October 2006 Archives

Despite building a very strong brand for Opodo in France, but less so in other European markets, Simon Vincent has quit for the top UK & Ireland job for Hilton Hotels.

Shock move? Yes, in terms of timing, with the busy booking season approaching... [He starts his new job in the New Year]

Although to some two years may not seem like a long time to remain at the top of the one of Europe's leading online travel agencies, but there is a "whiff of change" in the air [not our cliche, thankfully, but that of another leading figure in the OTA world].

Direct selling by suppliers is becoming more prevalent. European OTAs are going to continue losing their share of the online cake, according to PhoCusWright, over the next few years.

Perhaps it's the right time to get out?

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Some data in from research group ComScore Networks, outlining the growth of the online retail in the US.

Spending on travel products via the internet increased by 9% period-on-period in the third quarter of 2006 to $18.2 billion, ComScore says.

Non-travel transactions reached $23.1 billion during the same three months, up 23%.

ComScore says, despite the close to double-digit increase for online travel, growth is beginning to slow.

Forecasts for 2006 are $170 billion for online as a whole by year-end, with travel expected to take a $70 billion chunk.

Currently driving the overall growth are consumer goods such as electronics (up 42%), “accessories” (up 32%), sport and fitness (up 29%), software (up 27%) and event tickets (up 22%).

Is the slowing of the online travel sector about to hit the UK?

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Who would have thought it: a record-breaking day on the Travolution Blog last Friday – and all because you lucky people are desperate to use our new Travolution Travel Search Engine.

After plugging it on our e-news bulletin our visitor numbers have soared, with our weekend numbers on a par with our usual weekday figures.

So keep searching! And thanks...

[The Travolution Travel Search Engine is in the right-hand navigation panel]

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Another round of morning meetings – and another collection of companies pushing the affiliate marketing model as “the next big thing” in online advertising.

[None of the companies were affiliate marketers, by the way]

There are still huge questions surrounding the use of affiliate marketing. Indeed it was only a year or so ago that affiliate community felt the need to establish a body to “legitimise” and represent the sector, following less-than positive publicity about the types of sites used for campaigns.

What is becoming increasingly apparent is that it is no longer being considered the dark art – both in terms of theory and practice – of advertising.

One leading hotel chain told us today that it expects to enter the affiliate world in a big way in 2007, not content with using just pay-per-click advertising and employing the services of a decent agency to ensure its presence is paramount in natural search engine listings.

So what are the benefits?

Is it cheaper? More effective? Is it a handy and essentially automatic process once an affiliate house is signed up to do legwork?

Indeed, why is it only now that the model is being seen as the perhaps one of the most reliable methods of reaching a wide selection of consumers.

While working hand-in-hand with search engine marketing, actually “it can guarantee exposure where we need it”, said one senior figure recently.

“Guarantee”! That’s a strong word in the world of advertising…

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

The much talked-about new accommodation-only start-up Youtravel.com, which counts the likes of ex-Libra Holidays sales and marketing boss Paul Riches among its senior management team, launched today.

At first glance this morning there appeared to be no obvious technical glitches.

Positives: The site has a relatively simple design, making use on the homepage of handy boxed sections for destinations, bookings, sign-ups, suggestions and special offers.

The hotel search tool is as thorough as the user wants it to be, including options for board, facilities, check-in day, et al.

There is also a search-by-weather option – a nice, user-friendly tool that appears to becoming a rather popular piece of functionality following a similar launch by Wegolo earlier this month.

Negatives: more colour, please! [There are plenty of images of hotels and resorts, but often buried way down amongst the – very comprehensive – stack of details for each product]

Comments elsewhere ahead of Youtravel.com's launch pondered how much pay-per-click advertising would be needed in order to take on the reams of other bed banks, such as Hotels.com, Hotelopia.com, Lowcostbeds.com.

Perhaps Riches will tell us soon.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

This week featuring some chap from the US who is quite well known in computer circles: Bill Gates, of Microsoft.

Leave your entries via the comments button.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Previous competition:

Brent Hoberman

UK train operator GNER has today issued a press release triumphantly saying it has completed the installation of wireless broadband services on all its trains “seven months ahead of schedule”.

Well done.

But actually this is what they said in early September, when we first mentioned it on the blog.

A glossy brochure had arrived in the office one day saying all trains will be fitted with wireless system within a few weeks.

By our calculation that would mean mid-October. [Perhaps, after all, they are actually 10 days behind schedule!]

The dilemma still remains: pay an extra £30-odd for a first class ticket between London and Edinburgh and get free broadband access, hot drinks and nibbles – or pay a sizeable fee for an hourly or two-hourly hook-up.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Every now and again there are mutterings about brand hijacking in search, but here’s an interesting example of one operation muscling in on the search results of a completely unrelated company.

For a few moments yesterday afternoon, users searching for Ryanair on Google would have been offered sponsored links from Ask.com, a rival search engine, and – rather bizarrely – computer retailer PC World.

Overnight the PPC feed has changed on the keyword “ryanair” and only Ask.com remains in the sponsored links section.

