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Archive for the ‘Travel News’ Category

Thursday, June 19th, 2008

Summer = Ice Cream

Mark Evans
Director, Community

Ice Cream-1
There’s something about summer that sparks strong cravings for ice cream. Nothing like sitting back on a hot summer’s day enjoying a couple scoops of your favorite flavor whether it comes from the local ice cream store or your freezer.

If you’re someone passionate about the quest for great ice cream and travel, then here’s a list of the top 10 places around the world to find it. The list was created by the fine folks at Tauck, a luxury travel company.

COWS (Prince Edward Island, Canada)

Gelateria Perche No! (near Piazza della Republica in Florence, Italy)

Tip Top Ice Cream (locations throughout New Zealand)

Kula Lodge & Restaurant (Maui, Hawaii)

Freddo (Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Gelateria di Piazza (San Gimignano, Italy)

Hot Licks Homemade Ice Cream (Fairbanks, AK)

Glacier Berthillon (Ile de St. Louis, Paris)

Las Iguanas (Boca de Arenal, Costa Rica)

Ben & Jerry’s (Waterbury, VT)

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Thursday, June 5th, 2008

Global Nomad Added to Alltop

Mark Evans
Director, Community

One of the gems within PlanetEye’s growing collection of valuable and useful content is our Global Nomad blog, which is written by Brendan Powell as he and his girlfriend travel around the world this year.

Brendan’s posts reflect his writing skills but also his enthusiasm and passion for travel, and his interest in discovering the unique, out-of-the-way, undiscovered places that make a good trip great.

Having Brendan within the PlanetEye community is a great fit because his writing and approach to travel reflect the type of information that we want to provide to travelers.

It is gratifying and exciting that Global Nomad has been added to the travel section of Alltop.com, alongside respected blogs such as Travel Rants, Lonely Planet, Peter Greenberg, Write to Travel and The Lost Girls.

If you’re not familiar with Alltop, it’s sort of a like a “digital magazine rack” where you can quickly get information on a wide range of topics. Each blog or Web site listed on Alltop includes headlines for the last five posts/stories. Check it out.

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Friday, April 25th, 2008

Who Wants to Make a Deal?

Mark Evans
Director, Community

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The deals are coming fast and furious in the online travel market these days.

The latest transaction is CondeNet acquiring SFO Media, which owns two travel blogs: Jaunted, a “pop culture” travel guide, and HotelChatter, which provides hotel reviews.

The move into the blogosphere will provide CondeNet’s online business, Concierge.com, with not only great quality content but some serious traffic as Jaunted and HotelChatter had about 875,000 unique visitors combined last month.

“HotelChatter.com and Jaunted.com each have strong voices in the travel world, attracting a large community of passionate travelers,” said CondeNet president Sarah Chubb. “This deal increases our travel footprint and adds to our portfolio a group of sites for advertisers who target an active, passionate, and upscale consumer.”

The acquisition comes on the heels of Microsoft buying Farecast.com, which provides information about airline fares, for $115-million last week, and TripIt raising $5.1-million in venture capital.

For more coverage of the CondeNet-SFO deal, check out TechCrunch.

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Friday, April 18th, 2008

Microsoft Flies Away with Farecast

Mark Evans
Director, Community

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Microsoft has taken a bigger position within the online travel business amid news it has purchased Seattle-based Farecast for a reported $115-million.

Farecast, which has had a partnership with MSN Travel since last year, is a travel search engine that provides people with on-the-go information about airfare prices. Its investors include Madrona Venture Group, Par Capital Management and Greylock Partners.

Fore more details, check out John Cook’s Venture Blog.

Disclosure: Microsoft is an investor in PlanetEye.

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Tuesday, April 15th, 2008

Alltop Travel is Tops

Mark Evans
Director, Community

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As you can probably appreciate, I spend a lot of time reading travel blogs - looking for interesting stories, new places and good writers.

For anyone interested in travel blogs, the best resource is AllTop Travel, which provides a user-friendly summary of 60 blogs. It’s like traveling around the world in less than 10 minutes.

Aside from the depth of content, a feature that is particularly useful is a summary box that appears if you hover over a blog post. It’s a great way to get a snapshot of a post before deciding whether you want to click through to the blog itself.

Not sure how AllTop compiles its blog line-up but here’s hoping that with a little effort and creativity, we can get PlanetEye’s blog in there some day.

For more on AllTop Travel, check out Sandwagon, which has some nice things to say about it.

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Thursday, April 10th, 2008

Put That Blackberry Away on Vacation

Mark Evans
Director, Community

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I came across an interesting promotion while reading A Luxury Travel Blog about how the Sheraton Chicago Hotel and Towers wants to help Blackberry users break their Crackberry addiction.

