March 2009 Archives

Following our jaw-dropping Siftables post a few weeks back, here's another courtesy of Pattie Maes of MIT at Ted.

[NB: The air ticket check-in segment is excellent]

Who would be Gekko, launching its public beta in the week that Kayak has unveiled its revamped TravelPost site?

TravelPost has a number of advantages over Gekko - not least in that it is backed by the might of Kayak.

It has also spent months talking up the relaunch of TravelPost and highlighting the short-fallings of others in the space at the same time.

A canny, if slightly, unconventional strategy.

Let's not forget this is also the week when Tripadviser and CruiseCritic are taking a beating for the RCCL reviews for perks debacle.

Will Gekko's launch get lost in all the noise or, will its matching technology and profiling system make it stand out in what is already a very crowded space?

[The following post was written for the Uptake.com Industry Blog, which is gathering opinions about the future of meta search]

In the UK the metasearch scene was, until relatively recently, trundling along quite nicely, thank you very much.

Established players such as market leader Travelsupermarket, Skyscanner and a few others had carved out a reasonable but still not earth-shattering corner for themselves in the congested online travel arena.

Others, such as white label providers like Global Travel Market, were also doing well, securing a number of decent partnerships including

Sidestep and then Kayak came along a few years ago and won plenty of plaudits for their noticeably different and, some say, improved functionality and user experience.

Kayak, following the purchase of its closest rival in the US, decided on a different strategy to that in the homeland and closed Sidestep.co.uk quicker than you could say "Ajax-driven sliders".

Jokes aside, Kayak's addition to the market caused a reasonable stir, but whereas in the US it had a strong brand and reasonably dominant position, here in the UK it had some big contenders ahead of it.

So this is where we were, let's say, early-2008.

However, bubbling away in the background, there were also a number of things in play that would ultimately shape how meta search is likely to evolve in the UK.

The first was the realisation that the economy was going to start bombing from the middle of 2008 onwards.

Whereas just 18 months ago most travel companies were forever talking about the "value" of a product being the determining factor in a purchase, privately many executives started reverting back to the classic "price, price, price" adage.

This, in theory, plays straight into the hands of the meta search players, for very obvious reasons.

The noises coming from most of the UK players are that business is pretty good. In addition, the affiliate advertising networks are "loving the aggregators", as one said to me recently.

For airlines and hoteliers, desperate to fill seats and rooms, meta search is a "quick and dirty route to market", another executive on the air side told me.

So, given that the economy is boosting the ability of the meta search engines to raise their profile - and revenues, they would hope - one would assume that the market in the UK would begin to mature.

This is the classic web cycle. New (ish) idea finds its legs, starts running, hopes it's a marathon rather than a sprint.

Fast forward to late-2010 and the meta search market in the UK would most likely still be in a similar position as to now (albeit with far higher awareness amongst consumers as a concept).

Travelsupermarket would probably remain the market leader; Skyscanner would be pushing hard behind it with its neat technology and vastly improved interface; and Kayak would be matching the often amusing (and unusual) bravado of its CEO and be snapping away at the heels of those above.

[Kayak has loftier intentions, but without a major branding campaign, some argue it will fall short of reaching the heady heights of the likes of Travelsupermarket within the next 18 months]

Unfortunately, while the economy began falling off a cliff, some folk in Massachusetts decided to develop a meta search product of their own.

Now most people are saying, retrospectively, that Tripadvisor's decision to launch a flight meta search engine was always going to happen, it was just a question of when.

Needless to say, now that the service is up and running in the US, and will be in the UK within six months, it would be fair to say that the two/three-year strategies of most meta search engines are now being re-examined.

In other words, the addition of Tripadvisor as potentially a major player in the meta search market will have triggered a fair amount of soul-searching for a number of reasons - some obvious, some less so.

First of all its existing position in the purchase funnel is fundamentally different from the other meta players - and adding flight search spreads its presence into new areas of the food chain.

To be getting consumer eyeballs when they are reading hotel reviews as well as when they are considering how to get to the hotel in the first place means puts Tripadvisor in a very strong position.

