Wikivoyage talk:Welcome, tourism professionals

Could someone help with a write up/adjusting this: --(WT-en) Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 22:44, 17 October 2009 (EDT)

Incentives

Every month we feature some of our best guides on the front page of Wikivoyage, viewed by hundreds of thousands of visitors every month. That could be your destination! However, this requires you taking the time to carefully construct a complete guide in line with our policies and our tone, but considering the costs of reaching a global audience the size of Wikivoyage's through advertisement, it could easily prove more economical, more effective and more fun!

The Colorado hotel Wine Country Inn [1] spent a month building up a guide for its home region, Colorado's Wine Country, which was featured on the front page in August 2009. You can read about his experiences with the process in the related press release here.

Furthermore, as destinations guides grow into well developed articles, they tend to begin attracting a larger number of contributors who update, upgrade and improve the content constantly. As Wikivoyage's content is provided under a free license, you can take the new information, reviews, etc. back into your internal information ecology, provided that you don't charge for it.

Incentive section

Do we really want a link to an article about how WT has helped improve a region's tourism prospects? Would it be best to remove the link? --Nick (talk) 01:13, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

I've removed the example. --Nick ^talk 15:15, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Revision

I would like to revise this page so that it is more visually appealing. Text heavy information can be on a different page and linked to this page. Overall the message should be "welcome" with user-centric information and links. I will link to my usersubpage once it is created. Any initial thoughts, opinions, concerns? Thanks!--Tbennert (talk) 19:46, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

I just look forward to seeing what you come up with. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:48, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

German version of this

Hi, great work with this article! I'd like to see it translated into German, as that's the 2nd largest Wikivoyage. Anyone willing to help out? Cheers, Horst-schlaemma (talk) 11:41, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Use Google Translate. TravelAroundOz (talk) 09:03, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

No offense, but that's not very helpful advice, and since the question was asked almost 7 years ago, I think someone must have translated it a long time ago. But if not, Google Translate is not that accurate for a policy or guideline page. If it does still need translation, I wouldn't be the one to do it, but there are a number of people who could (and probably already did). Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:15, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

I am also looking for the same advice. It's the only way I've translated it into Portuguese with my limited understanding of the language. TravelAroundOz (talk) 10:28, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

There are Portuguese-speakers here, such as User:Ibaman and User:Nricardo. It would be much better if one of them looked at that translation. Have you seen Google translations into English? Granted, Google Translation is much better than it was a few years ago, but it is not nearly as good as a good translation, when you have more than a sentence or two and it needs to be accurate and idiomatic. Ikan Kekek (talk) 10:43, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

I see. TravelAroundOz (talk) 23:26, 19 February 2021 (UTC)

Promoting Wikivoyage

Swept in from the pub

Hello! It's time to start working on the Promoting Wikivoyage project! I'm so excited!! The plan is to introduce Wikivoyage to local chambers of commerce in the US. My user page will have any news and links to works in progress. I expect to have a basic draft of the presentation by next Friday. Please chime in with your comments anytime along the way.

One question I have is: Who uses Wikivoyage? Is there a profile of a typical user? Please comment so I can help the chambers picture the traveler. Thanks!--Tbennert (talk) 23:30, 1 July 2014 (UTC)

Here's a start: according to Alexa, the average Wikivoyager is a female with a postsecondary education browsing from school. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 01:31, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Somewhat technical, but we have general statistics for browser visits here. You can make some determination about what devices are being used on all wikimedia sites. (Short version is that we are getting less visits by desktop/laptop users over time, and our users are increasingly visiting Wikimedia sites with their smart phones (iPhone, Android, etc) Andrewssi2 (talk) 05:21, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

It would be good to do further analysis as to how these stats apply just to Wikivoyage. Andrewssi2 (talk) 05:22, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Its nice to know we're ahead of Wikipedia in terms of female visitors but I'm wondering how Alexa detects whether the site visitor is male or female. --Saqib (talk) 11:19, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

w:Sexing PrinceGloria (talk) 19:45, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

It's probably also worth considering the difference in demographics between readers and editors - I'm not sure they align entirely. --Nick ^talk 00:37, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! These are helpful links I had not looked at before. I am agreement with Nick that readers and editors may be somewhat different. So maybe the question becomes why would a traveler choose Wikivoyage for information as opposed to another travel site? --Tbennert (talk) 03:38, 3 July 2014 (UTC)

UPDATE: Behind schedule by several weeks but finished up a large project this week so I'm hopeful that I can get back on track. I'm going to add to the pages at meta to better fill in the timeline. I'll post when the presentation and materials are viewable. A couple items to help with logistics:

• Is there a single person who manages the Facebook page? I'm thinking Facebook might be a useful communication tool because it is familiar to the chambers.
• I would like to rework Wikivoyage:Welcome, tourism professionals. I will do the work on a usersubpage. Discussion is on the Welcome talk page.

Thanks! --Tbennert (talk) 19:36, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

To Tbennert: Regarding your first question: our Facebook page has (I think) three administrators, but I'm the only one who updates it on a regular basis. I generally update the page three times a month when the new Destination of the Month, Off the Beaten Path, and Featured Travel Topic articles are rotated. Also, I answer questions from Facebook users who are connected to the page, but that doesn't happen terribly often. I'd be happy to help this initiative out in any way you envision. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:33, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Also, if you're interested in promoting Wikivoyage via social media, Saqib helms our Twitter page. You might want to get in contact with him as well. -- AndreCarrotflower (talk) 21:35, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Thanks again for the good info. Right now I'm just hoping for a place chambers might go if they feel uncomfortable communicating here. Essentially removing the interface concern other new editors have expressed on wikipedia. I'll keep in touch directly with you after the calls to help if we get a flood of inquiries on Facebook. Thanks! --Tbennert (talk) 00:50, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

UPDATE: Bad news - I have not been successful coordinating with the US Chamber. They don't "do tourism" apparently. I am going to contact each state starting today. This may adjust the number and times of calls because I'll be responsive to each state. The outcome should remain the same just a bit different in organization. --Tbennert (talk) 14:41, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

According to w:Convention and visitor bureau#United_States, "In the United States, convention and visitor bureaus (CVBs), financed through bed taxes or their members, perform destination marketing. Every U.S. state and almost every larger city and county has its own CVB. Although many government and chamber of commerce bodies also market destinations to visitors and meeting planners, most U.S. convention and visitors bureaus (CVBs) are independent non-profit organizations." K7L (talk) 15:43, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

On the surface the chambers encourage tourism. When looking past the surface, activities are geared toward economic growth. I hoped that offering a free, informational, non-selling webcast would be persuading even though there is not a direct return on investment. Unfortunately the multiple people I spoke to at the US Chamber of Commerce were not interested in educating the local chambers about Wikivoyage. Really all it means is a bit more time on setting up the calls. We are on plan B and I have one more in reserve with a few more halfway ideas. The economic push was somewhat expected but I hope the states will be more willing. --Tbennert (talk) 02:53, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

The chambers are funded by individual local member businesses, many of whom are industrial firms (not tourism per se) looking to connect with other businesses or advocate on behalf of the private sector... so Whatevertown is a great place to build a factory or open a business, according to the Whatevertown Chamber. The chambers are primarily local entities and the amount of Chamber activity devoted to tourism varies, based on the size of the town, on whether there's a publicly-funded "economic development corporation", a CVB or even city hall itself already actively promoting the town as a travel destination and on whether tourism is the town's main business. I wouldn't rule out contacting state-level entities like the I ♥ NY campaign, even if they are state-funded development corporations and not chambers of commerce. K7L (talk) 04:29, 31 July 2014 (UTC)