Travel Guru TV, at a computer screen near you
January 21, 2008
Old friends and acquaintances have been roped in to a new online travel service called TravelGuru.tv, reporting on destinations around the world for your visual pleasure (and possibly your wallet’s ultimate distress).
While I was really looking forward to watching David Wickers cast an acerbic eye over some dire theme park or Paul Gogarty skewer the facilities in a French railway station, essentially this turns out to be a Wish You Were Here? for online shoppers and the resulting videos are as sweet and docile as fluffy kittens.
Visually it is great. TravelGuru uses Vividas, a video distribution service which downloads its own player along with the movie. Click the link and suddenly John Carter fills your screen.
The first time this happens can be a bit alarming, not because it is John Carter - a really nice guy - but because it occurs with little warning. I imagine a few people mashing keys like crazy trying to regain control (hint: think escape).
As far as content is concerned, however, TG is little different from a regular TV holiday show.
Give a TV cameraman a tropical beach or early morning market, then hand your editor the resulting footage, and they will always deliver the most visually pleasing result of over-hanging palms or glistening fruit. It is in their nature and that has always been the problem with TV holiday programmes where visual fantasies inevitably rule over a more humdrum reality.
And just as Wish You Were Here? and the BBC’s version seldom bad mouth trips for fear of offending the poor operator who has just stumped up six tickets for the crew, nobody is going to say bad things about the TravelGuru’s trips which are for sale through the site.
Yes, fancy following in your guru’s footsteps to Provence? Hit the link to the tour operator and give them your TG reference to book the holiday.
There is nothing wrong with that - expert endorsement is a great way to sell a product. I just think that when it comes to finding a holiday, internet travel has moved on to a point where customers are more interested in fellow travellers’ unbiased recommendations and self-shot, warts-and-all videos than pretty images on a screen.
Still, TG is a welcome addition to the mix and I am looking forward to seeing if any of my other friends are persuaded in front of the camera.
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Lovely looking website but no RSS feed, no blog. It’s 2008, not 2007 as in their footer.
They also need to think about employing an SEO expert as their title tags are less than descriptive with the index page known as ‘homepage’.
That in itself is amateurish and at total odds with the calibre of its writers.
Lovely looking website but no RSS feed, no blog. It’s 2008, not 2007 as in their footer.
They also need to think about employing an SEO expert as their title tags are less than descriptive with the index page known as ‘homepage’.
That in itself is amateurish and at total odds with the calibre of its writers.