This isn't rocket science

Although the relaunch of Kayak's Travelpost brand is being labelled in some quarters as a "Tripadvisor killer", it will have some way to go.

This is primarily - and simply - due to Tripadvisor's eye-watering traffic volumes. If it can channel just a fair portion of those visitors into playing around with its flight meta search tools then it will immediately have stolen a march on some of the players in the UK.

This actually puts Tripadvisor into the unique position of being the disrupter to the UK meta search arena - the place where, ideally, Kayak wants to be - rather than, with its user review hat on, constantly looking out for disruptors to its existing business.

This is not hyperbole but the addition of Tripadvisor to the meta search arena is probably the most significant moment in the sector's recent history.

The company will certainly have its own challenges in the UK, not least when it negotiates with airlines which are already in the Expedia OTA stable (bundle deals, anyone?), or coming up with a marketing strategy that, frankly, will need to go beyond buying keywords.

[The latter point is, in fact, the same challenge Kayak has in the UK]

Needless to say, meta search in the UK has felt like it is on the crest of a wave for a year or two.

But the economy and the addition of a significant new entrant in the guise of Tripadvisor has give the market the jolt it probably needed to go mainstream.

And the encouraging signs for those already in the space is that for the time being there is probably enough room for healthy growth all round.

We are just not quite sure in what order they will line up by the time we get to mid-2010.

Nice idea from the guys at FlightCentre in North America.

They have been busily preparing for a relaunch of their main site and have taken the rather unprecedented step of allowing the public to not only take a look at some the designs but also vote on what they think is the best one.

[One can't imagine our great friends at Virgin Atlantic allowing this]

So here are the four designs, but please make sure you fill in the survey [takes just a few minutes]

Design One



Design Two



Design Three



Design Four

We have so far stayed away from the 'scandal' that is CruiseCriticGate - not for fear of coming down on one side or another, but sometimes the true picture often doesn't emerge for a few days after something breaks.

The details of the story are well documented elsewhere - from the original revelations to the debate on Travel Rants of the past few days.

In short and as a reminder: Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines approached the Tripadvisor-owned Cruise Critic user review site with a view to contacting members who frequented their products.

Cruise Critic allowed them to do this and has since claimed it then stepped away. RCCL created an arrangement whereby members were invited onboard ships. There have been suggestions that they were also rewarded for posting positive reviews. [NB: This version of events has been challenged and disputed completely by CruiseCritic in the comments below]

Since the story broke there have been varying degrees of hand-wringing from all sorts of experts and other commentators.

The primary conclusion to note first of all is that CruiseCritic's brand, as a provider of independent consumer reviews of cruise products, has been affected.

The most crucial point to make here is that regardless of whether CruiseCritic did anything morally wrong or not, perception is everything, and as a business which prides itself on providing independent reviews of products it is juggling with some very tricky balls at the moment.

Whether this is long term damage or just the outraged (and subsequently wildly applauded) mutterings of a few influential bloggers is a mystery at this stage.

Then there is the CruiseCritic user base. Some elements have been swift to condemn their host and - according to reports elsewhere - some negative comment threads have been removed from the CruiseCritic site.

As a consequence to all this, CruiseCritic actually finds itself in the hugely ironic position of being on the end of some very poor - and very public - feedback about its product.

So, CruiseCritic certainly has some work to do in repairing its slightly tarnished reputation, certainly amongst the vocal minority on blogs and forums.

However, the reality is that it will probably have a relatively easy job driving down the negative content about it which will no doubt appear in search listings.

For a company with access to the expertise of the wider Expedia/Tripadvisor empire (the latter of which has some of the best SEO on the web), this will probably take weeks rather than months.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that in userreviewland, CruiseCritic has found itself in a bit of a pickle. As a consequence, its decision-making process with regards to requests from the industry it writes about will probably - and should - be overhauled.

