Travel Videos Find Homes Online
With all the moment-capturing that goes on during vacations, does it make sense to have an online destination dedicated to sharing travel videos? Turns out more than one person thinks it’s a good idea. Two separate sites are launching today with that premise — Lonelyplanet.tv and Trivop.
Lonely Planet, the venerable guidebook maker, is expanding its original programming efforts to launch a website dedicated to travel video.
The site, powered by Reality Digital, advertises a contest with the prize being $5000, a computer, a camera, Final Cut Express HD, and a contract to buy your next video. No embeds, unfortunately, but here’s a screenshot.
Channels include “Encounter” for videos of locals, “Bluelist” for recommendations, “Guerilla Guide” for the low-down, “Oh F#@*! Oh Wow” for the best and worst, “A Year of Parties,” and “Tripcasts” for anything else. Channels are a mixed bag of Lonely Planet material and user material, with refreshingly minimal separation between the two.
Across the pond, Trivop, a product of Paris-based startup Videoagency, is dedicated to hotel videos,. It currently hosts hotelier-made videos, but promises user uploads are on the way. “[Y]ou will be able to compare what the hotel would like to show you and what travellers have actually experienced during their recent stay,” the company said in a press release.
However, it’s unclear travel video is a good business proposition. Just last week we wrote about TurnHere, a similar site devoted to videos about neighborhoods, changing direction to focus on more lucrative sponsored content.
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The lonely planet site is buggy .. definitely needs some work done to it.
Mike Harwood on April 2nd, 2007 at 12:18 pm - Permalink
Given the variable quality of most people’s videos, I’m not sure it will make particularly good viewing…..
Steve Warner on April 2nd, 2007 at 3:28 pm - Permalink
I think Lonely planet can do better. My review about their new site here: http://www.ugenco.com/?p=380
Niro -UGENCO on April 5th, 2007 at 12:53 am - Permalink
There are couple of others in this category: geobeats.com which has professional videos; travelistic.com which has both professional and user videos
Steve N. on April 5th, 2007 at 7:34 pm - Permalink
Travelistic is an excellent site for Travel videos - kind of like a YouTube for travel.
Chris TV on April 9th, 2007 at 3:28 am - Permalink