Travopia was launched on April 1, 2012 with the vision of creating a platform for travel technology enthusiasts to collaborate and benefit from travel technology knowledge osmosis. Its been eight months of exciting journey so far, and we are successfully marching towards the vision. There are number of steps that we need to take to achieve the vision. One such step was the introduction of ‘News‘ section in Travopia where we pick travel technology related news and present it with our research / thought pointers added to it.

In the last 15 days, there was only one article posted in Travopia. I went on vacation for 15 days and that’s the reason for low activity in Travopia. Before leaving for vacation, I had to attend an emergency for a week because of which I could not have any backup plan for Travopia during my absence. So, the point is – there was only 1 article in last 15 days and we are very sad about that.

Today, Travopia crossed 50,000 views. We did it in 190 days from launch date (April 1). Travopia had a fantastic 6 months with readers from literally every country in the world. The site attracts 800 to 1000 B2B readers everyday. In 6 months of our journey, our articles got featured in major publications like FOLHA (Brazil’s biggest newspaper), Tnooz (leading B2B news portal), HotelMarketing.com, Business Traveler Europe, Scoop.it, Tourismuszukunft.de to name a few.

Today is the 57th day of Travopia. In the last 50+ days, Travopia has got a maximum of 500 views per day and on an average the site attracts 300+ views per day. Some of our posts go viral on the net. Especially, Project Google Glass article went viral and got featured in Brazil’s biggest newspaper FOLHA. Travopia’s LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter pages are being followed by eminent travel industry leaders like Norm Rose, Abhinav Dhar, Founders, CEOs, many  senior management executives and wonderful travel enthusiasts. With a great reader base, healthy discussions started happening in the “Comments” section of posts.

Two weeks back, we had announced a contest to create an identity / logo for Travopia. We adopted the crowdsourcing style to create an identity and it has done wonders. There were many enthusiastic participants – some clarified their questions, some went to the next stage to design logos and sent it, some went even a step further and worked with me closely. We had participants in various stages. And, now we have a remarkable identity created for Travopia. As the saying goes – Winning is not important, but participating. We truly thank everyone who had taken part in this contest.

Travopia’s logo was designed using a freeware tool. It looks just fine, but it doesn’t look professional (at least, to me) and doesn’t convey the focus themes of Travopia. In 25+ days of launch, we get 400+ readers per day and we got featured in Brazil’s biggest daily newspaper “Folha”. To continue this momentum, there are lot of structuring happening in Travopia. We removed News, Trips from our focus areas and started to focus only on four areas. An another initiative is to redesign the logo.

April 26 2012 was a great day for Travopia. “Folha“, the biggest daily newspaper in Brazil featured Travopia in their article titled “Project Glass Stirs Travellers”. In this article, Folha quotes the article that Travopia wrote on Project Google Glass and its impact on travel industry.

Travopia was started on April 1, 2012. On the 16th day, we recorded 200+ visits per day. On the 19th day, we recorded 400+ visits per day. Our Google analytic report indicates that readers are increasing every day, now we have good number of readers from Russia, Africa and Canada too. Majority of our readers are from India, North America and Europe.Our Facebook fans, Twitter followers and LinkedIn group members are also on rise.

A hidden crocodile in a passenger’s bag breaks the bag, comes out. All 20 passengers and the air hostess run for life, plane loses its balance (center of gravity) and collapses into ground. It happened in Africa. 19 out of 20 died.

There are softwares that manage the balance of the plane, but how about software that manages a situation like this? How to handle this situation? Ideas? May be when the plane loses balance, the system should automatically trigger a message to ATC and automatically push its cargos to balance weight? Its a crazy idea, but it will handle this situation.

Source:
http://www.news.com.au/travel/news/crocodile-on-a-plane-kills-19/story-e6frfq80-1225942045322

One of my passion is Travel and Transportation Industry. TravelHawk.org will complement my passion. After registering the domain, I had put a speed breaker to think on the contents of this site. I thought about all the sub-domains of Travel Industry for two days and finally figured out that I will write about the following main topics:

• Flights
• Cruises
• Rail, Road Vehicles
• Hoteliers
• Tourism, Transport

All set to go. Happy reading!

The one and only certification that I found on net for IT Hospitality professionals: http://www.expertrating.com/awareness-tests/Hospitality-Awareness-and-Terminology-Certification.asp

Cost of this certification is 10$ (Rs 500). I took this certification and got a score of 88%. You may click THIS LINK to view my score card.

If you know of any other certification regarding hospitality industry, please let me know.

Incident Inside Flight: On 23rd July, 1983, Air Canada flight 143 that carried 61 passengers ran out of fuel in mid air on its way from Montreal to Edmonton. At 41,000 feet over Red Lake, Ontario, the aircraft’s cockpit warning system sounded, indicating a fuel pressure problem on the aircraft’s left side. Assuming that a fuel pump had failed, the pilots turned it off.