User Genergated Content Works for Online Travel

I do some travel writing and in my wandering around the Net spend a lot of time reading user generated content in travel topics, which if find very useful and also really interesting. But I've never really known for sure how much impact it has on online travel consumers.

According to new research by EyeforTravel, user generated content plays (UGC) a considerable role in the UK young professional’s online travel buying cycle, with 72% saying that consumer reviews have influenced their travel choice.

According to the article User Generated Content, the missing link in online travel? on Hotelmarketing.com UGC is having a significant impact on their decision-making process when it comes to travel; 15.3% state they always use UGC for travel, and a lower 12% for non-travel products such as music. Interestingly 63.8% occasionally use UGC in their buying cycle, so that’s a sizeable 79.1% who have actually used consumer reviews for travel before.

Read more

2010 FIFA World Cup - New Host City Names Approved

Following engagement and consultation with the cities, the board of directors of the 2010 FIFA World Cup Organising Committee South Africa (OC) and FIFA last week agreed that the name changes proposed by various host cities may be used within South Africa, while outside of the country a combination of both the old and new names will be used.

The Organising Committee Board, inclusive of a delegation led by FIFA General Secretary Jerome Valcke held their third meeting of the 2007 Calendar Year last Tuesday, 7 August 2007 at SAFA House.

The board welcomed Mr Valcke, who expressed satisfaction with the progress being made by the OC. “Our goal is to ensure that we deliver a successful tournament in 2010 and I will do everything in my power to support the Organising Committee and South Africa in ensuring that this happens,” he said.

Both old and new names will also appear on tickets issued for the tournament in 2010. The cities affected are Mangaung, Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality and Tshwane. This step is intended to allow for the effective global promotion of the host cities, while at the same time providing an opportunity to engage visitors to the country on transformation within the country.

Among other key matters discussed during the meeting included:

Preliminary draw

The preliminary draw, to be held in Durban on 25 November 2007, will be the first major event relating to the 2010 FIFA World Cup to be held on South African soil. This will be an opportunity to present all that is unique and wonderful about South Africa and the African continent as a whole, and also will be an ideal platform for the announcement of the official 2010 slogan. Preparations are reportedly moving swiftly ahead, including the appointment of Wisdom Keys Group as the event management company for the project.

Stadium construction

The OC Technical Team reported that good progress is being made on all venues and the projects are on track. Once again both FIFA and the OC agreed that it is important to continue monitoring progress to ensure that the important deadline of 31 October 2009 for the completion of construction is met.

Accommodation

Agreements with hotels are being finalised. The process of contracting and grading rooms is ongoing and thus far more than 1000 non-hotel rooms have been contracted. In total, approximately 28 thousand rooms have been contracted by Match Events Services, which may be contacted on 2010contract@match-ag.com.

Those who wish to be involved in the accommodation solution for the 2010 FIFA World Cup may obtain more information about the process from the Tourism Grading Council of South Africa on + 27 (0)11 895 3108 or the Tourism Enterprise Programme on + 27 (0)11 804 5750.

For the latest updates and information, go to www.fifa.com.

Webopedia: Online Computer Dictionary

Webopedia: Online Computer Dictionary is a very hand website for computer and Internet technology definitions.

And the people and companies that advertise on Webopedia are just so tempting with the Get a Free...

There are Free Developer's Tools to Download, terms, pronunciations and downloads.

It also has a term of the day - Today's term on Webopedia: Online Computer Dictionary is:

Fishbowl virtual reality
Fishbowl virtual reality or fishbowl VR refers to virtual reality environments that are viewed on a computer system, rather than projection or holographic displays. Analogous to users watching a computer monitor as one would watch a fishbowl. Also called desktop virtual reality or desktop VR.

Selected African Vacation Packages

Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, Egypt, Morocco - these travel companies offer a variety of African vacation packages - from couples to groups, right across the price range.

read more | digg story

IPHONE BILL...In a box?

Be careful what you wish for - can you imagine what Telkom will do with that?

Online Reputation Mangegement

Online Reputation Management - this sounds so governmentspeak I can't believe it is related to the Net. But when I saw this I suddenly became aware that I may just have an online reputation that I might want to manage so I dutifully read on.

What it really is all about, according to this guy, Stephen Pitts at Pittfall, is that you need to list yourself with Peekyou.com in order to manage and control your reputation online.

PeekYou is a new kind of online white pages.

A PeekYou profile helps other people find your websites, social-networking pages, photos, or anything else about you online. You can also create a profile for friends or relatives to ensure that they may also be easily found online.

So read all about how Stephen Pitts did something about his online reputation management on Peekyou.

Run a Stumbleupon Advertising Campaign for your Blog

When I read this blogpost on Problogger I thought wow! I'm a regular visitor to Stumbleupon and I have seen the power of Stumblers at work, so the create an advertising campaign for your blog at Stumbleupon sounds like a very good idea to me.

You get to choose the story you want, that you think the Stumbleupon audience will go for and you set daily budgets and limits to how many impressions you want on any given campaign.

For those not in the know, StumbleUpon - is a growing social bookmarking service (over three million members) that is used by people around the globe. It is a service that many bloggers target to drive organic traffic to their blog - but also one that also offers a means to advertise a website upon it. StumbleUponAds allows you to submit a page on your blog to be shown to StumbleUpon users as they go Stumbling. The cost is 5 cents per impression so for as little as $5 you can have 100 SU users see your page.

Let Darren at ProBlogger explain the rest.