New to Second Life, Everquest or World of Warcraft? Diving into any of the hot virtual worlds or massively multiplayer online gaming environments can be difficult, especially for individuals who aren't experienced gamers.
Whether you're a newbie who wants to pass as a digital native, a parent interested in getting a better sense of what your kids are doing online, a marketer looking to understand how best to integrate your brand into virtual worlds, or just a chronic tourist looking to see the best the virtual world has to offer, wouldn't it be great to have someone to show you around?
Enter Synthravels - the world's first travel agency devoted exclusively to virtual world tourism. 
Founded by two Italian entrepreneurs (one of whom is an experienced travel journalist) and just recently launched, Synthtravels promises a variety of virtual tours conducted by expert guides. Basic tour packages promise to match experienced "residents" with tourists for deep-dive tours through roughly two dozen popular networked gaming and virtual community worlds, including Linden Lab's white hot Second Life. To me, even more interesting are some of the custom tour suggestions -- experiences that span multiple virtual worlds to focus on "best shopping experiences", "trend spotting", "celebrity sightings" and other themes.
Time will tell whether virtual worlds like Second Life are a flash in the pan or a major trend in online community building (I suspect the latter is closer to true), but I think Sythravels has hit upon an interesting and valuable service offering at exactly the right time.
File this one under "cool" and learn more from trendspotting hub Springwise.
