The inaugural Travel Blog Camp in London hosted around 80 bloggers and travel industry folk - and some heated discussions.

I had planned to attend World Travel Market either yesterday or today but I’ve been bogged down with a feature deadline. I’m working in an office for the rest of the week so it now looks like I won’t make it this year. To be honest, I’m fine with that. I went two years ago and I wore myself out traipsing around the ExCel centre in London Docklands and collected a huge swathe of business cards and brochures that I never looked at again. I don’t tend to plan either my travelling or my travel writing that way - as a writer I look for interesting stories rather than destinations and as a traveller, there’s no shortage of cool places I’d love to go.

Travel-Blog-Camp.JPGI did, however, go to the Travel Blog Camp organised by Darren from Travel Rants last night. I must say I’m hugely impressed by Darren’s efforts and the fact that he even found sponsorship. The event was in a great location - Doggetts bar on South Bank near Blackfriars Bridge, which is a bit of an ugly building outside but has fabulous space inside and views of the river. When I was told he had close to 100 people registered (about 80 actually attended), I was shocked because I didn’t think there were that many serious travel bloggers in the UK.

The reason became clear on the night - it wasn’t just bloggers but also travel industry professionals and PRs who wanted to engage with bloggers and learn all about how they could be using social media in their own businesses. There were about 80 people in total and I met a fair few of them in the social time before and after the speeches, including Heather from Heather on her Travels and James from itravelnet. I mainly went for the networking opportunities but I actually really enjoyed the speeches - and surrounding debate - as well. I took photos but they didn’t turn out as it was really rather dark and I didn’t use a flash - but I did catch a snap of the welcome sign, which amused me greatly for the novel spelling of ‘blog’. (Blame Doggetts, not Darren, for that one!).

Alex Bainbridge, Musings on travel ecommerce

Our first speaker was Alex Bainbridge, a travel industry consultant who blogs at Musings on travel ecommerce. His name is at the top of his blog and this is deliberate. “I believe a blog should be from a personal perspective - there’s no point trying to be better than the news because you can’t be and people aren’t looking for a rehash of the news on a blog,” Alex said in his speech. Do you agree?

For him, blogging is all about hosting great conversations and he admitted he is sometimes guilty of “extreme blogging” to provoke a reaction in the comments section. “I see comments as a bit of currency so if someone writes something really good on their blog I’ll make time to go and comment,” he added. He said he could envisage a time when he might stop blogging if he found somewhere else to have the conversations he craves, though so far he has resisted the allure of Facebook and Twitter.

Karen Bryan, Europe a la Carte

Europe a la Carte is one of the most successful independent travel blogs both in the UK and globally. Karen Bryan is the founder and she has now taken on other writers, turning it into a multi-author blog cum online travel magazine. Karen’s speech was about the different types of travel blogs and what the future holds for each.

Her first category of travel blog is an online personal travel diary. These bloggers keep their sites for the benefit of family and friends, so they have a written record of the trip, and sometimes to showcase themselves as a potential travel writer. They are often hosted for free by platforms such as Wordpress and Blogger or specific travel-themed equivalents such as Travellers Point and Where Are You Now?. Karen believes this category of blog will continue as long as there is enough quality content for the platforms to make money from advertising.

Her next category of blog is an interactive online travel magazine. This includes offerings from big media organisations such as the Guardian’s Travel Blog and also independent sites such as her own or Darren’s Travel Rants. The former will be able to make money from advertising because they are part of a bigger site. However, life has become more difficult for blogs like hers because of Google’s crackdown on text link ads - bloggers that flout Google’s policy can have their page rank reduced to zero, which a deadly effect on traffic. Karen said one opportunity for online travel magazines is to band together as an advertising network with other sites with quality content. She is currently experimenting with Ad Roll to see if this would work for her. This is the first I’ve heard of Ad Roll and it sounds really interesting. Have any of you used it and have you had much success?

The third category, according to Karen, includes marketing blogs by established travel brands. She said this can work “as long ad you realise that a blog is a lot of time and effort - it’s low cost compared with advertising on ITV but you have to keep it up and keep pushing it”.

She bemoaned the fact that posts written with search engine robots in mind often outperformed quality content in terms of traffic. She said she wanted to see more aggregation of quality content within travel blogging. What do you think? Do you agree with Karen’s appraisal?

Molly Flatt, STA Travel Buzz

STA Travel has done something quite brave in social media - and it prompted quite a bit of heated debate last night. The travel agency has employed a social marketing specialist 1000 Heads to create STA Travel Buzz, which is a place for STA’s customers, typically young travellers, to connect on the web. Molly Flatt from 1000 Heads gave the presentation.

Molly says STA does not comment on the site, even when there is negative feedback. She feels this would be intrusive and destroy the atmosphere of the site for users. “The idea of having CEOs monitoring conversations going on and commenting on things is my worst nightmare,” she says. “We’re not their customer service department and it would be a dangerous path to start down.” She defended her stance passionately but many in the audience were aghast at this stance, feeling that users would expect a response. What do you think?

The other initiative 1000 Heads has taken for STA is STA Explorers, where they network and link to the travel blogs of STA customers. She pointed out that this was not a matter of reaching out to established bloggers, it was genuinely a case of encouraging customers to blog. The blogs are on several different platforms, which she hopes will mean a wider readership as some readers only stay within the community of their own platform.

Kevin May, editor of Travolution

Travolution is a business magazine for the online travel industry and it has an attached blog. [Full disclosure: I used to work with Kevin at Media Week and I've written for him at Travolution].

Kevin hosted a conversation rather than giving a speech. He had got hold of the guest list and calculated that 20% of the people in the room were in public relations, so he started off by asking people why they came along. Jane from Thomson Holidays and Sarah from Holiday Rentals both said they were just starting to explore social media, trying to figure out what it was about, what the terms of engagement were, and how they could use it. Charlotte from Lastminute.com said the company had already started to dip its toes into the water, with a presence on Twitter for example.

The second conversation was prompted by a conversation Kevin had with Guido, the Happy Hotelier, on the difference between journalists and bloggers. Kevin’s view is that there is no difference because they’re both just content producers. A few people in the audience suggested differences, such as bloggers’ willingness to link to the outside world and the fact that journalists will ask for input before they write a story, whereas bloggers give right of reply in the comments section. Karen from Europe a la Carte said readers didn’t care whether the work was by a ‘trained journalist’ or a ‘blogger’ as long as they were reading quality content. I also added my 2p worth as I believe that while journalists and bloggers might both be content producers, I thought that was meaningless. Content production is huge category that also includes people like a script writer on Desperate Housewives or producer on Sesame Street. What do you think?

All in all, it was an interesting and worthwhile night. Thanks, Darren, for organising it. I hope I’ve given everyone plenty of food for thought and look forward to a conversation in the comments field.