Staying on Top of Travel Advice

With the advent of sites such as Facebook and Twitter, your neighbors, friends and co-workers are the people you reach out to most often for travel advice.

As we discovered with TripAdvisor, you also will listen to the advice of strangers when it comes to the best places to eat or where you should stay. Travelers just trust the advice of people they know (and don't know), over what they might find on an attraction or hotel website.

There are a few new travel sites that are cashing in on the idea of using social media sites for targeted trip advice.

Gogobot.com, Afar.com and Gtrot.com are three new sites mentioned in a recent story by Michelle Higgins in The New York Times. These websites allow users to ask specific questions about travel to Facebook friends and people who use the sites.

Gogobot, recently named one of Time magazine's 50 Best Websites of 2011, allows you to follow your friends' travels and offer up your own advice on any travel topic, including writing your own reviews on accommodations and restaurants. If someone recommends a bistro in France, Gogobot will supply address and phone ­– even photos – if they are available. You also can build an itinerary that you can change as you make your travel plans.

Afar describes itself as a place “where travelers connect, share trips, discover new places and ask questions to travelers and locals.” Afar is a companion site to Afar magazine, which highlights global travel. Website readers can get personalized recommendations from other travelers and the locals who make their homes in these various destinations.

Gtrot links your Facebook account to its site to share travel itineraries, find friends in your future destination and get advice, so the more Facebook friends you have, the better. The idea being that you will trust recommendations from friends more than from people you don't know. As the comments come in, Gtrot aggregates them with your trip information.

Bottom line: Travel advice is coming from all corners these days. As a custom publisher, we try to stay on top of the latest and greatest to see how it might affect our clients' marketing strategies. It helps to know about the new ways people are connecting and to start a dialogue when you can.


Susan Chappell | VP/Travel Publishing | Journal Communications