Until now, it was usual to find blogs aiming at a very specific travel market: the backpacker’s. Most of the time they rather focused on low budget tourism or were encouraged by a romantic approach to the subject of movement. Slowly though, this issue has begun to diversify, and blogs are starting to generate propositions to compete with the most expensive travel market, that was a clear patrimony of graphic publications. Examples of this trend can be found in A Luxury Travel Blog, focused on travel packages to rather expensive or exclusive destinations; and The Lobby, the Starwood hotels, owners of the Sheraton brand, blog. In this last case, the subject concentrates around helping this chain’s frequent travellers to take better advantage of their stays. But they don’t focus on their hotels only, they also include articles on electronic devices and useful websites.

Surely, in the following months we’ll see travel blogs focusing on smaller market segments, such as family tourism, adventure, trekking, etc. I guess by the time blogs start reaching more specific niches, many graphic media will have to pay closer attention to their public.

LAB, Lloyd Aereo Boliviano, Bolivia’s most important airline, is about to go broke, because of the huge unpaid debt it faces. Several flights to many destinations, Spain among them, have already been suspended and there’s a big chance the airline will stop functioning altogether. These last days, what’s clear it’s that its current owner, Ernesto Asbun, will leave the company and this one could become a cooperative, run by its own workers. Of course, it’s not so simple, since they’ll have to negotiate debt for around US$ 170 millions, according to the bolivian government. Besides, Bolivia’s vicepresident, Alvaro Garcia Linera, stated public funds will not be used to save the company.

The disappearing of LAB would hugely complicate the offer of flights between Bolivia and the rest of Latin America, affecting particularly those who want to fly to cities other than Santa Cruz, where most companies fly to. Let’s see what happens during the following hours, but the problem is really bad. More information at Los Tiempos de Cochabamba; La Razon de La Paz, and El Nuevo Dia de La Paz.

It’s been said that since the appearing of collaborative technologies in the Internet, the so called “Web 2.0″ has made its may through. The potential of the Internet, according to this conceptualization, is not the ability to distribute contents in an economic way, but to provide users a collaborative platform of knowledge construction. Thus, the way of enjoying and obtaining muisc -with users building files exchange networks- is changing, as well as the way journalism is being made, from the irruption of the so called “citizen journalism”.

Is something similar going on within the travels area? Is the Internet modifying the way to do business in the tourism market? Can we talk about Travel 2.0?

Let’s take a look at some of the changes brought by the arrival of the Internet to the tourism field:

To be able to talk about “Travel 2.0″, that is to place a label on it, we’d have to find a collaborative dimension among the different actors. Except for the integration of the airlines supply chain -something that many companies from other sectors, from informatics to food related, have done- I don’t see many collaborative uses related to the travel field. There are some very specific examples, such as Wikitravel or sites destined to share information -which, we have to admit, is a limited form of collaboration. Is there some way in which the Internet can change the tourism business, in the same way it’s doing it with journalism or the delegation of tasks to third parties many companies are doing? As long as this doesn’t occur, we’ll hardly be able to talk about a 2.0 era in the travel market.

Florianopolis is, next to Camboriu, argentineans favorite destination in Brazil. The reasons are simple: the beaches are pretty and nearby -even when ‘nearby’ means an entire day bus ride or boarding an airplane. For this reason, many people consider this place the argentinean colonies of the south of Brasil, although it’s not hard to find uruguayans and chileans on vacations in these destinations as well. And the local tourism market has adapted quite well, the local brazilians who work in services usually handle a basic spanish decent enough to understand the requirements of those who don’t speak portuguese -something not so common in the rest of Brazil.

Florianopolis is, for those who don’t know it, an island with 42 beaches and many types of waves, going from the biggest and strongest ones perfect for surf at Mole, or the quiet ones, as in Barra da Lagoa, which is where we stayed at for a couple of days.

This last destination has grown a lot, to the point that Florianopolis tourism office is strongly recommending to visit the place, since finding lodging, even during high season, is not as complicated as in other places of the island. You can find small apartments with one bedroom, bathroom and kitchen for 25 reais per person, per day, and even less if you stay a few blocks away from the beach. Before you ask: it’s quite easy to find a place, as soon as you get off the bus, there will be people offering you rooms, in our case, we went there towards the end of january and it took us less than five minutes to find a place.

To get to Barra da Lagoa, or any beach on the north side of the island, the most popular side, you have to go the local bus terminal, located next to the rodoviaria. There’s not direct service, so you’ll have to make a connection at the Lagoa de Conceiçao bus stop -also known as TLAG, pronounced “tilagi”- next to the lagoon located almost in the center of the island. From there, just take another bus that goes up to Barra da Lagoa, stopping at Mole beach first. The ride fare is 2.30 reais one way. There are two lines: one goes direct (with only one stop) and the other one makes many stops along the way. The schedule is placed at the bus stops.

Despite the last years growth, Barra still is a quiet place, mith many lodges and not big hotels or commerces. Restaurants are located in front of the beach, and seafood is the most popular around. Sequencia de camarao is a highly recommended plate, a large amount of food -shrimp, fried fish, feijao (black beans), rice, fries, among others- for 35 reais, big enough to feed three people. If you don’t want to spend much, you can get single dishes of fried chicken or fish for under 8 reais. To snack on the beach, you have the traditional grilled cheese on a stick vendors walking around the shores. An useful tip: there’s at least one money exchange office, the rates are reasonable, although a few cents less than at the biggest cities.

Barra da Lagoa beach is extremely calm; not as calm as Praia do Farol at Ilha do Mel, though. It’s ideal to relax and float without many concerns. If you want to surf, you can take a bus to Mole beach, which is close and has big waves. By the way, from Barra you can join a tour to Campeche island. It seemed nice in the pictures, although we couldn’t go because we had to buy the tickets several days beforehand, since there’s a high demand.

We still have to mention Rio da Lagoa and Prainha, but we’ll leave that for the next entry about Barra da Lagoa.