How common is this practice? Any other weird examples?

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Poor old Ryanair, named and shamed today by consumer review site TripAdvisor as the “world’s least favourite airline” in its annual travel trends survey.

The survey of 4,000 travellers also saw US giant United Airlines singled out, while EasyJet was voted the second worst airline by British travellers after Ryanair.

Bad news all round for the Brits, with Heathrow Airport handed the unfortunate accolade of worst airport. Singapore's Changi came top.

Thankfully, British Airways has restored some pride, being chosen by travellers as the world’s favourite airline [feel an idea for a TV ad coming on].

More titbits form the survey here.

For those looking for the “hot” new places to go in 2007, here is TripAdvisor’s Top Ten:

* Pamukkale, Turkey
* Parga, Greece
* Ayr, Scotland
* Campeche, Mexico
* Marrakech, Morocco
* Naxos, Greece
* Puno, Peru
* Soller, Spain
* Salvador, Brazil
* Fes, Morocco

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

The digital version of our October edition is now available.

Includes every feature, every column, every ad, all at the click of a button.

Get it here.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Amid the giggles from some (rivals) and consternation of others (environmentalists), new long-haul low-cost carrier Oasis Hong Kong defied the best efforts of the Russian authorities and has finally got off the ground.

At the eleventh hour, the Russians decided the flight from Hong Kong to London Gatwick would not be entering its airspace, throwing the airlines carefully laid launch day plans into chaos.

Thankfully for them the Russians relented and the flight eventually took off from HK just after 5am UK time today (26 October).

Interesting aside to all this mayhem is that the airline told us that a massive 77% of all tickets bought in the UK were purchased over the internet, with the rest primarily from its call centre.

In Hong Kong the ratio is completely reversed, residents apparently preferring the human touch.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Little bit of moping around at First Choice towers today following its pre-close trading update unveiled to the Square Mile today.

For summer 2006, the multiple said:

* Short-haul down 9% y/r
* Medium-haul down 6% y/y

Winter projections:

* Short-haul down 15% y/y
* Medium-haul down 9% y/y

However, long-haul bookings are up (45% over the summer and 39% for the winter) and, most significantly, online bookings across its online brands Hotelopia, Hotelbeds and Bedsonline have soarded 39%, 70% and 35% respectively over the summer.

Full statement on First Choice corporate website.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

The last meeting of the Travolution executive advisory board took place a few weeks back.

A trancript of the whole meeting is avalable on the website and a photo reel on Flickr.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Tricia Holly Davis sends a report from the Association of Corporate Travel Executives conference in Barcelona

"People don't want to search," proclaimed Dr. Ricardo Baeza-Yates, director of research for Yahoo! Europe and Latine America, during a speech at the Association of Corporate Travel Executives conference in Barcelona.

Rather, Baeza-Yates clarified, "People want answers." One challenge facing Yahoo!, (and any company in the search business for that matter) is how to know what the best "answer" is.

In other words, how do companies like Yahoo! "mine" the billions of bits of customer information they have to figure out exactly what people are searching for and subsequently deliver information that is tailored to their personal lifestyles, likes, hobbies, etc?

"Every time you search you are saying something about yourself," said Baeza-Yates.

Sort of like predictive text, predictive search, would enable Yahoo! to individualise the search process.

This is not an entirely new concept. Supermarkets are kings at using customers' prior purchases to sell products that they would be most likely to buy.

In the online world, there is arguably no company better at predicting customers' mood than Amazon, which knows what book or CD a customer is likely to buy, based on that individual's purchasing history.

What Yahoo! is talking about is one step beyond what supermarkets and Amazon have been doing for years. Yahoo! wants to capture customer knowledge to create a virtual encyclopaedia that is uniquely tailored to each individual.

Whether this vision will give Yahoo! enough momentum to overtake the emperor of search and its main rival Google is unclear.

What is clear to some industry observers is that Yahoo! is arguably still trying to recover from its failure a decade ago to recognise that search would be big business, an oversight that some suggest let Google rule.

"One of the great things about the web," mused Baeza-Yates, "is that you can predict things but sometimes you'll be wrong. This is a good thing – otherwise, life would be just boring."

Tricia Holly Davis, freelance journalist

Look across to the right hand navigation bar and you’ll see a new function – a vertical travel search engine powered by Google.

Or, Troogle, as some of us have been calling it for a few months now. [“Obsessed”, is how one senior Google figure jokingly, we hope, described us today!]

In typical Google fashion, however, it is actually rather simpler than just being a travel vertical search engine.

Google Co-Op, the official title, is a service (in beta) that allows users to create their own engine and dictate which websites to search.

We have therefore created the Travolution Travel Search Engine, and embedded it into the Blog.

At the moment it searches around 20 different websites, including Lastminute.com, Expedia, Travelsupermarket, Kelkoo, Thomson, BA, Ebookers et al.

The significance of this cannot be underestimated. This is essentially a customised search engine that allows users to only search for products in websites of their own choosing – in our case, travel-related sites.

"Google Co-op was built to be scalable enough to cover a wide array of topics," says our Google friend.

