It’s astonishing just how quickly a phrase or an idea can catch on and seem to spawn a whole new generation of websites almost overnight.
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‘Local travel’ feels like it’s hit the big time at the moment. Although there are mixed thoughts on whether ‘local travel’ refers to utilising the help of people native to a destination or to utilising tips from fellow travellers who have been there, or both, everyone wants a piece of the ‘local travel’ action, to join a web start-up and wrestle to become the next big thing in travel. One thing is for sure: without a business model behind many of the initiatives that are popping up, they are open to abuse and cannot always be trusted.
Today, companies dedicated to providing a trusted service must compete with a great deal of noise unleashed by recent Web 2.0 start-ups around the subject. My how far we’ve come from the days when ‘local travel’ pioneers like Your Safe Planet (‘Your friend at the other end’), whl.travel (‘…your local connection’) and Guardian journalist Vicky Baker struggled to be heard because no one was listening.
New ‘Local Travel’ Forums
I recently discovered travellr (‘Ask the world a question’). It’s still in private beta but has a slick interface with a nice (very Web 2.0) ability to filter other people’s questions and answers based on the details you provide in your profile about places you’ve been and lived. It’s like Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree brought up to date by making it more personally relevant and better able to find information so often buried in the threads of heavily used forums.
No sooner had I found travellr than I was directed to Localyte (‘Travel like a local!’), basically another travel forum for posting questions and answers. But does the internet need more travel forums? My experience is that without constant care and attention these media are havens for spammers and marketers.
New ‘Local Travel’ Blogs
One of the more recently acclaimed websites, Spotted by Locals is different from the two listed above in that it is a multi-author blog, not a forum. ‘Spotters’ around Europe post short articles about things they find around their city that might be of interest to travellers. The site recently won Best Group-Authored Blog in the inaugural Lonely Planet Blog Awards, beating the Matador Network behemoth and indicating just how popular the ‘local travel’ phrase is becoming. I think local blogs like these can be a gold mine of information and extremely useful.
The Free Lunch
With so many online services available for free these days, it’s a wonder anyone is making any money. Is everyone reliant on investment to push their projects far enough into the public domain so that one day they can exist off advertising deals? Is everyone striving to build something of value that will one day reach a critical mass of followers and be snapped up by one of the ‘big guys’, making the founders a small fortune? Or is all this just careless business being carried out by people who simply build something because they want to and because they can, without seeing the need for any real revenue model?
The Role of the Brand
Hopefully the day will one day return when people don’t mind paying to secure a quality service offered by a brand with integrity, quality, ethics and a strong business model. I increasingly find my time swallowed up trying to keep on top of technology, who’s saying what, who’s been where, what’s new and what other people are doing in the travel industry.
With so many social media channels to monitor, so much information passing before my eyes, I yearn for a brand/company that I can trust, one that I know is moving in the right direction, innovating and will always keep it’s feet on the ground.
Further information:
The Essence Of Travel, No Additives Or Preservatives
For All Its Labels & Categories, ‘Travel’ Presides
Stephen Chapman, founder of Make Travel Fair and editor of Make Travel Fair UK, Stephen recently began collaborating with whl.travel. Read more about it.
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Stephen,
This is a really great article and truly insightful. I just read an article (and I can’t find it online) that even the phenom of Twitter is not financially sustainable, other than the build and sell approach that you mention.
I wholeheartedly agree that we are in a time of mass confusion, and that this is the great explosion of a new sort of dot com boom. It seems we are in now a “Web 2.0 Bubble” and that similar to what occurred in the 90s where there was an explosion of all of these new e-commerce companies that were all doomed to failure, we have the same thing happening now. The only thing that is different is that while in the 90s investors and venture capital funds were throwing millions (if not billions) into those black holes and now these things are coming up free. I think that fact that these sites are free is worse, because now there truly is no one to account to and no one to say “ok, we need to shut it down.”
My only hope is that we will see the same trend with the first dot com boom whereby after a period of total chaos there was a period of consolidation, where the companies with a true value proposition, a viable business model and real brand gobbled up the small, weaker entities. I guess time will only tell.
Thank you Stephen for you article and please try to stay on top of this issue, because I think it is something worth following.
Zack
Great to read your thoughts on this aspect of the Internet Zack. I think it’s a truly fascinating evolution to follow and the ‘Web 2.0 Bubble’ that you mention is definitely one that must surely be near bursting, especially as everyone is forced to tighten their purse strings over the next few years, and sound business foundations will once again become a crucial element for new ventures to establish.
Increased accessibility to the Internet and lowered barriers for entering into a web based venture is probably a major reason that so many free sites have appeared. Perhaps the ‘Web 2.0 Bubble’ will continue to expand proportionately with the internet, maybe it’s not a bubble at all. Successful, independent online ventures will surely diminish as major players find success harnessing and rewarding the will and co-operation of others with a more social, bottom-up focus to business. I’m sure we’ll see more opportunities for collaboration with larger companies that have the reach and infrastructure to offer powerful income generating schemes to others like the Apple App Store, even whl.travel MPOs.