1) Something is happening very fast and it is happening on Twitter again!
Sunday I asked around if anybody on Twitter had a hotel suggestion near Visp or Brig for a friend.
During a skiing holiday in Zermatt the wife of one of my friends became ill and was transported by helicopter from Zermatt to Visp were she was operated in the local hospital. My friend wanted a hotel for a couple of days in the neighborhood for her to be able to recover and to be nearer to the hospital than in Zermatt. Since he knows that we travel that area annually, he asked for some suggestions for a hotel.
I did some research with Booking, Tripadvisor and Vibeagent and based on their rankings came with the following suggestions:
- Hotel Ambassador in Brig
- Hotel de Londres in Brig
- The new Turm Hotel in Grächen, a little village around the corner in the narrow valley on the road to Zermatt and Saas Fee
Today my friend e-mailed me that he liked the Turm Hotel and the little village of Grächen and was anticipating the hospital release of his wife tomorrow.
In the meantime several of my Twitterfollowers gave me some ideas to look at. One of them @WouterBlok made up the hash tag #travelbytwitter.
2) Today all of a sudden the idea exploded more or less on twitter.
Wherivebeen suggested #traveltuesday and it was picked up by some traveltwitterati and caused an avalanche of travel suggestions. Am curious where this is heading.
Wherivebeen posted already a blogpost about it Where I’ve Been introduces #traveltuesday worth reading!
3) In the meantime
Since January we have seen growing #tbex the twitterchat channel for the ning based travel bloggers community Travel Blog Exchange from nothing to 634 members in a couple of months, also by way of Twitter. Check it out! they will organize a Travel Bloggers Conference in Chicago.
Things go fast in twitterland!
Will travelblogging been killed? I don’t think so, but Twitter is a powerful tool for new inspiration. That’s for sure.
Thank you so much for the mention! We are really excited about how much attention #traveltuesday has generated. This is a great way for everyone interested in traveling to gain advice from others passionate about it. Stay tuned for more info from Where I’ve Been because we will be will be sharing a #traveltuesday tool that will be beneficial to everyone!
Katy, Where I’ve Been’s Community Manager, will be taking the ‘Crème de la Crème’ from all the tweets today. Check out blog.whereivebeen.com tonight to see who made the list!
Cheers!
But you didn’t say how much success you had getting hotel tips from Twitter? I’m soon embarking on a twi-trip experiment of my own, so keen to know how much success you had.
Lara,
You make me curious!
The Ambassador was mentioned two times to me. One guy wanted me to book a hotel in Lech, but he is from the Austrian Tourisboard:-)
I got two mentions of another hotel in Brig.
So far I would say the experiment is worth it… but off course I am not the average middle of the road hotel Joe: Always looking for something new, spectacular, unusual or extraordinary and in addition I want to have control and that is something you have to forget if your going on a Travel by Twitter adventure.
I suggest you read about the Twitchhiker’s and Benji Laredo’s experiments before you start.
Cheers!
Guido:
A question that I’ll bet you can answer. I automatically import my blog posts to Twitter via rss. I notice that your headline for this post (Traveltwitterati: #travel #traveltuesday, #travelbytwitter, or #tbex? Zen?) includes hashtags. Do you do this so that when the headline is imported into Twitter, it already contains the hashtag? And do you find that doing so harms your search engine indexing at all? Thanks for any insight you may have. As always, your faithful reader.
Barbara
Thanks Guido – I’m trying it out with my Twitter post tomorrow. We’ll see what happens!
Barbara,
When you use hash tags in your header, and automatically Twitter about your new post, Twitter Search will pick them up. Not sure what Google and other search engines do with it.
Hope this helps.
Cheers!