Terrabook: A traveller’s Wikipedia for Greece
“We wanted to gather everything in one page to be able to give a simple, genuine way all there is in Ithaca. It was such a simple start”, says the founder and general manager of Terrabook, Giannis Martatos.
Since the internet technologies infiltrated our lives and portable devices are now available for the majority of the population, there are many who plan their vacation by themselves.
However, even in the era of internet dominance, this requires a long, time-consuming search, which often acts as a constraint for the user, who can "lose" some useful information into the maze of search engines, different sites etc.
The novelty of the "Book of the Earth", that is, Terrabook is that it brings the pages of all information on tourist destinations, giving the user the ability to start from where he wants to go, and from there to see what kind of possibilities and options are offered by this region. Terrabook was born as an idea in 2011, based on Ithaca, and first implemented in 2012.
Terrabook, as emphasized by Martatos, has the startling number of 14,000 pages of content, which varies from the busiest beach to the most secluded and picturesque port that may be of interest to tourists and the most luxurious hotel rooms to more economic budget-wise solutions. "There is not a text that is copy-paste”, states Martatos.
The aim and the central idea behind Terrabook is that each region is presented in its entirety, into a real tourist platform- encyclopedia, a tourist “Wikipedia” which aims to "bring tourists to the area and the keep them there, as it will show them whatever they want”.
Practically speaking, the main advantage of Terrabook is that it is the only online destination where you prospective tourists/ travelers need to go to plan their holidays in the areas covered by it. Apart from Ithaca, the team of Terrabook and its colleagues have mapped Kefalonia, Chania, Evros (Alexandroupoli- Orestiada), Samothrace, the prefecture of Messinia (Kalamata as well as Mani), Syros, Viotia (Arachova ), Argolida, Lemnos, Rethymnon, Corfu, Sifnos and Fokida (Delphi), while in their plans are to add even more destinations. The user is navigating through an interactive map, through which they can easily come into contact with the information that they seek.
Terrabook, as Martatos asserts, is very for everyone, “regardless of financial ability and personal preferences: If an area has the places that can satisfy the tourist, then they can find them in it”. The website is a localized website in five languages (English, French, Italian, German, and Russian) and other languages will follow. Also, Terrabook has great presence in social media, investing in direct communication with the public on Pinterest, Google+, Facebook, and Twitter.