In March Google announced that they would support GEORSS for Google Maps. This is big news for the hospitality industry, and slowly we start to see some interesting implementations of this. When Guillaume Thevenot's posted the "Unofficial Travel / Hospitality Blogs ranking - June 07..." Albert Barra responded with his post: "Blogs de Turismo en Español" to encourage Spanish bloggers to be put on the map as well, literally. Albert provided simple and clear instructions via his blog and their Google group "Turismo 2.0". The result: a map of all the blogs en Español can be found here.

After reading Albert's initial post I realized that many probably do not know that you can GEOcode RSS files, let alone mash them on Google Maps. For that reason I decided to reach out in true collaborative web2.0 spirit to illustrate the ever-increasing power of RSS in our second generation web environment.

Please note that my intensions were not to replicate Albert's work but rather to illustrate the use of GEORSS. It should in fact be noted that I would not have been able to create this without Albert's work. So before I continue I want to thank him and the Turismo 2.0 group members for their efforts.

Below you will find four RSS files that are GEO coded so they can be mashed with Google Maps.

hospitalityblogs_ALL.xml (all languages)

hospitalityblogs_ES.xml (Español)

hospitalityblogs_EN.xml (English)

hospitalityblogs_FR.xml (Français)

Use these feeds as you like. You could add them to your favorite RSS reader, or even use them to import their content to your own blog. Note that the "all languages feed" is categorized so you can filter by language (with IE 7, for example). These feeds do not contain news from the blogs. For this, combined news feeds from blogs, you should check "Travel in Blogs"

Now the interesting part

The interesting part is when you mash these GEORSS feeds with Google Maps. To do this, simply copy the URL into the search box of Google maps. Or just click here to see this using the hospitality blogs in English RSS feed.

It gets even more interesting when you use the Google Maps API. Click here to see the mashup I created with the GEORSS feeds. Please note that you are more than welcome to use this map on your own blog just like I did on my blog . To do this you simply have to create a new blog entry, and insert an "iframe". (Contact me if I can help)

Here is the code:

<iframe src="http://rshotels.com/demo/GEORSS/HBgeoRSSOverlay600.html" scrolling="auto" name="GEORSS MAP of Hospitality Blogs" width="600" height="580" style="width: 600px; height: 580px"></iframe>

Note: I have created this page with 600 and 500 px width. So depending what fits better you can change the highlighted 6's to 5's.

I will attempt to add more blogs in the future, but I hope this has illustrated the power of RSS and why it plays a big role in the second generation web.

Questions, comments? Please contact me.

PS. Many of the blogs have or will be added to the custom Hotel Industry Search engine!

When somebody walks into the front lobby, I assume your staff welcomes them. After all, that is what hospitality is about: making your guest feel welcome. Now, when a potential guest visits your website your staff does not even notice them. Why not say 'Hello, can I help you?'

IKEA does this, and so do many other companies but strangely this practice seems absent in the hospitality industry. In fact, our industry seems to be focused on how we can move away from that personal welcome and towards how we can increase the number internet transactions. Year after year highly esteemed research reports give us a progress report on the percentages of this pursuit. This year in the US it looks like we have passed the tipping point. Meanwhile, the web in general is becoming more personal, and VOIP like Skype is gaining significantly in popularity.

It's time to make our websites reflect why we are in this industry; let's make them hospitable. Instant Messaging (IM) is not just for kids, it is a tool that can be used to let your customer know you care about them, instantaneously! IKEA uses it to help their customers with any questions as they browse their website, and brokers on Wall Street use it to give immediate advice as the market fluctuations stir emotions in their clients. I believe we can (and should) do the same. In the last two years we have seen hotels increase their direct sales and I believe this type of personal attention can be the catalyst to change the traditional distribution model forever. By now I hope I have at least made you curious as to how one can make their site more personal and more hospitable by reaching out to your website’s visitors in real time.

The most obvious solution would be to encourage them to call you if they have questions . Not just by displaying your phone number , but to do this with the simplicity of a click. Visitors that use Skype (there are 10’s of millions of them) could click a “Skype Me” button that can easily be routed to your front desk or call center via “Skype In”. Additionally your website's visitors should be able to send an instant message requesting a call back by simply entering their phone number. This instant “call back” message could be routed directly to your phone system or mobile phone as a SMS message.

Secondly, and the more comprehensive solution, would be to use an instant message service by which you can chat with you website visitor in real time. There are numerous solutions out there and many have advanced features that would allow you to direct your visitor through the content of your website. Some of these IM / “live support” solutions even allow you to see what they have been looking at since they entered your site, and most allow you to route the request to the appropriate location. If you have a (multi lingual) call center this can be especially useful. Furthermore think of the data (feedback) that you will be collecting which you can then use to improve your website or use in your CRM system .

If you have any questions, comments or you would just like to share that your hotel already has a “hospitable website” like this , I would love to hear from you.

