Originally Posted by
SANspotter
I've been hearing about imminent doom since '98. Every year, something happens which sends everyone running in panic, claiming the end is near, and yet...here we are.
The rules will change, and we will change with them. It's a never ending cycle.
Right but there is also a huge difference in the amount of exposure from these bloggers in the past 5 years. Examples:
1) While credit card churning has been around for a while several prominent travel bloggers have gained very large audiences. Once they began to detail how to churn cards and published the reconsideration numbers with a script it wasn't too long after that CC companies started to clamp down. I would say one of the biggest reasons people did not get into the churning game was due to having to read so much in the forums and lack of knowledge on how to meet minimum spend which bloggers changed very quickly around 2010.
2) Hidden city ticketing and throwaway ticketing have gotten a lot more exposure from blogs. No longer does the average Joe have to read pages of comments on FT and try and decipher code words and acronyms.
3) Manufactured spending really took off in '09/10 with dollar coins, rebate portals, and amazon payments. While several forums covered these methods they didn't receive full exposure until the hit the blogs. Before there were wikis you had to go to a blog to obtain the spoon fed version.
4) Correct me if I'm wrong here but there were only a select few non-bloggers that bragged to the media about the MS deals?
5) This is only a guess but I am not sure of the "backroom" discussions that are being made at things like the Freddy awards and what not. Now these "hobbyists" are being consulted by travel companies. Not only that, some of the bloggers have direct financial relationships with these companies.
So while I wasn't around in 98 I can say that bloggers have a much larger influence of the direction of the hobby. They want to be TV personalities and have higher aspirations. I have no idea if that is a good or bad thing for those of us who do this as a hobby.
Someone pointed out that Ben may soon get burned out. Maybe he's looking to transition into something different and this is just a foreshadow of what is to come?