Paesionline, the leading online tourist information service well known both in Italy and abroad, has recently invested a significant amount of resources in creating an international portal aimed at becoming the benchmark for all international and specifically English speaking travellers. Thanks to the positive experience of Paesionline.com, it emerged how the use of an English denomination would have made the site more visible from abroad and better position it in the infinite range of offers available online. Hence the change from PaesiOnline.com to PlacesOnline.com, a one stop tourist portal dealing not only with Italy but also with major tourist destinations worldwide, with special emphasis on the United States, the UK and India. As well as guides, this site offers a wide range of information on attractions, museums and the most important monuments of each city. A range of photos, the weather and a selection of extra information and tips are also featured. These are written first hand by visitors to these locations who belong to the online community. Furthermore, the writer service offers to all web users the opportunity to describe their holidays, further enhancing the exchange of information among those who love travelling.In the last few weeks a record number of hits have been registered at Placesonline.com. This has been possible thanks to precise online marketing strategies: SEO and SEM.The SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy has allowed us to improve our ranking in search engine results, enabling us to reach our target users at the very time when an information or emotional need is born. Among other things, this assures the mid to long term web visibility of site contents and of the popularity link and aims at optimising the contents of the latter.The SEM (Search Engine Marketing) strategy has been aimed at generating qualified traffic to Placesonline.com from search engines. To this more general cpc campaigns on other sites are added…Placesonline is part of a number of important and prestigious partnerships such as the ones with Venere and Volagratis and is developing other important join ventures aimed at constantly improving and enriching its offer for tourists.Our portal is also a promotion medium for all tourist accommodation businesses wishing to increase their visibility abroad. This is the aim of the Your Smart Activity service (see http://www.placesonline.com/add_accommodation.asp). Thanks to a simple administration dashboard, it allows the creation of a page packed with images and information regarding the accommodation featured inside the travel guide of the location where the venue is situated. A new service offers visibility to tour operators, car rental companies and businesses providing specific itineraries in the area (e.g. wine tours). Here too, web pages are linked to the destination venue (see http://www.placesonline.com/writers/home_company.asp).The goals Paesionline wishes to reach in the immediate future are not only related to quantity, though we see the importance in a numerical increase of our users. We feel it is also important to aim for the quality of our contents and services in order to help the portal become a benchmark in the world of travel guides, so as to increase the importance of our product on foreign markets, especially in the US, the UK and India. Another crucial objective is that of developing an ever more diverse and interactive community which is to become and important arena for dialogue and exchange for anyone who through the web wishes to share their travel experiences – naturally in the context of the 2.0. Web. Our desire is to offer users and businesses wishing to promote their services on PlacesOnLine.com a wide range of opportunities.