08 September 2008

TravelMole invests for the future

The final quarter of 2008 is likely to prove a pivotal one for the travel industry.

In a year that has seen unprecedented rises in fuel costs, a continuing crisis in the money markets and small but significant changes in the exchange rate of the major global currencies, wise investment in marketing is at a premium.

For TravelMole, too, it will see a period of investment and change.

We as usual will be reporting from the many important events that take place around the globe. But perhaps more importantly we will be investing.

Within the next eight weeks we will be reporting from, amongst other things, World Travel Market in London combined with the UNWTO Ministerial Conference, the British Travel Awards; Going for Green (the new event to celebrate all that is good in the world of sustainability) in London; the ABTA Travel Convention in Las Palmas, Gran Canaria; the Advantage conference in Sitges and the International Luxury Travel Market in Nice.

TravelMole will have a mixture of both written and video reporting from all of these events.

We are also introducing new products and services such as an online gallery with the ability to almost instantly display photographs from events online.

A Chinese language version of TravelMole (18,000 Chinese outbound agents already registered) will be launched in November and at the same time the re-emergence of Travel Industry Question Time (TIQT).

TravelMole now reaches in the region of 450,000 travel trade professionals around the world on a regular if not daily basis.

The resultant effect of this is our web sites now have just over 4.5 milllion page views per month.

In the UK alone our registered database numbers over 100,000 and, when you combine this with our team of journalists, it becomes a compelling story in itself.

I would urge you to comment on our services, web sites and, perhaps most importantly, our stories as often and as freely as possible.

I would be delighted to hear from you directly on how you think we could improve what we do and at this key planning stage for us the timing could not be better.

Needless to say, we all hope for a smooth ride over the next three to four months and look forward to hearing about the positive outlook for the travel industry in 2009.

Graham McKenzie,
TravelMole UK Managing Director
Graham@TravelMole.com