June 19, 2008

Blogging and booting

What makes a good travel blog? Is it a compelling account of a writer's experiences on the road? Or is it the offer of insider info on great deals with airlines and hotels, frequent flyer redemption tips or destination updates? The Wrap has been taking a look at the best of the blogs.

Giving Qantas the BOOT

One of the Wrap's favourite blogs is BOOT, the Business of Online Travel, hosted by Tim Hughes, an online travel/retail/media executive and former lawyer and Internet venture capitalist.

In his latest post, Tim asks readers to complete the following sentence:

"Your BOOT correspondent flew Qantas yesterday. As per usual once the flight had levelled out at 30,000 feet he grabbed the remote control and discovered that the ..."

He promises the winner a well-thumbed copy of the Economist, Forbes magazine, Fortune, Time, Asia Golf Daily, Watch Maker Monthly, Knitting Weekly and every other magazine he could find to get him through a 14 -hour flight.

In Qantas defence, he says, the VOD system was back up and running within about half an hour "though the guy next to me had to change seats to find one that worked".

Hope the journey on the way back was better for you, Tim.

O'Leary blows in with a special offer

The Cranky Flier has been taking a look at Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary's press conference to announce plans for a transatlantic airline.

Cranky writes, "A bunch of economy class seats that will sell for 10 euros or something really cheap like that as well as a business class that'll run you 4,000 to 5,000 euros. Why would you pay that much?"

"Beds and blowjobs," says O'Leary.

Watch for yourself here.

Cranky especially liked the reaction of the interpreter at the conference was had some difficulty translating O'Leary's concept to a German audience.

DerrieAir, the only way to fly

The Fly Away Weblog has an interesting item on a spoof that has been flying around the travel websites in Cyberspace. Check it out here.

The website facetiously displays an imaginary airline, which charges by body weight, as well as the weight of your luggage.

It was a campaign by a US newspaper to measure responses to its advertising, but that didn't stop hundreds of thousands of readers logging onto the site.