Bratislavia, Slovakia ...or is it?
Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, is sometimes referred to (although incorrectly) as Bratislavia. It has to do probably with Slovaks being part of larger cultural and language group knows as Slavians. Letter "I" is then inserted into Bratislava, making it Bratislavia.
Google currently indexes over twentytwo thousand pages that contain incorrect spelling of Bratislava: "Bratislavia". There are even some AdWords advertisements located on the search results page showing Bratislavia as a place to visit. Never mind that Bratislavia has never existed.
Wikipedia lists the following historical versions of Bratislava's name:
Istropolis - ancient Roman name
Posonium - Latin name
Pressbourg (Presbourg) - old French name
Pressburg (Preßburg) - German name
Pozsony - Hungarian name
Presporok - older Slovak name
Bratislava - current name
Bratislavia is not and never was among them. The temptation to use -via suffix comes mostly from the English speaking people.
Wise travel industry website owner will use this knowledge for search engine optimization of tourism-related website. As you can see, we can create a special landing page for people looking for different spellings (variations) of the same city to attract more visitors from the search engines.
PS: More information on Bratislava is available at Bratislava Guide.
:: 25.10.2006 :: filed under Reviews :: written by Daniel :: [*] :: Comments (0) ::
Map (theft) on-line
When looking for a map for a travel website many beginning non-professional webmasters opt for not too sophisticated theft - after all another website's map is quite easy to copy as a picture.
More advanced travel websites occasionally have their maps revectorised - taking a regular image (roster) map and turning (redrawing) it through software into vectors, which can then scale and provide the advanced GIS functionality. These days a Google search for "map vectorization" reveals many companies able to perform such service with expertise.
Our experience in trying to obtain a legal yet reasonably cheap city map was a tricky one - many of the official map providers we contacted charged what appeared to us as outrageous prices yet took no action against websites blatantly stealing their map visuals and displaying them as their own.
For instance, many a website covering Bratislava use the very same map - a copyrighted pdf. Most simply modify it by cutting of the bottom strip containing the copyright. The owner does not seem to mind trying to charge others who would like to use it legally about EUR 350 (USD 400) for the privilege.
A few days ago we reported on our efforts to contact Maporama, who provides a lovely Bratislava map. After a little difficulty finding Maporama distributors on their website we did find a list and contacted the one in Romania. No reply in four days and I am obliged to carry out a small experiment (hat tip to Tom Locke): contact all European Maporama distributors on the list with the same request and see whether they can deliver on the promise of this European leader on the market of Geocentric Services.
These identical email requests were sent out to five Maporama distributors:
"Hi, I would like to inquire about the price of a Maporama map of Bratislava to be used instead of the current map at http://www.bratislavaguide.com/map. Thank you for your prompt answer."
On March 20, 2006 I sent the request to the Maporama Distributor in Romania. On March 23, having not received a reply, I sent the message to the distributors in Estonia, Poland, Greece and Hong Kong. As of March 27 I had received no replies.
On March 28 the first reply came in, quite friendly, from the Polish Maporama distributor (?) www.emapa.pl. Apparently, Emapa "are not resellers of Maporama's mapping - on the contrary, [Emapa] are Maporama's suppliers as far as map data of Poland is concerned. As such, [Emapa] cannot provide you with a price quotation for the www map service you inquired about - we simply are not in the possession of the mapping data you require." Well, time to send the message of to biz@maporama.com - listed below the list of Maporama Distributors Worldwide as the address for business information.
The following table provides a brief overview of how the articles have performed in the top search engines. Each line is structured as follows:
SE - position for word "maporama" - position for words "maporama distributors"Results on March 27, 2006
Google.com - 20 - 3
Yahoo.com - not in first 500 - not in first 500
MSN.com - 50 - 2
Results on March 28, 2006
Google.com - 21 - 3
Yahoo.com - not in first 500 - not in first 500
MSN.com - 50 - 2
The strong showing in Google is certainly of note, as is the no-show in (at least in the top results) in Yahoo. Certainly, adding fresh, relevant content should not hurt.
* - the words "maporama distributors" were searched for without the commas, these are added for the reader's convenience.
:: 28.03.2006 :: filed under Reviews :: written by Andrej :: [*] :: Comments (0) ::
Looking for Maporama distributors?
Try to find worldwide distributors of Maporama, the French-based "European leader on the market of Geocentric Services". Although Maporama's maps "enable companies to locate precisely fixed elements [such as] location of sales outlets...in real time" their own link to their distributor list reads "file://///192.168.50.15/wwwroot/home/en/company/maporama%2Bdistributors.asp?SESSIONID=" and does not seem to open on my computer. See the link for yourself at Maporama's Contact us page.
We may consider Maporama as a supplier (since we actually did find their distributor list after lightly "re-engeneering" the URL under scrutiny). To save their other potential customers the hassle, you may See Maporama Distributors Worldwide courtesy of TravelWebReview.com.
:: 19.03.2006 :: filed under Reviews :: written by Andrej :: [*] :: Comments (0) ::
Payment processing for a non-US travel website
Running a website out of one of the European Union's new member states disqualifies you currently from receiving funds via PayPal. You need a bank account in another country, which is quite difficult to get.
Merchant accounts are notoriously difficult and expansive to obtain and suffer from a singificant US-centrism. There are a number of online alternatives but none have the name recognition of PayPal and its near-universal (or first world universal) presence.
Local banks also offer some feasible alternatives - the least quirky and most experienced probably being TatraPay from TatraBanka. You must be a client and qualify through sufficient duration and turnover. The processing, however, is not integrated seamlessly and TatraBanka is unlikely to have much name recognition abroad despite being one of Slovakia's largest retail banks.
Mobile-pay systems seem a promising venue but are far from usable due to limited list of cooperating mobile companies. Slovakia-based PayPay seems interesting and certainly worth watching but there are probably countless competitors at various stages of implementation.
Therefore, the prospect of a Google payment system, currently receiving major attention throughout the webmaster community, seems and appealing one and certainly in this region of the world it could sto PayPal dead in its tracks (unless it chooses to start with a limited roll-out in major markets only).
:: 18.03.2006 :: filed under Reviews :: written by Andrej :: [*] :: Comments (0) ::
.travel domains registration begins
Following years of debate registrations are due to start on the new .travel top level domain (TLD). Are these of value to the travel industry on-line?
:: 30.09.2005 :: filed under Reviews :: written by Andrej :: [*] :: Comments (0) ::
Welcome to Travel Web Review blog
Our first idea about Travel Web Review
came after we had realized there is no website covering topics of
Search Engine Optimization, Return of Investment (ROI), Websites
Usability and Accessibility for travel industry related websites.
:: 14.09.2004 :: filed under Reviews :: written by Daniel :: [*] :: Comments (0) ::
Improving Travel Website Conversion Rates
Accessibility
Do you take phone calls?
Trust
Usability
:: 16.08.2004 :: filed under Reviews :: written by Andrej :: [*] :: Comments (0) ::