A year ago, InfosTourisme did not exist

Six weeks before our first anniversary, I decided to tell the story ofInfosTourisme in six episodes. Not to fabricate a success story or to present a summary filled with superlatives. Simply to recount what we have truly built since the media outlet's launch.

Today, more than 1,500 articles have been published, 12 volunteer experts have joined the adventure, and numerous tools have been developed. But before all this, there was simply an idea and a lot of uncertainty.

Six weeks to recount a year I will not forget

In six weeks, InfosTourisme will celebrate its first year.

I could have waited until this date to publish a big anniversary article, list some statistics, thank the readers, and move on. But looking at everything that has happened since the launch, I felt that this first year deserved more than just a simple review.

Because a lot of things have happened.

There were the first articles, the first visits, the first loyal readers, the first interviews, the first companies that agreed to trust us. There were also the tools we began to imagine, the events we wanted to cover differently, the arrival of 12 volunteer experts, the launch of our Android application, our development in 21 languages, and our first revenues.

Obviously, all of this wasn't built in a day.

So I decided to publish an article every week until our first anniversary. Six weeks, six stories, and a first year told without trying to embellish it.

To begin with, we need to go back to the time when InfosTourisme did not yet exist.

On September 1, 2025, everything was yet to be built

It is strange today to look at InfosTourisme and try to remember when the site was still almost empty.

There weren't 1,500 articles. There were no practical destination pages, no geopolitical radar, no bullshit alert, no world map of DMCs, no tourism stats, no mobile app, and certainly not a team of 12 volunteer experts.

The main question was: is it still possible to create a new B2B tourism media outlet and bring something truly different to the table?

The honest answer at that time was that I didn't know.

I didn't know if professionals would read InfosTourisme. I didn't know if Google would give us a spot. I didn't know if executives would agree to answer our questions, if companies would ever decide to become partners, or if the media outlet would still be around twelve months later.

On the other hand, I knew perfectly well what I didn't want to do.

I didn't want to create just another media outlet.

I didn't want the logo to be the only difference

When I launched InfosTourisme, the professional tourism sector already included several historical media outlets, recognized newsletters and titles specializing in travel agencies, technology, aviation, hospitality or distribution.

It would therefore have been quite presumptuous to think that the mere arrival of a new site would revolutionize the market.

I didn't want to create a clone. I didn't want to publish the same topics as everyone else, in the same order and with the same formats, only to then explain that we were different.

I wanted to start with another question: what do tourism professionals really need?

Of course, they need to be informed. But they also need to save time, quickly understand a crisis, verify information, find the formalities of a destination, identify a local partner, access data, or understand what a new technology will really change in their business.

It gradually became our editorial obsession.

With each topic, I try to come back to the same question: what does this concretely change for tourism professionals?

This sentence may seem simple, but it profoundly changes the way we process information.

Announcing that a company is launching a new product is one thing. Explaining what this might change for an agency, a hotelier, a tour operator, or a destination is another.

It is this second approach that I want to defend with InfosTourisme.

Initially, nobody was really expecting us

When you launch a new media outlet, you start with an obvious disadvantage: nobody has any particular reason to read you.

You have to earn every visit, every click, and every minute of attention.

In the media and digital world, new editorial projects are often quickly judged through a few simple indicators: their audience, the number of subscribers, the size of their team or their revenues.

These figures obviously matter. A media outlet without readers cannot fulfill its mission, and a media outlet without a business model cannot build its independence in the long term.

But when starting from scratch, looking only at the big numbers can become paralyzing.

At first, you have to learn to look at the small steps forward.

Another article. A returning reader. A professional sharing content. A company agreeing to an interview. A page starting to appear on Google. An idea transformed into a tool. A first subscription. A first partner.

Building a media outlet from scratch means accepting that a lot of work will remain invisible for a long time.

And continue anyway.

Publishing more than 1,500 articles was not the initial plan

Today, InfosTourisme has more than 1,500 published articles.

I must admit that when I started, I didn't imagine reaching such a volume in the first year.

But I want to be very clear on one point: I do not consider the number of articles as a victory in itself.

Publishing for the sake of publishing is pointless.

What matters is what this production has allowed us to build: editorial depth, a better understanding of the topics that interest professionals, a growing presence on Google and above all an ability to cover daily an industry that is evolving extremely fast.

This first year has been a period of accelerated learning.

We have covered travel agencies, tour operators, airlines, destinations, DMCs, hotels, cruises, MICE, travel tech, artificial intelligence, distribution, transport, geopolitical crises and major transformations in our sector.

Each article taught us something.

Some found their audience immediately. Others took several months to emerge. Some were hardly ever read. Others continue to generate traffic long after their publication.

That's also what building a media outlet is about: trying, measuring, understanding, and starting again.

We preferred to start rather than wait until we were perfect

Looking back, I think one of the most important decisions of that first year was to start before everything was perfectly ready.

We could have expected better design, more resources, a full team, a perfect business plan or a definitively fixed editorial strategy.

We preferred to publish.

The first item, then a second, then ten, then a hundred.

