eTurboNews is a terrible name for branding: Here is why?

In 1999-2001 Bloody Good Stuff under the leadership of Juergen Steinmetz, and Melanie Webster represented Indonesia Tourism in the United States and Canada.

This was arranged together with the former Indonesian Minister of Culture and Tourism, the late Hon. Ardika from Bali.

One of the challenges at that time was political and resulted in travel warnings by the United States against the Republic of Indonesia.

In 2000 at the TIME tourism festival in Jakarta, Juergen Steinmetz was awarded a medal for special achievements for Indonesian Tourism by the President of Indonesia in a mass event on Plaza Indonesia.

ICTP was looking for a cost-effective way to address US travel agencies to educate the sector about the geographics of Indonesia. This was necessary to get the message out, that problems in Jakarta are not affecting tourism in Bali for example.

Internet was in the infant age, but most travel agents already had emails, some had websites. Juergen Steinmetz teamed up with Singapore-based eTurbo Hotels as a sponsor and started the first international travel industry news-letter using a Yahoo Group format. It was called eTurboNews, recognizing the sponsor.

eTurboHotels was the first Expedia-type company. They owned many website domains like sheraton.id or hilton.id and offered to build a free website. The monetarization model was to charge a commission for online bookings.

With the help of the Indonesian travel and tourism industry, this eTurboNews Yahoo Group grew fast. Other groups, like the influential ASEAN TOURISM DISCUSSION Group, brought leaders in the private and public sectors from the new ASEAN countries together to discuss tourism cooperation. Many of the current arrangements within ASEAN tourism had a start in this discussion.

The Hawaii Talk Group became an advertising-free opportunity for travel agents to communicate with hotels and other Hawaii-based suppliers and exchange ideas, praise, and criticism. In 2002 eTurboNews was told by the Hawaii Tourism Authority (HTA) that internet chat rooms had not much of a future, and they would not consider sponsoring such a discussion.

In the meantime, eTurboNews started a number of popular blogs including Meetings, Aviation, Wines, GayTourism, TravelIndustryDeals, WorldTourismWire, complimented with its own social media channels.

eTurboNews syndication expanded around the globe, and articles can be seen published on Hindustan Times in India among many more.

eTurboNews is a new tool for travel and tourism information that quickly grew in another region of the world. eTurboNews changed the format from Yahoo Group to other mass email formats, became independent from Indonesia in 2001, and the first completely independent media was started.

22 years later eTurboNews stillremains to be the real deal.

eTurboNews was and is the first global newsletter published every hour 24/7. It’s the only independent and global news wire in the travel and tourism industry, with opinionated content one can only find on eTN.

With 230,000+ travel trade email subscribers, the email distribution is now only about 10% of the overall readership.

News aggregators including Google and Bing News, the Breaking News, social media, push notifications increased the visibility of eTurboNews tremendously over the years.

A year ago Hawaii headquartered eTurboNews established 92 independent websites with its own ratings and SEO to promote content in 92 languages across the globe. Spanish, German, French, Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Swahili, Portuguese or Italian are the current front runners for non-English readers.

With more than 2 million unique American readers that opened eTurboNews articles, the United States is by far the largest audience, followed by the U.K., Germany, India, and Canada.

Currently, eTurboNews is seen in 238 countries and territories. The smallest territory in Antarctica with just one reader, and it’s unknown who this one reader is.

The largest cities where eTurboNews can be found are Frankfurt, Washington, London, New York, and Duesseldorf.

eTurboNews is a founding member of the African Tourism Board, the International Coalition of Tourism Partners, and the World Tourism Network, and founded the independent Hawaii Tourism Association in response to the former Hawaii Talk Yahoo Group.

eTurboNews remains to be based in Honolulu, Hawaii, USA with an independent operation in Duesseldorf, Germany, and freelance writers in 128 countries.

eTurboNews remains to be an undisputed leader and at the forefront of independent reporting for the global travel and tourism industry, touching lifestyle, fashion, human rights, and other interesting content.

When COVID-19 attacked the world of tourism, eTurboNews together with PATA, the Nepal Tourism Board, and the African Tourism Board founded the Rebuilding.travel group in March 2020 on the sideline of a canceled ITB trade show in Berlin, Germany.

This group emerged into the World Tourism Network with members in currently 128 countries.

After 257 popular zoom discussions, eTurboNews and World Tourism Network managed to keep the travel and tourism industry and its leaders united and engaged.

With Livestream, eTurboNews started its first 24/7 global video news channel, the Breaking News Show, and eTV. Readers can see eTN videos and real-time discussions playing on all eTurboNews websites, syndication partners, and dozens of platforms.

This is complemented with an extensive eTN Podcast selection. Every new article on eTurboNews can now be read, listened to as a podcast, and watched as a video on the eTN YouTube Channel and other known platforms.

Countries and Territories eTurboNews is seen: