Selecting the winners

When we handed out the 2009 awards, TravelGround.com was less than 6 months old and the TravelGround Awards were based on around a quarter-million page views along with the corresponding enquiries, bookings and reviews. To choose the winners we simply calculated which accommodation establishments drew the most attention, potential bussiness and completed bookings in each region.

However, during 2010 we had 2,5 million page views, not to mention tens of thousands of enquiries, bookings and reviews. So this year we have done much the same analysis as in 2009, but with A LOT more data!!

We are confident that the winners reflect some of our users’ favourites!

The prize

Each winner has received a custom badge made for their personal website as well as their TravelGround profile page. Below we have a sample of the Award that was designed in-house here at TravelGround.com.

A sample of how each award looks

And the winners are…

The only hiccup in growth this year (the section circled in yellow) was due to the Seacom Cable going down. This cable carries much if the Internet Traffic between our South African users and the TravelGround Server in London, so when a section of the cable broke in the middle of the Mediterranean, we were left at the mercy of a repair ship that took almost 2 weeks to get the repair done.

Number of Enquiries Week by Week -- First 6 Months 2010

People tend to think that this magnitude of growth must be linked to the current Soccer World Cup, however most of our customers are South African’s traveling South Africa. Upon analysis of enquiries over the last six months, you can see that over 85% of our business is generated by local interest, pointing strongly towards sustainability.

So here’s hoping our next 6-monthly report is even more impressive!

The selection of cities was done by a multi-national team of respected experts who lauded Cape Town for its low environmental impact and scenic qualities. We agree! Cape Town is an amazing city to live in or visit and the TravelGround team considers Cape Town a particularly excellent place to run a travel business!

It’s no wonder that so many international conferences are held in Cape Town – the great food, affordable cost of staying here and amazing views all make this city perfect for such events. We can help in this regard: we now help businesses and organisations find quality conference accommodation. Give us a call!

Below is a sample image of the 4 badges that are available for our members. If you have an accommodation listed on TravelGround.com and you didn’t get your email detailing how to add one to your site, then drop us a mail!

TravelGround.com Membership Badge Samples

From humble beginnings…

In March of 2009 we began registering accommodation establishments for our nation-wide South African accommodation website. In early August, less than 6 months later, we opened our brand-new booking service with 380 establishments. During that 1st month we had almost 3,500 pageviews. That traffic resulted in only 10 accommodation leads. Action was required!

To the present…

Today, TravelGround is growing faster than ever. Over the last 6 months we have added an additional 500 accommodation establishments and now list almost 30,000 beds in 900 accommodation establishments across South Africa.

In the month of January we had almost 90,000 page-views which represents an incredible 2500,00% increase in traffic over 6 months, but even more importantly we had over 1000 enquiries for accommodation.

For a more visual representation of our speedy growth, take a look at the graphs below:

In only 6 months our rapidly growing traffic has reached 90,000 pageviews per month, and is still growing fast.

Even after the busy peak season our number of website enquiries has continued to grow. In January, we generated over 1,000 enquiries, and we expect over 1,500 enquiries in February.

We’re excited about our growth thus far, but what really excites us is all the growth that lies ahead!

TravelGround.com advertising big in the USA

When it comes to advertising, TravelGround.com doesn’t mess around! We’ve now been advertising for approximately 2 months and we’re achieving in the region of 400 highly targeted visitors per day from Google Adwords alone! So here’s to continuous growth of our online marketing!

Welcome to TravelGround: your travel playground…

Behind the scenes, ZissuTravel.com has been re-branding… TravelGround.com is the result and the website will be moving across to this new domain today. But not to worry, all your old links to ZissuTravel.com will still function.

We’re open for bookings…

Despite the inevitable delays caused by the necessary re-branding and server upgrades, TravelGround.com has recently opened its much anticipated secure-booking system to guests from across the globe. We have ensured that the system is smooth and intuitive.

TravelGround.com now has almost 500 prime South African establishments listed on the website, and we are continuing to grow. We look forward to keeping focused on each and every establishment on our website, and giving personalised service to every user.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Web 2.0 buzz, here is quick introduction: The old Web 1 was all about bland html sites. Each of these websites are run by one company exclusively. While some of them have grown into giants… their days are numbered.

Web 2.0 is the way of the future: these websites enable social interaction, collaboration and transparency. They are trustworthy, and consumer oriented. They give customers incredible resources that they would usually not have access to. And the diverse sources of content for these Web 2.0 sites (such as Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Flickr, Blogger, and Wikipedia) means that they can grow at rates that even the most powerful corporations could never achieve. This is the power of Web 2.0 – this is the future of the internet.