Some might say that it simply made a lapse of judgement (although how much RCCL told it about the programme is unclear); it was then rumbled; and then criticised heavily by its users and bloggers. This is not a good situation, but one suspects it will bounce back quite quickly and easily.

RCCL appears, so far, to have escaped any major and, I suspect, long-lasting criticism. As we said in the comments on Travel Rants, most travel companies are busily exploring ways of engaging with users and attracting reams of glowing feedback in social networks and forums.

All the marketing people in this particular cruise company did was - let's face it - their job.

If there is one thing to be learnt from all this it is the concept of disclosure.

This extends from the RCCL-appeased fans, which as a group or as individuals should've been upfront about the relationship, to the person who was extremely swift and thorough to slam CruiseCritic after the story emerged but didn't let on about his previous position as a senior exec at the user review company until challenged by us and Travel Rants.

Some commentators elsewhere have said that this saga exposes the fatal flaw in the user review phenomenon favoured by CruiseCritic/Tripadvisor - that only closed systems (where users who have actually purchased the product) can make a review.

This argument has its merits, but wouldn't have stopped the RCCL problem as - in theory - the reviewers had all been on cruises.

But, finally, perhaps the element to all this which is being overlooked is that the wisdom of the crowds does eventually prevail.

If there is a significant volume of comments about a product (hotel, cruise, holiday, destination), then the overall opinion - if aggregated and rated properly - will rise to the surface, despite the odd rogue review.

In just over a week the Civil Aviation Authority will be renewing licences for tour operators in the UK - a process which takes place at the end of March and September ever year.

Ignoring the TravelRepublic situation for a moment, this scheme impacts on almost all tour operators and those dynamically packaging holidays simply because the ATOL Protection Contribution (APC) and the regular ATOL bonds are seen as the best way to protect customers if a travel firm goes into administration.

In other words: thanks to ATOL, passengers will be brought home, sometimes refunded their money, etc, in the event of a business going under - something which occurs from time to time, but is certainly a bigger threat during an economic downturn.

Now the huge irony here is that due to the financial state of the economy many travel firms are actually under huge pressure to find the money to renew their ATOL licences in the first place - and therefore will not feel comfortable trading if they do not get their accreditation.

It's what Steve Manwaring, a director at 'restructuring and recovery specialist' MCR, called a "ticking time bomb" for the industry in an email this week.

In addition, "the CAA, by doing its best not to over expose the risk to the fund, is holding back licence renewals from many in the industry right now as it assesses the risks associated with those companies," Manwaring says.

This may not make comfortable reading, but some people believe that the system actually exposes the fundamentally perilous way in which travel companies operate.

First of all the collapse of credit markets has meant that companies do not have the same access to investment capital. They can't grow, so therefore they can't attract any more investment. A vicious circle...

Now this is the same as other industries, of course, but where some travel companies fall down is in their practice of operating on low levels of cash flow.

Many operators take a late payment from customers and then pay their creditors quickly (hotels, airlines, car hire, etc), meaning there is often very little in the coffers.

This has worked for eons, but is quite a precarious way to run a business.

And now add the credit crisis.

This is making the problem especially acute as there are fewer bookings, some suppliers are demanding earlier payment, and banks are simply dishing out less money.

It may appear wonderful on the surface that average prices are higher - but supplier costs are also higher.

In the meantime there are less personal loans to directors being handed out, often using property as collateral, which traditionally would have given man y businesses access to funds and, most importantly, cash.

The consequence of this rather frightening cycle is that, if you listen to some close to the issue and analysts such as Manwaring, there are a number of small to medium sized operators in the market who will struggle to renew their ATOLs by the end of this month.

And that - for an industry only now discovering how terrifying the economic downturn is going to be - is actually rather a scary thought.

Hands up if you're worried about the privacy issues surrounding the launch of Google Street View UK?
 
Sure, it's cool and Hitwise is reporting a 41% spike in traffic to Google maps yesterday.
 
Having a play with it yesterday was fun and naturally you hone in on your local area or well-known places/attractions - (hence the Streetview/VisitBritian tie-up). And, you can't help wondering when the was car out and about and filming your area.