"Our goal is not to focus on particular verticals. Instead, we’ve tried to create a system that can make information more discoverable across all topics.

"We want to point people to the most relevant and useful information on the web, not keep them on Google."

Let the debate begin...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

UK train operator Chiltern Trains is – pardon the pun – steaming ahead in the mobile ticketing arena.

The company, which operates services between London and Birmingham, is about to pilot a scheme whereby passengers will be able to buy a ticket online, receive a barcode confirmation, and then use the image on the phone to swipe in and out of stations.

The system will initially only be available to those buying E-Day Passes, but if the pilot scheme is successful – after a three-month period, starting in mid-December – any passenger buying a fare online will be offered the service.

Chiltern told us today that mobile-to-mobile services might be available at a later date.

Problem: Chiltern Trains are heavily reliant on commuter for its business, as a vast number of the stations the company serves are within an hour of London.

Will passengers, who probably buy a weekly, monthly or annual season ticket, want to have a barcode ticket for local stations but then have to whip out their paper ticket or Oyster Card for the London Underground or bus network?

If all the other train operators got together to work on the technology then the project might actually be more effective.

Unfortunately the words “collaborate” and “UK train companies” are not often heard in the same sentence.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

You have got to hand it to Air France and their knack for creating appealing viral marketing campaigns.

Back in May this year we highlighted a simple game where users could “fly” an Air France jet, picking up comfort points such as flying into in-flight entertainment and meal clouds, while avoiding clouds indicating turbulence and bad weather.

So roll on a couple of months and this time, to promote its flights to India from the UK, Air France has produced an online game that allows film fans to add their subtitles to famous Bollywood movies.

* Bollywood

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

The exclusive lead story in the October edition of the magazine revealed how Amadeus has developed a tool to bridge the gap between meta search companies and suppliers.

What we didn’t add at the time, as the story emerged literally just minutes before we put the October edition to bed, is that the airlines are actually being shifted into a rather nice position.

“Amadeus Meta Pricer vastly reduces the strain put on an airline’s systems by travel search engines,” says a press release put out today by Amadeus, confirming our story.

And here’s the crucial bit: “Instead, the airline signals to Meta Pricer which fares and availabilities it wants to make available to which travel search engines. In turn, travel search engines query Amadeus Meta Prcier to retrieve all the flight information for the registered airlines.”

So, in theory, if an airline doesn’t want fares going out to certain meta search engines – if its own website is actually becoming the preferred option, perhaps – then in steps Amadeus to stand in between.

One senior figure has already suggested privately that handing this filtering power to the airlines, so they can decide which meta search companies can access their fares, will have a major impact on the meta search model.

Of course, this is so far only being provided by one of the GDSs – but where one leads, others often follow...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Travolution is away at an RBI conference, so just a quick mention of the October edition of our magazine, which is available from today.

Two features from the new issue concentrate on what the tourist boards are doing with their web strategies, covering the overseas organisations and those working to increase inbound tourism to the UK.

* Destinations online – International
* Destinations online – UK & Ireland

Elsewhere in the issue we have gazed into our crystal ball to see how the web will transform in-flight entertainment in the future. We also carry out a profile of Travelzoo, the masters of the weekly travel deals email, which is making waves in the UK just 18 months after arriving from the US.

There is also the full transcript of the September meeting of the Travolution executive advisory board, featuring representatives from Yahoo!, Ebookers, TUI, Lastminute.com, BA.com, Expedia and the Global Travel Group.

We hope you enjoy the issue. Full service will resume shortly on the blog …

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Think you know about Web 2.0? And does your knowledge match the experts at E-Consultancy?

The web-based analysts for the world of electronic marketing have produced a game to test your wits about all things Web 2.0.

It takes just five minutes to complete.

CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE TEST

Thanks to Chris Lake at E-Consultancy.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

It says something about the importance of the internet to travellers when high-brow guidebook publisher Dorling Kindersley finally decides to launch an online portal.

The famous DK books have been around since the early 1970s and specialise in lifestyle sectors such as its Eyewitness travel guides, plus other collections for gardening and the arts.

Early next year will see the launch of Travel.dk.com [there is a screen grab of the site], a travel portal which early indications suggest will carry pretty much the same as its rivals – such as Lonely Planet and Rough Guides: reams of content, booking facilities and reviews.

One interesting addition, similar to the recently launched Yahoo! Trip Planner, will be a facility to create customised guides for a trip, which users will be able to create on the site and then print out.

However, there is one part of the new DK site – scheduled for launch in February 2007 – that sits somewhat uneasily against the likes of Lonely Planet and Rough Guides, as well as the travel sections of the national newspaper: a member-only, paid-for area.

“For a small fee annual fee”, DK will allow users – some of which will be corporate clients – into an exclusive part of the website that will include “special discounts and features”.

It will be interesting to see how much DK will charge for this part of the site. But with a multitude of pages elsewhere – both on and offline – containing excellent travel editorial content, DK will have to come up with something very strong, or very different.

Most of the major online media brands have now abandoned paid-for or subscription content, simply because consumers are [cliché alert] just a click away from something else.

