UpTake Launches Travel Blog Network

We proudly announce the launch of UpTake’s new Travel Blog Network today.  The blog network helps travelers find vacation information across six travel categories, including attractions, beaches, hotels, lodging, restaurants and travel industry news. The network, a new addition to UpTake’s corporate blog, provides in-depth, complementary information to the site’s travel content and search engine. The UpTake blog network supports the company’s mission to improve search by offering information from local travel experts and writers.

UpTake Beaches Blog	UpTake Attractions Blog	UpTake Hotels Blog
UpTake Restaurants Blog	UpTake Lodging Blog	UpTake Travel Industry Blog

Meet UpTake’s Editors & Writers

We have five lead editors and a team of twenty-nine contributors. Each blog has its own tone and style which is determined by their editors and offers insights and opinions on day-trip excursions or longer vacation options in the writer’s local community. The lead editors are:

• Whit Honea, a professional writer and blogger on many of the web’s most popular blogs is the lead editor on the Vacations’ blog.
• Gudrun Enger, an independent blogger helped launch the original UpTake blog and is now the editor for the Attractions’ blog.
• Sebastien Tobler, a videographer and blogger combines his love of travel, beaches and his story-writing skill to create the Beaches’ blog.
• Colleen Lindesay is a popular writer for several blogs and leads a team of bloggers with suggestions and ideas on how to improve your next hotel stay on the Hotels’ Blog.
• Nancy Brown, a well known travel writer, built a team to offer suggestions about resorts, alternative lodging and campgrounds on the Lodging blog.
• Alison Osborne, an UpTake employee, suggests savory restaurant excursions, dining and food experiences on the Restaurants’ blog.
• UpTake senior executives contribute travel technology and industry news to the Travel Industry News.

If you have a story idea or need more information about a particular blog you can contact them via email:

UpTake Editors’ Email Addresses:

• Vacations’ blog editor (vacations.blogeditor at uptake.com)
• Attractions’ blog editor (attractions.blogeditor at uptake.com)
• Beaches’ blog editor(beaches.blogeditor at uptake.com)
• Hotels’ blog editor (hotels.blogeditor at uptake.com)
• Lodging’s blog editor (lodging.blogeditor at uptake.com)
• Restaurants’ blog  editor (restaurants.blogeditor at uptake.com

Blog Marketing Advisory Board

Prior to launching the blog network, UpTake sought the advice of three top bloggers who now comprise the company’s Blog Marketing Advisory Board, Stefania Pomponi Butler, Pam Mandel and Sheila Scarborough. UpTake also formed a content partnership with the Traveling Mamas who write for the network and provide periodic guidance about content and blog improvements.

UpTake’s travel search and discovery engine continues on its promise of being complementary to existing travel sites by providing relevant summaries and direct links to partner sites for complete, accurate results. By being complementary to its partners, UpTake helps their products get discovered and travelers find relevant vacation information more easily. The new blog network continues on this promise by incorporating travel information from sites and blogs across the Web, giving users a truly comprehensive online travel resource. If you are an independent blogger or a blog network, please contact pat at UpTake.com about potential partnership opportunities.

Here is a sampling of a few posts reflecting the content of the blogs from popular destinations to attractions far beyond the tourist track:

Attractions:  Backroads of Ohio

Beaches: Best City Beach on Gulf of Mexico, Clearwater Florida

Hotels:  San Ysidro Ranch Named  Forbes’ Top Hotel in America

Lodging:  Budget Lodging Gone Bad; Circus, Circus, Las Vegas, Nevada

Restaurants:  Best Upscale Restaurants in Santa Monica

Interested in reading more about travel in the U.S.? Please subscribe to our RSS Feed:

• Uptake Attractions Blog
• Uptake Beaches Blog RSS
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• Uptake Restaurants Blog RSS
• An Honest Take on the Travel Industry RSS

We hope you will take a tour through our blogs when you plan your next trip.

Walt Disney Co. (NYSE:DIS) is all set to release it’s first quarter earnings results. Analysts expect Disney to post a profit of 51 cents a share on revenues of $10.1 billion. Disney’s annual 2008 earnings were $2.27 per share, with a net income of $4.4 billion on revenues of $37.8 billion. 