Travel 2.0

Much like the rest of the web, travel, accommodation and tourism sites are set to undergo the same kind of changes. It is still early days for the new travel 2.0 paradigm, but travellers are already beginning to expect features that the online giants of travel seem reluctant to provide. Research has shown that potential guests seek out honest reviews and respect blogs and user opinions more than expert write-ups. Despite this trend, 10 year old websites seem to have become stuck in their ways. These once dynamic players, newcomers to the global industry, have become too comfortable. They simply list accommodation. They allow users to book a place to sleep. And they refuse to recognise that customers demand more, and that’s why ZissuTravel.com is set to knock the socks off the South African tourism industry…

On the bleeding edge

Zissu Travel offers all the traditional features and more and more and more… The only paradigm that we are stuck in is that we are committed to moving forward, evolving, remaining on the bleeding edge. Currently, online tourists are expressing a desire for Web 2.0 philosophies being applied to a travel site. The most important features required by users are collaboration,transparency and ease of navigation.

1. Collaboration: Collaboration is to everybody’s advantage. ZissuTravel.com has thousands of content pages about regions (from Provinces to tiny suburbs) and tourist activities (from iconic attractions to niche interests). So do many of our competitors. The difference is the rate at which information on our Travel 2.0 site can be accumulated. Many of our guides have already been written or contributed to by establishments listed on the site, but once we open to online travellers this information can mushroom exponentially. This will clearly benefit visitors to the site and accommodation establishments listed on the site. Soon, we expect to be South Africa’s most comprehensive travel guide. Later, posting reviews, comments, YouTube videos and travel blogs will all be options available to Zissu users.

2. Ease of Navigation: You might think that with this vast amount of content that users will be lost. For instance, if I want to travel to Cape Town how will I know that Table Mountain or Cape Point is more relevant than Ouma’s Beadshop? Well Zissu Travel has poineered an “importance factor” that will ensure that more relevant options come up more often, and like everything else on the site, importance will be decided by the input and preference of the entire Zissu community. On top of this, searches on the site aren’t  hindered by the archaic limitation imposed by some of our competitors that only recognise searches of establishment names or region names.  ZissuTravel.com can search all of these, but can also handle more general inputs like “beach” or “horse riding“, or “horse riding in KwaZulu-Natal“. When using ZissuTravel.com you will always know where you are, and how to get to the page that you want to see.

3. Transparency in Data: Ever wandered why all the reviews on Example.com’s site are over 90%? How can everyone rave about every accommodation establishment? Surely not everyone had the best holiday of their life though this site? Well, the truth is, many of our competitors hide bad reviews and never let them see the light of day. They consider bad reviews to be bad for business. While certain fact checking should certainly be undertaken, the only requirement to post a comment should be that you actually booked at that establishment – beyond that it is up to the establishment to post a reply and justify the experience. Believe it or not, some of our competitors even allow guest houses, B&B’s and hotels to write their own reviews! These same places allow establishments to pay to rank higher on their search listing, meaning that the accommodation options presented to you are often not even relevant to you desired holiday. These practises are unacceptable and cannot persist. ZissuTravel.com is designed with the customer in mind – its the only approach that makes any business sense.

To sum up

This isn’t innovation for innovation’s sake. This is innovation where it is sorely required. You will love this. South Africa will love this. The tourism industry. Establishment owners. Guests, guests, guests. Everyone.

Up till now our marketing efforts to accommodation owners have been focused on the Western Cape with small escapades into other regions such as East London and PE, and the response to Zissu has been wonderful.

Currently 127 suppliers of accommodations have joined the site (some of whom have listed multiple accommodations). This growing community has also joined Zissu Travel in writing over 280 activity guides to South Africa’s best tourism attractions.

Our forecasts show that, from the Easter weekend until our immanent launch at the end of the month, Zissu Travel will attract an additional 400 odd accommodation registrations. This is a conservative estimate based on the fact that we still have to follow 80% of our current leads.

Zissu Travel also expects that by the end of the month the website will contain over 1000 pages of content about South African regions and tourist activities. At launch these pages will be opened to public viewing, and will be maintained as a South African tourism ‘Wiki’, ready to grow into the greatest ever South African travel guide. Accommodation will begin to accept online bookings through Zissu Travel at the same time.

“It seems that accommodation owners like what we have on offer. We expected that they would, but somehow the response has still caught us by surprise,” said Marcel van de Ghinste, Sales and Marketing for Zissu Travel. The fact that Zissu Travel hasn’t yet launched to customers doesn’t seem to be holding back accommodation owners who want a greater online presence.

Zissu Travel’s launch to guests in April is rapidly approaching, but registering establishments on the site has run so smoothly, that Zissu has decided to extend their April launch goal to include the rest of South Africa. The Zissu site makes it easy for accommodation owners to register establishments on the page. Zissu Travel offers registered clients a multitude of expected features, like secure online accommodation booking, but it is their range of unique features for users which Zissu Travel expects will draw guests onto the site.