Twitchhikers' guide to the galaxy

Twitter is changing the way people travel. Kasmin Fernandes meets travellers who have found everything from free transport to lions in Johannesburg, through a tweet. All it took was under 140 charactersu00a0

This March, social media catalyst Moksh Juneja made an emergency visit to Thevalakkara, a remote village in Kerala he had never heard of. Thanks to Twitter, he was offered a car to drive around, a wholesome lunch, train tickets, and exact directions to the village. He managed to reach his destination in good time. "I had no idea how to reach Thevalakkara, so I connected with my Twitter friend Paromita (@suddentwilight), who I knew studied in Kerala," says Juneja. She hadn't heard of the village, but connected him to industrial designer Nithin KD (@nithinkd) who, although based in Delhi, belongs to Kerala.


Illustration/ Jishu Dev Malakar

The good Samaritan
"I DMed (direct messaged) him the name of my destination. Nithin guided me through an itinerary, advised me to book my air tickets to Trivandrum, and offered me his car for as long as I needed it. The icing on the cake? I still haven't met Nithin," says Juneja, during a chat at his spacious Chembur residence.

The miracle doesn't end there. Juneja had to reach Kollam to pick up Nithin's car. "Nithin connected me to Biju Narayan (@bijunarayan), who took time off from work to help me reach Kollam." Narayan picked him up from the bus stop, took him to Trivandrum station and bought him a ticket to Kollam. They lunched at a coffee house, and while Juneja downed filter coffee and dosas, Narayan connected him to Balu (@BaluKLM), who travels daily from Trivandrum to Kollam.

"I met Balu at the platform and realised that even though I hadn't met these guys before, I was in safe hands," says Juneja, with a lingering smile on his lips. When they reached Kollam, Balu dropped him off at Nithin's doorstep. "Nithin had already called his mother about the car, so she handed me the car keys immediately," says the 29 year-old.

Balu left, but Nithin continued taking Juneja through the directions to reach his destination. "In case of any eventualities, Balu had informed Ivan Gancis (@Ivan457), who stays in Shaktigualangara nearby, that I was in town. But I reached my destination safely and thanked my Twitter gang for it," says Juneja, who was again reminded of their kindness two days ago when he tweeted about an impending trip to Hyderabad. A concerned Shonaak Reshmwala (@shonakr) tweeted back, "It's raining there and temp has dropd to 15 deg, so carry warm clothes."

Bengaluru-based filmmaker and Twitter celebrity Hrish Thota has had his share of travel help too. He travelled to South Africa to be a tweeter for Champions League Cricket, and to Hong Kong to tweet live updates of families winning a contest for a brand of chips. He was in Johannesburg, and stumped for places to visit, when Twitter came to the rescue. "My tweet asking for places to see in Jo'burg fetched a great tip about a lion park. In Hong Kong, local tweeple suggested I drop by for a laser show at the harbour that night, which turned out to be a spectacular find," says the 30 year-old.

The new guidebook
It's hardly surprising then that travellers are setting guidebooks aside and relying on tweeting masses to plan their itineraries. Earlier this year, UK newspaper The Guardian's reporter Benji Lanyado embarked on a TwiTrip, asking his Twitter followers to guide him on hotel reservations, coffee shops, and museums around Paris, while writer Paul Smith became a Twitchhiker, using the kindness of those on Twitter alone to put him up as he travelled from the UK to New Zealand.

Twitter is changing the way people travel, replacing recommendations from experts and strangers with a targetted selection of information from acquaintances and their networks.

Travellers have used the Internet for years to find hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions. Some websites offer recommendations from guidebook writers, critics and experts, while others, such as TripAdvisor.com, Yelp and Chowhound offer feedback from individuals about their personal experiences. Credibility can be a problem. A good review could be written by the business owners themselves or their friends, while bad reviews could come from competitors. A destination website might only list businesses that pay to be featured.

