From the swivellin' chair...

The challenge is out: 350 words, no more - tell your travel story, blog style.

Darren Cronian launched the Travel Rants Blog-a-thon competition last week, in an effort to unveil hidden travel writing talent. The rules are simple: in less than 350 words, write a blog-style entry that is both useful and unique. The winner gets their entry posted on Travel Rants and also receives a €200 Amazon voucher donated by SA-Venues.com. There's exactly two months till the deadline (May 31st), so you still have plenty of time to craft your finest piece of writing.

Need ideas? For a great example, check out Darren's story about being tricked into eating what is affectionately known in Malaysia as Devil's Curry. He's even managed to keep it within the required word length - the entry runs for a tight 346 words. Just as well he can't enter himself!

Today we added another 6 languages to our budget accommodation section. Users of the site are now also able to browse the accommodation listings in Russian, Japanese, Chinese (traditional + simplified), Portuguese and Swedish. If you happen to speak any of these languages we welcome you to have a look and see how accurate you think they are!

Russian
Swedish
Portuguese
Japanese
Chinese (simplified)
Chinese (traditional)

We are also currently working on creating translations for the blog labels, which would mean that if you run your blog in Chinese, your entire blog could look Chinese, including dates, headers and navigation elements. If you speak another language and are interested in helping us with this translation work, let me know and we'll send you a file to translate.

To our very pleasant surprise, it appears that Travellerspoint has been nominated in not one, but two categories of Travolution's 2007 Awards. It's the first year that Travolution is running the awards, which are dedicated to the online travel market, so we're pretty proud to be up there competing with the best of the best.

Our travel maps earned us a nomination for Best Use of Social Media, while overall we managed to sneak into the category for Best Travel Portal. Fingers crossed for a good night on the 24th of April

In other news, Travellerspoint was mentioned again in the local press here in Melbourne. I'm afraid the pitiful scanned-version-of-a-photocopy you can see below hardly lets you read the text, but here's a nice segment to give you a gist of the article:

The internet is shaping young people's travel experiences as never before, and enterprising travel experts are ensuring they move with the times.

Peter Daams, one of the directors of Travellerspoint.com, is very excited about the possibilities. Already, more than 80,000 people are taking advantage of his free online travel diary services.

http://www.travellerspoint.com/photos/stream/size/L/photoID/101762/

If Technorati's Where's the Fire? is anything to go by, global warming is one of the hottest topics on the web - right up there with Britney Spears' shaved head and the death of Anna Nicole Smith. People on the web really know what's important in life, don't they?

But back to global warming.

Much has been said about the environmental impact of the aviation industry. Though flights only emit 2% of greenhouse gas emissions, the number of flights has steadily increased over the past few years. The introduction of low-cost airlines has made flying an affordable way of getting around, putting overseas travel within reach of people who previously could ill afford it. And just last week, the EU and US outlined plans for an "open skies" deal. As prices become more competitive, that means we could see up to 26 million more passengers crossing the Atlantic by plane. More passengers, more flights, more greenhouse gas emissions.

It's enough to make some people lament the very introduction of budget airlines. As Travellerspoint member Niels (bentivogli) puts it:

The concept of pricefighter airlines has done incredible damage to the environment by bringing regular flying in reach of the masses. Personally, I think that if you go fly, you should bleed financially. That's about the only thing that makes the average consumer think twice.

On the opposite end are people like Darren Cronian from Travel Rants. About the UK government's move to increase air passenger duty earlier this year, he writes:

I feel that increase in taxes isn’t going to solve anything, all it’s going to do is widen the gap between social classes, and end low cost flights as we know it.

No doubt. Imposing higher taxes on flights means that the poor can't afford to fly, while the rich just pay the tax - turning overseas travel into a luxury of the elite.
But should those with less wealth be the ones to bear the burden of global warming? Or does the responsibility to combat climate change rest elsewhere?

I guess it's official. Travellerspoint is a great site. Don't take my word for it though; read the review or, if you're too lazy to leave this page, just read the snippet below:

Travellerspoint.com is more than just an on-line booking site, it is a place where travelers can gather and share their experiences, advice and love of travel.

It is easy to get lost in the enthusiasm of this site, reading the thoughts, experiences and ideas of like-minded travelers. People from all over the world are on-line in live topical forums sharing their common love of seeing the world.

Couldn't have put it better myself.