The new website easytovisit.com was developed by Toots, an Italian technological startup company to help people connect and meet safely through the web to experience travel destinations more hands on and with greater personal connections.

As part of the official launching of easytovisit.com, Toots has set up a special a contest called “Win the World – Social Hero 2010”. It is based on the ability of the players to get their friends and contacts on-line to exploit all the potential of the social networks and of the 2.0 web and let it go viral so as to become the most “social” nation in that continent.

Join the contest by clicking http://wintheworld2010.easytovisit.com or go to Facebook, where participating players will be able to use all their potential friendship-network. The contest ends on December 31st , 2010.

More than 6300 contestants from 95 different countries located in all 6 continents have already registered. “Around the world” plane ticket worth 2.500 Euros will be raffled among the  “social heroes” winners. The “top players” will receive a one year subscription to easytovisit.com.

Emanuele di Carlo, Toots‘ CEO, declares “Our goal is to create a tourism and social meeting tool that is reliable and easy to use, and that bring together all those who want to explore the world. It will help those who are looking to go on short trips following unusual or out of the way itineraries guided by trustworthy and competent locals.”

easytovisit.com aims to create a bridge between tourist demand and supply through Tutors, Bed & Breakfast and qualified guides with specific knowledge of various areas such as food and wine, sports, and spas, while socializing and making new friends wherever your travel takes you.

The tourists will be at the heart of the travelling experience by receiving a more enriching experience and putting their minds at ease. It offers personal knowledge while exploring and respecting the geography and culture of the locations they decide to visit.

“Easy & safe”: easy because a few simple clicks allows one to access all the necessary information: what, where, when and most important who. Safe because the identity and the knowledge of everyone who offers to aid the travelers will be meticulously certified by the system itself.

It is a new and innovative portal for those who love to travel. A new platform capable of focusing on human relations based on social, cultural and environmental sustainability that takes you back to the traditional way of travelling. The idea of traveling by relying on the local population and making the experience itself the reason for the trip, without sacrificing any of the advantages of modern technologies that guarantee maximum security.

Toots is a new Italian economic reality made up of dedicated professionals with the know-how and the willingness to communicate and bring together people interested in tourism who have designed and developed a project of international interest.

In the last week we have finally seen the participation of some African country like Nigeria and Kenya and also the joining of many friends from Australia and New Zealand, here is the complete list of all the countries involved ( in bold the temporary winners for every continent ):
Belize, Papua New Guinea, Italy, Bulgaria, Kenya, Estonia, Thailand, New Zealand, Australia, Bangladesh, Nigeria, Mexico, Costa Rica, United Kingdom, Macedonia, Philippines, Spain, Uzbekistan, Argentina, Zimbabwe, Jordan, Jamaica, Canada, Romania, Austria, Indonesia, Portugal, Croatia, Denmark, Azerbaijan, India, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Ukraine, Syria, Algeria, Malaysia, Finland, Netherlands, Israel, South Africa, Japan, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Peru, Sweden, Brazil, United States, Turkey, Russia, Taiwan, Germany, Egypt, Pakistan, Vietnam, China, France

As you can see we have a good mix of big and small countries and all the areas of the world are well represented. Saying that we also have realized that the system that we are using to calculate the “Sociality Index” of each country tends to give a huge advantage to smaller countries and at the same time it doesn’t reward enough those players that are really making an effort to win like our first ten eligible players :

1. Mathew Browne 5875 pts
2. Justin Frick 3275 pts
3. Fabio Torregiani 3150 pts
4. Lucio Scarpa 2525 pts
5. Alessandro Bidorini 2325 pts
6. Liberty Cardello 2275 pts
7. Adeoye Hammed 2175 pts
8. Martina Cramerotti 2000 pts
9. Lauren Natasha Veiga 1875 pts
10. Rifcy Zulficar 1675 pts

For this reason we have decided that in the next days we will fine-tune the “Sociality Index“ calculation system introducing values that will reward the most active countries. From now on it will not be just enough to subscribe the game and sit down and relax but who wants to win will have to demonstrate that him/her and his/her  country has the right Social attitude !
Expect an earthquake on the leaderboard !

Not only on Facebook…

From this week the contest is not only available as usual on Facebook but  also  as a web application at this address: http://wintheworld2010.easytovisit.com/
as you will see the interface is pretty much the same because we wanted to give the users the same environment and experience.
From now on whether you are on Facebook or not you will be able to invite also people out of Facebook therefore enhancing your chances of success. Cool isn’t it ?

The Welcome popup Tutorial for the Web Application

Keeping ourselves busy…

In the meanwhile we have also revamped our Twitter page giving it a more fresh and cheerful look, feel free to comment and of course to follow

The contest has two main targets,

• aims to “measure” the capacity of every country’s internet users to connect via social games or applications
• tries to analyze the tourism market through a series of polls that will cover every aspect of the tourism experience. Our hope is that collecting all this data will help us build a better user experience for travellers from every part of the world and will help us shape a more sustainable approach to tourism and interactions between locals and visitors of a destination.

In order to win the Contest you have to focus on two main goals:

1) Help your country be one of the 6 most “social” countries in the world by scoring an impressive “sociality index”(1) to beat all the other countries of your continental area.

2) Bring as many of your contacts as possible to join the game in order to beat all your other fellow countrymen.

If you manage to become your country’s Social Hero you will be awarded one of the 196 Super Friend Accounts available for this contest’s participants on easytovisit.com. This particular account will allow you to have an endless provision of Tokens(ii) for a whole year allowing you to meet for real all your international online contacts in an easy & safe way … easytovisit style.

If your country ranks as the most “social” of your continental area and you are the best of your country you automatically win a “round the world” plane ticket and a Super Friend account on easytovisit with an endless provision of Tokens(ii) for a whole year. With these two prizes combined you will be able to travel the world and meet for real all your international online contacts in an easy & safe way … easytovisit style.

(1) Sociality Index The Sociality Index is the result between players of  “Win the World 2010 – Social Hero” supporting a country and the number of Internet users of the same country. To determine the number of Internet users of every country we have used data from the following sources : Internet World Stats , CIA – The World Factbook.

At the moment the contest is available only on Facebook but in the next days we will release it as a standalone website for those who don’t have a Facebook account.

During these two events we will be able to introduce to the audience our concept and to detail the vision underlying easytovisit.com.

During te Facebook Developer Garage event our project manager Guido Nardo ( which by the way is also the organizer of the event itself for the Venezia Camp 2010 organizing committee) will introduce the case history of the Win the World – Social Hero 2010 contest associated with the launch of easytovisit.com in late july 2010. A short speech from our CEO Emanuele Dal Carlo will then introduce the audience to the basics of easytovisit.com.

During the second event, the STN Social Tourism Networking debate, we will take the chance to confront our vision with some of the most interesting projects regarding social tourism and we’ll try to draft our vision of the future of this engaging field.

If you’re interested to participate please take a bit of time to subscribe to the events here.