We are very happy to announce that three major online travel players in Germany joined the GetYourGuide partner network and start to sell tours & activities on their websites. This will greatly impact the visibility of GetYourGuide products in Germany and further accelerate our growth in bookings.

Here is a brief summary of the three new GetYourGuide partners:

Hotel.de is one of the leading German hotel booking websites with several thousand bookings per day. You may read further information on the company here.

Swoodoo.de is the leading German meta-search website for flights & hotels and are one of the most impressive travel companies in the country from a technological point of view. Here is more information about Swoodoo.

Tripwolf is a very special online travel guide, who mixes professional reviews from guide books such as Marco Polo and Footprint with user generated content. They are also very well known for their iPhone application. You may find more detailed information on Tripwolf here.

We are thrilled about working with such high calibre partners and are very much looking forward to see tours & activities to become an increasingly more important topic on the agenda of travel distributing companies on the internet.

GetYourGuide makes a rigorous quality check for all suppliers on the website, including background checks of insurance documents and trade registers, reputation with local tourism boards and customers. As a result, companies that distribute their products through GetYourGuide have been screened carefully for excellence at delivering the services that they load and manage on the website.

This neutral quality screen is extremely relevant to gain consumer confidence and receive more bookings. Therefore, GetYourGuide has created a Badge that can be easily placed on your company’s personal website, so your customers are aware that you are a certified GetYourGuide supplier and feel confident to purchase your products.

The GetYourGuide Badge will link directly to your profile on GetYourGuide and thus increase the ranking of your profile in Google search results and will very positively impact on your ranking on GetYourGuide.

This is how you can obtain the GetYourGuide Badge:

1. Log into the Supplier Administration

2. Click on the link “Product Promotion” (see picture below)

3. Copy & Paste the Code in the GetYourGuide Badge box into your website

DONE!

Salzburg Sightseeing Tours (GrayLine Salzburg) was the first supplier on GetYourGuide integrating the widget on their website. The company is one of the leading Austrian sightseeing tour companies and is famous for their cool bus tours through Mozart’s hometown. Here is a picture of the Badge on their website.

This post is for all suppliers, who are not sure yet whether to upload products or not. Our Sales & Customer Support Team receive many inquiries from users that are unsure how to use the service and are afraid it would cause them a lot of unnecessary work. Here are some short cuts that on how to quickly understand how the platform works and how you can make the most out of it for your company.

1. Is GetYourGuide the right platform for my products?

If you are a company offering tours, attractions, activities or other local touristic services, GetYourGuide is certainly a great platform to sell your products.

2. How can I start using GetYourGuide?

This is in fact one of the questions we receive very often and the answer is quite simple: Sign-Up and upload your first product. If you need help, please refer to the help section or contact us. Most of the general questions are also covered in our supplier FAQ. Our contracting team will get in touch with you to negotiate a commission, as soon as your first product goes online.

3. How does GetYourGuide sell my products?

GetYourGuide is only a platform, so we do not sell your products, we help you reaching a large audience of potential customers. We are doing this by promoting your products on our website and also distribute it on various travel websites.

4. How much work do I need to do?

GetYourGuide is actually very simple to use and you can upload and edit products in just a couple of minutes. Even if it takes you a little while to adjust to the system at the beginning, our suppliers become by experience very efficient in using GetYourGuide in just a couple of days.

5. Will GetYourGuide help to grow my business?

We think it will! Your products will get a great exposure across the web and your company brand will remain associated with it. As long as you design interesting products for the consumer, you will see that GetYourGuide will push your sales.

We are currently preparing the World Travel Market in London. We will attend between the 9th and 12th of November, so if you want to meet us, please drop us a line to info@getyourguide.com and we will notify you about a feasible time as soon as possible. We are very much looking forward to see as many of you as possible at Excel in 2 weeks!

GetYourGuide office @ Technopark Zurich

As described in a recent blogpost, we have concentrated on sourcing suppliers of tours & activities in the last few weeks. Needless to say our highly motivated team has progressed quite rapidly and we are already halfway through our target locations in Germany, Austria, Switzerland & the Top 20 touristic destinations worldwide. See the blackboard screenshot to track progress :-)

So what are our first learnings, surfing on dozens of travel websites each day and entering contact information into our database. Not much you would think, right? Wrong!