 Then it gets a bit spooky as you look at your kids' school with faces milling about - fuzzy for obvious reasons.
 
Is it all getting a bit too detailed and close to home?
 
And, it's not just StreetView but also the talk of behavioural targeting. Google recently announced its foray into behavioural advertising amid lots of muttering about privacy issues.
 
Feedback from experts says the search giant should set the standard with a balance between targeting and privacy.
 
The search giant isn't the only one in the space - at a TTI session before Christmas, Yahoo said the average user leaves more than 2,500 clues a month digitally from e-mail address, friends networks, ads they have clicked on.
 
That got the floor almost apoplectic with cries of foul play and privacy concerns.
 
Perhaps more pertinent are the commercial issues, especially in midst of a downturn - how targeted can it be and will the user object to advertising based on their online behaviour? 
 
Are we ready for Big Brother 2.0?

A few weeks ago we Tweeted the following message:

"Experiment: You tell us the top three topic areas you would want us to blog about - we'll either write it ourselves or ask an industry bod."

The responses were very good, one of which was from steve_e:

"User experience: OTA vs Tour Ops vs Meta Sites. Be interesting to compare and see who comes out top?"

So we asked user experience consultancy Webcredible to have a crack at this - and they have compared three brands in these areas.

Here is what senior consultant Abid Warsi had to say:

For a website to have a good user experience it needs to meet its users' needs and be easy to use.

How does the user experience of these sites compare?


Tour operators

Tour operators tend to have the simplest proposition.

[Tour operators often have simpler search forms]

Their products are pre-packaged up with fixed dates, durations and flights.

This creates the potential for simpler search forms and results pages. However, customers come to them for a particular type of holiday experience.

Their challenge is to successfully market and explain that holiday experience on their website.


Meta sites

Meta sites are at the other end of the complexity spectrum. They typically show a vast number of products on a single search results page.

[Some users will find Kayak's many filter options daunting]

Filter options help users find the most suitable product but these can also be too complicated.

Price driven users will return to meta sites despite their complexity. However, these sites should pay extra attention to how information is visually presented and should strike the right balance between the number filter options presented and ease of use.


Online travel agencies

Online travel agencies (OTA's) have possibly the largest challenge. They cover similar territory to both tour operators and meta sites.

[Expedia has a clean and organised homepage despite offering many types of travel products]

However, OTA's have a greater variety of products so there's the risk users might instead visit sites with more focussed propositions.

Many OTA's are expanding their product list e.g. to include theatre tickets or restaurant bookings.

They should ensure their homepages stay uncluttered and that it's still easy to book travel, which is what most users will be going there to do.

Users visit these sites with different goals in mind. It's vital that travel sites understand exactly what their users want.

They should also be aware of the usability challenges inherent in their particular online proposition and work to improve the user experience.

You can't really say that one type of site comes out on top in terms of user experience as each has its own advantages, challenges and difficulties.

The issue with picking a winner is that each sector has good and bad examples.

In a sense tour operators have the simplest proposition so their user journeys are often the simplest, especially when it comes to searching for a holiday.

However, the best OTA will be better than the worst tour operator.

Our travel website usability report from last year may be a good guide.

It reviewed 20 of the top travel agent and airline carrier sites for their usability and the top 5 consisted of Opodo, British Airways, Travelbag, STA Travel and Lastminute.

For comparison in this context, that's 3 OTAs and one tour operator.


NB: So, do you agree with Warsi?

So it looks like that, according to reports, Travelocity will follow Expedia's lead and scrap booking fees for air tickets.



At last week's PhoCusWright event in Berlin, president and CEO Philip Wolf did a quick straw poll of delegates during one of the debates, asking if Expedia's decision was a good thing or not.

From where I was sitting the result appeared reasonably even.

The pros:

1) Consumers get cheaper airfares [The Giving-Something-Back Theory]
2) Simplifies booking process in terms of displaying fares (one price) [The UE Theory]
3) Competitive advantage [The Smug Theory]

The cons:

1) OTA loses money [The Hugely Risky Theory]
2) Other OTAs will do the same [The MAD Theory]
3) Pressure on other areas of the business to take up the slack [The Blind Optimism Theory]

Now for Expedia there are a heap of reasons why it can get away with something like this, not least because it can shore up some of the decline in booking fee revenues with the launch of Tripadvisor's new meta search tool.

[Although during an interview with Wolf later in the day, Tripadvisor managing director Marc Charron denied the two were linked.

But what about Travelocity? It doesn't have the luxury of a meta search product of the anticipated scale of Tripadvisor to fall back on.

[But it might soon - you heard it hear first]

Anyway, there are plenty of people with strong opinions about what this latest move says about the OTA sector - so what do we think?

[Here is what the folks at PhoCusWright make of it]

Quite a captive audience for the appearance of Mr & Mrs Smith (or husband and wife team, James Lohan and Tamara Heber-Percy).

[Indeed, sitting alongside me was a representative from a German competitor, Escapio]

We have said for a long time that M&MS is a hugely interesting company, not least because it has managed to turn what essentially was a guidebook publishing house into a very online-focused service, using Kayak (for flights), UGC, Twitter, blogging, decent mash-ups, etc.

We, of course, heard the usual rundown on the company - much of which will be new to the European audience.

Perhaps one of the little nuggets of information is that conversion rates from phone queries to its travel team stand at 30% - which isn't bad at all (although overheads are a counterpoint).

[Escapio, sitting next to me, say they achieve similar rates and are far higher than online ]

A bit of history about the brand name as well.

Mr & Mrs Smith is synonymous with couples (who often aren't officially an 'item') escaping for the weekend and using the name to register, so they can't be traced.

The French equivalent, apparently, is M and Mme Dupont; in Italy its Rossi; and naughty couples in Germany would use the name Muller.

Bet you didn't know that!

But, in all seriousness, they're sticking with the Mr & Mrs Smith brand name for any further expansion overseas (they're in Australia and the US already).

And, finally, a proper nugget at the end. Lohan and Heber-Percy are considering splitting the company in two - media and travel. Very interesting...

Anyway, this was certainly one of the cosiest interviews I've ever seen at a conference. Good but strange...

Dale Moss, managing director of BA's OpenSkies subsidiary, is brually honest about how difficult it is to build a new airline.

In fact, he describes why the other business class-only airlines over the past few years - Maxjet, EOS and SilverJet) all ended up in the dustbin.

* Wrong business model
* Lack of distribution
* Not sufficiently capitalised

He also admits that in February 2008 there were some elements of the current economic climate they didn't see at all.

"Did we get oil at $147.27? No...," he confesses.

[One question: surely executives overseeing the launch of a new airline must have had SOME indication that oil prices might go a bit northward?]

But thankfully (Moss is clearly the best speaker so far) is realistic about the future of OpenSkies, especially in terms of recognition.

"We'll be successful in ten years and there will still be people saying 'who are they?'."

This is an interesting point. Let's just say that some of the failed airlines mentioned above tried as much as could to raise their profile with everyone, including the trade and the public.

But, as Moss admits, there is no point.

It's a niche audience, there is no need for widespread distribution.

Anyway, however, Andy Owen-Jones of Traveltainment poses one of the best questions of the day.

If the blog was a key element of having a conversation with potential new customers, he asks, why are there only 29 comments?

A fudged answer.......

A good session now - and a timely one - following the recent debate here when we ran the results of a study which indicated that tourist board campaigns were pretty low on the list of key influencers in the purchase process.

Step forward a collection of the great and the good from the DMO sector - Ryan Bifulco (founder and president, Travel Spike LLC), Roger Carter (managing director, TEAM Tourism Consulting), Konrad Plankensteiner (chief executive, Tiscover AG), Olaf Schlieper (managing director of Media Management, German National Tourist Board) and Martin Schobert (head of research and development (CIO), Austrian National Tourist Office).

One alarming - for some - summary which is emerging is that many DMOs can find it difficult to innovate because some of their investment has to be justified.

There are obvious exceptions - Holland being the one mentioned here as a top DMO site.

In other words, public money which doesn't give a return on investment is difficult to secure.

Seems like a perreniel problem?

[NB on another area: Carter reckons people still seem to prefer brochures and printed literature for researching destinations. Not sure about that...]

Can't believe we missed this.

SNCF.com.

Certainly worth playing with just to see what they've done. Very impressive.

"The traveller is one of the earliest adopters of [web] technology amongst consumer groups".

Or so says, Kais Makhlouf, vice president of strategic partnerships and merging platforms at Nurun.

I'm not so sure.

Okay, so customers have booked online for well over a decade.

But the online bookings are still, on average across the sector, nowhere what we would call saturation levels.

So not sure if the statement is true. Crowing to the audience perhaps?

A session here at PhoCusWright@ITB is fronted by Dr Eberhard Kurz, chief information officer for the technical division at DB, the German state railway.

He raises a number of good points:

1) Although there are geographical and political (as in corporate) differences, there is a clear understanding between national providers in Europe that they need to work together, primarily from a technology perspective.

For example, DB and the Swiss and Austrian rail providers use an open system for fares and availability, whereas the French system, SNCF, is closed.

But rather than give up and inevitably make the booking process difficult for consumers (who want to tap into the increasingly connected high-speed rail network in Europe), the rail companies spent years siomply sorting it out.

2) Mobile tickets with barcodes were launched on DB, for example, a full two years before most of the airlines - although, in theory, the process is essentially exactly the same.

3) The rail sector is attempting to embrace as many distribution channels as possible, rather than single out one particular GDS, OTA, meta engine, etc.

Now, as someone suggested to me earlier (not Dr Kurz), it would seem that the airlines (who, yes, obviously compete on some routes) have been so wrapped in other areas such as marketing, brand and the challenge over online versus agent distribution, that they've forgotten that perhaps there is also as much to be gained from talking to one another and innovating.

[NB: Obviously there is the Star Alliance programme and others which deal with some of the ticketing issues]

But, and here is the question, has the rail industry been quicker than the air industry in shaking off its legacy chains?

I am sitting on a panel today at the PhoCusWright event at ITB in Berlin. Our collective brains will hopefully be coming up with the top social media trends for travel in 2009.

One I suspect (hope) will come up is crowdsourcing.

So ahead of the session - and knowing that they use our sites to put on the screen behind the panel - here is a screengrab from Touchgraph, a fancy tool on Facebook, which aggregates your 'friends' into groups based on their links with one another.

The power of crowdsourcing is growing in travel. Using a network of like-minded individuals via various social media tools is indeed perhaps the best way to learn more about a travel brand or destination.

Or that's the phrase Barack Obama's speech writers would probably use!

Anyway, you know you're hit the mainstream when UK government officials single out your business as a good example of how consumer behaviour is changing and that they are considering a similar service.

[The Curse of Political Recognition is a fickle beast, so beware Mr Kaufer!]

And so we find Tripadvisor named, according to a BBC report, by the government as a lead for a new service which will allow the public to rate NHS facilities, police services and local councils.

The scheme (given one of those awful public body-type names of which management consultants are so fond) is called Working Together and is part of a wider project to democratise "the power of information" in local services.

EEK!

One shudders at what might come next - meta search for hospitals?

Step forward Mr Hafner, no doubt.

Okay, so not the most upbeat way to start a Monday morning but this is a fantastic guide (though offering no solutions) to what has triggered the mess the global economy currently finds itself in.

It is worth taking ten minutes of your time to watch it, or at least forward it on to those who do not fully understand "The Credit Crunch".





Hat-tip: @jimbobthomas

Never a dull moment at lastminute.com...

The other day we blogged about NRU, which is certainly a cool iPhone tool from lastminute.com, if you're on the move.

We have also been following the development of the pink one's Radar tool, which uses Google Gears wifi technology, to show users nearby hotel, restaurant and theatre deals.

Radar, currently in beta, uses wifi networks that can be picked by your laptop to work out where you are - best in places where there are loads of wifi hotspots...

Now, you could be mistaken for thinking that it's all work and no play at lastminute. So, just to dispel that myth, anyone for a phonefight?

That's a virtual duel to anyone not in the know!

Here's a video clip, which is, well, a little rough and ready...

.....and, then, leaves.

UPDATE: So, following a conversation with Stephen McNamara, head of comms at Ryanair, we have the following detail.

Dara Brady, deputy head of sales and marketing who we spoke to this morning, was apparently referring to "other" Ryanair Twitter accounts. [This is despite us asking him to confirm @ryanaironline]

These accounts, which were specific to certain destinations, such as ryanair_dublin, etc, have now been closed.

We also have the following statement:

"Ryanair has become aware of a number of Ryanair related profiles on Twitter which have engaged in abusive or denigratory comments towards Ryanair services and passengers.  These profiles have nothing at all to do with Ryanair."

A rather bizarre turn of events, don't you say...


Anyway, given that there is clearly some confusion over who said what, we are removing some elements of the original post.

All attempts to contact @ryanaironline are proving fruitless, as you might imagine, so far.


ORIGINAL POST:

Now most people on Twitter who came across it over the last 24 hours were understandably sceptical about the presence of @ryanaironline - especially given recent events.



The feeling amongst many of those last night who had viewed @ryanaironline with suspicion was based on how outrageous some of the early comments were.

Nothing much more to say on this...

[Joe Blogs does]

[As does Matt Parsons]

Ok. Almost every survey has some kind of agenda and they all have their individual flaws.

So, with some trepidation, I opened up yet another email this morning from a company claiming to have results of a major survey, etc, etc.

However, the study by direct marketing agency, Entire, discovered something which should send some reasonably seismic shivers down the spine of destination marketers.

In response to the question "When choosing (a) holiday destination(s) in the next 12 months  what do you think will be the BIGGEST influence on your decision?", the poll returned the following results:

* Recommendation from a friend/family - 8%
* Recommendation from a travel agent - 0%
* Independent reviews (eg. newspaper supplements/ online blogs) - 6%
* Destination's marketing activity (eg. travel brochures/TV ads/travel channels) - 4%
* Price - 46%
* Impact on environment (i.e. carbon footprint) - 1%
* Having previously been there and wanting to return - 20%

[The survey was carried out late last year online in conjunction with Yougov (credible agency) and with 2,000 members of the UK public]

Now any online-based survey is almost always going to throw up the low score for travel agents being an influence or the place to go to book travel - that's almost a given these days.

But even taking into consideration the date of the survey (December 2008), when there would have been less activity around, should it be a worry that the efforts of destination marketing companies appear to be getting lost?

Price, without doubt, is obviously going to be a determining factor in many decisions, but 4% does seem remarkably low.

I was expecting Entire to say howwell  they are working for their clients on improving exposure and are clearly greatest agency known to mankind, etc.

In fact, their representative simply admitted: "Entire was a bit shocked as well."

And so it might be if it and other's efforts are washing over consumers.

At a recent function I sat with the head of the London tourist office of a major European tourist destination.

I was told that despite the terrible state of the economy (visitor numbers are expected to be down around 10% this year to this particular country), more money would be poured into offline marketing and trade exposure.

This might appear to some to be a fruitless strategy given the above statistic about marketing recognition and a general slowing down of the influence from travel agents.

Lots of issues to consider...

So, what do we all think?


UPDATE: Column from VisitBritain addressing these very issues.

We like this a lot...

If this is the kind of stuff that the new lastminute.com labs guys are up to then we look forward to more...

Our Kayak story today raises some questions about the independence of review sites.

Shooting from the hip, (nothing new there), Kayak boss Steve Hafner doesn't think consumers believe Tripadvisor is unbiased.

Obviously, Tripadvisor co-founder and boss Steve Kaufer would have something to mutter in response to this.

