April 2009 Archives

Interesting stats from Kayak on the impact of swine flu on search behaviour on the meta search engine.

The stats below show the volume of searches week-on-week to and from Mexico.

From large world cities:

London - up 5%
Vancouver - down 35%
Montreal - up 30%
Madrid - down 43%
Edmonton - up 55%
Paris - up 24%
Barcelona - down 31%
Bogota - down 70%
Munich - down 22%

From large US cities:

Los Angeles - down 35%
San Francisco - down 31%
Chicago - down 20%
Denver - down 25%
Washington DC - down 18%
Seattle - down 14%
Dallas - down 33%
Boston - down 27%
Philadelphia - down 47%

Celebrating cultural differences (or, more tips for start-ups)

Last week's Travolution Summit experts threw out some pearls of wisdom for budding start-ups.

Most of the tips were from our US and Continental cousins and were as far ranging as you don't need lots of money to, go forward and have no fear!

Yesterday's start-up insight at the TTI Spring conference came from home and was, well, a little more conservative, although valuable nonetheless.

Ray Mason, former boss at travel.co.uk, had one critical question for over-excited entrepreneurs to ask themselves - "What is the point?"

The question is relevant for both new businesses and developing ones especially in the light of the current criticism being levelled at travel sites for their poor user experience and over functionality.

Ray broke down the question into the following key areas:

* Why are you doing it? Reaction to changing market, new opportunity, catching up with a competitor, improving existing site?

* Who cares? Is there a market for it, who is the target audience and how big is the market?

* How will it make money? Does it need to make money, what's the business model and are you confident of it?

It's enough to make anyone sit back and think for a few minutes. These guys have all been there, done that and some more than once.

It doesn't matter where you are from, the same clear messages are emerging - keep it simple, think about every step of the process, don't get carried away and of course, have fun!

The next evolution of travel businesses is going to be interesting to watch to see if and how any of this is taken on board.

But, to end of a lighter note - Visithuelva boss Mark Walker leaves us with the suggestion that anyone in charge of search engine madness should undergo psychological testing so they panic and spend uncontrollably.

We have Twittered at conferences - including our own - for well over a year, but last week was the first time we have streamed a dedicated hashtag live onto the main stage of the event.

The #travsummit hashtag for the Travolution Summit 2009 worked brilliantly well in some respects.

* As of this afternoon (Tuesday 28 April - one week after the event) there were close to 1,150 'Tweets' on #travsummit. At one point during the morning session the hashtag was 'trending' at number two across Twitter.

[This, forgetting the content for just a moment, is an awesome figure and admittedly was a bit of a surprise. Our publishing company Reed Business Information was suitably impressed and, rather embarrassingly for a humble chap like me, ran a gushing story to lead its intranet news service earlier this week]

* Approximately 200 of the Tweets were posted after the event.

[Now this is where it gets interesting. Post-event analysis and continuing the conversation was, until now, the Holy Grail of event organisers]

On the day we had the search.twitter.com page with the #travsummit feed appearing on the main stage's large screen during the Q&A sessions following each keynote.

We also had the feed running on smaller screens further back in the auditorium.

I encouraged - via email and Twitter - the assembled mainstream media and bloggers at the event to use the hashtag, in the usual fashion, to post their thoughts and questions to the speakers and other participants.

As the main moderator of the event, I observed a number of things during the sessions:

* People were 're-tweeting' other people's posts almost as often as they were posting messages themselves.

* The feed was probably added to far quicker than people that were following it in the audience would want.

* If the on-stage content started to wane, people would Tweet *other* observations, such as comments regarding the panel's socks and footwear!

* The number of specific questions for panellists and keynoters far outweighed the number of comments, re-tweets, Twitpics, etc.

* A number of people suggested on the day the huge flurry of Tweets in the early stages (and later on when the US 'woke up') was almost as if people were ensuring that they were seen to be following the event. [Not sure, personally]

As I said in an email to the bloggers and media the following day, the day has now posed a number of interesting questions for me and our organising team within RBI as how to handle live streaming of Twitter at events.

* Should we create different hashtags for comments and speaker questions?

