Visitopia est un nouveau type de guide touristique qui se développe avec une information locale fournie par un réseau de partenaires locaux bien implanté dans les villes touristiques.

Atze Zwirs nous parle de ce projet et du développement de Visitopia.

>Atze, can you tell some information about you and Visitopia

My name is Atze Zwirs; I am 31 years old love to travel, love Amsterdam and other cultures. I founded Visitopia in September 2006 as a means to let people interact with eachother by building their own city websites (with which they can make money) and share their culture and ways of life.

>Can you give us some outline about your goals with Visitopia!

The goal of Visitopia is to connect people by sharing local knowledge this way we can learn from eachother and respect each others cultures




> Tourism is a people business and a destination experience with personal encounters. Do you think the resident city community can leverage a destination thanks a web site and tools like Visitopia?

Yes Itruly think that. From April second we are even experimenting with this, because we moved a part of our office for the summer to a shop front where everybody can drop-in. We sit the persons down and take them around the Amsterdam website for the information they want. We print it and give it to them before they go into the city. The responses have been very good.

>Who will use your services? Do you have a target audience?

Our target audience is everybody from 18 till 70 with an emphasis on the group from 23 till 45. We also have a kids section. Well it is for kids and parents

> Do you plan to work with the professional as well? Like travel agency, tour operatoror is it only for end customer?

We might opt for a few professional bloggers about city live but Visitopia is for and by anybody. We are not hesitant for local travel agents, but big corporations are not for us. Not now and in the future!

>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?

I believe that the travel business is dominated by a few players that have big corporations behind them. Which slows the evolution of that part of the Internet. Because GDS systems (these are the bookings systems) are so complex, that these corporations want to protect their territory. As for User Generated Content. We see allot of recommendation websites (we are on of them) with content, which is often bought from other sites and it lets the traveler rate of comment on places. We think this is wrong cause what does a Chinese person really know about the 7th arrondisement in Paris. I rather learn from it from a Parisian, and comment on the places he recommends. Then you truly get a local versus foreign views and both cultures lets the other know what it feels thinks and loves. This is how Visitopia works




>We see important impact of news technologies (RSS, AJAX, podcast, blog, socialnetworking tools, Google mashup,Vido etc), what is your point of view in the travel area?

We think it is great! We are experimenting allot with it. Our suggestion box is our first little bit of AJAX in our website, we are very proud of our Google map integration (you should check it out on the Amsterdam or San Francisco website) and we would like to build a global community for and by everybody that incorporates it all!.

>What is your taste for?

>Travel:

Travel is an experience. Some like it pre cooked other like it raw. But the taste, smell and overall experience of other cultures makes it a celebration of your mind and senses

>Travel destination:

I dont have a particular destination that I favor. Unless if have friends living there. They give you a taste of local live, rather then touring the streets in a bus with your nose pressed against the window. This is also one of the main points behind Visitopia. To let you experience your travel destination

>Hotel:

Love hotels from small to big. In particular the ice machines in the hallway and the remarkable job chambermaids do. It almost make me feel guilty not making my own bed.

>Business:

Well now that we have a good base product we are looking to expand the amount of cities we have got. We would like to have 300 by the end of the year and add a craiglist style section for locals to rent out their vacation houses. We are also looking for a few small local alliances there with other websites. We also want to increase the share of the income the franchisers and writers get. Last not but least we would like to start and fund a lobby group to take on some urgent global problems

>You have the micro

The thing I would like the most is that I can take Visitopia with all the franchisers and writers and make the world a little less afraid of each other by showing each other how we live and the we can all coexist and visit each others cities countries and enjoy the planet.