The logo of the Fringe Travel network

With the milestone of the 2010 World Travel Market (WTM) now fading into memory, many who attended or were involved to some degree are left asking a single question: Where did 2010 go? Time has absolutely flown by since last year’s event. It’s been a busy and, for most, positive year, so if there’s one thing that I’ll take away from last week’s proceedings, it’s that feeling of general optimism. There’s reason to be cautious, of course, but on the whole there’s plenty of creative sparks being struck and the signs of fires starting to catch.

Finding Good Value on the Periphery

I didn’t attend the WTM this year, although several of my WHL Group colleagues did. I was, however, involved in several of the large number of peripheral events that have sprung up around the travel industry juggernaut that takes up annual November residence in London’s gigantic ExCeL Centre. As someone involved in responsible travel, I felt it was a natural choice for me. Although I understand that many of big travel companies signalled interest in sustainability this year, I still find the more casual environments of the smaller events to be a more rewarding and more interesting place to talk to people.

The Heart of the Fringe

Top of my list for this sort of interaction was the WTM Fringe Travel Networking event, a night organised by the team at Tripbod. It provides a space for people active in responsible travel to come together and socialise outside the main WTM event. Having attended this event last year, I was keen to head back to see how much things had changed.

The answer was not a great a deal – not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination. The friendly, welcoming atmosphere was the same. The willingness to allow people to speak and introduce their ideas was the same. The undercurrents of energy and creativity were the same. In short, everything was similar, only bigger, brighter and better.

The casual environments of the smaller events on the periphery of the WTM made them more rewarding and more interesting place to talk to people

For starters, the venue was larger, with more room for people to mingle. There were more attendees – I met several very interesting people with exciting ideas that were completely new to me. There was a greater interest from the mainstream travel industry; Expedia, which sent several representatives, sponsored the event. Technology also played a bigger role in the proceedings, as the evening was livecast via the Web to viewers around the world. I had to dodge the webcam several times as it made its circuit of the room.

A WHL Group Get-together

Later in the week I attended a WHL Group event organised to bring together staff, local partners and industry friends attending the WTM. As a guy who spends a lot of his time hiding in a darkened room and writing code, I enjoyed the opportunity to put some faces to names that had only previously existed to me as email addresses. Many of the numerous whl.travel partners were in attendance and it was truly a pleasure to chat with the people who work hard to produce the content which flows through The Travel Word.

The undercurrents of energy and creativity at the events on the periphery of the WTM were just as strong at the 2010 WTM Fringe Networking event as they were in 2009

Also in attendance were the teams heading up the various WHL Group businesses, including Urban Adventures, Green Path Transfers, Gunyah, Lime&Tonic and WHL Consulting. Again, it was great to be able to discuss things in person. The internet is a great communication tool and most of what I do on a daily basis couldn’t happen without it. But, at the end of the day, it’s no substitute for a good, old-fashioned conversation.

That would be the second thing I’d take from my week on the fringe – the importance of speaking to people. Travel is a business, sure, but that business is always a means to an end. And that end is the experience of discovery, of communication and of sharing something, even if it’s just a drink or a joke.

I understand what WTM is about, but I’ll always prefer the smaller events. So look for me on the fringe again next year.

The internet is all about social these days, it has been for sometime, and as more of us become more active on the major social networking sites it’s becoming increasingly apparent that although our number of ‘friends’, ‘followers’ or ‘connections’ can be huge, the opportunities for us each to leverage the intelligence that’s locked away in the minds of our contacts are minimal.

Network Cables / Flickr photo by pascal.charest

The travel space is one area that everyone can contribute expertise to and there is no shortage of websites that play on this fact in an effort to increase the diffusion of local knowledge, and connect travellers to those who have answers to their questions. Tripbod and Travellr are often cited as two of our favorites.

Extensive Integration with the Big Networks Required

The ability to spread local knowledge through sites like these is still very much hindered by their isolation from the social circles that we create for ourselves online though. The early status update idea has transformed into micro-blogging that makes interacting online a quite seamless and open experience. The local travel movement (as championed by the likes of whl.travel, Spotted by Locals, Tripbod and Going Local) is begging for us to see knowledge sharing websites that integrate with the obscene amounts of global intelligence available through our extended social networks, and operate in a similar way.

