Written on June 5, 2008 – 5:03 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The official Google blog welcomed another big shot to its list of guest authors: Jay Rasulo - chairman of Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. He had a fun announcement to make, packed in some slick PR language:
Last May, Eric Schmidt and I met to talk about The Walt Disney Company’s focus on technology. We started to explore innovative ways we could work together to bring one of the world’s most magical destinations to Google Earth’s millions of users… and how our guests could be a mouse-click away from visiting the place where dreams come true.
So Schmidt and Rasulo sent their employees to work, and within a month, a new feature within Google Earth has emerged: flying through Disneyworld. Every theme park has been copied into detail. So next time you want to go to Disneyland, you can plan exactly which roller coaster you want to see first. As Disney also took care of attraction descriptions, videos, photos, links to menus, event calendars, tickets, and reservations.
I hope you like that post!
The Next Web Blog covers start-up news from all over the world (not just the Valley), exciting new technologies and inspiring entrepreneurs. If you're new here, you may want to read our '
About' page and subscribe to our
RSS feed.
Do you have a start-up that we should write about?
Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!
Written on May 19, 2008 – 1:44 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Update: By sending fax and email log files, Renée De Meo from Venere proved that it was actually the mistake of the Arcadia Hotel Belmondo.
For most web professionals, the Internet is like a religion. We evangelize the almost endless opportunities of the medium and try to convince people to trust new technologies. It almost sucks us up, and creates some sort of tunnel vision. So when a new technology lets us down, it hits us extra hard. It happened to my co-editor Patrick and me.
We traveled to Hamburg, Germany last Thursday to visit the one-day conference Next08. Right before we left, I booked a hotel via Venere.com. Quite last minute, but hey, we’re busy guys. Moreover, that’s where these services are for. I browsed around, looking for an affordable hotel within walking distance of the Next08 venue and ended up at the Arcadia Hotel Belmondo. When I completed the reservation, I was happily surprised with the confirmation message via SMS.
So after a rather tiring six-hour drive with traffic jams and without a navigation system, Patrick and me arrived at the hotel. A bit stressed, as we were late for the Facebook Developer Garage after party. Yet when we arrived at the reception, a nasty surprise was waiting for us. After a lot of shaking no with her head and desperate looks in our direction, the receptionist told us the hotel was fully booked and she couldn’t find our reservation. When I showed her the confirmation page on my MacBook, she told me that it should have been impossible for us to make a reservation on that very day, as she had closed the booking system in the morning.
There we were standing, two angry young men. Utterly disappointed in the so-beloved medium. In our anger, we decided to write a blog post titled: “when the Internet fails”. Apparently, the disappointment got to our head, as it wasn’t the fault of the medium. It was the fault of one of world’s largest booking sites, Venere. The technology didn’t fail, the people behind the technology did.
Our faith in the web was renewed when the receptionist gave us two WLAN access cards. Within five minutes, we found an excellent last minute offer from a design hotel called Arcotel Rubin. Two minutes later we booked the room on Hotels.com and ten minutes later we were checking into a very comfortable hotel.
So all you fellow technology evangelists out there. Next time you try to make people trust the web, use this story to explain that when new technology fails, it’s often the people and not the whole medium. That might sound familiar to them, as it’s often also the case with technologies that exist for decades. Explain to them that they can use a broad range of new super handy tools, with the same or less risk.
Written on May 1, 2008 – 12:00 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Update: Leo wants you to test TripSay. The first 100 readers to send an e-mail to info [at] tripsay [dot] com with “nextweb” in the subject will get a beta invite.
As I’ve promised on Sunday, it’s all about the Finnish start-ups on the Next Web this week. They thank that to a successful invasion at Web 2.0 Expo. Today I cover TripSay, a social travel service. I’ve met these guys at the Next Web Conference as well as last week. They got Techcrunched after the Next Web, now it’s time for me to ask them some questions.
Let’s start where TC’s Erick Schonfeld ended his post. He said social travel sites like Driftr, HereOrThere, YowTrip, and TripSay will face the challenge of creating a knowledgeable community. To attract a crowd like this, a travel service will need a little something extra. So I asked founder Leo Koivulehto how they will differentiate from their competitors.
Jyri Engeström (Jaiku), yours truly & Leo Koivulehto
Koivulehto: “Our service is unique as the information you see is personalized according to your interests and profile. The more time you spend on the site and more places you rate, the more it learns from you. A college graduate and grandpa Jones will see differently biased content and recommendations. Which means you don’t have to spend time going through things that are of no interest to you. We help to find what you are really looking for.”
TripSay also partnered up with some large Finnish travel agencies. TripSay provides them with their content, in return they receive a chunk of the travel agencies’ traffic. Nice move, but Koivulehto will have to make sure that TripSay also teams up with agencies from other countries. Otherwise, TripSay will offers its visitors just a Finnish view on the world of tourism.
