Record levels of participation occurred in the traditional Bit competition, thanks to totally online integrated voting on Bit Channel, the most popular travel photo and video-sharing community in Italy – a success that confirms Bit as state-of-the-art Tourism 2.0, with a platform serving operators and travelers 365 days a year. The winners of the award were announced at a gala evening on the eve of Bit.

Do you remember the eighties and nineties and those evenings spent at friends’ homes watching never-ending slides from their latest holidays? Forget them. Internet has changed all this too: an end to boredom and a way to ensure friendships last. How? Simple: today you can upload photos and videos of your travels and share them online. And everyone is free to decide what, how and when to upload or look. Even better, you can then express your opinion with comments and votes.

ONLINE AWARD, RECORD FIGURES – This is the news from the Bit Tourism Award, the traditional Bit prize that goes to destinations best-loved by Travellers and the best Operators in the view of Travel Agents. This year it is completely integrated with Bit Channel, the most popular travel photo and video-sharing community in Italy (www.bit-channel.com) and offers a chance to propose and vote for the best photo and video contents in the community, as well as travel diaries.

Thanks to this formula Bit Tourism Award this year has posted excellent figures: at 31 January 2010, there were over 11,000 (11,897) Travellers registered, who had uploaded 169 videos, 154 diaries and 2,764 photos. Record figures for votes, with no fewer than 38,993 in total, compared to around 27,000 votes last year. This year 757 Travel Agents voted against the 582 of the last edition.

BIT CHANNEL, ‘THE’ TOURISM 2.0 – A well-deserved success also for integration in Bit Channel, a true Tourism 2.0 platform that meets real user demands. Want to know what kind of trip to take? The “Channels and special themes” section allows better understanding of specific kinds of holidays. Want to preview a destination? Thanks to Video Map all you have to do is click on the icons on the interactive map. Want to know what’s available?

Bit Opportunities lets you watch Bit Exhibitor videos. Do you want to take an active part? All you need to do is register (free of charge) to upload videos, photos or travel diaries on the site.

An internal travel-specific meta-search engine, the Catalogue of Catalogues, lets you search for information about travel offers by Tour Operators at Bit, identifying what’s available with a dedicated option. Tour Operators part of the initiative today include Settemari Tour, I Viaggi di Maurizio Levi, Aito Tours, Dimensione Sicilia, Rigamonti Travel Company, MSC Crociere, Caldana International, Brixia Viaggi and Virtual Travel Italica Viaggi. Bit plays a central role in innovative media, confirmed also by important sector representatives at this event, such as Rai Italian television, at Bit 2010 with the new satellite themed channel Yes Italia now also broadcast on the Sky 818 channel.

THE 2.0 REVOLUTION – By involving the Traveller, Bit Channel is a cutting-edge example of web 2.0, with the focus firmly on user-generated content. So-called user-generated contents are the real revolution that is turning net-surfers into web creators. Studies by e-Marketer, web trend analysts, show that in the trend-setting USA, creators of content for the Web will go from just over 80 million in 2009 to almost 120 million in 2013.

Top of the content list? Photos and videos. According to Intel research in September 2009, on a world level over 25% of users frequently create photographic content on their pc and more than 20% make video content. And videos are one of the main drivers of this growth. The figures for the Pew Internet project, taken again from Intel, show that between 2006 and 2009 consumption of online videos grew exponentially across all age groups: up by 34% for netizens aged between 18 and 29, 89% of whom are habitually interested in videos; a 32% increase in 30-49 year olds (67% are video users); 22% more surfers between 50 and 64 years of age, with 41% users; but over-65s are also up by 16%, over a quarter of whom regularly watch videos online. This is also confirmed by Nielsen NetRatings statistics, according to which the 10 websites that are growing fastest throughout the world are all sites that host user-generated videos or photos.

The 30th edition of Bit – International Tourism Exchange will be held at the fieramilano exhibition centre in Rho from Thursday 18 to Sunday 21 February 2010. For information updates: www.bit.fieramilano.it .