June 2008 Archives

Forbes.com runs a revealing if frustrating interview with Travelocity CEO Michelle Peluso.

Revealing, because it charts the early career of one of the sector’s most important figures. Taking a risk, taking time, going against conventional wisdom, recognising when a business model ‘is in the tank’...familiar themes for any aspiring entrepreneurs.

Frustrating, because the interview stops before 2005 when Peluso oversaw Travelocity’s takeover of lastminute.com. Buying a business for more than a billion dollars - less familiar...

Martin Cowen, chief writer, Travolution

Back in 2001, branding experts (apart from the company which designed it, of course) poured scorn over the Royal Mail's decision to change its name to the, er, far more memorable and trendy "Consignia".

It was an unmitigated disaster. Workers reacted with dismay and the public simply laughed.

It reverted back to Royal Mail within a year.

So, raised eyebrows all-round this morning when Expedia Corporate Travel announced it has changed its name to Egencia.

President of Egencia, Jean-Pierre Remy, said:

We pride ourselves on our ability to adapt to our customers changing needs and deliver the services expected of a true business partner, and the Egencia brand reflects who we truly are as a company.

Sounds suspiciously like the Royal Mail circa 2001.

Anyway, the Egencia name comes from a French business travel agency Expedia acquiried in 2004.

Reports at the time revealed Egencia would be rebranded to Expedia Corporate Travel following the acquisition.

Four years is a long time in marketing. Just ask Boo.com!

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

The original Where the Hell is Matt video is still one of the biggest missed travel viral marketing opportunities of all time. The sponsorship went to the forward thinking Stride chewing gum brand!

Anyway, Matt Harding has released a 2008 version of the infamous video. But rather than each clip featuring Harding dancing on his own, he's drummed up support from the locals each time in most of the shots.

Anyway, it features such gems as the DMZ in Korea, Tongatapu (Tonga), zero gravity over Nellis in Nevada and, the best of all, a coordinated Bollywood-style boogie in Guragaon (India).



It's wonderful clips like this that puts the 'rave' into travel! And forget stuffy, corporate marketing puff from tourist boards - a quick view of this is enough to inspire anyone to explore the world.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Travolution doesn't generally take part in the travel jolly but, er, this was an opportunity not to miss - and it was in a London black cab (not some far-flung corner of the globe).

To coincide with a new PR push for the Handy Group, a select group of hacks were invited to sit in the back of a taxi as it drove around Central London yesterday, while chief exec Michael Lacey demonstrated some of the platform's functionality on his iPhone and ran through a presentation.

Travolution recorded the event for prosperity, on a below-par Nokia camera phone.

The Hotels4u-branded cab [Handy Group has a content deal with the accommodation-provider].

A tourist attraction en-route.

Lacey runs through a new viral video for the company - lots of unfeasibly good looking 20-somethings doing stuff with mobiles.

And shows the flight search on his iPhone.


Just a bit of fun...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Moneysupermarket’s trading update issued to the London Stock Exchange yesterday contained only one paragraph about travelsupermarket, but it was an interesting one nonetheless.

With most travel search engines in private hands it’s good for journalists, to say nothing of its competitors, that the UK market leader is obliged to let us all know a couple of times a year how it is doing.

The statement said that H1 08 revenues should be around 45% ahead of the same period last year, ‘with package holidays in particular performing well, based on improvements to the core product.’

These improvements are not specified, but could be technological improvements - the connection to the tour operators systems – or content improvements - signing up more partners.

But the fact that traditional package holidays are alive and clicking online is a good thing all round. A travel product which the internet was supposed to have killed off is flourishing, thanks to the internet.

It might also be a sign that travelsupermarket’s multi-million pound TV advertising campaign is working. Unless of course it’s just the tour ops dumping stock. Or using travelsupermarket as a marketing tool.

Martin Cowen chief writer Travolution

The UK's celebrity culture appears to be reaching a low point (in the high life!).

Mainstream broadcaster ITV is to launch its own celebrity-run airline for a new reality TV show.

