People love using Wikipedia for information about travel companies

Wikipedia has created a tool which reveals the number of searches carried out for any keyword.

It's interesting in the context of the sheer number of times people are looking for information on individual travel companies.

Obviously one thing to ponder here is the extent to which consumers (let us assume it's primarily consumers for now) will go to learn more about a company.

Is this a question of uncertainty on the part of potential customers? Or the web just showing that if information is there, people will want to find it.

Anyway, here is a sample showing the number of Wikipedia searches in February 2008 for various travel related companies.

British Airways - 230,694
Eurostar - 23,980
Expedia - 21,323
Orbitz - 10,627
Virgin Atlantic - 10,194
Thomas Cook - 8,742
Lastminute.com - 1,273
Ebookers - 968
Opodo - 834
Kuoni - 24

One remarkable thing about this is that Google was searched 334,841 times - just 100,000 more than BA.

And now you can play around with the tool at the heart's content.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Hat-tip: Travelvine [side project of Darren Cronian of Travel-Rants] for flagging this up.

Technorati tags: wikipedia wikitravel wiki encyclopedia

Romance back on at Eurostar

Tradition has it that females can only propose to their loved ones on the 29th February - which means men are safe have to wait for four years.

Alex Bainbridge, following The Register, noted earlier this week how booking a journey from the shiny new St Pancras to Paris Gare du Nord on the 29th February with Eurostar is impossible.

[The reason why Expedia has the same problem for Eurostar tickets, as noted on The Register, is because it uses a direct Eurostar booking engine]

It took Eurostar a few days to get back to us but it turns out that an "internal ecommerce error" was to blame - well, indeed - and the problem has since been fixed. Apologies to customers, etc...

Romance returns to Paris.

The reason why it only came to light this week is because Eurostar publishes fares with a four-month lead-in time, and no longer.

Bit of a dark cloud on what has been a overwhelmingly upbeat week for Eurostar.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Green is the new pink

...for Lastminute.com at least.

It may have missed out on Rugby World Cup fever, but Lastminute.com is now attempting to show off its green credentials with a Paris city break deal through Eurostar.

Press and online ads in the usual places will feature not the usual pink extravaganza but a rather Halloween-esque, ghostly green.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: lastminute eurostar world cup environment paris