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June's Special

Tour hosts: Look out for our primer on Web use

We’re putting the finishing touches on a manual aimed at tour hosts that tells them the best way to use the Internet as a business and research tool. In it, we discuss how to run a “web-conscious” business that understands people’s expectations about Internet businesses and commerce. We also talk about Internet advertising and how it really works, vs. the increasingly decrepit “click-through” theory of ad performance. There’s also a section on using sites like Cultural Travels as solid marketing tools that can help clients who are seeking the ideal, non-clichéd vacation find you. We promise our primer will be short, sweet, concise and clear. Watch this space next month for details on how to get one.

Send us a travel story, we might put your name in lights

Well, not really in lights, but at least in bold type. Well, maybe not in bold type, but at least we’ll spell it right. We’re always looking for first-person accounts of travel to interesting places that have a cultural, scientific, educational or culinary aspect to them. If you have a story that you’d like to see on our site, send it in. Of course we can’t promise we’ll use it, but we do promise we’ll read it with interest and see where we might place it.  To see how to submit a story to us, go to The Cultured Traveler and click on Submissions in the upper right-hand corner.

Speaking of, here’s our editorial calendar through October:

Just in case you do want to send us an article for publication, here are the theme topics for the August, September and October issues of The Cultured Traveler online newsletter:

August: The World’s 10 Great Art Museums – We’ll stick our heads out there and try to publish a list that won’t have too many people shooting at us. Got a related story to tell? Send it in.

September: Food, Glorious Food – Is it possible to go wrong covering this topic? Nah.

October: The World’s Great Religious Shrines – and the wonderful vacations people can develop around them.

Bigger ticket sites are “better,” but how good is that?

The good news: Consumer Reports has just reported that the three big Internet travel sites, Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity, are the places people looking for the best airfares should go. The bad news is that CR has strong doubts about the objectivity of the information on those sites. Putting it as tactfully as possible, CR cited weird (and inconvenient) itineraries, failure to list all competitors’ fares and suspicious airline commission arrangements with the travel sites as reasons to doubt just how good “best” is in this instance. Look for CR’s report to add important heft to the argument that the federal government will begin probing restraint of trade at these sites. You can find it at Consumer Reports.  

Introducing two new ways to advertise with us

Uh oh, we’re going to talk about money. Here goes: We’re introducing two great new ad formats. The first is a 140 x 800-pixel vertical ad in our monthly online Newsletter. The second is a 150 x 150-pixel Thumbnail in our monthly trip mailing. The trip mailing is the document we send to all of our travelers listing the latest trips available from our tour hosts. Last month the thumbnails generated more than 500 views for each of our advertisers. Both products cost $250 per insertion. To kick off these new products, we’re offering the newsletter ads for $100 each or $250 for three. The thumbnails cost $250 each, or you can get one for free if you buy a Web Page Ad. We’re done now.

We’re beating Ask Jeeves, but eBay kicks our bootay

Visitors to our web site (www.culturaltravels.com) now stay an average of 13 minutes and 36 seconds, and view 9.3 pages. According to statistics from Nielsen/Net Ratings that 13-minute duration puts us in the company of such Internet worthies as Lycos (13:18), Amazon (12:59), CNET (12:40) and Classmates (12:31) and considerably ahead of Ask Jeeves (8:22) and American Greetings (9:43). Of course, in the interest of honesty, we have to report that sites like eBay (1:49:15), Yahoo (1:25:12) and Microsoft (1:08:34) kick serious bootay, including ours. Still, we’re proud that people visit the pages on our site an average of 87 seconds vs. the Internet average of 45. Content, content, content.

Our Calendar section is getting downright impressive

It started out small, but suddenly we’ve got an amiable giant on our hands. The Calendar section of our online newsletter (top right) has become this big, wonderful, comprehensive compilation of festivals worldwide. We owe its impressiveness to the patient efforts of Flo Heckenbach, the editor, who has gathered information on and links to more than 500 festivals and events. The current issue of The Cultured Traveler highlights 170 festivals, and links to others featured in previous issues. If you haven’t checked out the Calendar before, get ready for a delightful discovery.

Trips, Trips and more Trips!

If you haven't yet listed your trip calendar you are missing a great way to expand your exposure. Remember we'll be mailing new trip listings to our travelers every month, so get your trips listed and be included in yet another free Cultural Travels service.