We’ll be sending out private beta invite in waves but if you’d like a sneak peak? Request a beta invite here

Licensed Tour Operators, Wholesalers & Tourism Organisations can also Register.

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Sydney, Australia, October 20th 2009 - Tourabout (http://www.tourabout.com), the company launching the Social GDS (currently in private beta) for the travel industry, has been selected to be featured at The PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit. Senior analysts from PhoCusWright evaluate and invite just 30 companies globally to demonstrate at the event (held November 17, 2009 in Orlando, Florida) that showcases the year’s most compelling travel technology innovations to senior industry executives.

“This event is for innovations that PhoCusWright believes will significantly impact travel so to be invited is a great stamp of approval” said Ben Jackson CEO of Tourabout. “We look forward to demonstrating the Web3.0 travel platform that will fundamentally shift the way travel companies connect to and engage with travellers in the future.”

“The live demo of The Social GDST will focus on how the platform’s interlinked social, media and product technologies help operators and organisations connect and engage travellers in real-time early in the planning process to demonstrate expertise, build social equity and increase bookings.” added Mr. Jackson.

At The Innovation Summit, the audience will judge innovators live by voting after each demonstration to send four finalists to the coveted “Five Minutes of Fame” presentation during Center Stage at The PhoCusWright Conference later in the week. This will place the top four innovations squarely infront the most influential travel industry executives where one will be named the Travel Innovation of 2009.

“Many travel organisations struggle with The Social Web so we’re very confident The Social GDS will capture the attention of attendees as well as the travel and technology sectors in general.” added Mr. Jackson. “Partners we talk to are very excited about how it overlays commerce and community to help them to engage and influence potential customers much higher in the booking funnel.”

Ends.

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About The Travel Innovation Summit.
PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit presents the next wave of innovation in the travel industry and analyzes the ensuing impact on the travel business. Thirty innovators from around the world demonstrate applications, mobile technology and solutions that significantly impact travel planning, purchasing and memorializing.

About PhoCusWright Inc.
PhoCusWright is the travel industry research authority on how travelers, suppliers and intermediaries connect. Independent, rigorous and unbiased, PhoCusWright fosters smart strategic planning and tactical decision-making.

PhoCusWright delivers qualitative and quantitative research on the evolving dynamics that influence travel, tourism and hospitality distribution. Our marketplace intelligence is the industry standard for segmentation, sizing, forecasting, trends, analysis and consumer travel planning behavior.
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About Tourabout:

Tourabout helps tour operators, wholesalers and DMO’s engage travellers and sell product with a range of emerging social, media and product technologies delivered B2B and B2C.

With over 30,000 products from local, international and multinational tour operators as well as destination activity companies, entertainment, attraction and events providers Tourabout is one of the world’s largest land product GDS’.

Tourabout’s land product sale and merchandising tools are currently used by over 4000 travel agents including Flight Centre.

Previously: The principals of Tourabout developed travel technology (whereto.com.au) - acquired by Travelocity in 2001.

Tourabout is a privately held, privately funded company based in Sydney, Australia.

For more information visit http://www.tourabout.com/corp

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Pic by Pirate Alice on Flickr

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Enjoy.

New Zealand Part I from ian Hanna on Vimeo.

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Hat tip to Arnold over at Mr Gadget where I saw this amazing Nikon clip first.

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See below for excerpt

Australians looking for credible travel information are more likely to turn to blogs than travel agents, a new survey from Visa has found.

The poll of 1,000 Australians found one in three preferred travel blogs, while 24 per cent preferred to consult family and friends. Travel agents were the third most popular source, with 13 per cent of the vote.

Now I don’t think that the majority of travellers feel that Agents aren’t credible and certainly I know some travel agents that are truly amazing professionals so I’m not sure where this is coming from. Perhaps it’s the old perception “You only offer me X company because you get the most commission from them” perhaps it’s something else. Either way if you are a travel agent you wouldn’t have liked to see this report come out.

If you are looking for one way to do a completely unbiased product search you could try our vacation search for US travelers or our Australian or Uk tour search engines.

The news is even worse if you’re the guy trying to sell over priced column centimetres in a newspaper to advertisers where just 4% of people think the information contained in Travel Supplements is credible. Ouch.

So this brings me to a question, what is your preferred source for credible travel information?

No pic on this one cause I didn’t want to get sued.

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Travel Insurance in a no brainer. Realistically, if you can’t afford travel insurance you can’t afford to travel.