Not Everyone Can Be a Social Networking Site

Travellr has started to open the door on connecting travel questions and answers with other networks. It is a fantastic site with a great look and feel but still relies on users inputting the standard social network information into a new profile on the Travellr site. Social networking has been cracked, and although a vast amount of startups have contributed to its innovation, it is a numbers game in which Facebook, Google, Twitter and LinkedIn hold the cards and can therefore cherry pick the best ideas.

A Huge Untapped Resource

Other sites that are looking beyond creating niche communities and providing a global service need to accept that users don’t want to build new networks all over the web, and they need to begin looking at how they can integrate with the major social networking players and leverage the information already shared, much of which is not being used in any intelligent way.

Google Purchases Question-and-Answer Site

The recent purchase of Aardvark by Google is an indicator that Google understands what needs to happen in this space, and the potential that exists. It will probably eventually release another new tool that will blow all of these smaller local travel knowledge enterprises out of the water in the same way that it has with Google Buzz. The addition of personalised social results to the Google search pages is a step in this direction. The ability of a company to innovate and execute an idea technologically these days limits their success amongst the giants, even if the idea is a good one.

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whl.travel and Make Travel Fair have agreed to share this content with the aim of educating, engaging and inspiring both communities. The original of the article can be found here.

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It’s true. Local Travel’s here. It’s a small new movement, but it’s gaining momentum. Stay tuned for more…

Lonely Planet’s Travel Blog (hosted by Yahoo!7 Travel in Australia)

On 17 December 2009, I wrote a post about the misunderstood merits of Local Travel on Lonely Planet’s Travel Blog hosted by Yahoo!7 Travel in Australia.

Judging by the glowingly supportive comments, I apparently tapped a rich vein of local travel enthusiasts eager to lend credence to a cause.

Given that, I was invited by Lonely Planet to write a follow-up post, digging a little deeper into the fertile earth I’d found. That text – Get Lost, Go Local – has again fielded some welcome input from readers.

Here’s how I begin:

My last post about the misunderstood merits of Local Travel appears to have hit a positive nerve. It seems there’s a choir out there of local travellers who welcome a little preaching. Amen.

So from my fine pulpit, let me crack open the Great Explorers’ Almanac and thumb to the right page for a decidedly un-academic but nonetheless historical sermon about the kind of travel you may find meaningful.

I go on to look at how the earliest travel interactions – those from the pre-guidebook days – were flawed but frank. I give a few paragraphs to my impression of contemporary travel as safe but soulless. And then try to tie it all together by proposing Local Travel as the solution.

Most importantly, I drop a big hint:

Two local-travel companies with global reach have united to give oomph to this effort. Spotted by Locals and the WHL Group will soon be announcing how you too can rediscover a misplaced spirit of adventure: Get lost! Go local.

The Brooklyn Nomad Blog

I was welcomed to the pages of The Brooklyn Nomad as a Guest Nomad on 12 February. The blog piece I wrote, called Going Local –Yesterday and Again Today, is a more personal look at how

“a wedge has been driven between travelers and hosts. Both parties now float through a common space that is, alas, no longer a shared one. Most locals keep to residential areas (or keep to themselves when outside the gates), while travelers Spirograph through set circuits complete with canned commentary, the delivery vehicles of which (from buses to guidebooks to smart phones) are little more than horses of a different color.”

It posits that “we [can] bridge the divide between host and visitor, and resuscitate the merits of ‘going local’ without any of its past discredits.”

Are you with us?

A lot of good people with a lot of good things to say at the Fringe RT Network event @ WTM 2009

The prevailing attitude that I encountered throughout the night was one of positivity. Positivity about new product launches, positivity about potential joint ventures and positivity about the sector as a whole. I only heard the recession being discussed once all evening. It wasn’t that people were deliberately avoiding the topic – when it was brought up it was treated seriously – but every person I spoke to came across as optimistic and was proactively developing solutions to deal with the economy’s curve balls.

There was also a great deal of positivity about the increased attention being paid to responsibility in travel by the wider tourism sector. Since the RT Network’s inception back in 2007, the concept of sustainable travel has gone from having a single presentation at the main World Travel Market event to being a leading crosscutting theme returned to throughout the week. In fact, responsible tourism is now pretty much the WTM’s primary focus all day on Wednesday 12 November, better known as the WTM World Responsible Tourism Day, “the only global day of action of its kind” and one supported by the UNWTO and leading industry associations. Still, many of the Fringe attendees expressed their preference for the Fringe event over its giant sibling – the bubbling intimacy of the Fringe’s basement venue was more comfortable for most than the cavernous interior of the ExCeL centre.

