The Perceptive Travel website, of which this blog is an offshoot, just picked up a Silver for ‘Best Travel Journalism Website’ at the 2011 North American Travel Journalists Association (NATJA) awards announced earlier this week.

But that’s not all.
Many of the stories published on Perceptive Travel website throughout the year also garnered awards:

* Amy Rosen, “Can a Croissant Change Your Life?” (Gold, Cultural, Educational, Self-Improvement Travel category)

* Tim  Leffel, “Side Saddle Girls at a Mexican Rodeo”   (Gold – Special Focus Travel Articles category)

* Lisa Te Sonne, “Voices & Choices When a Human Flies”  (Sliver, Leisure Activity category)

* Tim Leffel, “The Dreams of Man in Stone and Concrete”  (Bronze, Personality and Profiles category)

* Amy Rosen, “My Life & Times with the CN Tower” (Silver, Historical or Hobby Travel category)

Congratulations to Tim Leffel and all the great PT writers.

Congratulations are also in order for the other two travel websites in the the ‘Best Travel Journalism Website’ – USA Today Travel (Veronica Stoddart) picked up the Gold and Travel with Lisa Online (Lisa Codianne Fowler) picked up the Bronze.

In the Travel Blog Category, our editor Tim Leffel also picked up a Gold for his Cheapest Destinations Blog, with Gary Arndt’s Everything-Everywhere picking up Silver and The Vacation Gals (Jennifer Miner, Beth Blair, and Kara Williams) picking up Bronze.

If you want to induce nausea in me immediately, you will say two little words: women’s magazines.

I wrote for women’s magazines for several years, and, with a couple of exceptions, count them among the worst experiences of my professional life.  I have been known to describe the editorial process at these magazines as a “sorority gang-bang”. I have been asked to repeat that phrase at dinner parties, especially those that involve other writers, because mentioning the phrase “women’s magazines” in a gathering of experienced writers creates something of a group shudder, followed by group therapy, often followed by heavy group drinking.

I don’t know why women’s magazines are so hard to work for, although the movie Mean Girls provides a partial explanation.

And while literary writing is quite different than the sort of stories that most women’s magazines are publishing, I can’t help but think that there is some kind of a connection between paucity of women’s bylines at the upper echelons of literature and how horrible women in media can be to one another, especially in situations that involve differences of power and prestige and the exchange of money.

But I live in hope that the new world of media, run more by writers themselves than by career editors, will be a better place for good writing and ultimately a better place for writers. That hope is fueled by the launch of an exciting new travel magazine, Vela.

Vela is written by women, but is obviously not a “women’s magazine” in the shuddering nausea sense, and decidedly not the territory of  “the gang tattoo of a Ya-Ya Sisterhood more interested in swapping stories about rough breakups and first periods and facial scrubs than in serious (male) literary writing,” as founder Sarah Menkedick writes in the site’s manifesto.  (If you doubt this could possibly be true, read Eva Holland‘s excellent essay about working, and working hard, in the Yukon. )

As Sarah goes on to explain:

The point here is not that this is a women’s site, by women for women, somehow female, feminine, or feminist in style. The fact that all of the writers are women is almost, almost incidental: it would be completely incidental if the publishing world did not create a situation in which women’s voices represent only a small fraction of the conversation.

Brava!  I’m looking forward to reading more.

If you think that the only thing that travel insurance companies are interested in is selling you travel insurance, then you’ve obviously not come across WorldNomads.com.

Sure they want to sell travel insurance.

But they also want to be an integral part of a traveler’s journey. Over the years, they have also created plenty of fun and interesting programs  – Travel Scholarships, Van-tastic Adventures, safety alerts, Footprints, language guides, and travel blogs – that not only help travelers but also give back to local communities.

And their latest creation – Ask a Nomad  iPad App – is no different.

This free iPad App is a great travel knowledge-sharing tool that draws on World Nomad’s existing community of travellers who already respond to questions from around the world via it’s website.

Want to find out where to get bubble tea in Sydney or how to rent an apartment in Paris or Prague?

There’s bound to be someone on ‘Ask a Nomad’ who can help you.

At the same time, browse already asked questions and answers by continent, country, city or suburb to learn more about places you are visiting or plan on visiting.

And just like twitter, Ask a Nomad stores your questions in a separate location for easy access. And you can favorite other questions for future reference.

All you have to do is download the App and then start asking.

I attended the travel tech geekfest known as PhoCusWright last week and penned this rundown of interesting new travel tech that could make your life easier. I came away energized but frustrated, awed but annoyed, and impressed but yawning.

My mixed feelings were shared by many other attendees who are trying to make sense of the tsunami of change occurring around us. Much of it is invisible to us travelers who are booking flights, hotels, and tours, the tech happening behind the scenes or “under the hood” of all those websites and apps. Often I bristle at the thought of travel being sold as a commodity like peanut butter or cell phone plans, but for the booking sites, that’s their reality.

Here on the content side of things, we’re more concerned about the experience—what happens in your dreaming and doing, what happens after you’re on the ground in a new and exciting place. The booking part is just a means to the end.

Thankfully for us, people seem to spend a lot of time on travel websites and blogs before making up their mind. The Experian Hitwise company’s research found, for example, that in the 45 days leading up to a purchase, the average person visits 50 different websites before hitting the “buy” button on a site like Expedia. (So any advertiser or PR person looking for “conversion” from one website is deluding themselves that this is even possible.)