The airline will have 12 "famous faces", according to the Guardian, taking on such roles as cabin crew and complaints handlers.

Monarch is reported to be the airline canny enough to associate itself with some free marketing for such a, er, high quality programme by lending the aircraft.

The terrifying news for Travolution readers is that producers will also create a bookable website!

The mind boggles.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: celebair guardian

This might be ancient history by now – it is after all nearly a week old – but the following is well worth ninety seconds of your time.



A respectable organ such as Travolution will avoid the many puns possible. We’ll leave that to Ryanair’s official response.

The interesting point is that by confirming that its business class product is known internally as ‘beds and blowjobs’, O’Leary is admitting that Ryanair is at least thinking about a two-class transatlantic service.

This represents a massive shift in the business model of one of Europe’s most successful airlines. Will Ryanair have to rethink its refusal to distribute seats through third parties if it plans to target business travellers? easyJet had to link up with the GDSs in order to make its product accessible in an acceptable way for travel management companies. Would Ryanair do the same?

Martin Cowen, chief writer, Travolution

Or not.

The technology section on the Guardian website could hardly contain itself this week with a glowing tribute to Expedia, titled "Indulge your flights of fancy".

The puffery article started with something along the lines of:

...it's often the simplest, quickest and cheapest way to book a trip if it includes a flight and a hotel

And ended with:

as a one-stop supermarket that covers everything from cruises to corporate travel, Expedia does the job

Expedia's ad/PR agency - which we must, of course, had nothing to do with such fantastic coverage - will be over-the-moon.

However, there's another, er, supermarket on the UK travel scene which might be rather concerned about such flattery.

Yes, indeed. TravelSupermarket, which just happens to run travel search facilities on the Guardian website and has a handy - yet perhaps now, rather inaffective - box alongside the story about Expedia.



"Book a trip today", it says. But obviously not until you've checked Expedia!

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: expedia guardian comment is free travelsupermarket

Well, it could happen if web regulators give the thumbs up to a proposal to relax the internet's top-level domain name structure.

A vote on Thursday will decide.

And in the background we have the ubiqutous tech firm in this area, Tralliance, which is seemingly still determined to make a good play of the dot-travel programme.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Some travel sites offer consumers the chance to talk to a consultant via a live chat facility.

And, a year ago to the day Thomson Holidays talked about allowing consumers to ask a travel question online and have answers pushed back to them, a bit like the ChaCha text service.

Now, with a slight tweak on the theme, travelshout is offering an application to let consumers chat with each other on your website.

The new live chat application, which can be added to any site or blog, talks about creating the big travel conversation not just within one site but across a whole network of sites by enabling consumers to join a conversation.

Yet again, it highlights the match made in heaven (if you can make money from it ) that is social networking and travel.

Linda Fox, lead reporter, Travolution

Hitwise has monitored paid search activity since Google changed its trademark policy in the first week of May (full report here).

In the first four weeks after the change, 11.2% of search traffic that the top 100 online brands received from their top brand term came via a paid listing on a search engine - compared to 9.2% before the change (up 22%).

The travel sector in particular has been one of the worst affected with travel brands increasing their paid brand search rate from 18.4% to 26.6% - the largest of any sector.

The bottom line is that while brand owners' websites have not been losing traffic they've been paying more to keep it front of mind with consumers.

Linda Fox, lead reporter, Travolution

SITA has issued some headline findings from a couple of its reports, angled around how the airline industry can use technology and IT to address the bottom-line impact of the hike in fuel prices.

The IT specialist claims that online booking has already saved the industry $2bn in distribution costs. And there’s more to come – from the 121 airlines in its sample, the average level of direct bookings is 24%.

But reducing costs remains the most common reason for investing in IT. Industry body IATA’s latest estimate for the aviation industry’s losses this year is $2.3bn. And IT accounts for an average of 2.2% of an airline’s revenues.

