The Happier the Hotelier, The Happier the Guest
I have many impressions to share from the PhoCusWright Travel Bloggers Summit at ITB Berlin.
For a change I will start with my last impression: I was interviewed for the Austrian Tourism Blog.
Thought of posting it first and adding more later when I’ve sorted the lot.
The interview was made by Rainer Edlinger of Edei’s Blog Recently Rainer was promoted to Hauptmann of the Zell am See Tourism office.
Those who follow this blog, know that I have spent quite some time with manually putting together top lists of travel bloggers according to Technorati in the past. The last one I published over a year ago on my TList page and for prior lists you can check out in my Tlist Category:
I did pray that someone would come up with a better measurement to replace my dumb work. Moreover at the time Technorati seemed too outdated and too infested with scrapers and sploggers and what all.
In June I discovered Frothy‘s Alexa only ranking.
Then came Invesp. I mentioned it already back in July, that put several measurement methods in a basket and created its own list of Top Travel Blogs.
From time to time I checked those and had a good reason not to go further with my own cumbersome list making.
But now Technorati has really cleaned its act and rolled out a completely new approach in their Blog ranking. I have a feeling that they are moving in the same direction as Google search is moving. A nice way of reinventing yourself Technorati!
Each ranking has its own pros and contras, but if you want to quickly orientate yourself about influential travelblogs you can have a look at both lists and make your pick, while I can concentrate on other content here:-)
The good people, more precisely P.Ling, at Uptake’s Travel Industry Blog ranked me among their top 15 Hotel Blogs. Thank you P. Ling at Uptake! Alas Uptake has discontinued since.
For me a reason to look again at one of my favorite posts: Blogging Hotel Insiders. I had 40 Blogging hotel insiders. My choice was a bit wider on the one hand and a bit narrower on the other hand: I did not include some Travel Industry Blogs. In addition there are still a some to be added. So I updated my post and put it in the sidebar as one of my favorite posts.
Another Blogger used the Uptake Blog for the following snipped which I was able to retrieve via a Google link by the comment of Elliott NG:
Hotel Blogging: 15 Blogs that Attract Interest
Like every other sector, the hotel industry too has it’s own set of A-list bloggers who lead the conversation. These 15 hotel blogs and their bloggers listed here offer their readers the best hospitality experience, so to speak.
- Hotelchatter – Hotelchatter, along with sister publication Jaunted, is published by SFO Media, which is now owned by Conde Nast.
Offers breaking news and genuine hotel reviews with on-location, view and anti-view posts. Hotelchatter does an excellent job of hammering new hotel openings with posts and follow-ups well before the hotel is anywhere near opening it’s doors.- Hotel Check-in – USA Today blog run by Barbara De Lollis, focusing mainly on business travel and new developments in the hotel industry. Also shares plenty of hotel deals and entertaining news stories related to hotels. Hotel Check-in leverages it’s brand quite often to attract guest posts by CEO’s and senior executives from the hotel industry.
- Uptake Hotels blog – Very dedicated group of hotel bloggers, with plenty of reviews and tips for finding the right hotels. Color me biased, but Uptake’s Hotels blog would merit a mention on this list even if it was being compiled elsewhere.
- Hotel News Now – HNN is a division of Smith Travel Research, which gives this blog exclusive access to all kinds of data and insight into the latest trends and reports for the global hotel industry. It also helps to have the Managing Director, President and CEO of STR blogging for you. Very useful blog if you need the latest facts and figures for presentations or articles.
- Hotels Magazine – Not just a blog, but blogs – 10 of them. Each blog authored by industry experts with decades of relevant industry experience. For example, Lyndall De Marco, co-author of the Eco-Speak blog, was executive director of the International Tourism Partnership and runs a consultancy which helps clients merge profitability with sustainability. The other co-author, Ray Burger, is president and founder of Pineapple Hospitality Inc., with over 30 years of experience in the lodging industry.
- Hotel Law Blog – This blog is a part of the Global Hospitality Group, and again, authored by a terrific group of heavily experienced hotel lawyers led by Jim Butler and senior hospitality industry executives. If it has anything to do with hotel financing or legal issues affecting the hospitality industry, then you’ll find it here.
And here we come:
- Three hotel bloggers who seem to have all their ducks lined up properly include Josiah Mackenzie of HotelMarketingStrategies.com, the Happy Hotelier, and Guillaume Thevenot of Hotel-Blogs.com.
- Mention also needs to be made of two blogs – Gadling and LA Times’ Daily Deal blog – which aren’t exactly limited to hotels. It’s a compliment to these blogs and their writers that the range, quality and quantity of their hotel related content beats the offerings of many blogs which are solely devoted to hotels.
- You might also enjoy checking out these three ’company’ blogs – Bill Marriott’s Blog (Marriott on the Move), the Dealbase blog, and Oyster Hotel Reviews blog.