It's fair to say that, with the exception of the home page, everywhere you look on Tripadvisor you see Hotels.com, Expedia, Venere et al - all Expedia Inc brands.

Tripadvisor has argued its independence on the strength of the volume of its consumer reviews - even if one review was biased, the rest would balance it out.

But, can you call yourself independent once you start pushing your own booking channels or is it up to the consumer to know that Tripadvisor is part of the massive stable that is Expedia Inc.

The mainstream holiday market used to argue about directional selling and whether the large vertically integrated retail chains should display a notice about their parentage.

The internet, as with so many other examples, makes everything much more transparent so maybe it is just a clear-cut case of let the buyer beware.

Then, there is the question of whether Tripadvisor's latest development - the flight meta search engine - makes it even less independent?

Will lastminute.com and others be rethinking their partnerships with the review service as it breezes into another element of the distribution chain?

Hafner freely admits Tripadvisor did steal an early march in terms of hotel reviews and he's bullish about how good Travelpost will be in comparison.

But how much should we read into his comments?

Is Kayak feeling the pressure of the might that is Expedia Inc?

Or is it really time for Tripadvisor to move over?

This post is inspired by a number of recent additions to the travel blogging arena - but I hope it will trigger a wider debate about blogging.

A few months ago a rather witty new blog appeared on the radar - joeblogs.net.

It was rather funny in places (even suggesting I should appear on a Celebrity Travel version of Big Brother), although it seems that it has since decided to stick to straight commentary pieces on industry news rather than poke fun.

Curiosity often killed the cat but always inspires the journalist, so with some help I found out who was the owner and confronted them. The person asked us not to 'out' them.

NB: There was a lot of debate behind the scenes, believe me.

[He has since come clean]

I'm not a great fan of anonymous blogging - perhaps this is the journalist in me who is trained to look for transparency and openness in information.

This is especially relevant if and when there are conflicts of interest or criticism of companies.

Anyway, not actually gaining anything from exposing Joe Blogs, we decided to sit tight.

Fast forward to last week and Travel Jerk appears in the blogosphere, running under the strapline:

"Saying things about travel that prolly ain't true... coz i'm a jerk!"

It's second post (which may well be deleted pretty soon) was about Thomson and it's apparent dislike of people of a certain size, primarily because these people didn't feature in its latest TV advert.

Maybe I've lost my sense of humour recently but it wasn't particularly funny - especially as I think it was meant to be. Ah well...

Anyway, our attention was also drawn to a poll it ran at the top of the homepage, asking which trade industry magazine, TTG, Travel Weekly, Travolution or Selling Long Haul, "makes the best toilet paper?".

Okay, well done, so now you've grabbed my attention - primarily because I don't want a blog to say - humorously or not - that Travolution is only worth existing as a device for, well, you know...

Sense of humour failure again, perhaps? Probably...

A bit homework, once again, and we've discovered who is the owner of the blog.

The grab below is from the WHOIS database for traveljerk.co.uk, not the Blogspot site which currently contains the content.



It was worth putting two and two together and hoping we get four, especially as they were registered-created almost simultaneously.

[Interestingly, the registrant name was changed within minutes of our initial contact with the owner this morning]

Anyway, our suspicions were confirmed in an email I received from Travel Jerk today, asking us not to take it any further action.

[Jerk said it wanted to be Holy Moly for the travel industry]

Now revenge can be quite sweet and outing Travel Jerk would probably be an obvious thing to do (we may still do it).

But for the time being, instead, I think there are some more interesting questions that should be debated.

* Is anonymous blogging an acceptable form of publishing?
* Can it only be taken seriously, ironically, if it is funny or satirical?
* How open should a blog be (especially in terms of conflicts, even if it is anonymous)?
* Should a site like Travolution be 'outing' anonymous bloggers if it finds them?

I apologise to Travel Jerk for the attention you are about to receive - you've just triggered what is actually quite an interesting debate.

UPDATE: Travel Jerk is no longer. Site and Twitter account deleted.