Travelblather

I was just doing some research around destination travel guides and thought I'd have a look at what Lonely Planet is up to these days.

I discovered that there's a totally new format in town from LP. It's called Trips - and is clearly an attempt to continue to move the LP brand into the more mainstream travel sector. At present it looks like the series is only for US destinations.

It features Road Trips with maps and detailed itineraries... trips are categorised:

- For Urbanites
- For Foodies
- Iconic Trips
- Offbeat Trips
- Cultural Trips

The design and series logo are both really smart. I'm surprised I've not received any PR releases from the LP press office, but guess it's because I'm UK based.

There are stacks of travel websites out there trying to be all things to all holidaymakers. None in my opinion do a very good job. Let's face it, it's difficult indeed to cover all the different sections of the market - families, honeymooners, backpackers, singles, adventure seekers, beach bums. I pity the poor punter trying to research their holiday on-line at the moment.

What surprises me is that we're not seeing more decent niche travel sites popping up. I think it's illustrative of how travel content on-line is still in its infancy. Few people are really investing in it and really thinking about who their audience might be. At the moment it's just about chucking a load of content up on a site - usually of very mediocre quality - and hoping enough traffic is generated to garner some ad revenue. Or alternatively setting up a big booking engine that pulls in product from all over the place (a la Expedia or Travelocity) and sticking a few bits of content around it just to make the site look nice.

Surely if you get the content right for a specific audience, you should be quite successful at selling product and gaining ad revenue?

I did find one example of a new site trying to mine customer niches recently. I got sent a press release about a new site called Holiday Goddess which is authored by '30 of the world's leading female writers'... 'Female friendly travel' is the strap line so it's presumably aimed at savvy lassies who know what they like and don't mind spending a little to have it.

But how depressing the site is. It's badly designed and looks awful. Clearly an attempt by people who know a thing or two about print but very little at all about the web and are working on a shoestring budget. Shame, they have the germ of a great idea.

I tried a Google search for 'Family Travel' - the first obvious customer niche that came to mind. The only UK website I found was called Family Travel. Again it promised something, but didn't really deliver. It's edited by Kate Calvert and Charlotte Hindle who both know their stuff when it comes to writing about travel for families, but the site looks old and very basic. On further investigation I realised that most of the proper content is only available to subscribers. So maybe it's working for them... somehow I doubt it though. The site looks so Web 1.0 it must turn potential customers off long before they subscribe.

The only example I could think of that for me comes close is Responsible Travel. This is certainly an example of a site that really taps a niche and does it very successfully. There's UGC here with forums and reviews, but again very little professional content to provide additional depth and insight. I wonder if they will ever see it worth the investment to add some?

I think there's real opportunity out there for someone to set up a site that really delivers useful information - with great holidays attached - fora specific customer niche.

Anyone found any genuinely great examples of niche travel sites?

I posted a month or so back about the lack of decent TV shows about travel on mainstream telly.

I was approached by a researcher looking for the 'next big travel TV idea' pre-Christmas and I've been meaning to post about it.

The reseacher worked for Endemol. We chatted on the phone. But that was as far as it went. I was told I wasn't what they were looking for as I sounded 'too posh'. She'd already viewed about 100 showreels and was getting pretty hacked off with Exec Producers telling her that 'No this person wasn't quite right.' Forget whether they actually knew what they were talking about.

It got me thinking. Media - TV shows in particular - is increasingly driven by the celeb presenter these days. The face is more important than the content. Find the next Jamie Oliver and pukka! You're sorted.

A new show on BBC 2 at the moment called Grow Your Own Drugs really made this clear to me. First in the series was last week - the second last night. And wow I hated it. I particularly dislike the presenter James Wong. He had all the elements you need these days for being a 'celeb TV presenter'... a bit quirky, very keen on his topic, good looking... but so unengaging, so NOT someone I'd ever imagine having a pint with or being interested to know more about. Presenters in my opinion should feel approachable... normal. 

Caitlin Moran writing in the Times this weekend was more explicit:

And that's the disappointment.

Quality content is being superceded by the cult of the personality. (Oz & James Drink to Britain, Dan Cruickshank's whatever it's called etc. Gok Wan takes off people's clothes or whatever, Trinnie and Susannah pinch your flabby bits et etcetcetce).

Is it to do with the need to do things faster and cheaper? If you can find a personality to carry a concept, you can cut out a big chunk of the hard work - and the cost too. Far easier to get some 'expert' to wheel out an opinion than to do some real research and spend time creating an idea based on proper data. Far easier to use a 'name' to sell a concept rather than develop something that stands on its own merit.

The internet and 24 hour news are driving this. (Along with the credit crunch). We want immediate content. No time to stop, research and analyse. Just pull in someone who 'knows what they are talking about' and ask their opinion. As if that really guarantees quality?

Any proper journalist will tell you that quality journalism comes from the grunty work of thorough research. Real facts are what you hang a story on, not a quirky presenter that the blokes might want to be and the ladies will fancy. Will the internet coupled with our obsession with pseudo celebrity kill off quality TV and print media for good?

It could easily happen.

[PS: Any TV execs reading this? I'm available to develop quality travel TV concepts. I would like to present them too but I promise I won't sound like a cockney or have a stupid haircut or be desparate to get noticed...]

I love and loathe Micheal O'Leary the CEO of Ryanair in equal measures. I hate flying on his planes... a stressful, grumpy flying experience. Awful.

But I watched his live interview late last week after the much commented upon blogging incident (a member of Ryanair staff being just a little to agressive responding to one blogger's comments about how he'd found a security flaw in the Ryanair website.)

And he came out with the awesome line "We might consider charging customers to use the toilets. After all you have to pay to use them in all sorts of public places these days. I don't see anything wrong with being charged a pound to spend a penny." (I'm paraphrasing here by the way.)

You could see the smile on his face as he said it. He knew he'd just generated acres and acres of coverage for his company for the next week by saying something outrageous. He does it all the time... and we all pick up on it. I blogged a few months back about a previous example. He was suggesting Ryanair might one day offer business class flights with err, 'free services for gentlemen'.

I mean seriously. Does anyone think he'd ever charge passengers to pee? It would NEVER happen!

Part of me wishes the media would ignore rubbish like this... but then again... news seems so dismal these days, maybe crackpot ideas that are clearly just to scandalise people are a bit of light relief?

Here's the latest graphic doing the rounds online... where will it end? One thing is for sure... O'Leary knows how to play the press...