First of all it is just mindblowing how many companies are out there. We are just at the very tip of the iceberg and already found a couple of thousand potential tour & activity products. So if they are so obvious to find, why don’t we all book our diving courses and golf lessons online?

We believe the magic word here is structure. Looking at all these websites, I just find it amazing how unstructured some of these products are presented. It is sometimes unbelievable companies get bookings through their websites, when it takes you 20min to find their contact information. However I would be mean to pretend that all is bad. In fact many SMEs also have very good websites and integrated Shopping Baskets (e.g. Google Checkout). However this alone is not enough, as you also need to actually find their site. For many tour & activity providers Tripadvisor is a good opportunity to enhance their Google ranking and increase traffic to the site.

It is also quite notable that many suppliers have set up a blog (probably hoping to attract new customers). To us it is reassuring that some suppliers already integrated such Web 2.0 applications by themselves as it shows that they are eager for technological innovation.

We will keep you updated on further news, as we progress with our sourcing activities…

Since the early days of the Internet before the 2001 Dot-Com-Crash one big issue always troubled e-commerce: How to receive payments?

Although much has changed in how payments are handled and the general eagerness to pay online has drastically increased thanks to big players such as eBay & Amazon, I would like to argue in this blog post that online payment systems still lack essential features that are needed for the further developmet of state-of-the-art e-commerce solutions.The rapid growth of social networks and the overwhelming success of Google’s AdWords application has brought Internet pioneers to think that e-commerce is a 90’s thing and the future of the web is in some form of advertisement or “premium feature” business model. I strongly disagree. At least the start-ups that have been recently backed in Germany & Switzerland mostly have solid e-commerce business models. VCs seem to have a clear preference towards transaction based business models these days. Just take a look at the newest offspring from Marc, Alexander and Oliver Samwer’s Rocket Incubator and you will see a variety of 90s style e-commerce start-ups centered around common consumer goods. Whether such websites are technologically innovative (and/or successful in the long run) or not is another discussion, but it underlines that e-businesses rediscover their original approach: Make money the straight way!

Now, it is clear that the landscape has changed. At least since Amazon’s move to integrate third-party suppliers on its website, payments are not straight forward between customer and supplier as they used to be in 1999. Still, payment systems such as Paypal. Moneybookers or Amazon Web Services have not fully adapted, yet. In my eyes the main problems small e-businesses currently have with the existing online payment options are the following:

1. The gateway systems and developer’s frameworks that can be built in a website are still very poor in functionality & flexibility. Let’s say you have a product for which a customer pays on your website, but you need to process this payment further to a couple of secondary suppliers at distinct points in time. Imagine some entity in your supply chain cancels a payment and you need to reverse the money flow and cancel automated transactions…All these things mentioned are really common sense to most web businesses (notably in the travel space, where everyone earns commissions), but very hard to execute in the given payment frameworks.
2. Integration of payment interfaces into third party solutions are still VERY ugly and look like webdesign in 1995. I understand that it needs to be safe, but you could certainly do a better job to improve the look-and-feel. After all design and intuitive UIs are extremely important for purchasing decisions.
3. The margins of payment providers are still completely outrageous. For instance Paypal commissions between 3-4% for credit card transactions, even if you have a reasonable turnover. There is a great need for better payment solutions (particularly micropayment) that carry less risk than the antique credit card business. And I don’t mean paying only with your Paypal account.

At least Paypal announced that it would launch a new flexible Payment API soon (see Techcrunch article here). Whether this will be sufficient to allow new innovation in e-commerce business models is still to be seen….

People have been talking now about the semantic web and how it will revolutionize the search engine businesses for quite a while. Personally, I have not given too much thought on this entire “semantic search business”, as I have always felt that my searches were quite “unsemantic” and more directed to websites that I already knew (like “kayak amsterdam” or “tripadvisor amsterdam reviews”). However, I have to admit that my search patterns have changed over the last months and my searches are getting way more complex. Recently I find myself writing or copying entire sentences into Google – with varying results. Yet, we have the big Google competitor Bing now on the scene, so today I tried how well both search engines handle “semantic” searches in comparison.For starters, I tried out a search that is in my opinion very ordinary semantic search and quite important to the online travel industry. I decided to look for a hotel in Amsterdam next week, thus entered “book hotel in amsterdam next week”. The result in Google and Bing is quite sobering:

"Book hotel in Amsterdam next week" on Bing

"Book hotel in amsterdam next week" on Google

I don’t know whether I am too demanding here, but none of the searches are presenting my anything in particular for next week. No special deals, no availability information – really nothing in particular. I could have just left it out and just searched for “hotels in amsterdam”. Even more interesting is that none of the Ads even recognize that I want to go next week and thus promote special deals. I mean really, for all the money hotel websites pay their online marketing agencies, someone could have at least thought about targeted ads concerning dates and times.

Furthermore I thought it was quite interesting how very different hotel companies pop up on either Google or Bing as first results, which once again demonstrates the power of the search engine to specifically promote sites optimized to their standards. It’s quite funny how Bing ignores Booking.com, which is by far the No.1 hotel platform in Europe by now.

Whiteboard in our office (Technopark Zurich)

We are currently sourcing companies offering tours & activities in the Top 20 travel destinations of the world, as well as in Switzerland, Austria & Germany (strengthening the homebase…).  The idea behind this acquisition strategy is to build a strong local network here in the German speaking countries, where the competition is weak (so far) and where we are rooted and thus have good access to suppliers and distributors alike. On the other hand we need to serve potential B2B partners in the travel space (Online Travel Agents, Travel Communities etc.) from the first second, providing them with appropriate content in the destinations, they make most money in. The resulting list of target destinations is compiled on our whiteboard, which you can see here:

Each day we are working ourselves further down the list, sourcing dozens of potential customers in each of the places listed above. Currently, we have covered central Switzerland, London, Vienna, Prague, Paris and some Berlin. Following a couple of basic learnings we have made already along the way of this first global sourcing effort:

1. The competition only covers the tip of the iceberg using their “hand-picked tours” approach: There is plenty more colorful fish in the ocean, which might not fit their mainstream approach, is very interesting nonetheless!
2. The Long Tail in Tours & Activities is not as obscure as you might think: Although some offers are definitely niche content, there are professionals focussing on these very specific services, building a reputation and brand around it. For instance in the field of biking tours a very vivid, professional and interconnected scene has emerged (see for instance Pedal Power in Vienna)
3. The market cries for a better standard: Apart from one or two companies and its affiliates, there are just one million separate websites that all look different and offer different functionality. As a customer, you have no idea where to start and need to apply some really hardcore tricks on the search engine (or knowledge of the location) to get to interesting content.

So far a first oversight…more updates, as soon as the sourcing is further down the road…

Auf Einladung von unserem guten Freund Philipp Treyer haben wir am Metapeople Suchmaschinenmarketing Kongress im Mövenpick Hotel am Zürcher Flughafen teilgenommen. An dieser Stelle einen herzlichen Dank an Metapeople, die wirklich eine erstklassige Veranstaltung organisiert haben!

Hier eine kurze Zusammenfassung der Talks, die ich besucht habe

1) Keynote von Andreas Rohde, Industry Head Google Schweiz

Es war eine einleitende Keynote, die einen breiten Überblick über das Thema Suchmaschinenmarketing (SEM) gab. Die wesentlichen Take-Aways für mich waren zum einen die Einschätzung, dass es bezahlte Abo Systeme für Online Zeitungen geben wird (z.B. eine monatliche Gebühr zum Lesen von 5-6 Zeitungen). Dies von einem Google Mann zu hören erstaunte mich sehr, da ja gerade Google sich in den letzten Jahren sehr für kostenlose Inhalte in diesem Segment stark gemacht hat.

Weiterhin ging Andreas sehr auf den Einfluss von Online Werbung auf die Kaufentscheidung des Kunden ein. Laut Google wird lediglich das schalten von AdWords die Brand Awareness enorm (selbst wenn man nicht auf die Werbung klickt) und vervielfacht dadurch ihren Wert. Angeblich werden schon jetzt 40% aller Kaufentscheide basierend auf Internet Werbung oder Vergleichsseiten gefällt, welches überproportional zur Nutzung des Mediums im Vergleich zu TV oder Radio ist. Die Argumentation forcierte also noch einmal den ja schon bekannten Gedanken, dass das Internet gezielte Werbung ermöglicht deren Nutzen deutlich über Werbung liegt, die auf den traditionellen Kanälen geschaltet wird. Weiterhin stellte Andreas kurz das Google Tool Insights vor, welches es ermöglicht Statistiken & Trends für  Suchbegriffe abzufragen. Wer es noch nicht kennt, sollte es benutzen, ist ein sehr hilfreiches Werkzeug!

2) Patrick Singer, Agency & Product Consultant Google

Patrick leitet Google AdWords Schulungen bei Online Marketing Agenturen und hat das neue AdWords System vorgestellt. Google hat über einen längeren Zeitraum Kunden beobachtet und sich einige nette Dinge ausgedacht, wie man es dem Kunden noch leichter und schöner machen kann AdWords zu schalten und Kampagnen zu administrieren. Hier die wichtigsten neuen Features:

• UI ist stark modernisiert und sieht sehr schön aus
• Man kann einen Alarm einstellen, sobald ein spezifisches Keyword keine Impressionen mehr erzeugt
• Man kann seine Keywords gegenüber allen anderen Nutzern dieser Keywords benchmarken (mein Favorit!)
• Man kann ähnlich wie beim Google Website Check eine Marketing Kampagne testen und bestimmen ob sie sich signifikant von einer laufenden Kampagne unterscheidet. Dieses Feature ist noch in Entwicklung und Patrick hat nicht zu viel darüber verraten, aber es hat sich sehr gut angehört.

Zum Thema Google Website Check hat Patrick einen Use Case mit L’tur gezeigt, wobei sie bei einer identischen Flugbuchung nach Mallorca auf dem Buchungsbutton einmal “Jetzt buchen” und einmal “Auswählen” geschrieben haben. Nach einer längeren Testreihe war das Ergebnis überraschenderweise, dass “Auswählen” eine um 10% verbesserte Konversionsrate liefert. Ich fand das Ergebnis sehr uninuitiv, wodurch die Nützlichkeit des Tools noch einmal bestätigt wird.

3) Philipp Treyer, Campaign Manager Metapeople

Philipp hat einen sehr interessanten Talk zum ominösen Google Quality Score gehalten. Der Google Quality Score entscheidet neben dem Gebot für bestimmte Keywords über den AdRank, also die Platzierung einer Werbung. Je höher der Quality Score, desto höher ist die Wahrscheinlichtkeit, dass man relativ weit oben bei den Werbungen neben den Suchergebnissen erscheint. Nützlicherweise kann eine gute Quality Score sogar dazu führen, dass man im Mittel 30% weniger für ein Keyword bieten kann und trotzdem (falls die Quality Score optimal ist) oberhalb eines durchschnittlichen Mitbieters platziert sein kann. Anders herum muss aber für eine miserable Quality Score bis zu 600% draufgezahlt werden um gleich platziert zu werden, wie ein durchschnittlicher Mitbieter.

Was sind also die Parameter, die die Quality Score bestimmen?

Prinzipiell gibt es drei Dimensionen:

1. Die Landing Page (macht ca. 10% aus)
2. Die Relevanz der Keywords
3. Die Relevanz der AdCopy (der Anzeige selbst) im Vergleich zum dahinter liegenden Content

Weitergehend spielen eine wichtige Rolle die History, sprich die vergangenen Klickraten bei Werbeplatzierungen, die Ladezeit der Seite, sowie ob es sich um Original Content handelt, der beworben wird. Google kennt keine Gnade für Copy-Paste Webseiten. Dies ist besonders interessant im Zusammenhang mit Travelwebsites, da viele Anbieter ihren Content bei mehreren Distributoren einstellen. Eine gute Diskussion dieses Themas findet man hier.

Überraschenderweise honoriert Google ebenfalls das Offenlegen von AGBs oder anderen Massnahmen zur Transparenz einer Website. Einen intelligenten Algorithmus hierzu stelle ich mir sehr kompliziert vor, aber Google ist ja einiges zuzutrauen.

Für die eher algebraisch orientierten unter uns noch einmal die Formel mit der der AdRank kalkuliert wird:

1: Anbieter 1

2: Anbieter 2

p1 (Preis) x q1 (Qualität) = b2 (Gebot) x q2 (Qualität)

Logischerweise ist der Preis für den AdRank:

p1 = b2 x q2 /q1

In einfachen Worten ist also der Preis des AdRanks gleich dem Gebot des Mitbieters mal dem Quotienten aus Quality Score des Mitbieters und der eigenen Quality Score.

Als nützliche Take-Away Tipps gab Philipp vorallem an möglichst aktuelle und relevante Ads zu schalten. Als Beispiel hat Philipp Live Ads für einen Live Ticker einer schweizer Zeitung  während eines Ice Hockey Spiels genannt, wobei per RSS immer das neueste Ergebnis des Spiels in die Werbung eingeblendet wurde. Die Konversionsrate Click-Through-Rate (danke Philipp!) dieser Werbung lag bei ca. 15% und damit weit über der Konkurrenz. Es gibt also noch nach wie vor Strategien um im überlaufenden SEM Markt mit moderatem Geldeinsatz besser als die Konkurrenz zu sein.

Heute gibt es einen schönen Artikel über GetYourGuide im Punkt.ch. Einer unserer Guides, Michel, wird hierin vorgestellt und gibt auch einen netten Kommentar zur Plattform ab. Danke Michel!

Wir hoffen, dass sich viele weitere Guides von seinem Beispiel motivieren lassen und Touristen die schönsten Ecken ihrer Heimat näher bringen. Allgemeine Anfragen (z.B. Presseanfragen) zu GetYourGuide können übrigens immer auf info@getyourguide.com gesendet werden.

René Obermann (CEO Deutsche Telekom) and Martin Varsavsky (Serial Entrepreneur and CEO Fon) had a public conversation on mobile communications. I tried to capture some of the things they said. Below you can find my notes.

• Mobile business is still in good shape with old business model
• Telekom is part of solution to global crisis, makes huges investements: cover country in broadband (VDSL, fibre optics etc.)
• mobile in the US, a lot of flatrate products -> why not in germany? iPhone, Android, mutual change of information, requires more flat, thus Germany will adapt. But lesson learned is that it is all about innovation to change these things
• US only 4 companies run entire mobile business, Europe is all clutter not consumer friendly, tough : Europe is learning its lesson very fast
• liquidity reserves with Deutsche Telekom are very high, M&A still possible
• Acquisitions: 6-7 billion -> Orange netherlands, Greece
• Very difficult to grow in Germany, markets are saturated
• Problem at Fon is Pound revenues: € is a great thing ;-) Hope that the € stays a strong currency. DT on the other hand can’t hedge currencies, profits are kept in distinct countries
• Roaming: Industry is changing, but not so quickly (first example is paying by the minute). It’s just a matter of time.
• Varsavsky: Zuckerberg wants to connect people – is Facebook a new telecom operator? Obermann: Could be the next way to communicate!
• DT can be a great partner to many companies, but it is not tied to simply one. Thus they would never take over a social network.
• Personal part: Entrepreneur and Company very difficult initially, but DT has changed and is looking for young talented Entrepreneurial spirited people
• Mobile Payments : Will be implemented, but only for small money
• Future of video: Next years high increase in demand, very tough to cover everything with mobile, has to be hybrid mobile broadband and fibre optics

DLD featured an interesting panel on the future of cloud computing. Below you can see my live-notes.

Marissa Mayer, Google
Werner Vogel, Amazon
Russ Daniels, HP
Moderator: Spencer Reiss, Wired

• Classic cloud computing: Bittorent, governments unable to stop them. Users are reliant on clouds.
• does it matter where data is located? Vogel: yes, customers need to know where data is stored
• Mayer: It’s not clear where the cloud really is – is it where the data is stored? where the data lives etc. ?
• We use cloud computing every day -> where is the next frontier? where will we add more stuff to the cloud?
• technology takes more responsibility
• cloud is a great way to build software, why risk a lot of downtime using traditional server infrastructure
• what are the unique capabilities? Scalability, redundancy
• It is unlikely to be true that only a few companies operate huge data centres -> but clouds are great places to solve enterprise application processes, supply chain management
• no more islands of data? example: putting data into the car, not so easy -> different contact informations (outlook, Gmail etc.) but there is no URL for contact information. Needs all to come from one place.
• interesting market for niche operators in aggregating information to the cloud
• back cycles used to do highly complex and sensitive computations, such as protein simulations etc.
• device integration will be the main determining factor for cloud computing success

Nach dem Tourismuscamp bin ich jetzt direkt weiter nach München gefahren und schreibe diese Zeilen, während vor mir der Enkel von Jacques-Yves Cousteau über Nachhaltigkeit, Medien und die Kraft der Kuriosität spricht. Abgesehen davon sind jedoch vorallem die Granden des deutschen Internets sowie Vertreter von ungefähr jedem Venture Capital Fund präsent. Das grosse Thema, das regelmässig durchscheint ist die Finanzkrise. Eine Session, die besonders auf dieses Problem eingegangen ist, war eine Panel zum Thema “New Realities” in dem u.a. die EU-Kommissarin Viviane Reding und Dave McDrummond (Chief Legal Officer, Google) über den Einfluss des Vertrauensverlustes an den Märkten sprechen. In der Zwischenzeit habe ich auch den deutlichen Einfluss der Finanzkrise auf die Hormonlevels der Early Stage VCs feststellen können -> SEVERE ;-)

Relaxed und freundlich hingegen war Stephan Uhrenbacher, der Gründer von Qype, der mich sehr mit dem GetYourGuide Konzept gepushed hat. Stephan wird in den nächsten Tagen in den Aufsichtsrat von Qype wechseln und die operative Verantwortung abgeben. 

Der nächste Panel findet über Mobile Kommunikation statt und es wird in der Form eines Gespräches zwischen René Obermann (CEO Deutsche Telekom) und Martin Varsavsky (CEO Fon, Serial Entrepreneur und Investor) geschehen.

Die deutsche Internet-Touristikerszene hat sich an diesem Wochenende in Eichstätt bei Ingolstadt versammelt um sich in Form eines Barcamps auszutauschen.  Das sogenannte Tourismuscamp war sehr interessant und mitunter auch kontrovers. Ich habe bei folgenden Sessions beigewohnt:

• Studie der FH Worms zur Zukunft von Reisebüros im Internet
• Beauty24: Ansätze zu Kooperationen mit E-travel webseiten
• Ideacamp: Neue Ideen zu Websites mit touristischen Inhalten
• Blog vs. Destinationsportal: Welchen Mehrwert bringen Blogger für Destinationsportale im Vergleich zu Werbung in Standardmedien
• Travel Mobile: Worin liegen die Chancen und Hemmschwellen für Touristiker im mobilen Internet

Zusätzlich habe ich selber eine Session zum “Long Tail of Travel” gehalten, welche auf sehr gute Ressonanz gestossen ist. An dieser Stelle ein grosses Danke an alle Teilnehmer. Ein interessanter Trend dieses Tourismuscamps ist in jedem Fall, dass die grossen Destinationsportale verstärkt auf die “neuen” Webmedien aufmerksam geworden sind und Kooperationen mit Content Providern suchen.

Interessante, neuere Projekte kurz vorgestellt:

• Tripwolf: Web 2.0 Online Reiseführer mit einer hälfte User generated Content und einer Hälfte profesionellen Einträgen aus Reiseführern des Verlagshauses Mair DuMont, welches auch als strategischer Investor tätig ist. Das junge Team arbeitet in Budapest, Wien und San Francisco.
• TripsByTips: Analog zu Tripwolf, TripAdvisor und Co können User Bewertungen zu Hotels, Sehenswürdigkeiten und anderen Reiseinhalten verfassen. Das Start-Up ist von Burda Digital Ventures finanziert. Gründer und CEO Uwe Frehrs hat im touristischen Bereich bereits das Luxussegment Hotel Portal Escapio gegründet.
• Travel Mobile: Hierzu gab es noch keine konkrete Firma, aber mehrere Teilnehmer des Tourismuscamps haben die Absicht geäussert in nächster Zeit in diesem Bereich aktiv zu werden. Ein Business Modell ist es Reiseführer mobil mit Bezug auf die Geo Koordinaten verfügbar zu machen.

Mehr Details folgen morgen. Jetzt muss ich zur DLD nach München abfahren, bin schon gespannt auf das Internet-Event des Jahres ;-)

Nach einer zweimonaten studienbedingten Unterbrechung unserer Arbeit ist das GetYourGuide Team jetzt wieder zurück und voll aktiv bei der Arbeit. Wie schon im letzten Jahr auf diesem Blog versprochen gibt es demnächst einige Fortschritte in unserem Design und der Nutzerführung, sowie ein paar neue Features. Ihr könnt also schon gespannt sein. Sobald es offizielleres Material gibt, werde ich es auf dem Blog posten. 

An diesem Wochenende werde ich am Tourismus BarCamp in Eichstädt teilnehmen, das dieses Jahr zum zweiten Jahr in der “nördlichsten Stadt Italiens” stattfinden wird (habe gehört das sagt man, da es so viele barocke Bauten in mediterranen Farben geben soll ;-). Das Tourismuscamp wurde initiiert und vorbereitet von der Autorität des deutschen Tourismusbloggings, Tourismus Zukunft. Ein kurzer Blick auf die Teilnehmerliste lässt auch schon einiges erhoffen, da sich sehr viele Jungunternehmer und Tourismus Pioniere angemeldet haben. Besonders freue ich mich auf die Teams von TripWolf, Travel IQ, Swodoo und die Tourismus Portal Betreiber (z.B. Tirol, Südtirol etc.). Das Programm startet am Samstag und endet erst am späten Sonntag Nachmittag, wobei eine Session nicht länger als 45 Minuten dauert. Ich habe schon einmal das Thema “Long-Tail” vorgeschlagen, welches recht viele Stimmen erhalten hat und daher wahrscheinlich in einer Session behandelt wird. Die Ergebnisse werde ich dann im Live-Blog aus Ingolstadt mitteilen. 

Wednesday night, we officially celebrated GetYourGuide’s launch at the Dozentenfoyer of ETH Zurich and announced the winners of this year’s Tour de Suisse competition. It was a very tight race, but in the end, Marina’s “Urchiges Appenzellerland” won the price. Congratulations and have fun traveling ;-)

The complete final ranking can be found on the Tour de Suisse page. At this point we would also like to thank our sponsors Facebook, Orange, Local.ch, MySwitzerland and Travel.ch for helping to set up this unique contest. We had a great time watching these innovative contributions being submitted and really enjoyed this final evening, when we got to see the people behind the entries.

Here are some impressions of the award ceremony:

Introducing the 20 finalists, who won the popular vote

Michel receiving his prize “A Ski-Weekend at Bettmeralp” from MySwitzerland

Isabelle Banner from Local.ch (left) awards Barbara Odermatt (right) with an iPhone for her fourth place tour

Travel.ch CEO Roland Zeller awards the “Facebook Dream Holiday” to Marina

Acknowledging Tour de Suisse’s main sponsor: Facebook!

People gathering around Orange’s stand. Their slogan is our motto: Internet Everywhere ;-)

]]> http://blog.getyourguide.com/2008/11/tour-de-suisse-results/feed/ 2 http://blog.getyourguide.com/2008/11/tour-de-suisse-finals/ http://blog.getyourguide.com/2008/11/tour-de-suisse-finals/#comments Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:09:58 +0000 Johannes http://blog.getyourguide.com/?p=245

Dear Friends,

after an amazing race we have seen over the last two months, voting on Tour de Suisse has finally come to an end this saturday night. Cusquix’s “100% Valais, Hike & Gastro” won the popular vote (678 votes), followed by Dani’s “Airboard in Filzbach” (575 votes) and rolf’s “Bezaubernde Schneeschuhtour im Mythengebiet” (553 votes).

Next a jury will evaluate the top 20 tours (be aware that we do not count second tours in the Top 20 that were submitted by the same guide – no one can win more than one prize!) and select the winners of the prizes. The results of the final round will be announced at the awards ceremony on November 26th, 19:00h at the main building of ETH Zurich (Rämistr.101, Zurich), “Dozentenfoyer” (Restaurant on the highest level with a view all over Zurich).

The contributions have been fantastic in quality and now we are really looking forward seeing the results of your great efforts. The jury evaluating the entries and picking the winners will consist of the following experts:

- Angela Zäh, Javier Olivan (Facebook)

- Roland Zeller (Travel.ch)

- Isabelle Banner (Local.ch)

- Alfonso Llopart (MySwitzerland.com)

- Andreas Güntert (Schriftzug.ch)

In the aftermath of the event, there will be snacks and drinks for everyone and the chance to chat with some of the people involved in GetYourGuide. We would be happy, if you would find the time to come by. Please drop us a note to info (at) getyourguide.com, if you intend to come and we add you to the guest list.

One of the contest sponsors of GetYourGuide’s Tour de Suisse is Bettmeralp. Many people have asked us about where Bettmeralp is located and what you can do there, which is why we decided to release a special Blog post on this great place. Bettmeralp is located in Valais and is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Jungfrau-Aletsch-Bietschhorn.

The sun-spoiled village of Bettmeralp is situated at 2,000 meters (6,561 ft) above sea level and is a perfect holiday destination, as you can combine nature and sports. Whether you take varied hiking tours in summer or enjoy unforgettable skiing days in winter, Bettmeralp, the family-friendly and car-free village, provides the perfect framework for carefree and relaxing days far away from routine and the hectic pace of the world.

A very special point to Bettmeralp is that families are really a core element of the philosophy. Bettmeralp aims to provide a vacation according to the needs of kids and their parents or accompanying persons. Welcoming families is at the heart of what they do and is not just a marketing gag. It is also supported by the undersigned tourism service providers and by local residents. In line with the needs of the families at their vacation destination, Bettmeralp recognizes the quality criteria that are required by each resort, and which are checked periodically by independent experts. They guarantee to stick to the quality criteria and constantly endeavor to improve family offers and incorporate new ideas.

If you are looking for a good place to spend your winter vacation at – check it out! There are several good deals for hotels and ski passes on the Bettmeralp website.

Dear users, fans and supporters of GetYourGuide,

while our competition Tour de Suisse is still not even half finished, we have seen many new people coming to our site and sharing tours. Although this might sound not very spectacular to you, it is certainly special to us, as it means that the framework that we have been created during many hours of hard work withing the past couple of months is used in a creative manner. We believe that there is no better thing for creative people than to step aside the project you are working on for a brief second and see how others engage with it.

The hypothesis that underlies GetYourGuide is that there is a vast potential in tourism that is unrealised due to tideous constraints and fragmentations that have been dominating the business for many years. Seeing how you create interesting contributions to travel and international connectivity pushes me to think that we can turn around this single sided state of things. We believe that we can make a difference and help people travel in a richer way than they did before, seeing things on their travels from different perspectives.

Tour de Suisse is a competition that seeks people to design and submit creative tours in Switzerland. After the first couple of weeks, we have already seen several that I would immediatly judge to qualify for these criterions. However, let this be only a beginning of what we are able to accomplish. With your help, we all will be able to grow this website and achieve something very unique. But most importantly – to have fun doing so!

Best,

The GetYourGuide Team

We are very proud to announce that we have launched “Tour de Suisse”, a contest seeking to find the best touristic tours and activities in Switzerland. You may find it here !

Tour de Suisse offers to everyone living in Switzerland to post innovative and original tours that allow visitors to experience the country from a different perspective than when traveling on the standard touristic paths. The contest runs until November 15th and everyone can vote on the tours through an application that we designed on Facebook.

Facebook is a terrific social community that allows users to integrate APIs on their platform and make use of the powerful social graph. In our case users may create tours and then invite their friends to vote for them using Facebook. Once a friend cast a vote, the friends’ frind will see this in his/her newsfeed and may also vote for the tour. Thus, within few cycles, a creative and convincing entry to the contest may rise to the top of the competition and win one of our amazing prizes.

On November 15th midnight, the top 20 (with most votes) will qualify for the final round. In the final round a pannel of experts decides, who will take home the prizes and who is going to win the “Tour de Suisse”.

The GetYourGuide team is very much looking forward a lot to the next 2 months and we hope that the users have as much fun participating in the contest, as we had creating it. We believe it is a great opportunity for everyone in Switzerland to cause some awareness for the beauty and the endless opportunities in the country.