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February 06, 2006
Travel industry embraces blogs; bloggers bite back
More and more tourism bureaus have gotten the message that it's a good idea to be friendly with bloggers. Some, in fact, are very friendly. Some bloggers agree with the practice and others think it's a blow to the blogosphere.
Recently, 25 bloggers who have BlogAds have been invited to Amsterdam by the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions. Gridskipper has an extensive post and a roundup of others.
But bloggers, such as the Beltway Blogroll, think it's a sham:
But curiously, the bloggers just started talking about the trip yesterday -- and not all of them are doing so yet. If they really wanted to be transparent, why didn't the bloggers tell their readers about the trip when the invitation was extended?What's more, transparency is not sufficient justification for media outlets -- and that's what blogs want the U.S. government to call them -- to accept favors from an agency with an agenda. Bloggers rightly maligned columnists Armstrong Williams and Doug Bandow for taking money from the Bush administration and Abramoff. Now some of the them are guilty of similar arrangements with the government of Netherlands, and they deserve the same scorn.
No one who makes the trip is compelled to write one word, good or bad, about Amsterdam, and maybe some bloggers will return home and say nasty things about the place. But somehow I doubt they will.
The Caribbean Tourism organization has invited bloggers, along with media, to a press conference and networking session at a March meeting in New York.
The Passenger Focus, a watchdog group in Great Britain, is looking for bloggers to write about their subway adventures, in exchange for a free rail pass for a year.
Pennsylvania, Minneapolis and Milwaukee have or plan to use bloggers to spread the word on tourism.
It's a smart move by the travel industry to embrace bloggers. Other travel companies should follow suit, or at least start by monitoring blogs, like Shel Holtz's on business travel, which pulls no punches.
We've discussed freebies for bloggers here before. The blogosphere is full of people who will disagree about free products and what degree of transparency is required -- but that's what makes it so interesting.
Posted by at February 6, 2006 07:19 AM
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Tracked on February 7, 2006 08:10 AM