The media outlet was built up as it progressed.

I don't claim that everything was perfect. That would be wrong. Some pages were improved, some formats evolved, errors were corrected, and several ideas were completely rethought.

But I prefer an imperfect project that is moving forward to a perfect project that only exists on paper.

Very quickly, the news alone was no longer enough for me

A B2B media outlet obviously needs to cover current events.

A new airline route, an acquisition, an appointment, a regulatory change, an innovation or a crisis can have very concrete consequences for professionals.

But current events have one obvious flaw: they age quickly.

An article published today may lose much of its relevance in a few days.

So I started to think differently.

Why not also build resources that can remain useful over time? Why not create guides, maps, platforms, and tools that can support professionals on a daily basis?

This is how our practical destination pages, interactive maps, Tourism Stats, Bullshit Alert, geopolitical Radar and our world map of DMCs gradually appeared.

We started to move from a simple publishing logic to another ambition: to make InfosTourisme a media that professionals can also use.

This development will be at the heart of the second episode of this series.

Think like a professional before you think like a media outlet

A travel agent doesn't wake up in the morning wondering what topic will allow InfosTourisme to generate more page views.

He may be wondering if his client needs a visa, if a destination is safe, which airline serves a city, which tour operator to contact, or what new regulations might affect a booking.

This reality must guide our work.

The question therefore cannot simply be: "What article can we publish today?"

It should also be: "What problem can we help solve?"

It's a difference of a few words.

But it has profoundly changed the way I view InfosTourisme.

She explains why we developed so many tools in just a few months. She also explains why I don't want to confine InfosTourisme to the traditional definition of a simple news site.

I believe that a modern professional media outlet can inform, but also provide a service, structure data, simplify research, and build useful resources.

Some of the ideas probably seemed too ambitious for such a young media outlet

Create a geopolitical radar during an international crisis. Make InfosTourisme accessible in 21 languages. Develop a mobile application. Map destination management companies (DMCs) worldwide. Create nearly 90 destination guides. Regularly compare the technical performance of B2B tourism media.

For a media outlet that had just been created, it would have been easy to respond: "It's too soon."

And perhaps, sometimes, it was indeed too soon.

But I also believe that waiting until you're grown up to think big is one of the best ways to stay small.

So we tried.

Sometimes with very limited resources. Often by learning as they went along. Always with the idea that something different had to be tried.

Not everything worked perfectly, and probably not everything will work in the years to come.

But I prefer to experiment and learn rather than watch others invent for us.

The first article will probably remain the most important

Publishing the first InfosTourisme article on September 1, 2025, was obviously nothing spectacular from the outside.

A new website appeared on the internet. A new article was published. No one could know what would become of the project.

Looking back, I think that first click on "publish" was the most important act of that entire first year.

Because before that moment, InfosTourisme was just an idea.

After that moment, InfosTourisme existed.

The 1,500 articles, the 12 volunteer experts, the tools, the maps, the first readers, the first partners and the first euros of revenue all stem from this initial decision: to stop thinking about it and start building.

We often tend to celebrate only the major milestones: a million visitors, a fundraising round, a major contract, or an international expansion.

But the very first victory of a project is often much more modest.

It's simply the moment when someone decides to begin.

Has InfosTourisme succeeded?

After less than a year, it would be far too early and far too presumptuous to speak of definitive success.

We built foundations. We found our first readers. We created tools. A team of 12 volunteer experts gradually formed. We generated our first revenues and convinced our first partners.

All of this is real.

But the real challenge begins now.

Last.

Grow our audience.

Create a solid business model.

Continue to produce useful content.

To develop our tools.

To preserve our credibility.

And above all, to continue to deserve the time that readers give us.

I even believe that the second year will be more difficult than the first.

When you start from scratch, every step forward seems huge. When the project begins to take shape, expectations become higher.

And that's perfectly fine.

What I really take away from this starting point

This first year has taught me that it is not necessary to have all the answers to begin.

She also taught me that the first article sometimes counts more than the thousandth, because it is the one that transforms an idea into reality.

I understood that an audience is built gradually, but that a vision must be present from the outset. That a professional media outlet must consider usefulness before focusing solely on volume. That the best tools often emerge from a very concrete problem encountered by professionals.

I also learned that you have to measure results, accept mistakes and keep moving forward when no one can guarantee success.

Perhaps this best sums up InfosTourisme's first year.

We had no guarantee.

We started anyway.

Next week, I will explain why we created 14 tools

Publishing was the beginning.

But very quickly, I realized that this would not be enough.

Tourism professionals needed information, of course, but also maps, data, guides, radars and tools that could save them time.

This is how InfosTourisme gradually stopped thinking like a simple media outlet.

Next week, for the second episode of this series dedicated to our first year, I will tell how and why we built 14 practical tools and maps, from the Geopolitical Radar to the world map of DMCs, including Bullshit Alert, Tourism Stats, our destination pages and the maps of the CEDIV and Havas Voyages agencies.

Six weeks. Six stories. A first year.

And this is just the beginning.

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