* Is there a case for a Twitter feed commentator, to coordinate the flow of the Tweets, as one contact who wasn't at the event suggested to me last week?

* Should we ask that delegates to stick to a particular form of Tweeting (keep it serious, for example) during the event.

* Do we pull the feed from the main screen if there is anything negative about the event or speakers? [We didn't last week - and, yes, there were a few comments]

* When there are a huge number of Tweets such as for #travsummit, is there a way of slicing and dicing the hashtag via the Twitter API so that people can understand how many individuals Tweeted, whether they RTed, @replied, posted links, Twitpics, etc? [We could do this manually, of course, but it would be a lengthy and dull task!]

* Is encouraging the use of Twitter at a conference impacting, conversely, on delegates who would ordinarily have blogged about the content? [A fellow conference organiser told me recently that his organisation felt that the quality of coverage suffered as a result of delegates spending their time Tweeting whereas in the past they might have been busily crafting more analytical coverage]

Background reading: a post on the Meetings Podcast outlined six ways to utilise Twitter at conferences, some of which are obvious but others are interesting and need further exploration:

1 - Scheduling meeting ups.
2 - Alerting attendees about changes or events.
3 - Keeping track of what is going on at an event.
4 - Using it in your presentation to engage the audience.
5 - Building a brand of how cool your conference is for other watching through twitter.
6 - Real time performance review and feedback.

This is a fascinating subject in many respects but primarily, as a conference organiser, journalist and Twitter user, these issues create big challenges and opportunities for the way an extremely active and immediate channel like Twitter is handled at events.

Please feel free to add to the debate!!

There's a row brewing on the other side of the pond, which is Europe-bound sooner rather than later.

It centres on US airlines - namely American and Delta - charging travel agents and distributors for the right to sell their seats.

The US industry is in uproar over the suggestion and say, ultimately, the customer would pay.

The GDS fraternity is equally unhappy, but then they already pay many agents incentives to use their technology.

What's behind it, once again, is that airlines are suffering - Delta lost $794m in Q1 - and distribution costs are an easy target.

The GDS argument is that they provide value and can prove it especially when it comes to business travel and other premium traffic.

They also say it doesn't make sense to reinvent the wheel and at the Travolution Summit last week, Amadeus said airlines should be in every possible channel.

The agents' argument is that the majority of customers aren't just looking for a flight but a whole package of travel.

The airlines have not said it will happen - both CEOs have suggested they could see it happening in time.

It's ironic that the airlines founded the whole GDS system and now fail to see the value in them.

Would it mean the return of frantic switch-selling, could airlines get away with it, could it be anti-competitive?

Whose side are you on?

[By Linda Fox]

UPDATE Midday: EU health commissioner warns against all non-essential trips to affected areas - but stops short of mentioning Spain.

As a global issue, the Swine Flu outbreak of 2009 has the potential to not only knock the economic crisis off the headlines for a few weeks but have a big impact on travel companies.

We may even be completely underestimating its threat and the illness could become a pandemic (depending on which media source you read) very quickly.

Already countries are moving to establish zones to deal with any reported cases.

But here are facts:

In Mexico there are around 1,600 suspected cases of Swine Flu. There are reports of people falling ill in Canada, the US, New Zealand, Spain, Australia and Israel.

However, of the reported 100-odd deaths in Mexico only 20 are confirmed as officially being as a result of the new strain [BBC].

Neverthelees, health officials and experts are already warning the public about what to do, what not to do, etc.

Inevitably this has had a dramatic impact on travel stocks as the markets opening in the UK this morning.

British Airways shares were down around 7.5% within 30 minutes of the opening trade on the London Stock Exchange.

Carnival, which has a big interests in the Caribbean and Mexico, slumped by a similar figure.

Other travel firms were also hit in the early markets. Nineteen of the 20 stocks on the Travolution Index fell sharply.

So although travel shares have been performing quite well in recent weeks (up around 20% on levels in mid-March), the Swine Flu threat is clearly making investors extremely jittery.

SARS lives long in the memory...

There are some who suggest that it was only when SARS was added into the period containing the dot-com crash that travel firms really started tanking in terms of financial stability and investment value.

Therefore, the parallels with the current day are terrifying.

Let's jsut hope the Swine Flu outbreak is either being hyped by the media or can be quickly contained.

Google's conversion toolbox: valuable and simple tips on improving user experiencing provided by Google at this week's Travolution Summit.

The search giant's research suggests consumers make 12 travel searches over 22 travel sites during a period of 29 days before making a purchase so ensuring they find what they want and can buy it easily should be the centre of your universe.

eCommerce project manager Graham Cooke suggested a four step plan:

* Identify the problem - where people are falling through your site using data that goes beyond your visitor numbers

* Diagnose why people are falling through by listening to customers through user groups and online surveys.

* Test solutions on your customers

* Implement

It's not rocket science and Google believes the search function is one of the biggest areas for improvement with many travel companies are losing customers there.

There's also room for improvement on small areas from the size of images to the 'buy' button.

Google is happy to 'eat its own dog food', - translates as practise what you preach - especially as it saw a 56% improvement on its own adwords conversion.

Frommers Unlimited also threw in a few website nasties from some its latest user research with old information, misleading pictures, hidden fees and deadlinks among the worst online crimes.

And suggestions from Frommers' customers on how to improve included a 'more honest approach' and providing a 'complete price'.

Seems crazy that travel websites are falling down on such apparently simple fixes.

One delegate even went as far as to say that travel sites are among the worst legacy sites with no consideration for search engine optimisation, content or multivariate testing.

Harsh words or food for thought?

The buzz around homeaway.com and its boss Brian Sharples may have put other illustrious panellists at the Travolution Summit in the shadows but it gave good insight into the opportunities of the holiday-home market.

Some facts and figures - it's a $60-$100 billion industry and between the US and Europe there are 4 million homes available for rent out of a rental potential of 16 million. So, we're only touching the sides.

In Europe there is no dominant or significant brand and the market is seriously fragmented although HomeAway's master plan is to be the leading platform in each market.

The irony there is that for users there is no concept of brand - it's all about the richness of the information provided.

The opportunities lie in a number of directions - for HomeAway to continue in the same vein adding more and more properties. The company is about to launch in Brazil and Australia.

An online booking service is planned although there are hurdles such as owners wanting to talk to the person they rent to and holidaymakers also tend to have a lot of questions.

For other travel suppliers there is opportunity in providing ancillary services - flights, car-hire, insurance, tours and experiences...

And for homeowners, the opportunity is to have your house lived in for the 50 weeks of the year you are not there.

So, why such a buzz around HomeAway - clearly the size and opportunities of the market but perhaps more significantly the amount of money - $405 million - the company has raised so far including $250 million in its latest round.

And, finally the amount of money the company is turning over - Sharples mentioned $4 billion in bookings that went through the site in the past six months.

Compelling stuff!

And, one final word on the question of an exit plan - Sharples said that the plan had been to 'run it hard for five years' and then take it public.

Now, however he is viewing as much more of a long-term opportunity so is not going to even consider an exit for at least two to three years.

The CEO Interview hosted by PhoCusWright's Philip Wolf kicks off the afternoon session.

Most delegates will not have heard of PlanetEye and TripIt, whose CEOs Butch Langlois and Gregg Brockway are on the stage.

But these businesses have significant minority investors which might be more familiar - Microsoft has an interest in PlanetEye, while Sabre Holdings is a minority investor in TripIt.

Microsoft isn't on PlanetEye's board: Sabre is on TripIt's.

Keeping an established travel business going in the current climate is hard enough, so it must be difficult to establish yet another online travel planning site (which is what both these sites do). But having big names associated with the business cannot but help when the shake-out really revs up.

"The average age of new mobile phone users in nine years old. How can the travel business appeal to this market?"

It's not such a silly question. These new mobile phone users will be travelling independently within a few years, and chances are they are already texting their parents ideas or images for this year's holiday (while facebooking their friends to find out if Disneyland Florida is as good as Alton Towers...)

