BBC Travel

Google’s lesser known travel apps

Top sites for booking European rail tickets

Buy your airfare from GetGoing and it will decide where you’re flying

Need a flight? Start a contest

US officials put a focus on LGBT travellers

New measures in airport security

[SEE FULL LIST OF LINKS]

Tnooz
Security alert: How a travel technology company is grappling with an ethical hacker

Case study: How Yapta’s pivot from B2C to B2B is faring

Tnooz has covered European rail better than any of the competitors, but it’s been spread out across a bunch of posts.
This one gets at some of the broad themes:
SilverRail’s strategy for European rail ticketing

BBC Travel
[The following links aren't viewable to UK residents because of BBC rules.]

Top sites for booking European rail tickets (think this is pretty representative of my work)

When’s the best time to book flights? (was the most-viewed article on BBC.com for a day)
Pay-as-you-go rental cars come of age for travelers (written before the NYT discovered Cars2go)

Flip a coin, book a flight: GetGoing

Need a flight? Start a contest with FlightFox

Flight search that maximises miles for elite flyers: Superfly

Say goodbye to hotel room roulette with Room 77

US officials put a focus on LGBT travellers (my minor scoop)

Say goodbye to hotel room roulette with Room 77

New ways to earn miles faster: PointsHound and Rocketmiles

New measures in airport security

[Full list of posts)

Tnooz
Decoding the planned (r)evolution in airline distribution [The story I'm proudest of in early 2013]

Where Google Travel is heading, according to one of its employees [One of the site's most read stories of early 2013]

Six-second postcards: Vine is changing how travelers share stories [The most socially-shared story of early 2013]

In a Q&A, Tourism Australia reveals the secrets of its Facebook dominance [One of the site's most shared stories of early 2013]

Kayak adds price forecasts to US and UK fare search, saying it’s better than Bing Travel

Facebook: 9 fresh examples of how travel marketers can unlock success

Case study: How Yapta’s pivot from B2C to B2B is faring

[Full list of posts]

Condé Nast Traveler
The Lowdown on Travel Advisories

[Full list of posts.]

LearnVest
5 Surprisingly Affordable Destinations for 2013

A list of my writing in 2012.

BBC TRAVEL (tech column)

Seven innovations in air travel (The latest technologies at airports, such as facial scanners at airport security.)
Top sites for swapping travel tips (from Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree to Gogobot)
Five flight-tested travel pillows
Password protection on the road
Five download-worthy travel mags for iPad only

Pro photographers reveal their top travel gear
Save money even after you book a hotel or flight
Seven trusted family travel apps
Top tech tools for traveling (A round-up of interviews with travelers around the world)
Best blogging tools for travellers
How Facebook’s privacy changes affect travelers

Free e-books (How to stock up on before a vacation — one of my most popular posts.)
How to use smartphone apps to map your adventures, such as by making custom maps of your itinerary in advance of your trip
Twitter tips for travellers
Four ways to revive a dying smart phone

August-December:

New sites let you sell unused hotel and plane bookings
Five tech-savvy hotel amenities
Increased comfort in the sky
How to rent pocket wi-fi hotspots for overseas travel and never pay data roaming fees again.
A boom in same-day hotel booking apps. Which one’s best for you?
Six ways to shield your laptop
The rules for house-swapping
App guides to flyer’s rights
Keep e-mail out of sight, out of mind while on the road
Best travel tech in 2012
2012 gift guide for budget travellers

BBC TRAVEL FEATURES
See Switzerland without a car
Walking the new Wales coastal path
Prime time for golf holiday homes

A few short pieces:
London’s prototypes for new double-decker buses
Locals’ guide to Dublin’s pubs

I responded to to same-day news stories, like the launch of new travel story curation service Travelreads. I also dabbled in data journalism by taking a data set and mapping the safest countries for aviation.