Before launching their start-up, Koivulehto and his team used to be active travelers. Now they just stroll conferences: “We would never take a package trip, but want to plan the trip ourselves. For that we needed to crawl the web for information, ask all our friends where they had been and how did they like it . This was really time consuming and there was simply too much stuff on the web to find anything sensible and relevant to our interests.”
“We wanted to create a service where you can easily access travel information that has been crawled from the web, aggregated, organized and made easily searchable. We also wanted to have ratings and tips from your friends integrated, so you could see where your friends have been and easily spot the places that have been liked the best and get the insider tips and ideas for your next trip. Our databank now consists of info from over 260000 destinations, places and sights.”
What I like about TripSay, is the integration of Flickr and YouTube content. Koivulehto said they’re also working on Facebook integration and will pay attention to the wishes of their users. I think that the key to extra traffic lays there. Integrating content from other services - maybe Dopplr as well? - makes TripSay more interesting, nobody wants an isolated social platform anymore.
Written on January 25, 2008 – 3:06 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
I don’t know about you, but when I visit a foreign city I still tend to buy a travel guide, write down some interesting addresses and then hide the guide. You won’t catch me walking around as a tourist in your city. You’ll just see a random guy, whose sometimes looking into a Moleskine notebook. Besides that, I also try to get in touch with some locals I know. Since they’re the ones who can show me THE places to be. Never trust a night-life tip in a travel guide!
These are all actually pretty old-fashioned ways to get to know a city. It never occurred to me to use Web 2.0 when planning a European city trip. But now there is CityTherapy, ‘the new online platform & social planning tool for European city life and city travel’. Let’s give it a shot!
The site brings together the four pillars of city living in one connected social network.:
- the people - speaks for itself, you connect to them through the network.
- the places - restaurants, musea and galleries. Quick test: one of the dullest student-like clubs in Amsterdam is called a ‘great up-and-coming club!’. Sounds like just the owner paid a visit to the page. Yet this is a problem that will disappear as soon as more people use it.
- the events - I know exactly where to find cool gigs in my town, yet I could use a little help in London.
- the trips - This is a great option. Create your own personalized trip in some of Europe’s greatest cities and ask your friends to contribute. I’ve tested with an imaginary and melancholic trip to Paris (excuse me for the bad YouTube quality):
I like the social aspect of CityTherapy. It doesn’t make sense for me to add events and places, if it wasn’t for people who want to visit my city. So on the one hand I’m helping people having a better time, and I get tips about interesting events in other cities as a reward. I just hope people will not just look up things but also contribute.
So now I’m traveling 2.0 style as well. Still, not much has changed. I’m still asking locals where I should go AND I’m still writing things down. Because the one thing that’s really missing on CityTherapy is a mobile application. When you’re done setting up you trip, you can print the results. That’s not what I want! I want to check it on my mobile. They’ll still recognize me as a tourist, carrying around those large maps!
Written on January 11, 2008 – 12:03 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Tripr is a recently launched travel site where people can post video reviews of the hotels they’ve visited. The goal of the Dutch founders is to create an archive of reviews, so that visitors on the basis of the videos can determine whether they want to stay in a hotel or not.
When a visitor decides to book a hotel based on a review, the makers of the video earn 33 percent of the commission.
Jan Kooman, founder of Tripr.TV: “We’re some sort of YouTube for the travel industry. Because the videos are shot by hotel guests, visitors can get a good impression before booking. Moving images are more realistic than those often outdated pictures”.
In the press release (Dutch), the founders claim that the visitor gets an independent impression of the hotel. I dare to differ.
If I were to shoot a video for money, I would show the most beautiful parts of the hotel and, for instance, not zoom in on the dirty parts of the bath room. And really, I’m a nice guy. It’s just that I would feel like I was shooting a commercial, instead of a review. Why would I tell about my negative experiences if I could earn more money by drawing a nice picture?
When asking Kooman for a reaction on this remark, he said: “The good thing about video is that it is particularly hard to disguise the truth. On traditional websites with the well-known pictures, faking beauty is way easier. You just take a good picture from the right perspective and you’re done. When you’re filming, you’re actually walking through the hotel. Moreover, we’ll also publish video reviews made by an independent Tripr adviser”.
The customers and ‘independent’ adviser have the same goal though, and that’s making money. I agree with Koopman that it’s harder to disguise the truth when using video, instead of stamp-sized outdated pictures. Those photographers can turn crappy rooms into royal suites. Yet I don’t think that the label ‘review’ is the right one, since it’s more like a user generated commercial.
This doesn’t mean I don’t like the idea. I’m pretty sure that next time I want to book a night in a hotel, I can’t resist the temptation of checking what the room is like through the eyes of others.
Update: Tripr is now also available in English
Email
Facebook
Netlog
Linkedin
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
