Yesterday I wrote at 7 new wonders: patriotism and business about the topic of election of the “7 new world wonders”, organised by a swiss firm with commercial reasons. While the first vote is free, any additional vote is not. Why would anyone vote more than once? In some countries big campaigns have been set to make internet users vote to, I suppose, leave the nation’s honor high.

Now, one of things I stated in that entry was that the election was organised by a private firm and not the UNESCO, that would be the institution that should validate this initiative in case it was actually relevant. But it turns out, that when reading the spanish newspaper El Pais I found this:

The swiss millionaire Bernard Weber organizes the contest, supported by the UNESCO an in which one can vote through e-mail, telephone and mobile messages.

The UNESCO supports the contest? I assumed the journalist Carmen Perez-Lanzac had access to information posted after my entry on the topic. So the first thing I did was go to official 7 new wonders site. And with the assumption that such information would be standing out in the site, since UNESCO’s support would be of enormous importance. And I found nothing; not only no mention about the subject in the homepage, but neither in the press news or any other sections. However, checking out the page dedicated to expert panel that participate in the event, I found out the president of the panel is Federico Mayor, an spanish citizen who was general director of UNESCO. But he participates in the contest as an individual an not in representation of the organisation, as the Wikipedia states.

I went to the UNESCO site. I checked the press official news with several search. I found nothing. Unfortunately, the note at the spanish newspaper El Pais has no links to any site where the UNESCO’s support to the contest appears, and I take for granted that the journalist checked that info before publishing. But at least with the public information that is in the Net, I haven’t been able to verify that affirmation. Now, I don’t know what to think. That a commercial initiative is presented as something supported by an international institution such as the UNESCO is something serious, and deserves attention.

If anyone has more information to clear our doubts, it would be really good .

A few months ago, many media started promoting a contest about the “New 7 wonders of the world“. Such task is not being carried ahead by the UNESCO or any other relevant global organisation, but by a private company that charges for every additional vote for a “new wonder” -the first one is free when issued on the web, but you’ll have to pay if you want to do it through SMS. The worst thing is that several countries have launched strong campaigns to promote the vote for its country’s “wonders”. That is, their citizen, in the name of national pride, have to increase the profits of a private company that is making business of a contest of argueable seriousness.

At Viaje Aqui, carioca Ricardo Freire says something quite interesting:

It’s an insult to intelligence to place Machu Picchu, Angkor, Isla de Pascua Islands, the Coliseum, the China Wall, Egypt’s and Chichen Itza’s pyramids next to the Liberty Statue, the Corcovado Christ and the Cinderella Castle in Baviera. Excuse me? Cinderella’s Castle?

An acclaration, just in case, the castle is in fact called Neuschwanstein, and Disney based in it to make Cinderella’s.

Tony Galvez’ blog de Viaje a Brasil also talks about the 7 new wonders of the world topic.

It’s not worth spending money in this. It’s not even recognized by an important organisation, so don’t waste your time and money in these things. The real sad thing is that there are governments that are taking this seriously, and spending public funds in promoting something that has no real value, like being recognized by UNESCO.

UPDATE: the egyptian government complays about the lack of seriousness of the contest, which they consider of poor scientific value. More at this link (spanish).

One feature that is not uncommon in many places of Latin America -and a few other countries outside the region- is that the beer consumption is not measured by the style of beer -ale, stout, pilsen- but by the brand. Most people don’t have a clue of what type of beer they’re drinking, particularly respecting blondes. While in the latest years the weight of smaller breweries has grown, its weight on the market is definitely still small.

Why the lack of higher specialization when drinking beer? why do we drink brands and not varieties? why is that a lot of people doesn’t even know there’s many varieties of beer, as with wine? It’s interesting to see how the weight of marketing, built on brands, hasn’t even helped to associate the name of a beer to a variety. In Argentina, for example, many people drink Quilmes, and period.

What’s this beer’s variety? While it’s true that in the latest years this company, now owned by Ambev, has tried to put on the market some new variety -for instance, Quilmes stout- the attempt is at least something isolated. It doesn’t seem to exist plans, in the next months, for new labels. Thus, the argentinean beer market has no red beer, for example. And dark beers usually have generic names, with few exceptions. To get to drink well identified varieties, one has to point at smaller brewery brands, such as Otro Mundo, Antares, Barbarroja, Blest, Otto Tipp, Patagonia, etc. The big problem is, of course, the price, that can be over five times more expensive than a massive brand’s.

