Opinion
Media on Trial: travelmail.co.uk
12.06.2007Emma Dibben, Deputy Head of Press Last week saw the launch of the new Daily Mail travel website: travelmail.co.uk. Upon initial inspection, the site is not especially pleasing to the eye – the striped background looks quite cheap and the design is generally not as slick as competitor sites. The recently re-designed Times site seems to look a lot cleaner in design, although the Mail has managed to produce a home page which is a lot smaller and less cluttered.
The site does seem relatively easy to navigate with the opportunity to book holidays in conjunction with Teletext and Lastminute.com without leaving the site. There are also links to other travel shops.
There is a search engine with archive information: you could argue that this goes back a little too far as although my searches yielded very recent results, it also gave me information from 2000 which was out of date.
The site also offers many destination guides, the list is not exhaustive but covers a large number of destinations.
Travelmail.co.uk includes some user-generated content whereby users can send in photos, videos or stories of their holiday experiences. Personally, I’m not sure if I’m keen to see Daily Mail users on their holidays and it’s very much the case that one man’s meat can be another man’s poison where holidays are concerned.
However, it may prove a useful source of information although content is rather light at this stage but I’m sure that this will change in the fullness of time. It’s also a more personal approach to the video destination guides contained on AOL Travel which are professionally produced and introduced by experts such as Simon Calder.
Contextual advertising is to be sold on a pay per click basis as an add on to Daily Mail Travel Classified insertions in print. Display advertising is to be handled by Teletext.
While the site is not offering anything truly ground-breaking in terms of content, travelmail certainly provides another valid option for travel advertisers and with an extensive marketing programme planned in Daily Mail and Mail On Sunday titles and sites it is sure to attract a large audience.
