Spreading the whl.travel Word

whl.travel
23 April 2009

whl.travel is slowly but surely lifting into more visible flying space. Despite the tumult of these financially unstable times and while other travel companies contract, whl.travel continues to expand, reaching across and deep into new destinations, refining content and improving access to it, striking up new collaborative relationships with other players that share sustainable and responsible tourism values and even working on new joint ventures with some of the tourism industry’s better-known players (stay tuned for these announcements).

“I think you will be seeing a lot more of whl.travel in the media over the coming months,” said Len Cordiner, CEO of whl.travel. Boy is he right.

Building Community
One area in which whl.travel has been active is building a sense of community with other websites with which we share common strengths, especially the increasingly popular approach of working directly with locals.

Screen shot of the Make Travel Fair website

These sites include Make Travel Fair (see more here and below), Your Safe Planet, Tourdust (see more below), Mindfultourist (see more here), Leap Local, Tribewanted, Go Philanthropic and more.

Through these new partners, whl.travel has been reaching new ears. For example, in early April, the founder of Tourdust included a nice mention of whl.travel in the Guardian (a British newspaper).

Similarly, Stephen Chapman, the editor of Make Travel Fair and also a whl.travel collaborator, posted a very positive article about whl.travel based on his experience so far.

Screen shot of Armenian news site with picture of Zachary Rozga speaking at USAID CAPS conference

Sharing Expertise
Zachary Rozga, CEO of WHL Consulting and former Executive Director of whl.travel’s Africa regional office, presented at a workshop of the USAID-funded Competitive Armenian Private Sector (CAPS) project. The event brought together representatives from the Armenian tourism and information technology sectors. Mr Rozga travelled to Yerevan, Armenia, as the CAPS international expert in IT solutions for the tourism sector. He was the main speaker of the “IT Solutions for Tourism Industry” discussion.

“With IT having a growing impact on the way global travel is managed, operated and promoted, and with global tourism arrival numbers expected to decline in 2009 due to the financial crisis, the need to be technologically advanced to improve cost-effectiveness and productivity is as important as ever,” he said.

If you read Armenian, check out more at here and here.

Media Hits
Both the whl.travel team and its local marketplace operators have been working to bring to light some of the good work in which they are involved. Media is beginning to take notice and share the news with a growing base of interested users. Below are two examples.

* Lee Sheridan of Teamworkz, MPO from Laos and Thailand, was recently interviewed on Radio Australia about his expanding whl.travel presence in Laos. Download the podcast for Program Part 1 of the 03/04/2009 show. Around 19 minutes into the program is where Lee talks.

* Nepal’s Himalayan Times ran news of the recent launch of whl.travel’s Kathmandu website, the first of two planned travel portals in that country.