User Generated Content: The Missing Link? Web 2.0 or Travel 2.0?

Hotelmarketing.com does a promo piece for EyeForTravel's The UK Young Professional & Online Travel Report with an article on UGC, um yes.. that's User Generated Content.

Interesting data nonetheless:
1) 72% say that consumer reviews have influenced their travel choice
2) 15.3% state they always use UGC for travel
3) 79.1% say they have actually used consumer reviews for travel before

See the article here.

I kinda have an issue with them labeling this as "Web 2.0 or Travel 2.0". According to EyeForTravel, the most popular UGC site is Expedia's Tripadvisor.com. But wait a sec, they have had their user feedback and ratings system up since 2000 - that's when they started. Ebay has buyer/seller ratings since inception as well. Amazon added this on around 2000 as well if not earlier. I think the first website to get UGC as the main USP was epinions.com in 1999. Their mission is "To help people make informed buying decisions."

So what's makes this Web 2.0 or Travel 2.0? Then again, what is "Web 2.0" and "Travel 2.0"?

- Is it technology (AJAX, XML, CSS)?
- Is it particular websites (Flickr, youtube, myspace, blogger)?
- Is it communities/social networking, or just new venture money?

We can point to kayak.com and bezurk.com and say that's "Web 2.0", but can we define it?

Let's check Wikipedia, shall we?

===
The phrase Web 2.0 refers to a perceived second-generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies — which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users. The meme became popular following the first Web 2.0 conference in 2004. O'Reilly Media titled a series of conferences around the phrase, and it has since become widely adopted.
===
See the full entry here.

Interesting words: "perceived", "collaboration", "meme"

Ok, so whatever it is... What does it mean to business? What does it mean for the Travel Industry? What does it mean for Hospitality eCommerce?

That's what we want to know... and umm... and also how do we exploit it.

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