It’s all about Facebook?

Here’s the other factoid of the week from Hitwise: one out of every pageviews in the U.S. now is Facebook. It’s one in six in the UK. Here’s the full report.

Many companies that presented at PhoCusWright took this as meaning we all want to see where our friends went, what they did, and how we can use their recommendations to book travel. I’m not sold on that. Some of my friends are like-minded, but some love cruises and RVs. I meet strangers on my trips that are more attuned to my likes than either group. Kids in their 20s may feel differently though. Time will tell if these companies looking to connect us all and broadcast our likes and locations will actually survive. As the leader of Kayak said at one point, “Social [media] is overhyped—at least when it comes to making money.”

Or maybe smartphones?

The other big wave is mobile, which of course is important and fast-growing, but there’s a tendency to project one’s own experience outward and assume everyone has an iPhone and wants to use it to do everything in life. Being that the attendees at this conference were almost all educated, white, and reasonably well-off, that’s a dangerous projection to base a business plan on. Internationally, smart phones are still a novelty in many countries. Where I am in Mexico, finding someone using an iPhone is almost as hard as finding a good Chinese restaurant. Blackberries, yes, but that’s about it. The data plans are just way too expensive for anyone but the elites or those who need to stay constantly connected in their job. (The one person I know who has an iPhone is a property manager with multiple rental units.)

Plus let’s face it, being constantly connected is not good for your health, your stress, or your creativity. There’s a whole great book on this: Hamlet’s Blackberry. We know this intuitively, but the science backs it up.

What do you think? In the future will you be making all your travel plans through a little handheld screen and relying on your social network for booking tours, restaurants, and hotels? Will you just pack a bag and show up? Or somewhere in between?

As the editor of Perceptive Travel, I don’t normally chime in too much here because I have five capable bloggers writing great stuff all the time. But I’m at the PhocusWright conference right now, a place where the brightest (and best-funded) start-ups in the travel technology space come to strut their stuff.

This year it’s all about sharing, Facebook integration, and planning your trip in collaboration with others. It’s already getting crowded though and the writers and analysts I was with weren’t sold: after all, a LOT of travel is planned by one person who then dictates to others what’s going to happen.

Anyway, some companies win, some lose, and many innovations are on the back end anyway, invisible to those of us actually spending money on travel. But here’s a sneak peak into what I saw that I personally think is useful and cool.

Hipmunk – Apparently I’m late to the party on this one as the company already has loads of traffic and has built up a legion of fans in just three months. These are smart and funny guys with lots of venture funding and a platform that makes booking a flight far easier than it is now. I’m ready to use this tomorrow and for every trip from here on out. The big sea change? They sort by “agony.” As in the trip with the least stops and the fastest time in transit comes up first, with all awful trips hidden away on a different screen, but you can sort by price, by departure time, etc. without ever having to leave your original browser page—new options open in new tabs. The interface is customer-centric instead of advertiser-centric and is a joy to use compared to what you’re used to.

Goby.com is the first site I’ve seen that would actually spur me to carry a smart phone around while on vacation. It’s a great local travel resource for seeing everything to do in a city, with maps directions, opening hours, etc. From within the application you can do pretty much everything you need to do booking-wise or to call or e-mail a place, plus it’s connected to Facebook, so you can patch in anyone who’s on the trip with you and keep them in the loop. (They can make suggestions and add places/activities.) It’s tag-based, so it’s pulling info from all around the web: tourism sites, park sites, festival sites—then putting it into a pretty package with photos. It’s “rich, hyper-local content” for Android or the iPhone family.

SilverRail – This one’s so dead obvious it’s a wonder nobody has made it work before: one-stop shopping for rail travel. Booking a train trip anywhere should be as easy as booking a flight anywhere, but it’s not. This company has done all the very hard legwork of tapping into all the fragmented systems and putting them into one easy interface. Whether you’re traveling around Europe or taking the bullet train in Japan, this site will get it sorted.

GroundLink – Need a car and driver somewhere instead? GroundLink is the one-stop shop for booking ground transportation with someone else at the wheel anywhere in the world. Book through these guys and you don’t have to worry about getting someone reliable after your plane lands.

Bonvoy was one of many social media booking/sharing/planning platforms shown off and this one got my attention because it’s not a website, but a Facebook app. If four of you are traveling together, you use this to plan it together, keep each other updated, and—here’s the key thing—automatically splitting up the costs. No more nagging your friends for that 180 bucks they owe you before your credit card bill is due. Simple and cool, and it cuts down on the e-mail chatter.

TripAlertz is a new members-only coupon site that’s like Groupon or LivingSocial, but just for travel. You get notified by e-mail or text about a screaming bargain hotel deal and if you turn some friends on to it, the price goes down. Just U.S. travel for now, but sign up and check it out.

OffandAway is a little too complicated for my tastes, but the basic idea is that you can bid on a fabulous hotel suite in places like New York and Las Vegas and the worst thing that happens if you don’t win is that you get a regular room for that price instead. So not much downside, but a lot of upside if you’ve got a nice vacation budget.

I heard 32 presentations yesterday, so obviously I can’t cover all of even just the consumer-oriented ones, but hopefully one of these can result in a great trip for you soon!