In the same way as there is a generation of young folk who have never not known the internet, there will be another generation who will never not have had a mobile.  It might not be the time to ask your FD for some cash to develop a travel app specifically for ten year olds, but if anyone does, the benefits could be great in the years to come.

Martin Cowen

"Ancillary revenues" has been a buzzword/buzzphrase in the business for a while.  Amadeus' Gillian Gibson talked about this at the Summit today. Top-line summary: ancillary revenues from airline related service yes; ancillary revenues from non-air services no.

Her argument was that ancillary revenues from the flight are within the airline's control and go straight onto the bottom-line without much dilution, while the money made from its hotel and car-hire partnerships is commission-only, with the profit nowhere near the amount of revenue.

Also, she suggested that airlines could lose brand integrity if the hotel was rubbish. And that airline customers wouldn't expect their airline to know about hotels. And that people don't necessarily book the hotel at the same time as the flight.

Amadeus has a range of products which help airlines sell the flight ancillaries, and this is where the technology company feels it should be focussed. She said Amadeus is "taking a bet" on the ROI being better for airline-related ancillary services technology.

I've lost track of how much money IATA thinks the airline business will lose this year, but  if an airline came make money by selling seat allocation or charging for luggage, they will do that. Expect more not less carriers to charge for the sort of thing we used to expect to get for nothing, when we were paying £300 for a flight which now costs £80...

Where Are You Now? has had plenty of detractors in its relatively short history.

A round-up of general negative opinions would feature probably a few of the following comments: "Too much spammy email." "It's just a dating site dressed up as a travel social network".

So today's news that the founders are radically overhauling the WAYN offering may trigger a few rueful smiles from some of its harshest critics.

I was invited to WAYN HQ in London last week to meet with co-founder Jerome Touze, ahead of the announcement being given to a consumer title (The Daily Telegraph) and the business media (us, luckily).

His partners at the top of the ladder have stayed away from the limelight in recent months (Mike Lines, in reality, has never been seen as the public face of WAYN and Peter Ward has spent most of his time with the core development team in Poland), leaving Touze to front much of the relaunch of WAYN.

The latest chapter for WAYN is pretty simple: the trio realised something needed to be done to address the image WAYN has amongst the wider consumer base (restricting its growth), extend its remit into other areas (i.e. become a wider, lifestyle brand) and overhaul its, as Touze admits, cluttered user experience.

Supporting this, they hope, will be a new business model which will see advertisers given highly targerted leads through a new behavioural targeting system.

The idea is that members will now be answering the question, through the Plans functionality: "What are you up for doing?"

They will then have the opportunity to see offers from advertisers based on what they are planning to do and, hopefully, forward on to their friends.

So, what is all the fuss about? Why does WAYN gather plaudits and criticism in equal measures?

One of the main things to admire (as the headline above suggests) about WAYN is that they have never been afraid to re-engineer the business, and talk about it so publicly.

[Obviously, from a journalist's perspective, they are eminently quotable because of their brutal honesty]

"We have done some things right, but have done many things very wrong," admits Touze. "I look at some things now and say: 'what the f**k were we thinking."

And this is what makes WAYN such an interesting company, not because of the offering (which, depending on your point of view, is a very interesting idea especially when you factor in the new functionality and design) but simply because it is willing to take risks.

There are many firms across the travel sector which plough away at the same model for years, despite all evidence to the contrary that times have moved on and a new approach should be made.

The last round of soul-searching took place in early-2007 when, shortly after receiving a round of funding from the likes of Brent Hoberman, David Soskin, Hugo Burge, the founders of Active Hotels and Esprit Capital Partners, WAYN dropped much of the subscription barriers which were preventing growth.

And, so, WAYN reaches 2009 and a vastly different social media landscape and web users who are demanding much more, but on simpler terms.

Whether the new strategy works - let's face it, Twitter and Facebook have stolen a march on WAYN, if you see its latest incarnation as a direct competitor - will be troubling the founders for the rest of 2009.

The detractors, to return to them once again, will also be watching closely to see if the bright young things of London entrepreneurland can pull it off.

