Travel Weekly and the TW Group have signed a deal with the On Holiday Group to trial its video review system
Using the technology, agents will be able to show video reviews of resorts and hotels on gazetteers.com.
As a part of the deal, the agent reviews will then appear alongside consumer reviews on Holiday Brokers TV which is about to launch.
Travel Weekly online editor Martin Couzins said: “This is a really exciting technology that will allow us to develop our online agent community. As an independent media group, we believe we are ideally positioned to mobilise the trade behind this ambitious project.”
Couzins said it would help agents become part of Web 2.0, the next generation of the worldwide web, which allows people to create their own content, as on social networking sites Facebook and Myspace.
A mix of competitions and promotions will be launched to drive agent participation during the relatively quiet pre-Christmas period. Agents will be encouraged to film colleagues giving reviews of resorts and destinations, which can then be loaded by the agents onto the site and reviewed before publication.
Couzins said: “It’s not quite the X-Factor but we are expecting to discover some exciting talents that we plan to invite to head up film shoots in resort as a part of an online educational planned with the On Holiday Group.”
On Holiday Group sales director Brian Young said: “Our agency partners’ feedback to our video reviews project has been enormously positive, with many being keen to use the footage in their own sites or shops. Partnering with the TW Group gives the project the chance to work with agents in gathering expert reviews that can be blended with the customer reviews that we are rapidly compiling in resort. At a later date these will then be distributed as independent content within the highly respected Gazetteers.com system.”
TW Group publishing director Simon Ferguson said agents did not realise how easy it is to provide a video review. “The platform is so easy to use that agents can upload video from a wide range of tools ranging from their mobile phones to webcams. However, we have found that the most effective tools are actually the new digital cameras that most people have recently brought. The video quality is excellent and it is amazingly easy to transfer footage to their computers and then upload it via the tab on Holiday Brokers TV.”