Many anthropology of consumption works have proved how our appropiation of the products we buy has become more sophisticated. But this phenomenon, at least in the beer market, still seems irrelevant, specially when compared to the level of sophistication the wine segment has. And I’m talking about countries where a strong wine consumption exists, wines that were once barely labeled as “red” and “white”.

Who knows, maybe in a few years we’ll start to see a bigger variety in Latin American massive beers markets. But, I think that, for a while, I’ll have to settle for small breweries red or stout beers. Which, by the way, has nothing wrong as long as I can afford them And of course, good brewed beers suggestions are welcome.

Those who have read in this blog the entries about Ilha do Mel, and are planning to go there, better be aware that Parana state authorities are strictly applying the 5 thousand tourists per day limit. Therefore, a few issues are coming up, and in some cases you can’t get boat tickets to get to the island unless a certain number of spaces are available.

More in Mochileros, a brazilian traveler’s forum (in portuguese). The note was originally seen at De viaje a Brazil, Tony Galvez’ blog (in spanish).

30 years ago, Dean Maccannell wrote this:

The touristic critic of tourism is not an analysis of tourism: it’s part of the problem (…) The touristic critic of tourism is based on the desire to outpower other “simple” tourists and reach a deeper appreciation of society and culture (…) All tourists want, at some point, this deeper commitment with society and culture; it’s a basic component of the motivation to travel.

Maccannell summarizes in this paragraph the eternal critic of the “traveler” over “tourists”. That is, that the traveler knows how travel better since, apparently, he has a “better understanding of the world”. That they use the same means of transportation and that they use the same payment systems in hotels and hostels are things that are usually overlooked. Against certain common senses, the mobility of the “traveler” around the world does not deserve to be studied differently than the “tourist’s”. Because, for those of us who play analysts, there’s a basic point to be respected: not to assume as obvious the perspective of the interviewed, the one who is part of the object of study. Methodologically, the “traveler’s” justification of “why they are better than tourists” shouldn’t be looked as an analytical form to approach the tourism field. In fact, these descriptions are part of the travel and tourism field, and should be analyzed as any other kind of document or text.

Dean Maccannell’s cite was taken from his book The tourist, originally published in 1976 and translated to spanish by Editorial Melusina in 2003.

The best thing about mobile devices is we can use them as we travel. The worst thing is, when we move a little, it usually doesn’t have the infrastructure needed to function. For example, I can think of the Blackberry I’ve been testing for a few weeks. Receiving emails anywhere and being able to answer them is indeed an extraordinary working tool. Until we reach the GPRS (the standard GSM net, the most used in mobile phones) net covered area. That is, we can’t go too far away from urban areas, or our Blackberry will not have signal. Not to mention notebook computers and its WiFi needs, or even count on normal signal on mobile phones. There are many mobile devices, but at least in most of Latin America, the basic infrastructure is limited to more populated areas.

Now well, many people are surprised that the Net doesn’t have more travel related applications that can be executed from a mobile device. There are tools such as Splash Travel, available for Palm OS, but not much more. I believe such absence is absolutely logical. What’s the point in creating such a social network that work in a mobile device for travelers, when most of the planet lacks of ubicuous locations to Internet? Even if Wimax started to expand rapidly, the possibility of internet connection available in most of the country is a long, 10 years perspective, or longer. Will web applications for mobile devices take that long to arrive? In our region, in the south of the world, it’s most likely. In Europe, where distances are shorter, they will appear much sooner -and in fact, tests of social networking for mobile phones are already being done in this area of the world.

If you want to read more about the topic of Mobile 2.0 - that is, the arrival of collaborative and participative tools for mobile devices- you can read the excellent summary published by Read/Write Web (thanks to Juan Pablo Paradelo for the info). For a more comprehensive definition of Mobile 2.0, check out Dan’s Blog.

Hotel Reservations is a reservations site. But don’t let its name mislead you: you can also buy airflight tickets and vacation packages, even rent cars. The service is available in english and spanish. While the homepage indicates it operates in countries such as the US, Canada, France, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, and other european nations, you can actually search through a lot more cities. If you’re looking for hotels in Asia, Latin America or Africa, just do your search and you’ll get a good number of results.

