I was in the beta-test for BeNoot, a new collaborative and community-based website dedicated to tourism.

It’s nice, the BeNoot Team is living in Marseille, as me, and I am proud to give you this interview.

They have a real talent in the multimedia field, passionate about travel and with a special feeling about the market.

>Benoit, can you tell some information about you, BeNoot and the Nooteam?
Benoit: Benoit LAURENT, 26, I am in charge of the marketing and business development in Media No Mad (our company). I am self-taught in this area (I was a trained glass blower at first!).
The Nooteam is the name we give ourselves: the team working everyday on the portal but also the blog. In the Nooteam are 4 people, amongst whom Emilie and Quentin pairing with me in the interview.

Emilie: Emilie AGNIEL, 27, I’m in charge amongst other things of the editorial content published on the blog and the site.

Quentin: Quentin Thiaucourt, 24, I’m the main developer and graphic designer. I’m interested in all things web.

Emilie: And then, there’s Anne-Laure DUBOIS, the main writer on the blog but also the voice of the podcasts.

Benoit: Be Noot is a portal dedicated to the edition and consultation of Multimedia Trip Books. At the same time simple, fun and free, it has innovative functionalities developed from a study on a travellers’ panel.

> Can you tell us some fact about it and the profil of people who use BeNoot ?
Benoit: To be short and simple, Be Noot is a collaborative and community-based website dedicated to tourism.

Every analysis show that e-tourism, as well as collaborative and community-based sites are in a very good shape, yet, no so-called travel 2.0 portal sees its stats skyrocket.

A study focusing on France and published at the end of 2006 showed that 2.5 millions of French people have or are wishing to publish their vacations souvenirs online. Besides that, if you count the subscribers on existing French speaking sites, you’d be very far from these numbers. So how to explain that so many people don’t step out?

Emilie: We decided to find out the why. The first answer that appeared to us was that a great majority of the existing sites just took the ‘hype’ functionalities from general platforms and just applied those to tourism (RSS feeds, tags, embed a video from YouTube, etc.) without any originality. The second thing is that the ‘traditional’ way of blogging is absolutely not adapted to the use of Trip Book which has its own specificities. And finally, we noticed that it’s all too complicated for new web-users.

Benoit: To get to Be Noot, and to avoid coming up with just another web portal, we gathered a panel of travellers/potential users. The goal was to study their expectations, wishes and needs as far as multimedia Trip Book publishing. And it’s only after, that we started the technical development of Be Noot. Today, the result of the panel can be found in every function existing (or coming up) on BeNoot. For instance, the HyperMedia links allowing to link part of the text to a media within the same article.

Be Noot is meant for anyone preparing or coming back from a trip or more widely to anyone enjoying travels and the world. It is important to point that expatriates haven’t been left aside, and all the noot functionalities will answer their wishes to share their experiences.

Emilie: Absolutely. Most people living abroad for a few months (or years) try to keep in touch with friends and family and this is not always easy despite internet (I’ve had this problem when living in the States for 3 years!)

So with Be Noot, it is possible to share photos, videos, sounds and texts, to geo-tag them (locate them on a map), add a few hypertext and hypermedia links here and there… So in just a few clicks, your friends and family will see what your favourite restaurant looks like, who are your roommates, etc. I am convinced any parent or grandparent would love that idea! (I know mine would have died to share all this with me.)

>I see we can Prepare our your next trips, Share your photos, videos, etc…but what about reservation?
Benoit: Reservation is a job that’s very different from ours. Media No Mad is the editor of a community based and collaborative website dedicated to tourism called Be Noot. We want to offer a well-rounded tool but mostly the closest to travellers’ needs, and that… well that’s already lots of work. The only links that could appear with e-booking sites will be through partnerships or advertisements but nothing else… And this comment is also meant for any activity in relation with etourism. *hint*

>Tourism is a people business and a destination experience with personal encounters. Do you think the community can leverage a destination or a product thanks to a web site and tools like BeNoot?
Benoit: To tell the truth, yes I believe so. And to go even further, this is one of our objectives with Be Noot. 99% of travellers’ testimonials found online are text based. Writing is THE most subjective way of expression. That’s where our wish to add photos and videos to our interface comes from. These 2 formats are more objective that just text. I foresee the reactions: Yes, I know, it’s easy to angle the message of an image but it’s also easier to make up your own mind on a city or a neighbourhood by watching pictures and videos rather than just reading a text. Ideally, going there to live your own experience is even better!