In contrast, a recommendation from your Twitter feed may feel more trustworthy and less random than something you stumble across on a website -- even when the "tweet" is from someone you do not know.

You get honest opinions
"Twitter will get you honest opinions and real-time experiences of people rather than advertising you come across on looking up a destination on Google," says Thota.

Karan Anand, head, relationships and supplier management, Cox & Kings Ltd., one of India's leading travel operators, says, "Recently, Twitter, as with other popular social media forums, has gained popularity in India. It is proving to be a crucial point where opinions are formulated, shaped and passed on. Twitter is where many past, present and more importantly, potential customers connect with one another to exchange information, learn, have fun and share."

Cox & Kings (@CoxnKingsIndia) began its Twitter journey in 2009. "We use it extensively to promote new offers, share travel ideas, address customer issues, answer queries, create conversations with users who are/plan to travel to certain destinations as well," says Anand, who is not concerned about social networking services making a dent in travel companies' share of customers. In fact, he feels, it will push companies "to be more attentive and responsive to customers".

Travel industry using Twitter
Agrees Yogesh M Shah aka Yogi from outbound travel company, The Backpacker Co. "Twitter is a great add-on for travellers as well as touring companies. Tweeting is more personal, city-centric and has a localised flavour. In fact, next month onwards, our consultants will be touring different cities across Europe and tweeting about events and festivals as they go along."

A Twitter presence has become essential for any company that wants to bond with a younger generation that will hopefully remain loyal for years. LuxuryLink.com and FamilyGetaway.com, which sell hotel packages, have launched 'mystery auctions'. Here, customers bid for hotel packages at discounted rates without knowing the property's identity. To increase followers, the sites began issuing clues about the hotels only through their Facebook and Twitter pages.

It helps. Even if you get arrested UC (University of California) Berkeley graduate journalism student James Karl Buck was arrested on April 10 -- without any charges -- in Egypt for photographing a demonstration. He used his mobile phone to tweet the message "Arrested" to his 48 followers, who contacted UC Berkeley, the US Embassy and a number of press organisations on his behalf. The next day, Buck tweeted "Alive and ok. Still in jail," but was released not too long afterwards.

When Mumbai web designer Kaushal Karkhanis announced that he was moving to Goa to work on client projects and write a travel book, Tinaz Daruwalla (@teenzy) instantly volunteered to intern with him for a month. "Initially, I thought she was kidding! She actually did join and we did some pretty interesting work together," says the 30 year-old entrepreneur who loves shuttling cities.

The Twitchhiker backpacked across South America in 2008-2009 and has been shuttling between Mumbai, Goa and Bengaluru since then. Karkhanis often helps out fellow tweeple with information on getting around Goa and South America. Recently, he helped out Adam (@travelsofadam) on his first trip to Mumbai via his other handle @ExoticGringo.

Karkhanis may have even found a travel companion through the microsite. "Khyati (@absolute_purple) read about a 15-day circumnavigation trip of India by train, that I had posted on my blog (ExoticGringo.com). She tweeted me to join. We might do the trip together!"

As Juneja says, "Twitter helps in emergencies but is also excellent if you need to plan a trip, because it connects you to people who help."

One-third of Brit travellers consult social media
Only one-in-three UK holidaymakers used social media when planning this summer's break, but the majority of those who did were likely to change their holiday choices as a result, reveals a poll by World Travel Market (WTM), a premier global event for the travel industry.

A representative sample of 1,000 UK holidayers, all of whom had taken a summer break in 2010, were asked about the impact that social media had during the decision-making phase. It emerged that out of 36 per cent respondents who did use social media, TripAdvisor was the most popular, with two-in-three (66 per cent) consulting the site. Around one-third referred to Facebook (34 per cent), one-in-five (21 per cent) looked at YouTube, a 17 per cent looked at Twitter.

The ultimate Twitchhiker
A UK writer who only used the generosity of Twitter followers to travel the world in aid of a charity, is gearing up for the release of a book about the project. Paul Smith completed the jaunt from his home town of Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Stewart Island in New Zealand in 30 days in March 2009, relying on donations of air, train, bus and ferry trips and accommodation throughout the entire journey.