To encourage/convince Blackberry users not to check their e-mail while on vacation, the Sheraton is offering to lock your Blackberry in a safety deposit box. The first person to not use their Blackberry for 48 hours will receive a complimentary three-night stay plus dinner for two at the hotel’s famed Shula’s Steak House.

Fact: 83% of people check their e-mail at least once a day while on vacation.

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Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

Getting the Best Bang for Your Travel Buck

Mark Evans
Director, Community

Bargains
It’s great to get away but getting away without spending an arm and a leg is even better.

For people looking for bargain destinations, FoxBusiness has compiled a list of places where travelers can find great deals. These destinations include: the Caribbean, Mexico, China, Indonesia, Eastern Europe, Argentina, Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands.

My good friend, Arthur Frommer (who I’ve actually yet to meet), also weighs in with a list of “20 Travel Bargains for 2008″.

Here’s Arthur’s top-five:

1. China. Despite a slowly strengthening currency, China remains available at unbeatable rates (including airfare) from Chinafocus.com, Chinaspree.com, Rim-Pac.com, RitzTours.com, PacificDelightTravel.com, China-Discovery.com (Champion Holidays), ChinaTravelService.com and many others.

2. Vietnam. Its touristic cost of living is remarkably low, and its shopping prices are minor miracles (like custom-tailored suits made in Hoi An). A great many independent travelers simply book a direct United Airlines flight from San Francisco to Ho Chi Minh City (via Hong Kong), and then pick up accommodations as they tour the country.

3. Panama. It’s the fastest-developing country in Central America, receiving ever-growing numbers of cost-conscious vacationers, as well as U.S. retirees looking for a cheap second home. The skyline of Panama City is beginning to resemble Hong Kong or New York’s financial district — except that those skyscrapers are residential condos.

4. Nicaragua and Honduras. Both are coming up fast as favorites for adventurous tourists. Honduras’ offshore island of Utila (for scuba diving) is the latest discovery. Nicaragua’s prices for lodgings and meals surely are among the lowest in the area.

5. Costa Rica. It remains immensely popular, and though it’s gaining swanky accommodations, it remains inexpensive for the tourist who searches out low-cost lodgings, like those available from Bells’ Home Hospitality in San Jose.

If you’re looking for beautiful photographs of any of the destinations above, check out PlanetEye.com.

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Wednesday, March 26th, 2008

Time for the Travvies!

Mark Evans
Director, Community

Travvies
It seems like everywhere you turn, there’s awards being handed out - and the travel blogging world is no different.

For all you travel blog writers and fans out there, the 2008 Travvies is it. Nominations recently opened, and you can vote in eight different categories.

- Best Travel Blog
- Best Single-Author Travel Blog
- Best Group-Written Travel Blog
- Best Destination or Trip Narrative Blog
- Best Informative/Practical Travel Blog
- Best Photography on a Travel Blog
- Best Big Media Blog
- Best Podcast or Video Blog

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Wednesday, February 6th, 2008

Word of the Day: Travel

Mark Evans
Director, Community

By Mark Evans

One of my favourite travel blogs, Brave New Traveler, has an interesting video interview with Julia Dimon and Robin Esrock, the Canadian stars of a new 13-episode television series called Word Travels: The Truth Behind the Byline that started to air last month on the Outdoor Life Network (OLN).

The interview features questions about what it’s like to be a travel writer and how they manage their keep their enthusiasm while spending lots of time on the road. Dimon is a travel writer whose column “Travel Junkie” appears in newspapers across Canada.

Dimon and Esrock also write a a blog called The Travel Junkie.


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Thursday, January 24th, 2008

Everyblock Goes Hyperlocal

Mark Evans
Director, Community

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By Mark Evans

It’s big world out there with an endless number of places to explore.

While adventures to far flung and exotic places are exciting, there’s plenty to explore just around the corner. At PlanetEye, we’re hoping to meet the needs of people traveling 1,500 miles or 1.5 miles by offering insight from travelers and locals for destinations around the world.

There are a growing number of companies solely focused on the local scene - a trend often described as hyperlocal. A new hyperlocal player is Everyblock, which searches the Web for information from other sites such as Yelp, Flickr, blog posts, Craigslist listings and government databases. It then packages and presents this information so people can get a current, in-depth view of their local scenes.

Everyblock was started by the same entrepreneurs behind chicagocrime.org (a Google Maps mash-up). The service has been launched in three cities - San Francisco, New York City and Chicago.

For more thoughts on Everyblock, check out A VC, who believes hyperlocal sites will be another blow to local newspapers, TechCrunch and the Everyblock blog.

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