It has long been my contention that the two industries that supply
me with a livelihood, --travel and travel publishing -- should
borrow a page from a highly lucrative, if less high-minded line of
work: Pornography.
My belief that the porn world took to the Internet like -- oh,
let's just skip the obvious Pamela Anderson metaphor and use a
duck-to-water comparison -- has never really been embraced by my
colleagues, who seem loathe to delve into the topic.
Today my theory's integrity once again has been bolstered. While
looking for a hotel room in Amsterdam, where I'll be staying for a
few days following next week's ASTA blowout, I conducted the most
basic of Web searches: I typed www.amsterdam.com into the URL field
of my browser, figuring that wherever that path took me would
surely lead to one hotel site or another.
I was only momentarily surprised to find that the site I was
taken to was Escorts.com, a fledgling "companion location service"
that currently is soliciting -- no pun -- escorts, clients,
agencies and other businesses to join its ranks. Now that's what I
call creative on-line niche marketing.
I'm still looking for a hotel room.