- And lastly, did you know about the TA hotel reviews which don’t get published? You can find them on the We Are Not Making This Up blog
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Source: P.Ling http://travel-industry.uptake.com
Posted 3rd August 2009 by Alexandros Paraskevas
Then, thanks to @CleverClogs of Clever Clogs – what’s in a name, see below:-) – I found ClusterUrl [Update: Disconinued Since] and as a test put the 15 mentioned by Uptake in a Cluster: Top 15 Hotel Blogs and Bloggers according to Uptake.
About ClusterUrl
ClusterUrl is a simple mash up to avoid having your browser open with umpteen screens. Instead you can put them in a Cluster and refer back to the cluster and share various links with your friends or readers. For the time being I have this one published at the bottom of my sidebar.
Then Amplify [Also discuntinued in March 2012] found me and had me fiddling around with it. Now what is Amplify? It is a Multi User WordPress blog where you can dump clippings of sites you are browsing for later reading or for sharing via Twitter. It has some nifty features and it is free. So it is a ClipLog or abbreviated a Clog. As a Dutchman, or inhabitant of Cloggieland as my foreign friends tend to tease me, this new term appeals to me. From now on I’m a Clogger. Look it up! Here is my little Amplify stream.
About Amplify
Amplify was developed by the same company that created Clipmarks.com. Clipmarks, based in New York City, is majority-owned and operated by its employees. Forbes Media holds a minority interest in the company. The Company’s philosophy on information sharing is comprised of three main principles: (i) people can do a better job than algorithms of filtering the massive amount of information that’s available on the web; (ii) serendipitous discovery is often more compelling than information organized by topic; and (iii) limiting the length of shared content allows people to learn about more topics than they would otherwise have time or patience for.
Amplify was created to serve the needs of two audiences that are not the focus of Clipmarks.com: (i) Twitter users; and (ii) Groups.
Post Alia
Both have in common that they draw traffic away from your blog on the one hand. On the other hand it can draw traffic to your blog from the specific community….
The same problem you have with syndicating your content.
A pregnant example of problems with syndication is Uptake’s post. If I look at Technorati, it is not Uptake who links to me, but PhocusWright where they syndicated this post…although technorati is fast sliding in oblivion when it continues to behave so wobbly as it does now already for months..Apparently PhocusWright has a higher Technorati ranking than Uptake today… Nowadays WordPress uses Google for it’s track backs. So in my WP Dashboard Google gives the original track back. You see? I’ll never understand SEO….
Last edited by GJE on March 13, 2012 at 4:11 pm and added to my Internet Graveyard category
Invesp Consulting managed to put together a ranking list of 150 General Travel Blogs without my (and Gary’s) help.
I’m excited. Ever since I saw Happy Hotelier listed on one of them ranking lists, starting with the T-List, I got interested in lists. For some time I’ve tried to keep up with lists of travel bloggers according to their technorati ranking. I’ve tried to combine same with Alexa ranking, but as I did it by hand it took a lot (actually too much) of time and effort.
In May I found myself number one on the Invesp Hotel Blogs ranking. I really hoped that they soon would come with a travel blog ranking and offered them help to speed it up. Then I could stop the tally work by hand. On the other hand the ranking and listing posts get a lot of interest. If you look at my side bar: My last year’s Happy Haloween post is my most commented ever…
We have seen other lists and comments as well: Many are of the opinion that a panel and/or public voting doesn’t reflect true reach of a travel blog. Let alone the mere technorati ranking or the mere Alexa ranking that I posted about recently….
In an update to this post I will analyze the list more in depth. In the meantime I decided to put my bragging badge in my sidebar.
Some Obeservations, updating this post from time to time:
Top 25 Travel Blogs of 102 ranked by a another List lover Frothy blogs [ah had to delete the link as this is another member of my category “Dead Travel Bloggers Society” which I changed into Internet Graveyard later] according to Alexa with some need to of editing by me:
Blog/Company Alexa Rank
1 on my way to where 8
2 ANTARCTICA RESEARCH ADVENTURE 8
3 Unforgettable Sydney 8
4 Travel Blog 4,804
5 iWalk, u2? 73,398
6 Newyork Traveler 92,771
7 Travel, Work, Life 95,688
8 The BenSpark 114,277
10 Emm in London 129,292
11 Life of Justin 147,325
12 Travel Blissful 150,557
13 Extreme John Blog 160,683
14 Thailand Land of Smiles 171,848
15 Happy Hotelier 181,641
16 Mimpikami 195,432
17 Traveling Mamas 201,648
18 Go green travel green 295,621
19 The Lost Boy 334,111
20 My Trips 422,798
21 Irish Taxi 452,202
22 El Rinc?n de Edy 488,528
23 Justwandering 497,141
24 My Itchy Travel Feet 504,403
25 RengBA’s Terella 505,561
It immediately demonstrates the relative weakness of this measuring method, because the first 3 mentioned here are on Blogspot which is a site with millions of blogs….There are many more Travel Blogs on Blogspot. So when you go further with this without something else to measure you will end up with hundreds of Travel blogs ranking #8…..
Update
I’ve added the category Internet Graveyard to this post as frothy passed away.
Last edited by GJE on March 11, 2012 at 1:02 pm