Bring on the blogs

We have been commenting a lot recently on how the industry is being urged to embrace social media, with tools like blogs and user-generated content.

So it’s nice to see a handful of companies, outside of the so-called giants of the online travel world, which are using at blogs as an innovative way of reaching consumers.

We spoke to Lee Harrison, owner of Select World Travel in Worcestershire, UK, early last week to swap tales about blogging platforms and what his company is doing.

It’s an interesting case: rather than use the agency’s existing site for content and news, Harrison created a blog a while ago to run destination advice and news about the company.

Since moving platforms – from Blogspot [which also powers the Travolution Blog] to Squarespace – he has also snapped up one of the new dot-travel domain names, Selectworld.travel, for the blog.

[Travolution article on how to get a dot-travel domain name]

Within days of talking to Harrison, Dale Lovell, a former contact from Shermans Travel UK, emails with news of his new company, Travel Answers.

This is a blog-based operation that allows users to send in questions and then a team of “advisors” respond by posting comments back on the blog.

[News story: Travel Answers launches Q&A blog and travel deals]

Kevin May, editor, Travolution