In the 4th quarter 2008, the company had reported earnings of $0.43 per share on revenues of $9.4 billion. This did not meet the expectations of $0.49 per share estimated by analysts.

We’ll know soon enough whether Disney manages to make good with it’s Q1 earnings, but based on  warnings during the 2008 Q4 earnings call, and their recent activity in the past 10 days or so, it doesn’t sound encouraging.

(Update Feb 3, 2009 - Walt Disney Co reported a quarterly net income of $845 million, or 45 cents a share, a 32 percent decline from $1.25 billion, or 63 cents a share, a year earlier. Revenue fell 8 percent, to $9.6 billion. “We faced a challenging first quarter with many of our businesses impacted to various degrees by the economic downturn,” said Robert A. Iger, Disney’s president and CEO. “We are forcefully confronting current circumstance while investing in the great creativity, brands and assets that are Disney’s strengths and keys to its long-term success.”)

Novermber last, explaining the 4% Q4 drop in operating revenue from Disney’s parks, Chief Executive Robert Iger warned analysts that the bad state of the economy could continue to dampen consumer spending well into 2009.

And in late January, in a likely bid to cushion the impact of a tough Q1 earnings report, the company offered voluntary buyout packages to around 600 execs at its theme park and resort divisions. The executives have been given until Feb 6 to accept the offers. If Disney does not get enough volunteers, they plan to implement involuntary layoffs with lesser severance packages than that offered in the buyout.

Secondly, they’re removing 400 jobs from the ABC TV Division by letting go 200 people and not filling 200 positions. They’re also planning some reorganization, with ABC Entertainment and ABC Studios to be operated as a coordinated business unit entitled ABC Entertainment Group. Earlier, Disney’s ESPN had announced a reduction of 200 jobs and a salary freeze for senior executives.

And in what is beginning to look like a trend among the big theme park operators, Disney is also starting to focus more on expanding it’s footprint in Asia, with revived plans to set up a long planned Disney theme park in Shanghai.

All of these are almost surely preemptive moves meant to placate investors worried about dismal earnings. In addition to an expected continuing slump in bookings and ticket sales at its two theme parks and resorts, analysts also predict steep drops in Disney’s DVD sales from the movie studios and loss of ad revenue from Disney’s regional ‘owned-and-operated’ TV stations.

Walt Disney Co.’s Q2 earnings are expected to be even lower, with analysts estimating profit per share of $0.47 on revenues of $8.4 billion.

Roger Dow, President and CEO, U.S. Travel Association

There’s $825 billion of spending and tax cuts incorporated into the stimulus bill (S.1 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009). But this open hose of taxpayer dollars is not being used to fill up the travel industry’s tank, mainly because of a clash between the National Tour Association (NTA) and the U.S. Travel Association (USTA).

The lobbying and the media campaign being run by the groups representing travel and tourism, while intense, still leaves a lot to be desired. The NTA and the U.S. Travel Association (USTA, formerly Travel Industry Association – TIA) are not speaking with one voice, and whatever they do say, is being completely ignored by Congress and the Obama Administration.

During the transition, the USTA set up a special transition website (www.poweroftravel.com/), where they wrote about the travel industry’s priorities and listed expected ‘handouts’. Obama’s transition website (www.change.gov/) had mentions of just about everything else from education to healthcare to transportation, but not a single word about tourism promotion or pending legislation affecting the travel industry.

Then the NTA organized a summit of 37 travel and tourism groups in Washington DC so as to be able to come up with set of joint recommendations. They did finally come up with 7 recommendations, and sent a letter to then President-elect Obama. But it was signed by the heads of only 24 industry groups,  and it didn’t include Roger Dow, President of the USTA.

In fact, in between the summit in December and the letter in January, Roger Dow actually sent emails to participants of the summit in which he undermined the credibility of the summit and asked them not to support the initiative and the recommendations.

The USTA then further complicated the situation by sending their own letter to Congress, with recommendations for getting the Travel Promotion Act (H.R. 3232 and S. 1661) included in the stimulus bill, and urging modernization of the nation’s air traffic control (ATC) system.

Given this appalling display of lack of unity as an industry, it’s no big surprise that the  American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 does not include the recovery and necessary investments for the travel industry.