to be have a lot longer Warnings and Dangers sections than other LPs. The Mexico LP is a good case in point - if you took it at face value you'd be more nervous about going to Mexico than The Democratic Republic of Congo (a pretty scary place, or so I have inferred from the excellent Blood River by Tim Butcher!)

photo by flickr user mattmurf

Virgin Atlantic V-Jam Event

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 21:40:00 +0000

I had a very corporate day yesterday in London at a Virgin Atlantic event, V-Jam. The agenda was as vague beforehand as it still is retrospectively, get loads of people in a room with either a connection to Virgin, travel or social media and then talk about it...... Ok, so we're going to write their social media strategy for them are we? Hmmm not even sure if we did that, but hey there were some interesting people there, some insightful conversations and free chocolate, so i shouldn't be too critical.

Aside from the usual ice-breaker sessions, the majority of the time was spent in very informal brain-storms, (which, as Alex Bainbridge writes in his post, were seriously lacking in some kind of moderation.) I went to 2 sessions, the first of which was addressing the issue of how Virgin should / could capitalise on social media. We were outnumbered by Virgin employees who were all keen to understand the 'secrets' of social media and how they should be using it. Toying with the idea of their own social network seemed to be high on their agenda. They are clearly monitoring blogs and forums already for mentions of their customer service and then (like many other large co's) are unsure with what to do with the information. They have identified the influential bloggers in the industry and are unsure as to how to approach them. (After the recent blog camp debate 'tread carefully' would be my advice!) They were keen to get our feedback on this dilemma.

Personally, I think it does pay for a company such as Virgin to be aware of what people are saying about them and to act on the feedback in an open way. However, rather than getting lost in the fog that is 'social media' they should remember that this is more about good old fashioned customer service, rather than funky web 2.0 technology.

The 2nd meeting was a more generalist conversation about how people can find information about destinations and be inspired by them. This began by everyone in the room being asked to choose 1 word to describe what motivates their decision when booking a holiday. This infuriated me because there are several 'need states' for a holiday and I think pigeon-holing consumers into one category the 'you have children therefore you must only want child-friendly holidays, therefore I will only try to market family resort holidays to you' is actually very short sighted.

The conversation then became dominated by a discussion about the collecting and profiling of complex consumer data and thus the ability to market to them according to their needs. What Amazon do for books etc could be done for travellers.

Now, those who know me will appreciate that I am not exactly an early-adopter of technology, so I'm not necessarily best qualified to judge the technical capability of this. However, I can't help feeling that tech development should be driven by a consumer insight, rather than an exciting programming proposition. And as an impulsive and unique individual, I would far rather have access to a site that allows be to browse and be inspired (ahem some self-promotion here, how about a site called tourdust?) rather than be told by a programme that I should be going on a package holiday to Spain because I have 2 children.. OK, this is turning into a rant, move on Anna, move on.

The event didn't so much end as peter out, with no conclusions presented on how Virgin will progress on the day. However, I'm told that they will be in touch in 3 months with feedback. So I guess we will have to wait and see what happens.

What a Week!

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:27:00 +0000

phew, where do the weeks go? We have been megabusy signing up travel companies to feature on our website. Our initial recruitment plan is to call every one we have identified and speak to them in person and to develop a personal relationship with them. Despite the fact that this is very time consuming, it has really given us a chance to talk to them and understand their businesses. What has been really gratifying is the support that we have received from nearly everyone we have spoken to.

And we have found some fantastic products to feature. A Question of Taste in Spain, offer gourmet food tours, which look amazing. They have been incredibly supportive in signing up our site.

Another great person we have spoken to is Scottish Fishing Guides up in Scotland. He was the first person to sign up to the site and despite numerous issues with uploading photos and registering (thankfully all resolved) he stuck with us and gave encouragment throughout.

We still have quite a long way to go until we get to the level of content that we want, but the first signs are incredibly encouraging and exciting. A big thank you to everyone who has helped us along the way.

Cold Calling

noreply@blogger.com (Anna) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 20:20:00 +0000

We have been a bit quiet here on the blog front this week. As the bug fixing is almost complete on the website (hurrah), we have thrown all of our energy into signing up tour operators in time for our launch in January.

Cold calling has never been something that has appealed hugely to me, but I can't deny that it has been very good for both of us to step out of our comfort zones. I can't tell you how daunting it was picking up the phone on Monday to speak to the first people on the list. For this I completely blame modern technology. I never use the phone anymore - all my social arrangements are arranged by text and most of my business work is done via email. So speaking on the phone is something I only really do as a last resort these days....... However, it has been a positive experience so far and has allowed us to get closer to the people that we will be working with and dare I say it, I think we are both secretly enjoying it.

So far, we have had a positive approach from 80% of the people who we have called, the question is, how do you convert people from being enthusiastic on the phone to actually signing up on your site? I believe in the world of sales this would be classified as 'closing the deal.' Any tips gratefully appreciated. In the meantime, I'm sure you will hear the screams of joy when we have our first sign up....