It seems blindingly obvious, however, that 15 million members (how many of those are active, is the burning question, of course), a number which WAYN has reached this month, will be the judge of whether the network can pull off another overhaul.

So we've had 24 things to think about if you work in online travel, Worry Lines Part One and Worry Lines Part Two.

And now, courtesy or PhoCusWright, we have the Top Ten Travel Technology Trends for 2009:

1 - Despite Market Woes, Pockets of Investment Still Exist

"During economic downturns, innovation is the single most important condition for transforming the crisis into an opportunity."


2 - The Entire Trip Experience Will Be "Informationized"

In the past, the main focus of the travel value chain has been those components that resulted in a booking. Access to further information was a challenge because of limitations of mobile devices, lack of acceptable technology in hotel rooms, language barriers and no clear business model. This is all about to change.


3 - Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing and Open Source Spawn a New Flock of Innovators

Open Source has matured to the point that many companies are fully dependent on it. It has become an enabler for startups, allowing them to rapidly accelerate their time to market. At the PhoCusWright's November 2008 Travel Innovation Summit, demonstrator Home and Abroad explained that they would not have been able to bring their product to market if it had not been for Open Source.


4 - Suppliers (Finally!) Provide Personalized Shopping/Booking Tools

Today, most OTAs look much the same: Where do you want to go? When? Air only or hotel and/or car? To provide convenience and value to the customer, future learning and shopping screens will adapt to the users' stated profiles, observed profiles and shopping style. Similarly, the content presented will be the most meaningful to the customer.


5 - Technologies Will Continue to Converge

Ten years ago, television networks were distinct from the Internet. Video was limited to TV and you went to see a movie at the theater. Now you can make a phone call anywhere to anywhere in the world using your laptop. You can watch movies and TV and browse rich content on your mobile device. You can watch content from the Internet on your TV and wirelessly network your house for all manner of content.


6 - A Flood of New Mobile Travel and Location-Based Applications Come to Market

Mobile usage in travel applications has languished for years with a poor technology capability and an even worse business model. The mobile platform finally has interactive capability that makes it the fully functioning "3rd screen" alongside the desktop and laptop. With the growth of 3G (broadband wireless) subscriptions and smartphone adoption, apps will embrace location and context in a new way, enhancing the travel experience.


7 - Advertising Technology Transforms Travel Distribution

Pure play booking fee models will become dinosaurs as blended models involving highly targeted ads, referral fees and fees for service establish peaceful coexistence. The technology convergence discussed in Trend 5 will enable the convergence of business models.


8 - Still Searching...for Better Search

Last year the trends were "Semantic Technology and the Semantic Web will drive the next wave of Internet technology" and "Search will evolve to become more effective." These are still true. Lack of adoption of the formal semantic Web does not mean that search is not getting better. There are several instances where semantics are being used to improve search. As they begin to show differentiated business value over normal search, they will gain traction.


9 - Democratization of Supply Levels the Playing Field

In the beginning when the airlines created travel distribution, the GDSs (they were called CRSs then) controlled the distribution of travel content. This created an oligopoly. But times are changing. The implementation of standards for interconnection, the transparency of the Internet, Web services and mashups, new search tools and SaaS models have all contributed to the development of an open marketplace for travel distribution.


10 - Business Intelligence and Analytics Move to the Forefront

In tight times, you need to squeeze as much as possible from your existing operations and capabilities. This involves understanding what your competitors are doing, how efficient and effective your own operations are and what your customers are saying.


Full analysis of points one and two in this downloadable PDF.

More information in PhoCusWright's Technology Edition.

Amadeus and Galileo will be quietly pleased that this morning's story about Monarch Airlines exiting stage left from the GDS came on the eve of the long Easter holiday break.

A good day to find yourself buried in bad news, as the saying kind of goes.

Monarch is now only one of two major airlines in Europe not on any of the Global Distribution Systems.

The second, unsurprisingly, is Ryanair.

Monarch MD Liz Savage [come and witness her on a panel with, er, Amadeus at the Travolution Summit on the 21 April!] said the airline had seen a "huge decrease in the number of direct GDS sales".