The increasing importance of mobile phones is highlighted in a separate paper. SITA says that ‘location sensing via mobile devices could save airlines up to $600 million by tracking passengers, sending messages and moving them to gates more efficiently; improving turnaround times and reducing delays.’

It also predicts an evolution of self-service to mobile devices. ‘Airlines are forecasting that while only 1% of passengers use mobile phones for check-in today, this will rise to 6% next year by which time more than half of airlines will offer the service.’

And 85% of the sample is now providing passenger data to the world’s governments. Last year it was only 4%.

Martin Cowen, chief writer, Travolution

Guest post from Alex Bainbridge, managing director, Travel UCD.

The Travel Technology Initiative’s Morning with Google travel’ took place at ABTA’s head office in London this morning. Three UK execs - Daniel Robb, Miranda Gowlland and Anna Tong - outlined their roles in Google and took part in a Q & A. Brave folk! Here are the highlights:

CPC
CPC is in substantial growth. They are nearing total coverage of queries - and as a result in Q1 08 there has been 20% CPC bid price inflation.

This inflation is not to do with anything that Google is doing but just the nature of competition. Also websites are getting better at converting visitors hence are willing to bid higher prices. However, they did mention that they know there are still queries "out there" that are under advertised but they won't say what they are (even to those companies who have account managers at Google)

Trademark
Daniel Robb said it would be very wrong for him to comment about it.... however he restated that now US, UK and Ireland are aligned. The policy is a "Founders policy" (i.e. coming from the top in the US) and although could be rolled out globally, they will operate in accordance with local applicable laws. In particular, he mentioned France may be a challenge.

Robb admitted that it has hurt some relationships that they have in the travel industry however he stated that the impact varied wildly between their clients. He also mentioned that, as a result of the relevancy system incorporated into Google, that the system will naturally sort itself out over time. This has been their experience in the US.

Troogle
Nothing I have seen or heard about that is either planned for meta search or selling as an agent", says Robb.

I believe him - but this then makes you wonder how Google plan to react to the threat posed by Microsoft. Both Microsoft and Yahoo have basically given up competing with Google on keyword based search.... but Microsoft will attack on the flank that Google now suggest they are not going to defend - vertical search.

An interesting and insightful morning but amazed that some of the larger UK travel brands weren't there. Don't they care about what Google are doing? Come on people - this event was tailor-made for you!

Alex Bainbridge

UK-based readers of a certain age will fondly remember BBC’s Tomorrow’s World, the long-running TV programme which predicted technological and scientific breakthroughs that would dominate our lives in the future.

Most of them never happened, such as the folding car which would fit into a suitcase. But some did, such as the ATM and Ceefax.

Ian Yeoman claims to be the only futurologist working exclusively on travel and tourism. His latest book, Tomorrows Tourists, looks at ‘where world tourism will be in 2030 and what the tourist will be doing in 2030.’

The headline predictions range from China being the world’s largest destination [likely - Ed] and holidays in Outer Space being the ultimate luxury experience [unlikely].

Topics covered range from shopping in Dubai and health tourism in India to the feminisation of business and travel in China and what would happen if governments banned tourism.

The link to the Tomorrows Tourist home-page includes a few sample chapters and a couple of podcasts, including a look at the ‘sex tourism’ industry now and in 2030, using Las Vegas as a starting point.

Yeoman’s work has been ‘supported’ by FutureFoundation, a London-based consumer think, so there is a proper methodology behind the predictions.

Back in the mists of time , well, 2004 to be exact, a well-known tour operator issued its own 'predictions' for what we would be doing in 2024. Maybe that well-known tour operator should have been getting its web strategy in place rather than telling us that trips to New York would cost £50 or that the ‘the hotel of the future will be a fully transportable super pod containing rooms of varying sizes that can be dismantled and moved anywhere in the world’.

Martin Cowen
chief writer
Travolution

There's quite a few of these surveys around at the moment all showing the impact of (or lack 0f) credit crunch and rising prices on Britain's holidaymakers.

Tripadvisor's annual summer survey is no exception although it does compare Britons with other travellers worldwide.