Six months after returning to the UK, book publisher Summersdale approached Smith to write an account of the trip. Twitchhiker: How One Man Travelled the World by Twitter is a 320-page paperback that released this August.

How Smith did it
Smith's rules were simple: only accept hospitality from followers of his @twitchhiker Twitter account; only make plans three days in advance; only spend money on food and drink; and return home if offers to move on from a location dry up within 48 hours.

The route Smith eventually took included a ferry trip to Amsterdam, train to Paris and then Saarbruck and Frankfurt in Germany, back to Amsterdam, flight to New York, bus to Washington DC, various buses and flights across the US midwest before heading to New Zealand from Los Angeles.

Companies and tweeple donated the flights and accommodation during the journey and included Orbitz, Air New Zealand, a businessman in Zurich and a frequent flyer who donated Air Miles for the Pacific journey.

The trip caught the imagination of the tech and mainstream media around the world and Smith's presence on a New Zealand TV show saw a sudden spike in traffic to Twitter (a country which at the time had little penetration from Twitter). Smith even raised over ufffd5,000 for Charity:Water, a non-profit bringing safe drinking water to people in developing countries, through the trip.

Read about Smith's journey on his blog https://www.twitchhiker.wordpress.com/. His book Twitchhiker: How One Man Travelled the World by Twitter is available on Amazon.com

Heard this?

Travel with location-based apps
The novelty of checking in and winning prizes (like mayorship on Foursquare) on location-based apps has worn off. Location-aware services like Yelp! And Gowalla are evolving into valuable travel tools. For instance, when Foursquare users check in from a given place, the app asks them to post 'tips' about their experience. These tips usually contain information specific to the place and its product, but can also provide invaluable real-world looks based on actual experience. Like this: "This restaurant is packed and the waiters can't keep up." Or: "It's Saturday night at 10 pm and this lounge is almost empty." Or: "The grilled cheese sandwiches here truly live up to the hype, but I am now Rs 200 lighter. Sigh."

"This type of information can be very helpful when you are trying to decide whether to patronise this place or that one," says Moksh Juneja, who has organised spontaneous Foursquare eat meets in his Chembur neighbourhood.

The handbook

How to travel with Twitter
Travel writer and author Rolf Potts who runs popular travel blog Vagabonding (rolfpotts.com), suggests:
1. Before the trip: Get insider information about your destination by finding experts or groups to follow. You can search for the place either by typing its name into the search under the 'Find People' tab, or by using a hashtag, which attaches a hash symbol as a prefix to any topic, allowing people to search for it easily (for example, #peru, or #travel). This will help you identify local experts and official tourism bureaus.

2. Post the tweet right: There are many ways to update your Twitter feed while travelling. One is to set up your Twitter account to accept updates via text messages from your phone. If you are travelling internationally, check Twitter's help pages to find out how to send messages when abroad and what your phone carrier charges for international text messaging are. You can beat some of those costs by downloading a free application for Web-enabled phones, like TwitterBerry for the BlackBerry and Twitterfon for the iPhone. TwitPic is an application that allows you to send photos to Twitter.

3. Ask for recommendations and advice: "Many people I follow often, send out tweets like 'I'm headed to South Africa in two months. Any suggestions for lodging/activities?' or 'Currently in Buenos Aires. Which restaurant has the best steak here?' Since you'll be getting responses in real time, Twitter becomes even more useful if you're a more spontaneous traveller," says Potts, author of books Marco Polo Didn't Go There and Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel.

4. Join the help group: If you are just starting out as a Twitter user and don't have a lot of followers to turn to for travel emergencies, you can join the Twitter Travel Help group on www.twittgroups.com/group/travelhelp.

5. Share your experiences on the road: While you can use conventional blogs to write about your travel experiences in-depth, Twitter can broadcast some essential updates in real time.