The title piqued my interest… I clicked, and found just one more line...

Sounds familiar?

While RSS is becoming more popular there are still many sites that provide useless RSS feeds. Really what is the use of providing a RSS feed that includes just one more line of the “article” that you are trying to lure me too? I find this especially frustrating when you are trying to use RSS (offline) on a mobile device.

So what could be the reason that a site would create RSS feeds with just one more line of text? Are they just that confident that it would only take that one extra line for me to click one more time? Or do they have bandwidth concerns?... No, that would be plain silly as RSS files are very lean. Perhaps these sites are concerned that another website might want to use the RSS file as content?... No that does not make sense either as it contains the link back which, just as the RSS file itself, attempts to generate more traffic. Furthermore, having your link on other sites helps your SEO.

Maybe they just don't understand the full marketing power of RSS, and they just look at it as the next evolved version of the newsletter... No that does not make sense either, because these sites provide much more informative newsletters with much more text than they provide in their RSS feeds...

Can somebody help me understand? ...It would be so nice if I could read more interesting RSS files, offline, on my mobile device during my commute...

Earlier this week Google announced their Universal Search. And even though this is no surprise to me having seen what Google has done for Hotel and Restaurant searches, it is a clear indication that they are to take on the competition head on. (Competition like: Rollyo, Clusty, Technorati and Kayak.)

Here is an example to illustrate the Universal Search launched this week: Search for iPod. On this page note that you can refine your search through easily accessible links on the top: Web, Patents, Products, and News. However for the hospitality industry, as I mentioned above, this type of integration is not new. For several months now Google has given us quick access to related information. A search for Hotel Casa Fuster in Barcelona with the link for more information shows you related information easily organized via tabs. Same is true for restaurants “Babbo restaurant in New York ” (again click more information)

Some have speculated that Google will start its own Travel vertical search, when it started posting job openings for Google travel. I surely think that they will become a player in this space but I believe they will not resemble anything like the other OTA’s. Instead I think it will be more like the examples above. When it comes to finding flights you might also have noticed that they have tried to help. Here is an example search for La Guardia (NYC) to Barcelona . Note here that you can select travel dates, and then the links to the different vendors. In the next year we might expect them to integrate maps and display the prices as an overlay from the different vendors. While travel related advertising is the largest and thus a major income source for Google, this strategy and these types of implementations, make a lot of sense.

Google relies on all of us to accomplish its mission; “to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful”. To do this they give us tools, and free to use programs that help us classify and organize this information. Google maps for example allows us to put anything on the map. Through some form standardization they get this data from us in a structured way that helps them provide more relevant search results. Similarly they allow anybody to create its own (branded) search engine through their Google COOP (custom search engine) program. While searching with regular Google might still seem like searching for a needle in a hay stack this is very useful. Below you will find a link to a Custom Search Engine that attempts to find more relevant and higher quality information about the hotel industry. For more information about this search engine please click the link.

Another catch phrase? Perhaps... But now that I have caught your attention let me elaborate on what I see as the next generation of Hotel Distribution.

Just as with web 2.0 or travel 2.0, I believe we will soon see the impact of this next generation web on hotel distribution. The new web has become more personal, now everybody can easily write on the web, and the consumer has gained significant control over how the data from the web is read. The data in the next generation web has been separated from the presentation layer and, thanks especially to Real Simple Syndication (RSS), this data is now released from the web pages. This represents a significant change from the first generation web, where websites resembled online brochures. In this second generation web we have thousands of services scrutinizing each new piece of online information, grabbing interesting bits, remixing them in new ways, and passing them along to other services. Each new addition to the mix is exploited in countless new ways, both by human bloggers and by software programs. Information is analyzed, repackaged, digested, and passed on down to the next link in the chain. It flows. (Johnson ) Furthermore, it should be noted that the web's transparency is being exploited and is forcing many industries to reevaluate their business models.

Until recently, hotels had many partners whom they entrusted with distributing their product. Even today these partners prove their worth year after year by delivering REAL results: bookings. But due to the transparency of the web, these partners have also become competitors to the hotels who are selling direct. Consistent pricing now seems to be the only rational choice to make the hotel's customer not feel cheated as he or she is evaluating the options. After all, why would a hotel encourage its customer to book via its partners for less, to in the end yield less revenue? The hotel customer might, in fact, feel cheated or unappreciated to pay more if he decided to book direct. Really, hoteliers should remain hospitable!

It's time for hoteliers to take a step back and reevaluate their distribution strategies. And this is why I believe we are entering a new phase with regards to hotel distribution. In the next generation of hotel distribution, hence the 2.0, hotels will make their direct contact with their customer a priority. They will attempt to be as hospitable as possible, and they will use the new web to do this. This will still include using the services of intermediaries, but in this new model they will take control of what information is distributed to potential customers and will distribute their rich information widely to ANY interested party. Additionally they will attempt to profit from the information that is provided by others and will respond to it where appropriate.