UPDATE: Hotel bookings will be handled by the excellent and particularly well suited TravelIntelligence.net. Insurance by Columbus. Flight partner has yet to be found.

DK say fees for the member-only section of the site will be £10 per year. They are also reasonably confident that paid-for content will return once more as a model for other sites , especially in the travel sector.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Travolution entered Linden, the virtual world created by US-based Second Life, for the first time last night.

We have been tracking this new world over the summer ever since it emerged the Starwood hotel group had commissioned developers in Second Life to build an exact replica of one its new Aloft hotels.

Last week we gave birth to Kevinluke May, our own ‘person’ in Second Life [another Kevin May already lives in Linden – and we will be looking for him!], ahead of our arrival.

After grappling with the control console, which unfortunately for your average home user requires some pretty hardy kit such as a fast graphics accelerator, we set about assigning clothes, hair (or lack of), facial features and the like to Linden’s newest citizen.

[It was certainly a rather unnerving experience to find oneself without any outer garments on arrival in the drop-off one where other all new residents also begin their adventures]

The drop-zone is actually a bizarre but, on reflection, probably sensible place to start.

With the population increasing every day as us immigrants arrive, it actually resembles not much more than a nudist colony for the insane.

Every other new resident is also frantically running around, learning the controls and busily trying to add clothes and ensure they have a passing resemblance to their real self [or, in reality, someone they aspire to look like] as quickly as possible.

As promised last week, Kevinluke May then decided to find the new Aloft hotel.

A directory of places in Linden quickly located the Aloft island and within seconds – via the handy teleport button – a now fully clothed new resident of Linden found himself standing outside the new hotel.

A quick tour of the hotel revealed everything is in place for the hotel’s official opening this week.

Picture shows our resident standing by the pool at the Aloft.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

PING! Email arrives from Expedia in the US, providing salvation to all those who dread the annual visit to the family and sleeping on the rickety fold-out bed.

You are not alone!

According to Expedia’s Travel Trendwatch, almost half of adults would actually prefer to pay to stay in a hotel rather than be shoved into a cold spare bedroom that only experiences clean linen and a warm radiator a few times a year.

Whether this is a reflection on the tensions in your average US family is – unfortunately – not addressed.

Alas, Expedia is only a global online travel agent and not a family counselling service. At least, not yet…

On a serious note, the bulletin reveals that the Caribbean has become this winter’s cheap destination as the region is opened up to low cost carriers from the US.

Flights are also expected to be full or close to capacity this winter, Expedia says, despite what it calls “frustrating changes” in carry-on rules laid down by the Transportation Security Administration.

The following quote from the release requires no further comment.

“The addition of winter coats, shopping bags and holiday gifts carried on board will make flights feel even tighter.”

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Is the holiday home rental market perhaps seeing a bit of a renaissance? It just may well be so if the activity of the past few weeks is anything to go by.

Yesterday the Daily Mail & General Trust, owners of Associated Newspapers, which publishes the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday and the London Evening Standard, splashed out £3 million to buy a 50% stake in Villarenters.com, a web resource for private holiday home owners.

Where a few years back the likes of DMGT and Trinity Mirror, owner of the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror, crawled over one another snap up recruitment websites, it seems travel could be the next area of focus.

“The acquisition of Villarenters.com adds to Teletext’s portfolio of online and TV travel businesses and continues the group’s strategy of increasing its presence in the online travel advertising sector,” DMGT said yesterday.

So what is it about holiday rental sites? There is a general feeling that the quality of a high number of holiday rental sites – follow this thread on Travel-Rants recently – is on the negative side of mediocre.

Texas-based site HomeAway invested heavily in Holiday-Rentals.co.uk last year and is now beefing up the search capability of the non-US sites.

And now Teletext Holidays, the division of DMGT that will run Villarenters.com, has got its hands on 10,000 properties.

What this will undoubtedly mean is that, with the backing and resources of big name media and travel companies, holiday rental sites could improve dramatically in terms of quality and functionality.

There is an equally valid argument, however, that if larger operations start to dominate the market, the smaller, independent companies that have created successful rental sites and survived on a combination of their wits and innovation, could find life far more competitive and subsequently struggle to surive. Which would be a shame...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

PING! A press release arrives from JD Power & Associates in California outlining the findings of its 2006 Hotel Guest Satisfaction Index Study.

The survey of 12,000 Europeans who stayed in a hotel in the continent between June and September 2006 reveals exactly half made their reservations over the internet, up from 34% in 2005.

And the rise of the direct sell, according JD Power, is taking hold with sites such as Expedia and Hotels.com “ceding market share” to hotel websites.

Apparently guests are now twice as likely to book reservations through a hotel-branded website.

Elsewhere in the report, 70% of hotel guests in Europe prefer a smoke-free environment that “exceeds the boundaries of their room”. This is marginally lower than in the US (79%), but there are clear regional differences across Europe.