On the stats side some of the most interesting items were the large numbers which had the outbound traveller numbers at 6 Million departures last year and over 1.3 Million new passports issued for 06-07 a rise of over 8% and over 30,000 Australians required consular assistance. The dept expects new passport issue numbers to climb to 2 Million passports a year withing 2 years - not bad for a country with about 22million people.

Without a doubt the most important piece on information came in the form of a very clear example of why all travellers should register their travel plans with DFAT the State Dept  or their own Govt department. Greg gave a specific example of ways they helped people during the recent Terrorist Attacks in Mumbai.

DFAT had realtime intel coming in about the situation as it unfolded, the Dept was able to cross reference this information against records and registrations it had for travellers and then further check for specific rooms and floors. DFAT officers supplyied alerts via text message to Australians in hotels advising if their floor was clear and safe to evacuate and the safest evacuation path or if their floor was not secure and to stay concealed in their rooms.

No doubt technology and intellligence activities contibuted a lot to the success of these operations but without the knowlegde of who was where and contact numbers to send alerts to all the technology and intelligence in the world would have made no difference.

The moral of the story travellers? Wether you are on Tour or out on your own, Register with your State Dept and let people know where your going and how to contact you. In the unlikely event you need help it’s good to be able to get it efficiently and also let authorites and loved ones know how and where you are.

Ever been away somewhere you’ve needed a medical evacuation?
Do you register travel plans with the Govt or just leave a copy of your documents with a Next of Kin?

The life you save could be your own!

Connect with us on twitter

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On Twitter this morning (17th June) and a tweet from @sydney_sider caught my eye about a community radio station called Fbi radio. Fbi is trying to raise $1million to fund its needs and has been doing a few different and interesting things to get the attention of its listeners and some influential people who they think might help them.

And it’s obviously been working as you can see from the excerpt from Business Stripped Bare.

” I’d like to congratulate FBi radio for running a truly inventive and original ‘Ask Richard Campaign’. I only realised the full weight of their brilliant campaign when a charming, determined and soaking wet young woman, Georgia, swam two and a half miles from a neighbouring island here in the Caribbean to tell me more about FBi’s plight. Naturally I invited her to stay for dinner and for the night here on Necker with my family – we were right in the middle of dinner anyway! “

The efforts by FBi and Georgia have obviously made a great impression (hey who doesn’t wantyoung woman  swimming a mile or so arriving soaking wet to suprise you for dinner) with a commitment by the Virgin boss to help the community radio station with its fund raising - notice I’m saying here help them with funding, not give them funding, outstanding! Read the full post by Richard Branson here .

What I really liked about the response is that a $Million cheque wasn’t simply handed over (although I’m sure it could easily have been) it’s a classic case of give a man a fish vs teach a man to fish and I hope that FBi is madly learning all the fishing tips they can get from Mr Branson and the Virgin Managment team that FBi has been given access to.

My full response on the blog is below (hopefully it will be out of moderation at some stage) but I think this is a perfect illustration of how great minds challenge and motivate people to step out of a comfort zone and go for something rather than just provide it.

Carl Jackson - June 17th, 2009  

Your comment is awaiting moderation.

Hi Richard,
I think it’s absolutely the right thing you didn’t simply cough up a million dollars but rather offered prizes to help the current fundraising and other assistance to consult on fundraising and sponsorship opportunities for future needs.

A perfect example of give a fish and eat for a day but teach someone to fish and they’ll eat forever (as long as there is fish!) and I hope everyone at FBi sees this really is the best thing that could have happened.

If FBi’s product is good enough, with this increase in exposure, to get new supporters for current finances and they take full advantage of the assistance from Virgin Management the FBi future should be well secure.

I’m a Sydneysider who heard about this via Twitter - result I’m now listening to FBi - and if I keep liking what my ears are hearing (pretty good so far) I’ll definitely beome a supporter too.

Congrats FBi on a brilliant campaign a congrats to you on an excellent way to support it.

Now I’m off to buy an Island so charming, determined and soaking wet young women, can swim two and a half miles to see me.

Cheers Carl

http://twitter.com/tourabout

As a result of the things that happened last week I’ve been listening to FBi radio on and off and it’s a great radio station so I’ll probably end up signing up to support them. If you like a radio station thats rocking on many levels I highly recommend you check them out. If they can make a big enough impression on listeners to motivate Georgia to do the big swim and a big enough impression on one of the greatest promotional minds in business perhaps they’ll make an impression of you too.

What do you think about FBi promo?

Have you seen a great promotion?

What would make you swim miles ?

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Sydney pic by Apdk on Flickr

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