UpTake has been quietly putting together a high quality Travel Blog Network. I am impressed by the job they have been done since PhoCusWright in November 2008 with Pat Jenkins starting to write in the Travel Industry Blog.

New Blog Network Features Six Key Travel Categories, Including Attractions, Beaches, Hotels Lodging, Restaurants and Travel Industry News

Gudrun Enger helped launch the original UpTake blog few months ago and is now the editor for the Attractions blog and with five lead editors and a team of twenty-nine contributors, each blog network post has been carefully researched or personally vetted by UpTake’s team of expert travel writers.

The network is a new addition to UpTake’s corporate blog and provides in-depth, complementary information to the site’s existing travel content and search engine.

It’s a great resource if you are looking for in-depth hotel information that complements results from the UpTake search engine.

Elliott Ng, VP of Marketing, tell us more information about the UpTake Travel Blog Network.

>> The UpTake blog network lead the way for US market, can you give us some direct line about the editorial and are you looking for others contributors? What is the process to succeed as a new contributor?

We are really encouraging the individual lead editors of each blog to experiment with different ways to approach blogging at UpTake. We don’t want to create a typical corporate blog about this. We want each blog to be a valuable resource to its readers and honestly I think the approach for each blog will really depend on what readers respond to and want. As you know (exceedingly well, I might add) blogging is more about community building than about just an editorial point of view. So i think it will come from the readers and the individual authors, and less from us.

>> UpTake’s travel search and discovery engine lead the way of semantic travel search, can you remind us how a travel cie (ex : hotel, DMO, discovery tourism, etc) can be integrated in your travel search engine? What’s the business model to work with you?

We are crawling over 5000 travel sites so people can come to one place to plan and research their travel. Just like Google, our organic search results provide free traffic and links to all these sites. If you are not currently included in the search engine, just email us at feedback (at) uptake.com and ask us to include you. We’ll contact you back and get some information. If your site has a structured feed (like an RSS feed), that would be easiest for us to include in the search engine. The way we make money is through advertising units on the site and the Check Rates functionality where we send leads to various booking engines like Hotels.com and Expedia.

>> UpTake incorporating travel information from sites and blogs across the Web, without telling us your fabric secret, can you tell us some fact about the data that are inside UpTake travel search engine? (ex: number of hotel, number of blogs you scan, etc, to give an idea to the readers….)

We have the largest database of U.S. travel, with over 5000 sources, about 10X the next largest player. I know that is hard to believe, but most other sites just focus on hotels and often don’t include the content of other competitive sites. We include everyone because we are a meta-search site. We have over 600,000 U.S. attractions and over 175,000 U.S. accommodations.

>> Do you see some particular demand in the travel chain? (I mean particular demand for US spot, for type of product, etc….)

I think the big theme for 2009 is more interest in drive-to destinations instead of the big, glitzy (and expensive) fly-in destinations. We’ve already seen moe traffic in places like: Nashville, Brooklyn, Dallas, Pigeon Forge, Palm Springs, Gatlinburg, Austin, Monterey. People are looking for things to do, family travel ideas and romantic ideas right where they are.

>> UpTake senior executives contribute travel technology and industry news. For your point of view, what are the main goals in the US market for tourism player?

Right now, I think everyone is thinking about how they will survive this difficult economic period. Every month is bringing UpTake more visitors and users than the previous one, but we are just a small company right now. For consumers, we want to highlight to them lesser known hotels and attractions for their consideration. For small travel providers, we want the “long tail” of travel to be found. When that happens, travelers have better vacations and small travel providers get more customers who appreciate what special things they have to offer.

UpTake Travel Blog Network Features Six Key Travel Categories, Including Attractions, Beaches, Hotels

Lodging, Restaurants and Travel Industry News

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.

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