OMG: Earthquake in Reykjavik, Iceland

After trying to get some things done and staying away from Twitter this week a bit, I just logged on and got a first hand report from my Blogging friend Hjortur Smarason that Reykjavik just had a 6.7 Richter scale earthquake.

Twitter Over Capacity

I am almost certain Twitter is not over its capacity because of this earthquake. It is fluttering for some weeks now already.

I am experimenting away to get a decent screen shot from the conversation. Just to be able publish quickly I’ve copied and pasted this from Kwout:

Kwout 2

Hjortur on twitter via kwout

Am I saved by the bell?

Maybe: The point is this: Hjortur asked me two weeks ago, if I would be interested to go on a Cruise in Iceland and blog about it. I had to decline because right now I am much too busy and also because my readership just from the Netherlands is a bit too small…..It just might not be interesting enough for his client. His relating post is this one: A Great Opportunity for Travel Bloggers

Constance who he is referring to is one of the two lady Bloggers of the Dutch Blog Vakantie Blogo who I introduced to him and who went in my place. Sorry Constance!

Update:

And here a first picture of what happens at such earthquake:

Firts Picture of Iceland Earthquake Result

Source:MBL

Update 2: 01.30 AM Local Time

Funny to see that I beat CNN by approx 4 hrs.
Update 3
While in Iceland Constance even didn’t notice Iceland was hit by an earthquake, because she was at another part of the Island. She only heard about it from her husband when she phoned home….

Last edited by gje on December 13, 2016

Stay in Frank Lloyd Wright's Davidson House

Davidson House Buffalo By Frank Lloyd Wright

That’s a good idea: Open an architectural monument for a stay! Then you can enjoy the look and feel of the creation of the architect.

Davidson House Buffalo By Frank Lloyd Wright 02

The Davidson House in Buffalo, US, a design of America’s foremost Arts and Craft movement architect Frank Lloyd Wright is open for a stay with a minimum of 2 nights.

High Five (2): about Tagging your Photos, Word of Mouth and Twitterati

Travel Blog Carnival Venetian Logo
Old Logo for Happy Hotelier’s High Five…
until I find a better one. Claude maybe?

General
I read many Blogs and share many posts in my news feed reader. You can find my scraps in the widget in my sidebar or at Happy Hotelier’s Shared Items.

I have dutifully reported about developments in the Travel Bloggers world, You can find those at my t-list category and some of it on my t-list page.

Travel Blog Carnivals

I have also dutifully reported about Travel Blog Carnivals. You can find these reports in my Travel Blog Carnival tag.

Thus far I was able to pinpoint the following Travel Blog related carnivals:

  • Darren Cronian of Travel Rants started a Travel Blog Carnival, stopped with it and after some nudging from me (hence he gave me the nickname “Ranting Hotelier” ) restarted it with Crazy Flight Attendants Booze Bans and the Future of KLM. From now on Darren will be the Happy Ranter for me 😛
  • Karen of Europe A La Carte Blog started one: Europe Travel Blog Carnival 5 May 2008 is her latest.
  • The Carnival of Cities is a carnival with city reviews.
  • Flyawaycafe”, a Carnival of Travelers Information

If you want to draw my attention to a post, please use the Contact Page or give me a message at Twitter

Happy Hotelier’s High Five.

I believe it is time to start my own variation on a Travel Blog Carnival and I have coined it: Happy Hotelier’s High Five, because:

A high five is a celebratory gesture made by two people, each raising one hand to slap the raised hand of the other — usually meant to communicate mutual satisfaction to spectators or to extend congratulations from one person to another. The arms are usually extended into the air to form the “high” part, and the five fingers of each hand meet, making the “five”, thus the name.(High Five on wikipedia)

I will not publish it on a scheduled date. I will publish it each time when I have found five persons or sites or posts that I deem worthy a High Five. It even will imply me echoing old news.

If you want to draw my attention to a post you may e-mail me at gje[at]hetnet.nl or give me a message at Twitter

My High Five no 1 are for:

  1. Todd Lucier of Internet Marketing For Tourism for Upload Photos Correctly 10 Tips more Hits. Very important not only for “ordinary” (static) site owners, but also for Bloggers: If you name and tag your photos creatively, then your visibility gets a boost. This is also important because now I have Woopra for a week or three and see that more than 50 % of the referrals to Happy Hotelier are by image searches, rather than keyword searches.
  2. Set Godin who makes you think about word of mouth as he always make you think: Why Word of Mouth doesn’t Happen.
  3. Hjortur Smarason of Marketing Safari, because:
    1. He is the only one I know of thus far who Twittered just before and after his son was being born. Congrats! Maybe a first on Twitter?
    2. He is one of the first marketeers who really takes travel bloggers serious and who set up his client with a couple of bloggers going on a cruise with the intent of getting good coverage off course: A Great Opportunity for Travel Bloggers
    3. I was his first follower on twitter. He did two posts about his experience:
      • My First month at Twitter and what I have learnt, and
      • Are You A Twitterholic? Take the test!
  4. Elliot NG of Uptake for his support in setting up Twitter’s Tlist group that took off nicely, The T-List does Twitter, Join The Travel Twitterati! (Beta) and for his successful launch of Uptake’s Public Beta
  5. Problogger who summarizes 12 Traits of Successful Bloggers . I like foremost: Creative and Playful and Curiosity. What he tends to forget is that they have in common that they are great travelers as well, and therefore a good source for us Travel Bloggers.