The survey says 57% of Spanish tourists want a smoke-free environment, against 76% of Swedes and those from the UK.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

• * Sidestep.co.uk still re-directs to Travelsupermarket.com
• * Ebookers.com still lost in the depths of Google’s natural search
• * Industry still bitterly divided over our Influential Ten poll [“Michael O’Leary – are you kidding!?!!” said one outraged contact last week]
• * Lastminute.com still lagging behind Expedia on Googlefight [but only just]

To see in the weekend, here's the first in an occasional series, this week featuring Lastminute.com chairman Brent Hoberman, pictured at our most recent Travolution board meeting.

Send your entries via the comments link below...


UPDATE: Thanks for all the comments. We had to reject quite of few over the weekend due to the likelihood of costly legal fees incurred by Travolution if we published them! Keep them coming...

Teletext Holidays might be basking in the enthusiasm from consumers for its recently launched Linguabot tool, but it turns out “Jodie” is also striking a chord with consumers for reasons other than those related to travel.

Word reaches us that the attractive [of course] assistant, as well as helping users unravel their travel woes on the website, has been asked out on a number of dates and even had to deal with a tricky proposal of marriage.

The trick with a Linguabot, essentially, is to ensure he/she expands their knowledge and quality of responses by the types of questions it receives and the answers it gives.

The mind boggles of the impact Jodie's popularity might have in the future!

Q: What is the easiest way to get from Central London to Paris.

A: Catch the Eurostar from Waterloo; meet me on platform 17, with flowers; whisk me away for the weekend.

Erm... We jest. It is, in fact, a very innovative tool and is pretty useful...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

After closely following the construction of the virtual Aloft Hotel over the summer we thought it was about time Travolution became a resident of Second Life.

We have now registered under the name Kevinluke May and hope to move into Linden shortly. There is, alas, another Kevin May among the 900,000-odd other citizens in the population

We will try and make our first visit one to see how work is progressing at the Aloft.

Here begins the adventures of Travolution in Second Life!

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

The BBC reports how the chair of the Internet Governance Forum has warned the internet could be “broken up” into separate networks around the world.

The IGF’s Nitin Desai believes the emerging markets in Asia, especially China, could trigger a re-evaluation of how the web is structured and regulated.

This will mainly be drawn about how domain names are registered and whether countries with a non-Latin alphabet push for localisation.

While initially this will have little effect on the online travel sector, there could be concern as to how the world’s largest country is integrated online at the same time as Western travel firms attempt to target it for both in and outbound tourism.

Already there is a wave of next generation domain names entering the market – Travolution has already covered issues surrounding the dot-travel domain run by Tralliance – but there are already question marks as to where this expansion will lead if “Balkanisation” of the web [a crude term for breaking something up] takes place anyway.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

This post really needs no explanation or comment. Except to say thanks to Nathan Midgley from Crosstalk for the lead.

“Blogging ‘un-Christian’ – Shock” from The Register.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Normal service will resume tomorrow.

Busy day today, putting the final touches to our October edition of the magazine, so little to report or discuss.

Only that Nielsen Net//Ratings has issued its latest report on the performance of UK search engines.

It appears our obsession with search continues and an estimated 264 queries are carried out every second in the UK during August. This equates to 22.7 million per day, 950,000 per hour or 15,800 per minute.

Overall this is an increase of 30 million (4%) six months beforehand in February.

By far and away the majority of these are carried out on Google, which grabbed a 68% share of the all click-thrus in the market.

Tailing behind are Yahoo! (9.1%), Ask.com (7.8%), MSN/Windows Live (5.8%) and AOL (4.1%).

More information and charts here.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Heather Hopkins at Hitwise UK writes:

In my first post in this series [the first focussed on the finance sector] I walked through some of our data on paid and organic search terms for MoneySupermarket.

In this second post in the series, I will look at a couple of examples of the ratio of paid and organic visits to better understand the impact of different ad copy on click through rates (CTR).

Consider the following screen grab from Hitwise showing the top search terms sending UK visits to Expedia.co.uk in the four weeks to 30th September 2006.

Volume refers to the volume of visits that term represents to the website and paid rate and organic rate refer to the rate at which consumers reached the site from a paid or organic listing.

Brand terms offer a good start for analysing this as there are no issues of ad placement or competing ads. The brand, at least in most cases, is the only paid listing and the top organic listing. When UK consumers visited Expedia.co.uk from the term "expedia" in the past four weeks, 65.20% of the time they came from a paid listing. When they came from the term "expedia.co.uk" 8.54% of the time they came from a paid listing. Why the difference?

It seems to be down to ad copy and bolding and highlighting. Whilst we can't be sure what ads were appearing over the past four weeks, today, when I searched for "expedia" on Google UK, the paid listing featured the brand name in bold in the title of the ad, the URL and body of the ad (see screen grab to the right).

The result for "expedia.co.uk" was titled "Discount Travel" and the only mention of Expedia was in the URL (see second screen grab).

Similarly, for the term "expedia.com" which shows a high paid rate, the search term was bolded in the title of the ad, as we saw above with "expedia".

This points to the impact of ad copy on click through rates. Using keywords in ad copy that match those the consumer entered into the search box seems to influence CTR as those words will be highlighted in the ad presented to the consumer.