Here are the headline findings:

21% of Britons said the high price of fuel would affect their plans compared to 41% of travellers globally.

21% said they would take fewer car trips to save on fuel compared to 31% of all travellers - (clearly the survey was carried out before the lorry drivers' strike).

Meanwhile, the weakening of the pound against the Euro will push travellers to seek out cheaper accommodation or travel to destinations not adversely affected by the exchange rates, according to the study.

Now, here's the really interesting bit - 61% are planning to take the same amount of time off this summer and 25% are planning to take more time off.

It does question where all the talk of looming recession is coming from - airports are packed, planes are full and Brits are as unwilling as ever to give up their annual holiday abroad.

Unsurprisingly, seaside holidays were the most popular among the 4,000 people questioned and 61% said they were planning to visit a beach destination.

And top of the hot list of summer holiday activities was relaxing (66%) followed by city sightseeing and shopping.

Linda Fox, lead reporter, Travolution

The TWgroup team is home from the ITT event Cyprus.

We produced three special episodes of the Purple Pod, live blogged the event and took part in TW TV.

News here. Live blog here.

Podcasts and video below:

Watch out all internet fraudsters out there, the Welsh police have appointed the UK's first e-sergeant.

Read the full story here but come September the e-sergeant will be joined by four e-detectives.

The e-police force's remit is to tackle internet crime which cost Welsh businesses a whopping £294m last year!

Going forward, it will be interesting to see if UK travel gets its own e-plod!


Linda Fox, lead reporter, Travolution

Interesting chat with Keith Betton (ex ABTA PR supremo) for the first episode of the ITT special Purple Pods last night.

A man known for not mincing his words, Betton said he felt ABTA - the UK's representative and consumer protection body - was not appealing to the requirements of pureplay online travel companies.

He hinted that unless ABTA changed its strategy, it will only represent a decreasing number of members.

A further intriguing part of the conversation came when he suggested that a separate organisation could be created to stand for the interests of just online companies.

These are indeed spikey comments and will not go down well in Newman Street, where CEO Mark Tanzer has spent the past few years overhauling the organisation to do exactly what Betton suggests.

We'll be on the look out for ABTA council members today for a counter argument.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Travolution is here in Cyprus for the ITT conference for most of this week.

We are live blogging on the dedicated ITT blog created by the TW Group, so check regularly for updates.

The first of three special Purple Pod podcasts went live last night.

As always you can subscribe to the Purple Pod by adding this feed to your RSS reader or via iTunes [NB: link opens your iTunes application].

It's here as well:

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

The Sunday Times reports how listings giant Time Out is joining a growing list of companies angry over the BBC's acquisition of Lonely Planet.

There are concerns that the licence fee funded broadcast giant will use its expertise to develop the global travel guide publisher Lonely Planet, a direction Time Out boss Tony Elliott is understood to have said is "beyond the resources of any privately funded organisation".

Lonely Planet, in turn, may well help the BBC develop a travel portal of its own to run similarly to its motoring and environmental channels on the website.

People really shouldn't be surprised at such a turn of events. The BBC didn't buy LP because of a deep-seated love of backpacking!

And it would take a messy intervention from the likes of the UK's Office of Fair Trading to put a stop to it.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Some of you will have noticed a new box on the side of the blog, in the top right-hand corner.

This is our fantastic new webcam tool which we'll using at the ITT conference next week.

We will be turning it on during event so readers can see what we're up to, or not.

It uses the fabulous Ustream.tv system and an old Logitech webcam. Our main Ustream page is here.

Live Streaming by Ustream.TV


Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Any Big Brother fans out there?

No, I thought as much but to get over the boredom of another series we thought we could come up with a fantasy travel big brother house.

Where? How about the Aphrodite Hills Resort in Cyprus - we hear there might be a few travel people out there quite soon for some conference thingy.

And, besides the travel industry loves a lock-in.

We need some glamour so let's have Ian McCaig of lastminute and Steve Endacott of the On Holiday Group.

