September 25, 2006

Travel Blogs Enter the Mainstream

TravelWeekly.com reports that, "Travel suppliers, destinations and their marketing and public relations professionals are realizing that they have to deal with bloggers, those edgy, irreverent, sometimes dazzling, sometimes off-base voices on the Web."

Marriott International already has experimented with the blogs and found that they can play a role when it's hard to grab the attention of the trade or consumer press. Commenting from the audience and addressing a panel of bloggers at a recent event in New York, communications official John Wolf of Marriott said, "I can say from experience that we once tried to break news using you guys because we didn't think it was newsworthy enough to get into a newspaper. It was just a fantastic bang. We learned a lot from it. What it did was show the influence that you guys have with mainstream media."

...One audience member said, "I work in PR in the international tourism area, and quite often we have to discuss with our clients the value of a lot of these different outlets. Particularly in the last year, we have to say, 'Look, it is really time to look at these blogs, these online journalists, and to bring them overseas, give them advice and work with them."