ChooseToTravel.com goes global.

Chris Knights (Co-Founder) | 17 July, 2010
ChooseToTravel.com now provides a global hotel booking engine with over 60,000 hotels.

Over the last few months we have been working on amalgamating our properties from our various Choose branded sites into ChooseToTravel.com. Today I'm pleased to announce go live! This has also been extended to our Travel Guides sections.

As hotels sign up on the various Choose branded sites and as travel guides get added, we now push these onto ChooseToTravel.com extending both exposure and reach.

Essentially we are trying to address both repeat customers (who know and trust our brand) and those whom are not so sure where they wish to travel. Both now have a single entry point and can research global hotel rates and destination info directly from ChooseToTravel.com.

Assuming they 'Choose' as destination they can also visit the appropriate Choose branded site for detailed info about their destination.

Add your listing for Free!

Jonathan Shaw (Co-Founder) | 28 May, 2010
In today's business scenario constant change and innovation is a must and for us, owning and managing a web business, this change is more dynamic and embedded in the organisation's culture.

Consumer generated content is key to maintain a healthy level of content which is constantly growing and more important satisfying the millions of online searches done daily

Our new listings facilty is our latest development and is a great platform for local businesses and services to list their offering. We have created over 140 categories in which such listings can be appropriately posted and the list is also constantly growing.

Our thousands of daily users across multiple destination specific websites do not only book hotels and accommodation online but also research for activities, things to do and things to see. After all, this is what travelling is all about! More Info: ChooseMalta.com/advertise

Do you need a holiday?

Jonathan Shaw (Co-Founder) | 14 May, 2010
At some point in time you have probably come across some sort of article highlighting the benefits of a regular holiday. Other articles are in check-list format and allocate scores according to your answers. Well, I'm of the opinion that if you are ready to stop and read such articles, there is no need to go further and you really need a holiday!

Nonetheless, the idea of planning a summer holiday during the month of May is also deeper than you think. It's been engraved in us throughout our childhood with the eagerness of our school summer recess since day 1. Who does not recall the counting of weeks for school to end for summer? For me, it was a weekly, if not a daily count and a prime topic in my school break!

Not many years ago, the planning of a summer holiday started with the choice of destination. The necessary booking requirements followed suit. Nowadays, low cost airlines, love them or hate them, have in a way revolutionized our holiday planning process and some, if not many, start with the low cost flight schedule and price.
If a destination is available at interesting prices, then the holiday destination choice is easily made! This is not the norm but I'm sure it happens often!

Once a destination is decided upon and flight secure the interesting search and choice of hotel begins. I love booking hotels online and finding a good unique hotel with the required characteristics and location has now become fun and easy due to online innovations. Viewing the hotels' neighbourhood on Google earth and street view is also great, time permitting.

Which brings me to the infamous list of things to do and see...... I tend to shortlist a number of items and relative addressed and then leave it up to mood, weather and last minute decision when on holiday. For me it works as it gives me enough functionality to take advantage of the local area attractions yet giving me flexibility to relax and have no rigid schedule on holiday.

Nonetheless in recent years planning a holiday has become intertwined and runs in parallel to discovering local good restaurants. I'm one of those that envies the food critic that travels the world tasting local cuisine and restaurants.
Whilst travelling, food and eating out is synonymous with the destinations culture and eating well wraps up a great holiday!

So, let's all start planning, we have over 70,000 hotels for you to choose from and for those that discover the ultimate local restaurant, please do email us so we share it on our new restaurant listings!

eCommerce - Taking business a step forward

Jonathan Shaw (Co-Founder) | 30 September, 2009

On Friday 25 September 2009 I was invited to speak at the above titled forum organised by the Malta Communications Authority. The aim of the forum was to highlight 3 local case studies and also launch e-commerce business guidelines for businesses in the Maltese Islands.

Having guidelines to assist local companies is a good initiative especially since a section on taxation and cross-border VAT implications for products and services for EU or Non-Eu clients was also addressed.

I was asked to speak about my business experience in setting up and launching ChooseMalta.com as our first website and eventually all of the other 'Choose' travel sites that we own and manage.

In sharing my experience I vividly recalled the obsession I had with three main areas:

1. How many people visited the site

2. If google had indexed us

3. Number of online orders

I'm writing this in this blog as anyone out there who launched a website can probably relate to these initial 'obsessions'. Reality is that years down the line, you still monitor the above 3 areas, yet not as frequently, as when you launch a new site! Nonetheless, what changes is that the analysis of these 3 areas becomes deeper and more complex.

 

Do you market online?

Nakita Vassallo (Advertising Manager) | 15 September, 2009

"Yes, I have a website", is what some people say.
Having a website is just the first of many steps of ensuring your brand is 'reachable' online.

A website should be supplemented by banners linking to the website, to help you reach as many new visitors as possible.  Unless your website is at the tip of everyone's tongue (EBay?), or unless you rank first on various search engines including the top ones, with all the keywords associated with your website content (which is practically impossible - and still, not a very safe bet, since you would probably like to entice new visitors who were not really looking at searching for your category of brand) - banner advertising is imperative.

Banners on the world wide web first appeared back in 1994, and since then, the banner industry has exploded.  Quite reasonable considering it took radio 38 years to reach 50 million users, TV 13, and internet a mere 5!

There are two types of positive banner outcomes, the first and most obvious is a click-through, where the viewer clicks the banner and follows through to the linked website, and the second is viewing the banner.  Whilst the second choice might seem rather passive and almost like the user is 'ignoring' the banner, this is not the case.  The brand is still gaining it's rightful exposure, and the user might visit the website once he is interested or in need of the product.

To make it simpler - what is the probability of you visiting a shop you have seen advertised on print, after viewing the advert on paper?

You might be interested in the advert, but you have to:
a) remember
b) find the time to visit the shop
...to say the least!

Now let's say you are online, browsing in the comfort of your home...you spot a banner with a product that interests you...and bam...you click, and find yourself browsing the company's website.  Busy?  No excuses:  hit ctrl+d and bookmark the page, and view it later ;-)

Therefore I consider web advertising much more effective than print advertising, and this is only one of the thousands of reasons I can think of off the top of my head!