Some travel bloggers get a helping hand

In the first entry of her 2-month-old blog, or Web diary, Erin Leffelman announces she’s on a “one-woman mission … to spread the word about the kickin’ outdoor recreation scene in and around Milwaukee” — a town better known for beer, bratwurst and bone-chilling weather.

But while Leffelman’s http://playinthecity.blogs.com doesn’t mention it, the 23-year-old waitress and aspiring journalist is getting a little help from Milwaukee’s tourism office: a year’s worth of high-speed Internet access, $1,700 in computer and camera equipment and free access to many of the outdoor diversions she’ll be describing in her twice-weekly musings.

Milwaukee is one of several destinations trying to harness the blogosphere, a virtual universe laced with unvarnished, off-the-cuff comments produced by an estimated 12 million diarists. And rather than simply monitoring bloggers’ opinions, travel marketers are tapping them as paid evangelists.

Last month, Pennsylvania’s tourism site, http://visitpa.com, launched six blogs written by “real people” taking road trips across the state. Accompanied by digital photos and videos, the diaries cover such diverse pursuits as antique shopping, mountain biking and attending a NASCAR event. The authors — a family of four, a history buff and a Harley-Davidson rider among them — receive $1,000 for each of three journeys they’ll write about this summer.

Minneapolis’ visitor and convention bureau, meanwhile, is soliciting applications for three culturally diverse “online tour guides” — a heterosexual couple, a family with children, and a gay male couple or group of gay male friends — who will post journal entries on the bureau’s Web sites at least once a week for six months. The bloggers’ payback: a “package of fun” that includes hotel rooms, event tickets and gift certificates.

Though sponsored blogs may be anathema to some Web purists, they’re part of an effort to bypass mainstream media in favor of “customer-driven content” that ranges from online travel communities like IgoUgo ( www.igougo.com) to guest-written hotel reviews on TripAdvisor ( www.tripadvisor.com).

The Milwaukee blog is “a hands-off relationship, and if Erin has a negative experience, we expect her to record that,” spokesman David Fantle says.

But whether such sponsored efforts will translate to new visitors is debatable. Business Week’s Blogspotting columnist, Stephen Baker, noted that some of VisitPa.com’s early posts are “brochures traveling under another name. A dose of tedium, frustration, or fear would make them more believable.”