This needs more and careful study (which will follow in due course). It is also worth noting that this may be influenced by placement of the .com and .co.uk URLs in the organic listings.

I also looked at this for the generic terms "flights to alicante" and "cheap flights to alicante". The sites that get visits according to Hitwise from these searches are those that use the terms "flights" and "alicante" in the title of the ad and in the ad copy.

For the term "flights to alicante", BMI Baby was the #1 site receiving visits in the past four weeks and their ad uses both "flights" and "alicante" in the ad copy. Great Late Deals was the #2 site, and their ad title was "Flights to Alicante" today.

Heather Hopkins, vice president for research at Hitwise UK

So at least Google and YouTube managed to avoid a protracted bidding process, with just four days since the rumour first circulated to a $1.65 billion deal being done.

Speculation that News Corp, Walt Disney, Time Warner and Yahoo! would enter the fray was either wide of the mark or they didn't hit the ground running as fast as Google clearly did late last week.

In summary:

• * YouTube brand identity to remain
• * Google Video to keep developing, but "strengthened and complimented" by the deal
• * YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen to keep their jobs [and make a lot money]

Okay – so here is something for those that perpetually bemoan the lack of quality on YouTube.

“It’s full of rubbish” or “Random videos that do little bar wasting my time”, are just two recent comments.

So to demonstrate how rubbish and random YouTube can really be…

If anyone can shed some light on the Lastminute.com-Garfield tie-in we would be eternally grateful.



Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Reports today suggest Yahoo!, Time Warner and even Walt Disney are – surprise, surprise –interested in making bids for the video-sharing giant YouTube.

The rumour mill is likely to be working overtime in the next few days, especially if – as some reports predict – Google makes an official bid for the 18-month old YouTube as early as this week.

John Batelle is already nicknaming the deal GooTube.

Still, Google and YouTube are, predictably, remaining silent over the news, which broke late on Friday night.

An email yesterday from a senior travel industry figure said the deal would probably not have much impact on the sector, only that a vastly stronger Google - as a result of its ability to expand its empire through video - would cement its dominance/influence (take your pick) over the industry for years to come.

Summary: if Google was looking – in a very minute sense, of course – to be losing some ground in travel as users turn to vertical search engines and direct with suppliers, then this would hand travel advertisers a massive new outlet for pay-per-click campaigns.

Fun(ds) and games...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

UK consumers are estimated to spend almost £100 billion on travel products in 2006, according to a report released this weekend.

AXA Insurance revealed the findings without year-on-year comparisons but the results are interesting nonetheless.

It appears that less than 50% of the £97.3 billion is actually earmarked on the holiday itself, with £29 billion for spending money and an astonishing £7 billion splashed out on new clothes.

Other expenditure:

• Tours and excursions – £4.4 billion
• Travel insurance – £4.2 billion
• Holiday toiletries – £2.4 billion
• Car hire – £2.2 billion
• New electrical equipment – £1.5 billion
• Holiday equipment (eg toys/tents) – £1.6 billion

• UK and Ireland – 22.4 million
• Spain, Balearic and Canary Islands – 12.2 million
• France – 8.3 million
• Italy – 6.2 million
• USA – 5.6 million

PING! PING! PING! The internet world and our email alerts appear to have gone mad overnight with speculation over a takeover of YouTube by Google.

Astonishingly – though some would argue par for the course these days – the story first broke on the Silicon Valley-based blog, TechCrunch, but was soon picked up by the Wall Street Journal, which published the story on its website.

Since then much of the world’s media has scrambled around to take the story forward, but most sensibly have concentrated on what a deal would mean for pair and the wider internet community.

Both Google (unsurprisingly, as it says very little days) and YouTube are remaining tight lipped about any potential deal, which is rumoured to be worth around £850m.

Follow the thread on TechCrunch for some interesting comments.

Opinions there and elsewhere could be summarised quite easily:

* Google wouldn’t want the hassle of the inevitable copyright lawsuits that would flood its way following a sale.

* Users would desert YouTube if Google took over as it would impose its corporate structure and rules on the service – and therefore it might lose its laissez faire attitude to the web.

* It’s a fantastic deal for both parties – especially YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Stephen Chen – and gives Google another route out of its reliance on search.

* Microsoft might attempt to scupper the deal. Indeed the speculation could actually trigger a bidding war amongst a plethora of media companies.

What impact would this have on the rest of the web, and travel in particular?

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Our landmark September issue is now free to view as a digital edition.

Every single page is available. The contents pages are interactive; all the advertising has direct links to the client; and it looks fantastic!

Enjoy!

As a progressive B2B media brand we are always exploring the various publishing options available to us. Please let us know what you think of the digital version… And the edition itself...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Antony Mayfield from Spannerworks writes:

Are you clear on exactly what social media is? Social media, which includes blogs, wikis, MySpace and YouTube, is not just a new set of media outlets or channels: is it is a fundamental re-writing of the rules of how media works.

The rate of innovation and change in online media at the moment is incredible. Many people are likely to have heard stats like "one blog is created every second" and "100 million downloads are made from YouTube every day" without necessarily understanding what lies behind them, or what they mean for their brand.

