Blog-tastic!

The world has gone blog mad.

Last week we heard how a blog has been created around fans of Carnival Cruises.

A story in the Houston Chronicle tells us the bloggers all met up recently on board Carnival Freedom after making friends through the cruiseline's blog.

And, now there's a gastro-blog.

No, it's not some horrible virus striking people down. It's a foodie commentary blog called Marriott in the kitchen from chef Brad Nelson of the Marriott Hotel, Washington D.C.

To give him his proper title Nelson is 'culinary VP and corporate chef', and as such gets to travel around the world, creating, testing and best of all, tasting dishes.

Nice job if you can get it. Travel the world, eat great food and write about it! Actually the strapline for the blog is food, travel, thoughts...

Nelson can be no stranger to the blogging phenomenon as Marriott's Bill Marriott established a bit of a first when he set up his corporate blog a few years ago.

We can't wait to hear more of Nelson's blog, his culinary creations and likes and dislikes but he'd better watch out. Even we can have too much of a good thing!

Linda Fox, lead reporter, Travolution

When is a hotel website not a hotel website - or a list not a list?

The BOOT highlights an intriguing website called TopHotel100.com.

It is basically a catalogue of the most popular hotel-related websites on the web, based on the number of other sites on the list that "mention" [in other words, link] them.

[A bit like Technorati]

But the list itself is rather odd. The top ten goes something like this:

• 1 Tripadvisor.com 2,110,000 (mentions)
• 2 Booking.com 1,760,000

And then straight out of leftfield:

• 3 MySwitzerland.com 1,570,000

Normal services resumes:

4 Orbitz.com 1440000
5 Holidaycheck.de 1,420,000
6 Marriott.com 1,330,000
7 Expedia.com 1,290,000
8 Voyages-sncf.com 1,230,000
9 Travel-library.com 1,080,000
10 Kayak.com 1,020,000

Is Kayak a "hotel" site? And VoyagesSNCF is a rail-led/online travel agency site. It seems astonishing that there are 1.5 million mentions of MySwitzerland.com contained on the other 312 sites.

As Hughes on The Boot says, he doesn't actually care as the overall list is quite a good who's who of decent hotel sites (with the odd bizarre exception), but there is certainly a faint whiff of the Link Love going on here a bit.

We've submitted the Travolution Blog to see how closely they monitor entries.

We were asked to add a link or logo in order to get listed. [TOP 100 HOTEL SITES]

Struggling to find the link on TripAdvisor and Expedia, unsurprisingly.

We'll keep you posted......

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: hotel 100 lists

Pegasus has a blog

US travel technology company Pegasus has joined the likes of TripAdvisor, Marriott and Travelocity and launched its own corporate blog.

And it's called, er, Pegged.

The people behind the blog say they they hope over time it will "stimulate plenty of discussion about our company and the myriad of ways that Pegasus touches hotels, distributors, developers, customers, partners and employees in this exciting time for the travel industry".

Let's hope not. The best travel company blogs have tended to be those that try not to flatter the company or its customers.

TripAdvisor's Snarky Owl is funny, for a start, and doesn't try too hard. Even Bill Marriott's blog has its lighter and controvsersial moments.

Let's hope the Dallas-based Pegasites [we just made that nickname up, but it kinda works] can also bring us all some insight - and entertainment.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution