Travel2.0: a new article on Travel Daily News
WorkLight, the Web 2.0 specialist, is urging the online travel industry to take advantage of the benefits of Web 2.0 technology, as online booking continues to grow according to recent industry figures.
The online travel market in Europe is currently estimated at Euro 50 billion, according to an EyeforTravel Research report, and has been growing at an astounding rate of 41 per cent CAGR (compound annual growth rate) in 2002-2007. At the same time offline travel expenditure has remained static.
“With one in every five travelers making travel arrangements and booking flights and hotel rooms online, in this competitive market, companies need to take advantage of Web 2.0 services, such as personalized homepages, social networks, RSS, desktop gadgets and others,” said David Lavenda, WorkLight’s vice president of marketing and strategy.
[Thanks to Dimitrios]
Alessandro Inversini 
If you want to see an interesting social content model have a squint at Metrotwin.com. British Airways recently launched this online community that twins New York with London and is fed by a blog network. It’s a social utility serving a niche (admittedly, a *mega*-niche) rather than a social networking site. Very pretty and great content (I would say that, my agency designed it), plus a buzz-based algorithm tracking user behaviour and sentiment, and dynamic ‘charts’ of the best places in both cities. Bloggers and online communities are the real local experts – it’s what many of us now look for when researching a destination or trip – authentic, intelligent recommendations, filtered out from the wall of noise, spam-sites and search cheating. Good relevant blogs (and the most relevant pages within them) are particularly hard to find using search engines alone. Have a look at http://www.metrotwin.com and let me know what you think. Ta
Tim