Emilie: I’d like to add that some parts of the world have pretty bad reputation because of their past. I’ll take the example of Harlem. The image of this neighbourhood is “violence, dirt, drugs, gangs…”, and if you ask people, not many would want to go and visit there. Well, if people living there as expatriates, or tourists visiting talk about their positive experiences, and the fact that “it’s not violent, you won’t be mugged, it’s actually a nice place, etc.”, well, the negative image might change. And more people may want to go and visit.
I think Be Noot can help in that way. People need to have more information about the world, and drop the prejudices.

>We see important impact of news technologies (RSS, AJAX, podcast, blog, social networking tools, etc), what is your point of view ?
Benoit: My point of view is that all these technologies allowed a major evolution (not revolution) of the internet. Interfaces are much more creative and open, and also the functionalities conform to users and not the opposite anymore.
Quentin: And that challenges us (developers) to stay up-to-date!

>Internet is going faster and we talk now about Web 2.0 and Travel 2.0. What do you think about this evolution in the tourism & hotel market place? Social media and User Generated Content are the big trends for Travel 2.0? Is BeNoot riding the wave of these trends?
Benoit: Be Noot is right into what you call Travel 2.0: both a travellers’ social network and a User-Generated-Content platform that has a lot to do with high speed connexion expansion. For me, this evolution is major since today users don’t have to adapt themselves to functions but the latter are conforming to users to improve and optimize what some call the ‘user experience’. Thanks to the web 2.0, surfing the cloud is more fun, intuitive and simple than ever before.

> What are the 10 tips to build a travel community like BeNoot?
- Know the different profile of potential users;
- Always consider the average user is a newbie;
- Always lead the community with special events (coming soon);
- Never do ‘just like’ any other website;
- Be passionate about travel yourself;
- Be insomniac… or you’ll become insomniac anyway;
…That’s pretty much it!

> Can you give us advice to use BeNoot
Benoit: Amongst all possible scenarios, here are some thoughts Be Noot will answer:
• I want to go to Morocco, but hesitate between Fes and Marrakech…
• I’m coming back from a fantastic trip and I wish to share my memories with a community of passionate people and my friends and family living in Europe and throughout the world.
• I’m going to live abroad but I want to keep in touch with friends and family by sharing my adventures.
• I would like as many people as possible to grow from my experiences on a special trip (trek, humanitarian…).

>What are your taste for:
>Travel:
Benoit: I like urban tourism. I find wandering in the streets of a big city much more entertaining that long hikes. But this doesn’t keep me from dreaming of visiting the Iguazu falls in Argentina for instance.
Emilie: When I travel I like to be impressed, either by the culture, the people, the landscape… For me travelling has to be an experience that makes me grow, learn about the world or myself…
Quentin: Living like locals: going to concerts, watching movies, eating local food… And bringing back photos!

>Travel destination :
Benoit: New York and Stockholm are the two cities that impressed me the most with their energy and the ambiance.
Emilie: I’ve been around Europe, and the northeast of the States, so mainly to urban places. My dream is now to see natural landscapes. I’d love to go to Mongolia, Tibet, or even the Andes.
Quentin: Mostly third world countries (do we still call them like that?) and places where only few people go… Plus NYC!

>Hotel :
Benoit: When I travel, most of the time I don’t have a big budget. So I’m a frequent user of youth hostels; they have a double asset: close to the centre of the city and affordable prices.
Emilie: Just like Benoit, I’m more a low-budget-on-hotel kind of person.
Quentin: Youth hostels… Or three stars hotels when in Eastern Europe (10 bucks a room/night).

>Business:
Benoit: As I am self-taught in everything relating to Be Noot, Internet represent a wide freedom space allowing the right to express (and sell) my ideas, away from all traditional frameworks.
Emilie: My thing is finding subjects, writing about them, and publishing the content on the site and the blog. Going on a shoot is a lot of fun and it’s probably what I enjoy the most.
Quentin: Building things new. User Interfaces, uses and concepts…

>You have the micro !
Benoit: Be Noot is an absolutely incredible adventure. Our deepest wish is to offer a website that’s at the same time simple, fun and corresponding to the use of Trip Book. So, we are open to any suggestion, idea, comment that Be Noot users (or users to be) wish to tell us. Be close to travellers’ expectations and needs is our leitmotiv. And if by any chance, one (or more) investor is the room, please know that we are starting the first moves to get fundings to help Be Noot grow faster. And to finish, thanks to you Claude for this conversation and in a wider way for the blog LesExplorers, that’s a great tool for all travel and internet passionate people.

So what, let’s BeNoot !

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