CoolAustria - Austrian National Tourist Board launches Web 2.0 project

As you know I feature one English language article every Monday, and I like to alternate between interviews and my own content. But now I have two insightful interviews waiting to be published. One with William Bakker, Director of E-Business at  Tourism British Columbia, one with Justin Abbott from Blogads, who was in charge of last year's Bloggersinamsterdam project for Holland.com.

Well, the pre-launch of the Web 2.0 platform CoolAustria by the Austrian National Tourist Office (ANTO) a couple of days ago has messed up my editorial schedule even further. Because I believe my interview with Markus Gratzer - who is in charge of Coolaustria at ANTO - about the project's scope is of interest as well. Since that interview is in German, I shamelessly ask Joe Buhler, Jens Thraenhart or William Bakker, who all understand German perfectly, to give it a look.

However, the language of CoolAustria is English (sort of), so I encourage everybody to check it out. While I definetly cannot deny a certain feeling of awe and pride for their courage, I remain ambivalent.

Comments

[Kommentiert von: Jens Thraenhart]

Hi Karin,

Great interview! It looks like a majority of the National Tourism Organizations are working on social media websites - Canada included (as well as Sweden, Australia, etc.). We have finished phase 1 of our development and it is currently in beta for the english markets, and will go live soon. We are also working with some of our partners on social media campaigns. I especially like the fact to include residents in the process, to share experiences about their own country. In Canada, Tourism British Columbia was an early adopter of leveraging blogs - William may comment himself. Very exciting times. I believe the next wave will be around leveraging blogs for niche lifestyles...

Jens
Canadian Tourism Commission
www.canada.travel

[Kommentiert von: Karin]

Jens, Yes, very exciting times indeed. My (classic PR) client Weinviertel Tourismus launched a blog written by six winemakers of the region last September. It is read by German speaking winelovers. However, real touristic features remain yet to be implemented.
http://www.winzerblog.at
Looking forward to your launch. Karin

[Kommentiert von: William Bakker]

Very ambitious project and I hope it will be successful. I've shared some thoughts on my blog (www.wilhelmus.ca).