If you work with a major brand, chances are that social media is already affecting your communications and even your business.

For instance: 88% of the top 100 brands have a Wikipedia entry (a community-edited encyclopaedia) in the first 20 results on Google (most people don't look further than the first twenty results); MySpace delivers more traffic to HMV.co.uk than the Microsoft search engine MSN (now rebranding as Live).

Social media is best understood as a group of new kinds of online media, which share most or all of the following characteristics:

* Participation: social media encourages contributions and feedback from everyone who is interested. It blurs the line between the concept of media and audience.

* Openness: most social media services are open to feedback and participation. They encourage voting, feedback, comments and sharing of information. There are rarely any barriers to accessing and making use of content - password protected content is frowned on.

* Conversation: whereas traditional media is about "broadcast", content transmitted or distributed to an audience, social media is better seen as conversational, two-way.

* Community: social media allows communities to form quickly and communicate effectively around common interests - be that a love of photography, a political issue or a favourite TV show.

* Connectedness: Most kinds of social media thrive on their connectedness, via links and combining different kinds of media in one place.

Antony Mayfield, head of content and social media, Spannerworks

Spannerworks has produced a fantastic book - What is Social Media? - available free to download here. NB: Creative Commons Copyright on P32

PING! “Jargon baffles Britain's techies, but informed Travolution readers are busy tagging, hot-swapping and mashing it up,” a contact emails to tell us.

Couldn’t have put it better... Thank you, Ms One Satisfied Reader

According to a report by internet research house Nielsen Net//Ratings, web users are increasingly baffled by online and marketing jargon such as Wiki, RSS, VoIP and IM.

“In the relentless quest for the next big thing when it comes to new forms of digital consumption, there is a significant tendency for the industry to over-estimate consumer’s knowledge and understanding of the seemingly limitless new terms and products out there,” says Alex Burmaster, European internet analyst at Nielsen Net//Ratings.

So, for fearing of plugging one of our own articles, click here for 101 Explanations - our definitive guide to web terminology. [A wee snippet from the printed version is pictured below]

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Guillaume Thevenot of Hotel-Blogs.com has supplied us with a nostalgic trip down memory lane for users of Hotels.com. Thanks

An intriguing initiative for Expedia today and the announcement of its collaboration with UK High Street retail giant John Lewis.

The home furnishing and gift expert has launched an offshoot brand – the bizarrely titled Greenbee.com – targeting consumers with insurance, food ideas, gigs and theatres tickets, sport events and travel.

Expedia is will act as a partner for the travel section on the site and offer the usual OTA fare, such as flights, hotels, dynamic packaging and car hire.

This is the first time Expedia has struck such a deal with a High Street retailer and follows others – through its Private Label business – with Eurostar, Formula1.com and Swiss Airlines.

It’s an interesting move for Expedia amid speculation, despite its size and brand strength, that the direct suppliers – airlines, hotels and tour operators – are finally getting their act together and scooping off some of the OTA’s share of the online pie.

Lastminute.com’s Online Travel Corporation powers travel services for Tesco, so some senior figures in the industry are arguing that perhaps this is where the next area of growth will come for the OTAs.

Minds wander back to April, when Tesco.com chief executive Laura Wade-Gery spent almost the entire day at the Travolution Summit, triggering whisper upon whisper about why she was mingling with travel people.

Tesco, based on its recent soaring profits, could afford to create its own OTA altogether!

It does, in fact, make a lot of sense for retailers to align themselves with travel companies, especially OTAs, as consumers increasingly turn to the web for products.

Once upon a time it would be physically and often economically impossible for a retailer to bring in a travel agent – or even an agency – into an existing shop, but the web has effectively allowed a complete service to be installed in every store.

Not sure Expedia and John Lewis are the most obvious fit in terms of brand?

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Mixed news today on the marketing side for the online travel sector, following the release of estimates as to the amount of online advertising that has so far been spent in the UK this year.

The good stuff: in the first six months of 2006 online almost £1 billion was spent online, according to an Internet Advertising Bureau/PricewaterhouseCoopers/World Advertising Research Center report.

It doesn’t even take a city analyst to work out that all going well the internet should reach around £2 billion in media spend by the end of the year – a massive leap from the £1.4 billion in 2005.

So where is this extra money coming from? Well, the wobbly national press sector is expected to be overtaken by the end of year after bringing in just £76 million more than online in the first six months of 2006 - so some is undoubtedly coming from there.

TV’s share of the market - with ITV a noticeable giant of the industry facing problems - has slipped by 1.3% in H1 2006, although it still commands a 22% share and almost £2 billion in ad revenues.

Elsewhere, the outdoor market – billboards, posters, public transport – is now half the size of online, which has a 10.5% share of the market, while consumer magazines slumber at 4.6% and radio at 3.4%.

So, good news that the online sector is awash with extra revenues, boosted primarily by financial services and recruitment, but helped by all sectors.

Where it gets a little tricky for travel is when you look behind the figures. Almost 60% - around £530 million – is made of pay-per-click advertising, with a huge proportion going into the coffers of Google.