We also need someone for them to have a fight with so that it makes interesting viewing so that means the entire Google travel team!

A US contingent would also add some colour if Kayak's Steve Kafner could make himself available or maybe Bill Gates.

Failing that we could organise a live satellite link-up.

But, what would they talk about all day, who would do the cooking and more importantly who would be evicted first?

Suggestions please and feel free to add to the fantasy BB travel team, some female company could even things out a bit.

Linda Fox, lead reporter, Travolution

Our latest column in Travel Weekly:

Outsiders often accuse dot-coms of operating in some kind of la-la land. So here are some interesting figures.

Microsoft has offered £24.2 billion for Yahoo!; Google paid a reported £840 million for YouTube; Kayak paid £90 million for rival travel search company Sidestep; and microblogging system Twitter, is valued at £47 million.

In the case of YouTube, many believe the deal was actually a sound investment. In fact, listen to anyone from Google and they admit online video is growing quicker than search, its core business.

While all this is going on, Stella Travel Services is rumoured to be lining up a bid for Advantage Travel Centres, a deal that would see the consortium trouser between £6 million and £8 million. Stella denies the rumours.

Now, it would be unfair to compare a global search company to a group representing bricks-and- mortar travel agencies in the UK. However, the frighteningly simple Twitter is valued as high as it is because it has large numbers of people using the service.

Kayak boss Steve Hafner admitted at a Travolution conference that his company bought Sidestep for the web traffic.

As recently suggested on the Travolution Blog, people see more value investing in something with scale.

And web traffic is where the growth is for the keen prospectors, simply because it can be monetised quickly through both advertising and the sheer amount of volume running through a business. Now there is no moral to the story here.

The reality is investors are prepared to pay more if a business is online-based and, as they say in the US, “has the numbers”.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Suggestions in April that the Google brand bidding switch in the US in 2004 was relatively trouble-free are slightly incorrect - or have at least turned out to be.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting how "tensions over piggybacking have been simmering for a couple of years" and big travel brands such as Marriott, IHG, American Airlines and Northwest Airlines are unhappy at the behaviour of search engines, in particular - surprise-surprise - Google.

Read all our coverage of the issue.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

As Leftfield, one of FlightGlobal's blogs says: "Airlines may say they love travel agents, and maybe they do, but they have an odd way of showing it."

Delta Airlines is making sure agencies tow the line by double-checking all bookings they make via a GDS for errors.

But the carrier will not just send a strongly worded email for cock-ups or other misdemeanors, oh no.

Passive bookings (ghost bookings) will see the agent charged $3.50.

Hmm. That's quite steep.

But a bank-busting $50 will slapped on agents automatically (via the Airlines Reporting Corp) if they make an invalid name-change to a booking or are found to be making naughty block bookings - which it calls "duplicative, fraudulent, fictitious, and speculative reservations" - to reserve fares.

Ouch!

Be warned - The Airlines Strike Back!

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: delta travel agent GDS

Travolution loves Microsoft's Photosynth, in a big, big way. The opportunities for the travel industry are enormous. And it is very cool!

When Mel Carson of MSN showcased it at a Travolution conference in late-2006, we were all duly awe-struck. Carson ran the reel again at the ABTA Convention in November 2007, when I presented with him.

So interesting to see today that Google acquisition Panoramio has developed its own photo-heavy, streaming system combined user added images.

It's live, taking real-time images from members, and definitely worth playing around with.

Excellent examples include the Empire State Building and the Taj Mahal [click on the 'Look Around' button on the left-hand side under the main image after the jump].



Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Via Techcrunch

Technorati tags: panoramio
photosynth microsoft

Plenty and rather mixed coverage around the web today regarding the second anniversary edition of the Hitwise-IMRG Hotshops list.

The quarterly report of the top 50 UK online retailers is a handy benchmark of whose flying or dying in the online world, albeit from a share of overall web traffic rather than individual performance.

So what did the May 2008 report reveal, compared to that of May 2006?

