Top Travel Content is an exciting new site which aims to showcase the best travel content from travel sites and blogs around the globe. The site is currently live with the Europe section, with plans to expand to the rest of the world in the works.

Top Travel Content

Top Travel Content (http://europe.toptravelcontent.com/) was created and is run by Karen Bryan and Craig Martin. Karen apparently came up with the idea of an aggregation site which would feature the best in travel content from niche, independent travel sites and blogs, which would give all member sites some decent exposure.

She says the concept had been bugging her ever since she gave a speech on the ‘future of the travel blog’ at a Travel Blog Presentation organized by Darren Cronian from Travel Rants in Nov 2008.

The excerpt from her speech below explains why sites like Top Travel Content are important for the growth of travel blogs, especially independent travel blogs which face the daunting task of breaking out of the pack and then competing with big blogs run by corporates and the mainstream news media.

“Independent blogs face major hurdles in attracting readers in the crowded market. It’s always said that if you have quality content you will succeed but I don’t think that’s enough for an independent blog… It’s also hard to attract advertisers to an independent niche travel blog which may have a relatively low number of hits.

I see the way forward for independent blogs as working in partnership with other quality travel blogs… Or the collaboration could be taken step further If the content of several travel blogs is aggregated, this should increase the profile and hits of each of the individual blogs. The aggregation then becomes an more attractive option for advertisers and much simpler than seeking and contacting each blog separately. I believe that content should in the aggregation would have to be manually edited to ensure quality and I’m not sure that all content from the participating travel blogs would be included.”  – Karen Bryan, The Future of the Travel Blog presentation, Travel Blog Camp, London, 11 Nov 2008.

And that’s exactly what Karen Bryan and Craig Martin have done with Top Travel Content. As for the content and the sites which  have signed up, a preliminary look showed up some really interesting posts, like this one from Paris Breaks, which explains why Eurostar’s 186 mph high-speed train service has become the number one choice for European travellers.

The mix of manual editing and automated RSS feeds provides a good mix of quality travel content. There’s also some nice features for community interaction, like the Readers’ Pick posts, where readers can submit a link to an article/post that they would like to share.

It’s not like it hasn’t been done before and Top Travel Content faces the same hurdles as the member blogs in their joint quest for traffic, but they do have a decent chance of becoming a really important hub which provides syndication value for travel blogs and sites.