For the travel companies desperate to reach the eyeballs of consumers it could mean number of things: they may have to pay more for popular keywords; or, if they want to get smarter with their pay-per-click campaigns, search engine marketing will become even more complicated, and therefore perhaps more expensive.

However, an increase in the share of the overall advertising market reflects the popularity of the web and its gradual shift to perhaps becoming the primary media channel.

And that is ultimately good news for online travel companies…

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Our story last week about Expedia’s desire to include TripAdvisor content on its site seems to have generated some chitter-chatter behind the scenes.

Expedia EMEA boss Dermot Halpin heaped praise on the user review website at the PhoCusWright event in Brussels, before admitting that he would be very keen to see its reviews on his own website.

Nothing wrong with that, of course.

However there have been some suggestions from a handful of senior people in the industry over the last few days that TripAdvisor might be digging its heels in and doesn’t actually want to see its beloved content fed into a site, albeit one in the same happy family.

One mischief maker goes so far to suggest privately that TripAdvisor is reluctant to do a deal because it may have its own plans to syndicate reviews around the web to other sites – in other words, sites rival that Expedia.

TripAdvisor is, perhaps sensibly, remaining tight-lipped at the moment. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for others in the industry – some of whom are rubbing their hands with glee and sensing that this is, in fact, quite a test for the mighty and once all-conquering Expedia.

For Expedia it could be seen as quite a snub if the website its parent-company InterActive Corp bought back in 2004 subsequently decides it wants to keep its content away from Expedia’s traffic.

There is a suggestion that sharing content (there’s an irony there somewhere) with Expedia would impact on its own traffic, with users preferring the OTA as a one-stop shop.

Solutions to this latest dilemma are always welcome via the comments button...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Two of the unsung heroes behind Travolution have, erm, been on a marketing drive for our September edition on the Balearic island of Mallorca.

Art and production editors Flora Ioannou and Melanie Rule pictured.

We await a surge in overseas subscriptions as a result of their efforts.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Gail Kenny from Gail Kenny Executive Search writes:

In today's online, 24/7 age, flexible working has almost become the norm.

It cuts both ways - from an employee's perspective there are many advantages of flexibility such as working from home on a day when you have a home deliver or maintenance due; the chance to watch your child at sports day; all sorts of things.

From the employer's perspective, the flexible working often means getting far more from staff and managers, with people working remotely from home PCs, Blackberrys and laptops well past their standard contracted hours.

However, over the last bank holiday weekend, not once but twice did I see someone genuinely working from a laptop in a pub!

Surely this is one step too far! Maybe we should start campaigning for a hotspot ban in pubs!

What do you think?

[This latest missive was NOT sent from Gail’s Blackberry – Ed]

Gail Kenny, managing director, Gail Kenny Executive Search

Seems like the mainstream press has woken up in the last few weeks to the impact of the internet on the travel industry.

This weekend the BBC’s FastTrack show, a consumer slot on BBC News 24 and BBC World, spoke to Teletextholidays and the Guardian’s travel offshoot I’ve Been There to gauge opinion.

The piece began with a walk down memory lane, with viewers treated to the sight of the old – though still in action for those avoiding Red Button digital technology – Teletext pages with hundreds of travel deals, all to the accompaniment of jolly end-of-the-pier organ music.

Those were the days…

FastTrack reporter Simon Hancock – who rang us a few weeks ago to get some background material for the show – then took viewers on a whirlwind tour of the online travel market over the last ten years, featuring Expedia, Lastminute.com, Thomson and the like.

And then, just two hours after Sunday morning’s repeat, BBC News 24 had a news item on very much the same subject.

Brilliant! Sunday morning at home feels like weekdays at work!

After some amusing archive footage of those early holidays around the Mediterranean, the piece went on to analyse the effect of the internet on the package tour market.

In 2002 around 40 million travel products were sold and around half were traditional package holidays. Fast forward to 2005 and the number of trips has increased by 10% to 44 million, which is good news for all the industry, but the share of packages has dropped to 42%.

Simon Vincent from online travel agent Opodo told viewers one of the reasons for consumer enthusiasm for booking travel on the web is that they are not tied to the opening hours of traditional travel agents.

Meanwhile back in the studio, travel hack Karen Benyon mounted a spirited defence of the High Street agent by claiming it has been “proven” that cheaper prices are not necessarily always found on the web.

It is can only be a good thing that the issues affecting the travel industry are finally being aired in front of everyday consumers.

And the ‘onliners’ of the industry are finally getting some recognition.

In the Times a few weeks back Cath Urquhart produced her 50 People to Know in Travel.

Paul Evans (Lowcost Holiday Group), John Hatt (Cheapflights), Andy Phillips (Active Hotels) and Martha Lane Fox (Lastminute.com) were all featured.

Not sure how easy the notoriously elusive Hatt will be for consumers to track down - and what about poor old Brent Hoberman, Lane-Fox’s co-founder? Minor points...

[See our own list of the pioneers of online travel, The Influential Ten]

Kevin May, editor, Travolution