Post Alia
OMG, I thought having invented a nice name for this category. Then, while writing and editing this, Loic Lemeur announces on Twitter he has become a member of Hi5…Darn i should have checked. This ruined my post… or maybe not:-)

Some Concerns about Tips From The T-List

Tips From The T-List Banner

After three conferences with dedicated sites, the initiators of Tips from the T-List decided to start a more permanent site.

The site and its lay out need urgent attention imo!

  1. My main complaint is that the RSS feeds don’t work as they should: During a certain period of time they produced duplicate content. That has been taken care of in the meantime. The feeds are intentionally delayed. However to me it seems that the feeds are not added automatically with a delay of one or two days, while I believe they should. The time lag is so big the Blog loses momentum.
  2. Contributers to the site should be able to withdraw posts they deem less suited to publish over at Tips from the T-List.
  3. Contributers to the site should be able to edit posts. I understand the need of some over all editing of the site, but it is clear from looking at the site for some time now that the editors have very little time available for the editing;
  4. The navigation of the site needs attention, because it is not easy to wade through. I don’t like the difference between tabs and categories. Throughout the site there is no consistency.

All in all Tips From The T-List doesn’t take off as it should. Presently there are only 30 some travel related bloggers putting together their content. WiWiH has travel blogging as a lesser priority than its other activities and therefore was not chosen to act as a platform for the Tips from the T-List posse. Nevertheless WiWiH performs far better better imo. It gives you a clear overview of some travel blogging.The new startup Alltop’s Travel Alltop with currently 81 Blogs featured even gives a far better overview.

The income from the site

The initiators have announced that all income from the site goes to a good cause. I am glad they announced that. No fear anymore that they will earn some Adsense cents over my content. However I was not asked neither informed on beforehand that they would open up the site for advertising. Maybe I don’t like advertising at all….

The various agendas from Travel Bloggers

During ITB Berlin Bloggers summit it became apparent to me that the initiators of Tips From The T-List have their own limited area of interest, which is internet marketing for travel. I have a feeling that their main aim is to convince travel providers that they should listen to and engage travel bloggers as a marketing tool. There is nothing against that idea, but I am afraid that when one looks at the huge reservoir of thousands of Travel Bloggers, they forget they could make a far bigger Travel Community than Tips From the T-List is doing presently and consequently are losing big opportunities and huge momentum.

In my prior post I noted that Hotel Blogs Org, another Travel Bloggers aggregator presently seems to be hacked. I am sure the participants won’t like to be part of that. I wouldn’t. However Hotel Blogs seemed becoming a far better sharing tool than Tips From The T-List is at present.

Some Travel Bloggers don’t want to be part of Tips From The T-List because they are afraid they might jeopardize their Google ranking.

Some other Travel Bloggers don’t want to be part of Tips From The T-List, because direct competitors of them are behind the site.

It is my strong conviction that Blogging is sharing and not only sharing what you deem in your own commercial interest. I myself for instance have blogged about a fellow small hotel that blatantly had stolen the look and feel of the website of my own hotel. In another instance I have written about the opening of another hotel that is a direct competitor. A Blogger should be as impartial as possible without becoming impersonal.

Dear Friends can’t we finally bridge these gaps?

Finally we should reconsider its name: T-List
While every startup nowadays seems to reconsider its name, I suggest we reconsider T-List as a name for a posse of Travel Related Bloggers.

Create a Google alert for “T-list” and see what happens: All sorts of post are reported by Google:
Sh*t List
I don’t list
won’t list
didn’t list
can’t list
doesn’t list
weren’t’ list

All very negative.

Let’s go positive!

Maybe Travel Bloggers Posse could be a better name? Anybody a better idea?

Or should we just forget about the T-List and go on with TravelTwit.com solely?

Happy Hotelier Featured in Travel Weekly

In my Woopra screen I saw to my big surprise a reader being referred to this site by Travel Weekly’s Editor in Chief, Arnie Weissmann. Note you have to sign in into Travel Weekly’s site.

This is exciting, especially as I am being mentioned between the following great Travel Related Blogs:

  • John Herald’s Blog, the personal Blog of the senior cruise director of Carnival.
  • The Trends in Travel and Tourism, the Corporate Blog of Ferris and Partners, specialists in tourism and marketing.
  • Tony Wheeler, the co founder of Lonely Planet.
  • The Travolution Blog, Sutton, Surrey, United Kingdom: Commentary and analysis on the online travel industry. Part of the Travolution media brand in the UK. Guys I met at ITB Berlin.
  • Hotel Chatter, about where to stay when you leave.
    Note: On April 24, 2008, Hotel Chatter, together with its sister Blog Jaunted, was taken over from SFO*Media by Conde Net, publishers of Congierge.Com and the magazine Condé Nast Traveler (and part of the conglomerate that publishes Vogue). See for some press coverage on the acquisition Yahoo
  • Tracking Tourism: The Tourism Research Blog Travel industry thinking from Stephen Budd and Vicky Brock at Highland Business Research Written By Vicky Brock and Stephen Budd who I both met at ITB Berlin.
  • Bill Marriott’s Blog On the Move.
  • Les Explorers of Claude Benard, who I met at ITB Berlin. and
  • Seth Godin Internet Guru without the need of an introduction.

This is another example of how Woopra can help you Blog. Normally Bloggers are only tempted to watch their incoming links from other Blogs and not so much from static sites.