Let me be more specific to distinguish this model from the old. In the new model, similar to the wider web 2.0 characterizations, data will be separated from the presentation layer. It will be unlocked from the hotel's website and free for anybody to use. This way, as described above, it will be able to flow, be analyzed, repackaged, and digested by humans as well as machines or software. No longer will hotels lock this information on their websites or in their databases. Instead, they will make it easily accessible with RSS or other (data) syndication standards. Furthermore, hotels in the new distribution model will embrace other data produced by other web-services, for example peer-reviews. They will easily enable their information to be mapped and compared. Perhaps they will even make this available from their own sites. Because in this new model, the customer and being hospitable, honest, and true is what has become the priority. The transparency of the Internet simply demands this.

It started with Web 2.0, a phrase coined by O'Reilly Media in 2004, and refers to a perceived second generation of web-based services—such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies—that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users. (Wikipedia )

Today many things are affected by this second generation of the web and because of that many industries are emphasizing that their processes and business models have also completely changed, by adding the same 2.0. The numbering scheme is alluding to the version-numbers that commonly designate software, but the relationship to new versions of software does not do it justice because new software is frequently just a new evolved version of the previous. This 2.0 term signifies a revolution where the public has taken control.

Last year this became abundantly clear, and as a result Time magazine named it’s person of the year YOU. While the term perhaps has been used too much, and incorrectly, it is important to note that our world has truly changed. It’s now flat and connected and this will have an astounding effect on everything.

Click the “Read more…” link below for more references to Web2.0 and Travel2.0.

Netvibes.com is a custom-made web 2.0 home page solution (on steroids).

It is much like a MyYahoo or a personalized MSN or Google page, but what I especially like about Netvibes is that you can have many tabs and that there are many modules available. Truly there are so many possibilities with Netvibes that I think this is one of the best Web 2.0 solutions out there. If you are not familiar with netvibes yet, I strongly encourage you to check it out. To get you started quickly and to save you some time I already have created a netvibes tab that you can add to your netvibes to keep you informed about Hospitality-News (see the link to the left).

Netvibes is free, and without obtrusive advertisement!

It gives you the ability to create dynamic pages with Web2.0 data feeds and services all from a very simple and flexible interface. As such you can pull RSS feeds, your favorite podcasts (and play them without any additional software). Via your netvibes personalized pages you can check your email (Gmail, pop-mail etc) and use instant messenger (MSN, Yahoo, ICQ Google etc). You can also get maps, or “mashed maps” that show you traffic, weather or hotels. And because of their open web2.0 development methodology, everybody can add modules and new exciting modules are literally added daily. Note they are just getting started…

Click the "Read more…" link below for some answers to some questions that have popped up during my workshops on Web 2.0. like;

• How do I add the RSS feeds that I currently subscribe to?
• How do I add all the RSS feeds that I have subscribed to in netvibes to another RSS reader?
• Why does the language / location not work?
  
• Can I read this off line?
• Can I read this on my mobile / BlackBerry / Pocket PC?
• How do I move a module or RSS feed to another tab?
• Can you recommend some modules?

Del.icio.us is a social bookmarking site. A site that allows you to share your bookmarks via the web, categorized by tags instead of folders and with more descriptive notes.

So what is so great about that, you might be asking. Well let’s think about this... You have probably noticed that the web changes rapidly. You surf and find new interesting stuff all the time, right? Well I do too and so do many others. If we try to "remember" the interesting sites by using bookmarks or favorites in our browsers we have to try to put them in some descriptive folder that hopefully will help us find them once again. That is if we work on the same computer… Del.icio.us allows you to put your bookmarks online, which makes them always accessible. Now instead of organizing them by folders to help you find them, del.icio.us allows you to assign tags and notes to them to give even more descripion to your filing system.

When you use Del.icio.us the tags will likely be similar to your bookmark / favorite folders, however note that you can assign as many tags as you want. This way you can put your bookmarks / favorites in as many “folders” at once without having to hide them in sub-folders. If you are anything like me, I am sure you have wondered which folder to save your bookmark / favorite, perhaps you have even saved a bookmark twice, in two folders that you thought were appropriate. With tags, there is no need for that anymore. The other great benefit is that you can give your bookmark / favorite a more descriptive note. And because your bookmarks / favorites are online you can easily let others see them. No need to email them to your friends anymore.

Click the "Read more..." link below to see more useful tips to use Del.icio.us effectively like;

• How to automatically add notes from the page that you are bookmarking?
• How do I easily find my or the sites bookmarked by others?
• How do I leverage the work of others?
• How do I export / import bookmarks / favorites from my browser?
• How do I navigate from the address bar and how do I use the RSS feeds?