Great news received today! Yes, the Travel Rants blog has being shortlisted in the category of Best Consumer Blog in the Travolution Awards 2008. I’d like to thank everyone who has emailed to congratulate me and wish me good luck – it means a lot.

I am up against tough competition though:

• Travel Mail Blog (various authors)
• Viator Blog (various authors)
• Everything-Everywhere (Gary Arndt)
• Select World Travel (Lee Harrison)

Good luck to you all.

The shortlisted blogs will be scrutinised over the coming weeks by a panel of judges from across the travel industry and the winners will be announced at a ceremony in London on Thursday 24 April. For a full list of categories and more information visit Travolution.

Well, I’ve finished packing for my trip to Berlin, I’m heading to bed now for a few hours sleep before I have to be up for the train journey to Liverpool, then the flight over to Germany. I’ve decided to take the laptop, so should get time for 2 or 3 posts about the ITB and PhoCusWright summit/conference.

I’m looking forward to meeting the summit approved bloggers and hearing guest speakers from the likes of Google, BA and Trivop at the conference. If you haven’t already subscribe to my RSS feed and keep up to date with my trip.

Watch this space…

It’s been a crazy week at work and I have started putting together the first Travel Rants Podcast. I think I have finally got to grips with the technology. Anyway, more about the podcast later, today, I wanted to mention the PhoCusWright Bloggers Summit at ITB Berlin.

The summit takes place on the 5th March with the Bloggers Summit Final Gathering on the 6th at the Anhalter Bar, Mövenpick Hotel. Unfortunately, I won’t get to Berlin until the evening of the 5th so will miss the summit, but like a typical Yorkshireman, I’ll be there in the bar on the 6th and will be flying back home on the 8th March.

For more information visit the PhoCusWright, Bloggers Summit page.

Let me know in the comments if you will be attending PhoCusWright conference, ITB Berlin exhibition or the bloggers gathering and hopefully I will see you there. You won’t miss me, I’ll be the short guy looking lost and wandering around Berlin, trying to find my hotel.

Unfortunately, due to last minute work commitments I have not being able to attend this years World Travel Market, but I know looking at my blog stats that there are a large number of you finding this blog, from previous posts I have written about this event.

For the latest news from the exhibition visit:

Travel Weekly
WTM London
Hotel Blogs

Please feel free to contact me with any photographs or videos of the event and I will publish them on the blog. I’m pretty gutted not to be going, but I will be keeping my eyes and ears open for news that affects travel consumers.

I know its six month off, until the London World Travel Market, but the hotels are already filling up, and I want to be organised this year, and get into a hotel nearer Excel. Last year I stayed at a hotel near Victoria, which was pretty much run-down, was over an hour journey in peak time to get to Excel.

I thought it would be a good idea to organise a night-out, if a small group of you were interested. So, if you’re attending the Exhibition, and would like to meet up with a small group of travel addicts, then let me know and if I get enough interest, I’ll organise it.

This weekend I am taking a photography trip to my favourite city in England, that’ll be York. I love the city because of its history, cobbled streets, olde world shops, and the architecture of buildings like the York Minster, Clifford’s Tower, and Holy Trinity Church.

Picture of Clifford Tower, taken by Jenthepen8 on Flickr.

Just in case you don’t know York is located in North Yorkshire, England, has a population of 186,800 and its history can be traced back nearly 2,000 years when the Romans were in power, but more importantly, two centuries later the city became an important trading centre for the Vikings.

Check out these cool photographs tagged York on Flickr.

Useful sites:

Visit York
What’s on York
City of York

This weekend it’s the Jorvik Viking Festival which keeps alive the 1000-year-old tradition of ‘Jolablot’, the original Viking festival that celebrates the end of the long, cold, northern winter nights and the coming of spring.

It only takes 20 minutes by train from Leeds to York, and I am hoping the weather is good to take some photographs and get used to my new camera in preparation for my trip to Oslo next week. Expect loads of new pictures on Sunday!

Today and tomorrow the Travel Technology Show will be in full swing at Earls Court, London. I was supposed to be attending, but due to work commitments, it’s not possible [gutted!]

The event is aimed towards travel companies, rather than consumers, but if your interested in reading more information about the event then visit the official Travel Technology Show website or keep your eyes peeled for more information on the Travolution Travel Technology Show blog created especially for the show.

As regular readers will be aware, in November I attended the Travolution Conference, and World Travel Market in London. Well, next on my calendar of events, is a visit to the Select World Travel Holiday Show, which is taking place in Malvern at the Malvern Theatres on the 28 January 2007.

Exhibitors include Beachcomber, Sunvil Holidays, P&O Cruise Lines, and Virgin Holidays, and the show is free, so if your in need of some holiday inspiration and in the Malvern area, or fancy a drive down to the Cotswolds then visit the show - it sounds like a travel show worth visiting.