The ever ethereal “they” say that a change is as good as a holiday, and if your idea of a fun holiday is learning new skills as you travel, then you should be aware of the many wonderful opportunities for both matriculant’s and (young) adults.

Ready to start living the high life

Taking a gap year – where you travel and work – is a great option for those who don’t know what they want to study yet, and a break from the hum-drum norm for those who have been studying, or working.

Some of the many benefits include:

• Getting to be a traveller and not a tourist.
• Learning about a new culture.
• Gaining new skills and a variety of work experiences.
• Improving your resume.

Jet-setters Passports

There are a lot of programs on offer, but always do further research on the company you choose to use, so you don’t end up with an agency who’ll take your money and vanish into the night.

If you are accepted into a work program, ensure you read the fine print, and are aware of how long you will be staying, (if it’s only one season, or a whole year).

It’s important to note that most programs require applicants to submit to a drug test, medical examination, and for females, a pregnancy test.

To get rid of some of the stress of searching for a reliable company, below are a few established work and volunteer programs:

• If you’ve ever thought of running away and joining the circus, then this is the next best thing. Away2xplore specialises in placing applicants in various carnivals across America. The prospective employers will pay for your return air ticket and work permit. Furthermore, they’ll even pay for your travel expenses in the United States. If you’re accepted, all you need to do is get a passport, a visa, and then you’re well on your way to start earning dollars. http://www.away2xplore.co.za.

  

  Onward and Upwards

• Speaking from personal experience, I can recommend Workaway International as a reputable and reliable agency, placing South Africans in various positions at country clubs in America. You will need to have a valid passport, and attend the briefing session so you are aware of what you’re signing up for. After, you will be informed when interviews will be taking place, and if you’re lucky enough to be chosen after the interviews, all you need to do is apply for your visa, go for a medical exam, and once that’s out the way, they’ll sort out everything in between. http://www.workaway.com.

• The Chennels family have been actively involved with volunteering for over 30 years. Based in Eshowe, Zululand, they offer you a choice of working with either children in local schools, assisting with a community upliftment project, or helping out in the skills centre. They also give you the flexibility to move from project to project to on a weekly basis. Find out more: http://www.chennellsvolunteerprojects.com.

• At Work Travel S.A, all of the volunteer projects are aimed at giving back to local communities. They offer a variety of volunteer work, such as working with orphans, wildlife, marine life, and getting involved with community projects. They also have an internship program in the hospitality industry. Find out more information by visiting their website: http://worktravelsa.org.
• If what you’re looking for is just the travel experience, and no monetary compensation, then consider Workaway.info. The aim of this agency is to introduce working travellers to like-minded hosts, without having to pay expensive agency fees. By doing volunteer work for only a few hours a day, in exchange for food and accommodation, you have the opportunity to learn about the local lifestyle and community. Choose which continent and city appeals to you, and then pick work that you’ll enjoy, from painting to planting, shopping to shearing, and building to babysitting. A small joining fee is required to access their world wide database of hosts. www.workaway.info.

A city of lights

I speak from experience when I say that travelling opens your eyes and gives you a chance to learn more about the world around you. It is a gift to be able to immerse yourself in a new culture, live a different lifestyle, and meet many wonderful people. When you return home (be it two weeks, six months or only after many years of travel), you’ll find that you’ve grown a great deal – and often have a plethora of great anedotes and stories – and some amazing new friends.

Keeping that old saying in mind, “You need to walk a mile in someones shoes to understand them”, I say just start moving forward, and enjoy the journey. Let us know your experiences, if you’ve ever done local volunteer work, or gone abroad to earn dollars, pounds, rubles or yen. Feel free to add any agencies you’ve used in the past, and remember, no matter where you go or what you do, take some time out to relax, look around and memorise every moment.

This post was written by Roseanna McBain, TravelGround.com.

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.

If you’ve never heard of twitter, its a social networking service that works like a micro-blogging system. Posts have to be 140 characters or less, which keeps them down to bite sized chunks – the aim here is regularity, not detail!

We will be tweeting about ZissuTravel.com, our Wiki tourism guides, this blog, press, SEO, the travel industry, local news, and even day to day life at Zissu Travel. If you are an interested party, especially if you are in the hotel, travel or South African accommodation industies, then check it out!