New Destination Hub Pages

So, I have something new to show today!

I've created a new category of pages that I'll call destination hubs for want of a better way to refer to these. The main aim of these pages is to help people unearth some of the quality content on the site.

These are city level pages and involve a degree of manual effort, so it's not going to be available for every single location in the world. I'm starting with about 20 of them this week. The pages include

1. Some featured photos
2. Featured blog entries. These will cycle through and tend towards recency.
3. A brief intro
4. A classification by suitability for various different types of travellers
5. A list of top things to see in the location (this list is based on how often those sights were mentioned in previous TP blog entries)
6. Some links to forum threads.
7. Links to any content on TP that is related - eg.. the guides and accommodation pages.
8. A map of accommodation in the city.

It's far from perfect. I used AI to help generate the intros and persona classifications. I'm not really keen on having this AI generated content, but at the same time I am not capable of writing content for all the many locations around the world that I'd like to create these page for. I am planning on adding an option for members to suggest better content for these areas to keep the AI content to a minimum. If you are interested in helping write a better intro for any of the pages, feel free to message me with a suggested intro and I'll probably use it!

Credit for the traveller illustrations goes to the very talented Loopydave.

Some examples of these new pages:

Paris, Barcelona, Kyoto, Kathmandu ..

The very top places are linked in the main navigation behind the hamburger menu.

The rest of them will end up linked throughout the site, but for now are still somewhat hidden.

Let me know if you have any further ideas of how I can improve these.

Wonderful idea. And a beautiful page for the two I clicked on (the two places I've been - Paris and Barcelona)

I know it won't make a difference to new people, but I would like to know whose blogs I would be clicking on in that section. I clicked on one in Paris and was surprised that it was by Henna. I had forgotten the title of that blog that she wrote.

Also when I clicked on the Art Conoisseur for some reason I expected a list of museum. So I think that section would be better without the reasons because I would be disappointed if I clicked on Family Travel and found it was not a link to things a family could do. I think it would be better to eliminate that section altogether unless those types of travel lead to somewhere. If someone is already interested in a visit it doesn't really matter whether they are an influencer or a family traveler.

Maybe more blogs instead - labeled as to family travel or budget travel or whatever. Maybe the blogs could be tagged with the dates so that people could chose to pick an older one if the subject was interesting. Or at least pre-covid and post-covid

[ Edit: Edited on 4 Dec 2024, 14:10 GMT by greatgrandmaR ]

I know it won't make a difference to new people, but I would like to know whose blogs I would be clicking on in that section.

You're the second person who has suggested this (my son said the same thing when I showed him the page). That's an easy fix so I'll sort it out today.

Also when I clicked on the Art Conoisseur for some reason I expected a list of museum. So I think that section would be better without the reasons because I would be disappointed if I clicked on Family Travel and found it was not a link to things a family could do. I think it would be better to eliminate that section altogether unless those types of travel lead to somewhere. If someone is already interested in a visit it doesn't really matter whether they are an influencer or a family traveler.

Maybe more blogs instead - labeled as to family travel or budget travel or whatever

Great feedback to know what you were expecting to see when clicking on those personas. It might be a bit longer to fix this, but I think you're right that a list of activities and/or blog posts relative to that persona would make a lot of sense and then I can skip the somewhat generic descriptions as well. I'll have to think of how I can achieve that.

I think you should reduce those categories - Budget,Family, Art, and History for sure. I guess also Luxury. But you don't want to put on the list stuff that might change from one season to the next.

Food but probably only a list of typical foods because while mountains and historic buildings and art museums are pretty stable, restaurants are not. The restaurant I went to last year or last month may not be the same or be there at all anymore.

Not sure about Digital Nomad - I presume that is the availability of internet connections and I don't know enough about that to comment.

You may want to do this the same way you do the Communty Travel Guide. This will be a tremendous amount of work - not only to set it up but to keep it running.

I noticed you only put up personas for which a city is a good destination. I was thinking it might be at least as (and possibly much more) interesting to know why a city wouldn't be a good destination. E.g. if I identify as a digital nomad, why would Kyoto not be a good destination? And what degree of "not good": yellow, orange, or red?

And of course, when I finally spot the real "Wilderness Wanderer"-me on the Kathmandu page, I want to click through to see what other destinations would fit me.

[ Edit: Edited on 5 Dec 2024, 19:31 GMT by Sander ]

That's a good idea but I think you will need a whole database for that.

And of course, when I finally spot the real "Wilderness Wanderer"-me on the Kathmandu page, I want to click through to see what other destinations would fit me.

I'm definitely keen to add pages that are built around the traveller types and allow drilling down to other activities and locations that might suit. First I want to nail the 20 or so locations I've created, then ramp it up to the top 100 or so. Hopefully I can make the process behind maintaining these hub pages easy enough that I can scale it up to thousands of locations. One step at a time