The site has many parts. The main is the hotel, travel packages and car rent search engine. There you only have to give some information, such as the city, and other requirements according to the search, and you’ll get results along with the price. In the case of hotels, besides, you can also observe extra information on every one of them and its location on the map. You can refine the search, and indicate if the hotel we’re looking for must have a pool, or allow pets, among other requirements.

While the reservations can be made directly from the Web, you can also do the transaction through the phone. The site has also many useful sections for those who wan to travel, such as travel guides for a large number of countries, and a very interesting search engine of places to visit within the US. Just enter the zip code, the number of hours you want to drive, and in what direction you want to go. Possible destinations will appear marked in the map, next to the route to take.

This entry is sponsored by Review Me.

Starting april 1st, the european community will begin to formally demand every bolivian citizen that enters this region to previously obtain a visa. According to official sources cited in the spanish newspaper El Pais, this measure was taken due to the “intense migratory pressure” from Bolivia. Other countries of the area already in the list of nations that need a visa include Colombia, Peru and Equator.

Despite the declarations made by spanish and european community’s authorities, it seems pretty obvious that in a short term other latin american countries will be added to the list. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m not usually optimistic in these issues. And even less, if we analyze how has the migratory policy and the US - Europe tourism regulation evolved, with increasingly more strict measures.

A couple of weeks ago, I had to go to a travel agency, and on the computers you could see a paper sign with the entry demands to the European community. A certain amount of money per day, credit cards, round trip tickets with no more than a 90 day stay in the region, etc. And I thought, while an european backpacker can travel almost anywhere in the world with a relatively small amount of money and have a long trip, most of us are not allowed to do that. Eventually, only thos with the right passport will be able to backpack around the world. Or am I being to pessimistic today? (Thanks, José, for the notice).

I’ve said this many times in this blog: what’s important about travel is the experience. It’s the people, what they think, feel, believe. Many of my persistent complaints about “travel journalism” practiced in my country respond to that absence in many notes. There are no relevant experiences, no people, just actors of the tourism market interested in making the agenda reflect points of view that benefits them.

But the experience can be commercialized by the industry. It’s what the tourism industry has always done: sell sensations, images, transitory situations. But even in the “experience market” there’s a lot to innovate, as you can see in the note published in the english newspaper The Times. And there are interesting examples in the article. For instance, Isango and Black Tomato, specialized in selling travel packages, emphasize on unconventional travel experiences, many times characterized with the ambiguous and unprecise term of “extreme”. Other more traditional sites, such as Lastminute.com, also have joined the trend of adding more experiences to the supply. It’s not just about selling trips, tickets and packages; it also adds to commercialize theater tickets, restaurant reservations and more.

The truth is, in the same way limits between ordinary life and travel become more diffuse, experiences associated to tourism also have more contact points with our “home” lifestyle. Surely, as time goes by, travel and tourism sites will expand its supply to newer areas, not associated to travel before. The process will not be so fast or in short terms, but it surely be happening in the next few years. Or months, if you realize how fast things happen in the Net.

The original The Times article can be found in this link, the reference was originally seen at Hotel Marketing.

Costa Rica is one of the most important touristic destinations in Latin America. The country is the most stable in its region and has always shown an important economic development. The section dedicated to this country by the Indigo Guide online guide tries to summarize the most important issues when visiting this nation: history, basic information about the population and its quality of life, weather conditions, air flights, plus sections about specific topics. There are special sections for the gay scene, the possibility to learn spanish, and plastic surgery -this last item being on high demand among US tourists, since medical costs in Costa Rica are much lower.

Destinations are divided in Central Pacific, North Pacific, South Pacific and the Caribbean. The information on every destination is quite basic and is limited mostly to specific info on geography, history and landscapes. Unfortunately, there are no pictures for us to appreciate the beauty of each location. It would also be important to get more useful information for the traveler, such as the availability of hotels in every place, including its prices; tours that can be done around the area; and places to eat and go out to. While the section dedicated to Costa Rica includes a section dedicated to tours and adventure tourism, these references are too general, so we have to do a further research in other sites. If traveling is basically an experience, a travel site should help us build and plan this experience. And in this sense, Costa Rica Indigo Guide falls a little short.

This entry is sponsored by Review Me.