I covered the Diamond Jubilee in London
Recap: Scenes from the Thames Diamond Jubilee Pageant and Recap: the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Service and Procession, among other posts, such as A visitor’s guide to the Diamond Jubilee.

Fun fact: My BBC travel tech columns are translated into Portuguese for a Brazilian publication.

CONDE NAST TRAVELER
Mark Zuckerberg Fails to Tip, Should You? The Truth About Tipping Etiquette in Rome
Explainer: Why Do Airplanes Take Off Into the Wind?
Four Promising Tech Advances for Airports and Airplanes.
Does package bundling on vacation-booking websites really get you a deal?
Explainer: Why Are There Still Ashtrays in Airplane Bathrooms?
How Does a Mega Cruise Ship Source, Store, and Prepare All That Food?
Are You This Year’s Billionth Traveler?

TNOOZ
In July 2012 I joined as a part-time reporter for this pub, which is the number-one most read news blog in the travel trade.

My most read post in 2012 was iPhone5 – new maps, Passbook comes front and center, and more
My post that received the most comments was: What are the best cities around the world for travel tech startups?
Story I’m proudest of: After early hype and a quiet year, Everbread says it has something baking in Singapore
See the full list of my Tnooz posts, here.

MEDIA APPEARANCES
I was a guest talking about the pocket wi-fi story for BBC Travel on Peter Greenberg’s national US radio show (at the 12-minute mark) in December 2012, as well as earlier in April 2012, when we did a radio show on the Eurostar between London and Paris.

SOCIAL MEDIA
At the end of the week of tweeting travel news links for the @BBC_Travel account under the #bbcinbrief hashtag, I occasionally summarize the best tweets at BBC Travel.
For Budget Travel, I did a monthly Q&A under the hashtag #askBT.

BUDGET TRAVEL FEATURES, TOP TEN LISTS, and SLIDE SHOWS
11 Surprisingly Lovable Airlines which was also featured on NBCNews.com
15 More Places Every Kid Should See Before 15 (1,500+ likes)

BUDGET TRAVEL BLOG POSTS
Full list at my page on Budget Travel’s website
Some of my posts were re-published by NBCNews.com, including:
New Viator website offers cheaper shore excursions for cruisersMySeatFinder fetches you a better seat automatically.

PHOTOGRAPHY
This summer, I ran around town taking photos of London during the 2012 Games (Flickr) for BBC Travel’s Olym-pix slide show.

I wrote 18 feature stories this year for BudgetTravel.com, the website of Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel magazine in the US. One piece that CNN re-published — 8 Foreign Fast-Food Chains Worth a Taste — received more than 7,000+ Facebook “likes”. A piece re-published on Yahoo, World’s Prettiest Castle Towns, drew 2,500 likes.

I did 169 travel-themed posts for BudgetTravel’s blog.

MSNBC republished 18 of these, including “Travel tips for Android and iPhone users.”

I’ve been freelancing for BBC.com/travel’s blog since its first day in March 2011. In June, I became the site’s tech travel columnist. Here’s a typical one of my weekly pieces: “The best photo-sharing and storage sites”

Since July 2011, I’m the London guides editor for BlackBookMag.com and its app, writing (and editing) about the city’s newest cool spots.

This year, I’ve also done some writing for The New York Times‘s In Transit blog, with posts such as “Plane or Train? Sites to Help You Decide,” Expedia Offers Free Room Upgrades for Top Customers, and “In Bay Area, New Peer-to-Peer Car Sharing Offers.”

I wrote a bunch of city guides for the redesigned Away.com, such as for New York City and Dublin. I did a brief stint at AOL Travel News: and I wrote a handful of stories for Frommers.com.

Social media: All year, I’ve done a monthly afternoon Q&A chat on with Twitter users via the @budgettravel account. Since the fall, I’ve tweeted travel-related news links in the mornings every third week on @BBC_Travel. You can find my personal account at @sean_oneill.

Before moving to London, I was the senior editor of BudgetTravel.com in New York City for three years. For details, click here.