November 2009 Archives

Holiday Options has gone bust, and some of the reaction we've started to see testifies to the esteem in which the operator was held by agents.

This is just to aggregate some of the tweets I've spotted - I'm not using a feed as the keyword  'Holiday Options' is likely to pull in a lot of generic travel posts.

Holiday Options has gone bust. Shame.
@lisaminot

RT @lisaminot Holiday Options has gone bust... shame > Agree. They had nice program 2 interesting dests like Croatia, Azores, Slovenia, etc
@alastairmck

bit slow on the uptake but just been told Holiday Options has gone into administration. Shame, really nice company.
@steveody

Oh dear, another bites the dust, so sad.
@lynnerosie

"A big shame about Holiday Options, many satisfied customers over the years. Who now for Croatia? Not many specialists left to sell"
@selectworld

"Can anyone say what's happening with Hidden Croatia? ... Sad, as both v nice to deal with"
@catherinemurp

"Sad about Holiday Options failure, I quite liked them"
@juliedurrans

"Can't believe that Holiday Options has gone under!"
@baldwinstravel

Bing UK created a good visual search of prime ministers for the state opening of Parliament today (you'll need to install Silverlight) - and it turns out there's one for travel destinations too.

(Visual Search isn't an open-ended tool at this stage, there are just a handful of galleries that Bing has developed itself.)

It's a story best told with screengrabs:

So the first big problem is picture selection. While there are obvious ways to visually differentiate UK prime ministers (their faces) it isn't always that simple with travel. The enlarged section is the thumbnail for Hawai'i's Big Island. A clear visual clue? Not to me.

We drill down using category filters on the left, again enlarged, and get a flat gallery with some text cues. (You can also move up or down in the taxonomy by hovering over an image, which opens up a little sub-menu.)

Subsequent screens resemble this one, but with fewer 'results' as you refine your 'search'.

I use scare quotes because, as I said, this is a static gallery and not a true search tool - but it leads to true search results, because the endpoint of this process is a page of standard Bing results for the image you clicked on.

Hit the thumbnail for Bath, UK, and you'll get...

...organic search results for Bath, UK.

Clearly this is experimental, and it's a nice interface. I'm sure there are some more sophisticated ways it could work in the travel market - 'destinations' is after all as broad as it gets...

Twitterthanks: @alisongow, who retweeted the UK PMs gallery from MSN UK executive producer @peterbale.

Neither of these is hot off the press, but it is worth putting them side by side.

• Top travel sites show poor load times [Travolution]
• Site speed: Google's next ranking factor [Search Engine Land]

The latter refers to organic search results - i.e. the 'proper' results, not the paid-for slots right at the top or over at the side.

Big deal? Well, Google only said they may start using site speed, and Search Engine Land goes on to say:

If I had to guess, page speed would not be a tremendously weighed factor, unless the site takes 90 seconds to load

...and the worst load time in the Gomez study that Travolution reported was 30 seconds. So this isn't going to bring anybody's business down.

But every little helps, and a quick load time is important regardless of SEO impact.

For those who want to improve, econsultancy wrote a quick guide to some of the issues that impact load time in the wake of the Google story. 

I don't flatter myself that readers pore over our Thursday email alerts in search of contradictions.

But if you were so minded, you would have spotted this today:

On the left, our travel agent columnist decrying blogging; on the right, five posts from Travel Weekly bloggers.

A contributing columnist and a web editor are not obliged to agree, of course. And we don't.

While I don't know the family Maureen is writing about, it strikes me that you could take the same scenario and give it a positive reading. Like so:

A couple go on a road trip. Travel excites them so much that they want to document it. They write and post photos, which allows the family and friends left behind to feel closer to them. This seems to work, because their parents knew what they're up to, share their enthusiasm and want to pass it on. A bit annoying, but heigh-ho - we all know what Proud Parents are like.

For me, the main misapprehension in Maureen's piece is that bloggers expect everyone to read their every word. I don't know a single one that does (and I know a lot).

Did any TW Blog readers see the column? Thoughts?

There'll be loads of online travel types at World Travel Market, and everyone ends up walking a ridiculous distance. So I'm suggesting an informal contest.

Get yourself a pedometer - there may still be time to nab one of the Just A Drop charity ones - and keep track of how far you've walked.

Then tweet it with the hashtag #wtmsteps.

• Post daily stats if you want - some folks are only there for one day
• Post a final total on Friday

I'm fully expecting to lose, since I'll be in Travel Weekly's goldfish-bowl press room (UKI2155) most of the time...

Oh - the winner gets the admiration of their peers and stronger calf muscles.