CTC launches beta version of blogging site on Canada.travel

More Canadian innovation as reported in the Tourism INTERNET Marketing Blog by Jens.

It seems our friends to the North are showing not only U.S. but other DMOs around the world how to embrace what's collectively called web 2.0 and take active steps to engage with their audience.

I've just last week been asked by a colleague to rate some DMO sites and without doing a really exhaustive search, I really didn't come up with anything truly amazing. Sure, a lot of sites use technology quite well and the sites are attractive, sort of in the same way print brochures and advertising were. A great photo or flash show across the top of the first page seems all the rage - an approach we first introduced on MySwitzerland.com back in '99 so its not really innovative!

Booking engines for accommodation are getting also very common, especially on city sites but going a step further and truly offer a one stop shopping experience with airline reservations and ground services is very rare indeed.

This effort by Canada is the first I've seen that goes beyond that into more user interaction with social networking tools. That's what the conversation is about, not one way communications, as I've stated many times before.

"Good luck - Canada!" and tell us how it's working out.

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