There are currently eleven travel brands amongst the top 50 – a list topped unsurprisingly every quarter since it began by Amazon.co.uk.

TravelMole led with how Thomson Holidays is creeping up on easyJet as the most popular travel brand in the UK, while E-Tid said ‘Travel companies lose web presence’. [both require registration]

The report indicated that almost all the leading travel brands – with the exception of Thomson – had seen in a decline in position since the report began two years ago:

EasyJet – 8 to 10
Expedia – 7 to 12
Ryanair – 9 to 14
Lastminute.com – 12 to 17
BA – 11 to 19
Thomas Cook – 18 to 25
First Choice – 20 to 29

Quite a number of travel brands have dropped off the list:

MyTravel (for obvious reasons)
BMIBaby
XL.com
FlyBe
Jet2
InterContinental Hotels
Monarch Airlines
Opodo

The only newcomer in travel:

TravelRepublic

The apparent slump in the performance of travel websites led the Financial Times to headline with ‘Airlines lose web customers’. Lose?

What the FT failed to do is explain in detail why this has happened.

A call to Hitwise’s Robin Goad, co-author of the list, confirms the obvious: travel was an early adopter of e-commerce and consumers, likewise, felt comfortable with booking via the web, thus why so travel sites commanded a large share of the top 50.

In the past two years, however, other retailers have emerged – some traditional offliners, others created to service existing markets but purely online – and have attracted new users.

So while growth in online travel bookings may be slowing compared to other industry verticals, it is by no means declining.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: hitwise IMRG hotshops retail

Call us spineless and unusually lacking in an opinion, but:

WE ARE NOT GOING TO TAKE A STANCE ON THE GOOGLE TRADEMARK ISSUE!

Email received in response to our most recent story about a split in the Google action group, which could see an industry-wide approach to the issue fall at the first hurdle.

It read:

When is Travolution going to stick its neck on the line and support this group? I thought as the 'leading travel brand' for the online travel industry, you would want to get behind such a campaign.

We have had a few emails along these lines in recent weeks, from all sides of the argument.

The short(ish) answer to this is as follows: no, no and no.

Read all our coverage so far.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

We have written in the past about the scepticism surrounding the use of social networking sites for branding.

Ian McCaig of Lastminute.com is a passionate supporter of this point-of-view.

But I have just realised that Travolution has just attracted its 300th member to its Facebook group.

This is with no marketing at all - just a mention on the blog last year!

A free and easy presence.


If you want to join, go to the page and become a member.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Listen to anyone from the Googleplex these days at an event and they talk endlessly about the benefits to travel brands of using YouTube for branding.

A campaign extolling the virtues of New Zealand is typically the example given - and deservedly so.

The Pure New Zealand page has had over 90,000 views. One particular video has been seen nearly 1 million times!

The organisation has uploaded 40 videos to its channel, with the top 5 all attracting over 15,000 views.

But how have some other major travel brands fared since giving some time and effort to creating a presence on YouTube?

Expedia UK has its own channel page and has uploaded a huge number of videos (103 videos) in just a few months, but its top-performer - the too-good-to-be-true hotels signs effort we featured a few months back - has attracted just 2,100 views.

STA Travel UK also created its own page in August 2007, but has just two videos on show. The TribeUnwanted video has 1,100 views so far.

Biggles The Bear, the YouTube nom de plume for Cheapflights, has faired much better. The channel page has attracted nearly 3,000 views, but its most popular video - Where The Hell is Biggles?, a pastiche of the infamous Where The Hell is Matt? montage - has been watched nearly 29,000 times.

Anyway, all this playing around on YouTube has revealed Travolution's skydiving extravaganza (and, no, for the last time, it isn't me in the video) has been viewed more times than 101 of Expedia's efforts.

And here it is again...!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt7gqjky3HI&hl=en]

Our sister title, Travel Weekly, has a ship tour video of the Norwegian Gem, which has an impressive 6,300 views against. Three times as many as Expedia's best performer.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution