‘2.0 starts here’ This is how the first post published on the blog of Madrid’s Hotel Auditorium finishes, which started a new online communication strategy two days ago. Most of you already know the meaning of web 2.0, coined by Tim O’Reilly in 2004. A second web generation you can get informed about visiting the corresponding section on a proper web 2.0 platform: Wikipedia. The aim of this second generation is, broadly speaking, to share knowledge and experiences between users and, from a corporate approach, to participate in the dialog established between the said users to improve services and boost loyalisation.

By means of Twitter, yes, that microblogging system we have been talking about, we got to know that the Hotel Auditorium launched its brand new corporate blog, an initiative, promoted by Rafael Martinez, we applaud from Hoobing for since our very beginning we bet on this sort of new 2.0 functionalities; we incorporated a home specialized in tourism blogs so users can get to know other traveler’s experiences and we also show links to the corporate blog of hotels with this service. From here, our best wishes in this new challenge fot Hotel Auditorium!

Nevertheless, the case of Hotel Auditorium is not an isolated one within Hoobing: other hotel chains like Valamar hotels, with 9 hotels in Croatia, are taking care of their 2.0 functionalities and have awesome corporate blog where they provide news relating the hotel chain as well as information and reports about their destinations, always written in a plain and familiar language.

Likewise, the Catalan company Nuñez y Navarro, has been already managing its corporate blog NN for 3 years now, NN Experiences. A complete blog where they inform about events that take place in the city of Barcelona, location of its hotels, by means of which they launch different marketing strategies, like, for instance, the stories contest “Barcelona, a unique experience”, where the communicate their brand to final users with the aim to boost loyalisation. Besides, they manage to create what the Spaniards know as “boca a boca”, the well-known buzz, which is to say to make users talk about your company.

From the Hoobing Team, congratulations to all for a well-done job!

Keep on bloggin’

During this last two months the use of the micro-blogging system has seen a spectacular increase. Even Tim O’Reilly echoed this trend. Companies, media and even individuals use this communication channel to inform, build a corporate image or improve personal and professional relationships.

Twitter was the first micro-blogging system that appeared when mixing components from social networks and blogs; it allowed inserting short messages in the fashion of short articles of only 140 characters. Its simplicity, infinite number of updates and the possibility to use the said tool through mobile phones and pda’s make of Twitter a tool extremely useful for those travelers wishing to inform about their whereabouts at any moment. A good example is Soultravelers3, a blog written by a family that is travelling around the world and, for instance, wants to share their visit to Seville by means of their Twitter account. What better than uploading a video from one of the “Semana Santa” parades?
We would like to highlight that Soultravelers3 has been awarded the first prize in the Micro-Blogging category by the Travel Blogger Awards hosted by Lonely Planet, for bringing forward an amazing ‘What are you doing now?’ experience. Check their gallery on Twitpic – a site to share photos on Twitter- where they keep uploading content to picture all their comments on Twitter.

Another Twitter user that ended up being finalist in the Travel Blogger Awards in the micro-blogging category is Nerds Eye View, a girl from Seattle who, equipped with an ukulele, a camera and a passport as her only luggage, just decided to travel around the world and recount her experiences on Twitter

As you can see, the blogosphere brings us some really incredible cases.On Hoobing we also use this tool to bring you our latest news: last hotels and blogs that registered with us, the “blog of the week” section”, sector news, etc. You can visit us and become our follower

Some weeks ago the blog “El Sueño de la India” (India’s Dream) registered on Hoobing.com, a blog written by Alba Garrido where we are told about the trip Alba made through Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh provinces of India. She travelled during autumn 2008. When she registered we realized that she had been nominated for the Travel Bloggers Awards, organized by Lonely Planet, an award we already commented on Hoobing.com. Today Alba reported that her blog has been awarded with the first prize in the category of Photographic Travel Blog. Congratulations from the Hoobing Team, Alba!!!
We strongly recommend you to visit Alba’s blog and enjoy the wonderful pictures from such a magical country as India!!!

Congratulation and, as usual, Keep on bloggin’

As every week, we update our “Blog of the week” section on Thursday. Yesterday we decided to highlight one of our favorite blogs, the one written by a couple of travelers who is traveling around the world. These days they are visiting Morocco but if you pay attention to the right margin you will find a list including all countries they hit so far (some of them even three times!!!) . It’s simply amazing. We are green of envy!!! And we want you to share this feeling with us!!!

This morning, while visiting the blog as we often do, we found a surprise; click here to find out what we are talking about.

Greetings for Autumn and Danny… Keep on bloggin’!

As we commented last month, our blog search engine is already up and rolling. Today, we would like to dedicate this post to our “blog of the week” section, one of the options included within that search functionality. From January the 29th, 7 blogs have been honored as our “blog of the week”. From last thursday, the Hoobing team recommends you a blog that recently registered with Hoobing.com. Its name: “Volta dels 25”, an interesting blog written by a young Catalan journalist who is traveling around the globe with the intention to interview 25 25-years-old youngsters from all over the world. “La Volta dels 25” was awarded most voted non-English blog by Travel Blog Awards 2009, which we commented last week. Next, we display the list of blogs that Hoobing highlighted to date. Amongst them, you will find purely informative blogs, while some other prefer a more personal approach, we will even find some completely unpublished before, as” A Outra Face da Cidade Surpreendente”, a superb  fotoblog about Oporto.

Club del Viajero

3 viajes al día

Asiasido

Berlin Unlike

China, prepara tu viaje

A Outra Face da Cidade Surpreendente

Today we write about a much-discussed topic that makes a call to a reflection exercise. This topic is about the price disparity between the website displayed on the hotel website and those offered by the intermediaries. The said issue arises from a discussion which took place on the Twitter community. After an exchange of opinions between Ignasi Casellas from Hotel Condado, Jordi Ruiz from City hotels, Carlos Velilla from Finca Prats, Andreu Roig from Es Picot and myself, Jordi Ruiz send us an article posted on his blog (written in Spanish) where he recalls his personal experience when trying to book a room directly on his website, finding his prices higher than those displayed on the intermediaries. Jordi’s experience is not an isolated case: many hotels sell their products at a cheaper price through their IDS than on their own booking channels. That implies a lower opportunity cost for the hotelier.
On his post, Jordi Ruiz highlights the remarkable investments many hotels carry out on their corporate website, booking engines, positioning strategies for main search engines, etc. One must make these investments profitable and the best way to do so is offering equal prices on the official website and avoiding higher prices than those displayed by the IDS, who in many cases already get remarkable commissions. Generally speaking, we will get the best prices going directly to the factory, won’t we? So, how is it possible that this is not applicable for some hotels? How is it possible that one may find cheaper prices on intermediary portals than those offered directly on the official website? The benefit the hotelier gets for online bookings carried out directly on his website is completely free of intermediary costs and that’s where hoteliers should focus. Otherwise their benefit margin is reduced.

The debate is open…

Gradually, Hoobing is becoming more and more known at an international level. In this sense, some online tourism magazines like “Turismo Extra”, “Traffic News” and “80 días” are commenting our launching.
What about you, don’t you know Hoobing yet?
Are you a hotel and want to register free?
Then click here and within 5 steps you will be part of the project!

Hoobing is an all-purpose website: we have conceived Hoobing not just as a hotel vertical search engine and a social network for travelers but also as a tourism blog search engine- that we already announced in its moment. This week, we are glad to announce that Hoobing is developing its blog search engine: today we introduce to you a new tourism blog homesite!

We at Hoobing, firmly believe that blogs will be the future’s travelogues, for they include personal opinions from the authors and manage to offer a completely personal point of view about any topic: real pictures, affordable texts and very interesting opinions. More and more internet users use blogs to get assistance online obtaining a very versed opinion on the subject. We make it easy on our blog homesite; if you want to find blogs, you will be able to do so by entering its title in the search engine, or locate them sorting alphabetically. Well, if you want to get extended information about your desired destinations, you can get results sorting by specific destinations.

We haven’t forgot to include categories like “Most Wanted” or “Top rated”. There you will be able to check which blogs are visited by or most loyal users and which get the best reviews regarding content, pictures, videos, creativity, advices and tips, etc. Do not forget to register within the Hoobing Community to be able to rate and add your favorite blogs.

Finally, we decided to reward the loyalty, creativity and commitment of our most active bloggers, activating an special area for the most outstanding blog, a section that we will update on a weekly basis. This way, the author will be able to receive a higher number of visits. We hope you like it.

What about you? Do you have a blog? Register it with Hoobing!

Yesterday we posted an article on the Tourism Sector Innovation Group, within the Spanish tourism community Hosteltur, dealing with the impact of the new horizons offered by the new information technologies on the world of tourism industry.

In this article we bring forward a parallelism between the DIY underground trend and new user profiles, those of consumers of tourism products, which are arising due to the boom of free-intermediary environments which allow the booking of trips and hotels stays. Hoobing.com positions itself as the flagship of this philosophy among web portals. So we invite you to read this article and to participate in this discussion.

As you may know, one of the main features of Hoobing is our blogs search engine. We at Hoobing love travelling and customizing our holidays. To achieve that, blogs are an essential tool to know the experiences from the travelers themselves who report very accurately their trips and getaways all around the world.

To date there are 121 blogs registered in our data base, from which 20 have been included during our first week life. If you have a blog and would like not only to advise other travelers with your posts but also to receive visits from Hoobing users, you can register here for free.

From this first week online we can highlight 2 blogs: the lost girls, a really interesting blog about 3 girls touring the world under the influence of Thelma & Louise philosophy, with very accurate information about destinations from all over the world. And Autumn and Danny world travel, graduates of the University of California at Berkeley whose slogan is a Mark Twain’s quote: “Twenty years from now you will be more disapointed by the things you didn’t do, than by the things you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”