One of the best parts of the experience for me was putting faces to names. While the Internet is a fantastic communication tool and it allows people from all over the world to come together and keep in touch, you really can’t beat a good face-to-face chat with someone. I particularly enjoyed speaking with Stuart Grant, director of Geo.me; Thomas Armitt, founder of West Africa Discovery; and Vishwaraj Gyawali of Social Tours. Special mention must also go to Sally Broom and the rest of the team at Tripbod, who organised the whole event and brought so many people together.

It really was a refreshing experience to meet a large group of people with genuine passion for the industry in which they work. It’s also reassuring to know that such high levels of creativity are being channelled into innovation and activity, particularly during a difficult year. The Fringe event has been going from strength to strength and if what I saw on Monday was anything to go by, it will continue to do so. Thanks again to Sally and to everyone else who turned out. I’m already looking forward to next year!

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Monday November 9 marks the beginning of the 2009 World Travel Market, one of the travel industry’s most important annual events. While many people from around the world will be descending throughout the week on London’s ExCeL centre to meet, greet and do business, an increasing number will also be making a beeline to the Fringe RT Network Event – 6:30pm to 11pm in the Pavilion End Bar, close to the heart of the city – to meet, engage and inspire.

The Fringe Responsible Travel Network Event @ WTM, pictured here from a previous year, is a chance to connect and reconnect with people passionate about responsible travel

Developed by a group of like-minded individuals keen to bring together people with a passion for locally focussed responsible tourism that protects and enhances destinations for the benefit of host communities as well as visitors, the Fringe Network event was first held in 2007. In the two years since, attendees have met regularly, both in person and online, to discuss the challenges they face, share their experiences and promote the progress being made by the sector as a whole.

“It becomes ever more important that grassroots organisations and initiatives around the world continue to exert their independence, innovate and come together to network,” observed Stephen Chapman, founder of Make Travel Fair after the 2008 event.

Keeping Good Company

For the third year in a row, the Fringe evening is organised by the team at Tripbod (active in past years as YourSafePlanet). This year, however, whl.travel is proud to be a media partner, along with Make Travel Fair and Social Tours. The event sponsors are Intrepid, Rough Guides, The Blue Yonder and Travel to Care.

Despite inclusion of a speed-networking event that follows the speed-dating model, the evening is expected to be as relaxed and informal as in past years, an ideal environment in which to make new connections and reconnect with old ones.

This is my first time attending a Fringe – or indeed any – event of this kind, so I’m excited to be bringing a fresh perspective to the proceedings. I’m also hoping to convey some of the enthusiasm and optimism expressed by attendees on the night and, in advance, will be delivering some insights from Fringe veterans about what to expect. On 9 November you can follow me live via Twitter @whltravelBlog or keep up with what are sure to be multiple streams through the #rtnet hashtag.

Of course, if you’re in London on 9 November, I’d highly recommend coming along to meet some friendly faces. Register your interest via the Fringe Network page on Ning or Facebook. Alternatively, stay tuned here for updates.

If there’s a particular topic you’d like to see discussed or would be interested in hearing about, drop me a line and I’ll do my best to make sure I cover it on the night. If you’d like to contact the organisers directly, begin at the Tripbod website.

With Tripbod, users are introduced online to a vetted local expert who can offer real insight and inspiration, and equip visitors with the most up-to-date information and on-the-spot knowledge. What is unique about the service is the global network of trusted local contacts who can promote their destination to interested travellers and help them get a more enriching experience.

Founder Sally Broom comments, “The beauty of Tripbod is its unique global network of outstanding local people from Rome to Guatemala, and the interactive technology that connects them with the traveller. It is a ground-breaking travel service that promises to revolutionize the way travellers plan and carry out their trips, getting to the grass roots and back to what travel is all about.”

A new basic Trip Planning Light service (UK£10.99) is offered to travellers interested in a few quick tips to transform their holiday. They can ask questions to a Tripbod of their choice and receive advice and recommendations along with a Google map.

The full Trip Planning service (from UK£35) provides a private online space for realtime communication between the traveller and Tripbod that culminates in a personalised itinerary in the form of a tailor-made calendar and downloadable online map. Through a variety of live chat and messaging via an online planning page, the traveller is able to make a more meaningful connection with the destination.

Tripbod, in association with whl.travel, is offering 20% off any service until the end of October. Just enter the code WHLTRAVEL when purchasing online.

Are you interested in joining us? Show your interest in becoming a Tripbod or request an information and application pack.