This was primarily as a result of travel agents using other methods such as directly on monarch.co.uk or through its Avro sister brand.

Nevertheless, Monarch's decision says a lot about the extent airlines are going to in order to trim or their distribution costs.

A Monarch spokesman told us the move was not, as some suspected, linked to existing contracts with Amadeus and Galileo running out.

In other words, Monarch simply pulled the plug regardless.

So what is all this saying about the relationship between airlines and their distribution mechanism.

It could be said that Monarch's direct consumer sales are now of sufficient volume online (the huge monarch.co.uk branding programme over the past 12 months will have helped) that the airline has decided to go for broke and take the initially risky non-GDS route simply to simplify its channels - and reduce costs.

Ryanair was always the black sheep (for many reasons) of the air industry in Europe - even easyJet is using the GDS for business travel sales - but Monarch has now clearly taken a similar view that its own distribution programme is enough.

By allowing XML connections, web sales and the Avro partnership, Monarch may - like Ryanair - be confident it can achieve a similar reach as before.

The GDSs will be hoping that other airlines do not feel the same.

But if cost is an issue for airlines, distribution may well be further up the review schedule than people actually thought.

UPDATE: Good counterpoint from a business travel perspective from Murray Harold.

There is something wonderfully (and, I admit, rather sadly) absorbing about Hitwise data - especially when they throw up the odd nugget or two of intrigue for the travel sector.

The month of March 2009, for example, saw the following 15 websites leading what the stataholics at Hitwise call its 'Travel - Agencies' category.


1 - Expedia

2 - Thomson Holidays

3 - Lastminute.com

4 - Thomas Cook

5 - Travelsupermarket

6 - First Choice

7 - Travelrepublic

8 - Cheapflights

9 - OnTheBeach

10 - Skyscanner

11 - Teletext Holidays

12 - Opodo UK

13 - Directline Holidays

14 - Travelzoo UK

15 - Holiday Extras


To give you an idea of the range, Expedia commands a sturdy 9.17% share, Holiday Extras with 1.30%.

Perhaps two things to note here are the heady heights in which OnTheBeach now finds itself, and the absence of Kayak and Ebookers.

Moving on...

Perhaps more interesting are the figures showing the top 15 sites for upstream share into that same 'Travel - Agencies' category. In other words: the sites users are hanging out on before heading off to the sites listed above.

And now the data (for the month of February 2009) becomes absolutely fascinating.


1 - Google UK (29.26%)

2 - Google (4.95%)

3 - Tripadvisor (1.78%)

4 - Facebook (1.52%)

5 - Travelsupermarket (1.48%)

6 - Cheapflights (1.42%)

7 - Tripadvisor UK (1.33%)

8 - Yahoo Search UK & Ireland (1.27%)

9 - Thomson Holidays (1.05%)

10 - Windows Live Mail (0.96%

11 - Expedia UK (0.87%)

12 - Thomas Cook (0.85%)

13 - Yahoo Mail UK & Ireland (0.71%)

14 - First Choice (0.70%)

15 - Ask UK (0.69%)


No surprises at all that Google's combined influence reaches almost 30%.

And feathers in the caps of both Travelsupermarket and Cheapflights, which some might say are doing their job of aggregating products for users very well and are clearly important distribution channels.

The position of Tripadvisor as the third highest upstream referrer is showing, if the industry didn't already know, how important it has become in the food chain.

But the placing of Facebook is of critical importance - but, equally, must be confusing - for the travel industry.

Clearly the ubiquitous social network plays an important part in the internet usage of millions of consumers, but the question marks that many have over it as an advertising channel (members are in networking mode, not buying mode) put it in the unique position of being incredibly popular but incredibly frustrating for brands.

In short: how do brands harness that interaction because the evidence illustrates that many consumers are using Facebook at exactly the point prior to them heading off to a travel website?

Another table we have shows the top 15 sites for upstream share into the 'Aviation - Commercial Airlines' category.

Once again, the data (for the week ending 2 February 2009) is extremely interesting:


1 - Google UK (29.04%)

2 - Google (5.71%)

3 - Windows Live Mail (2.86%)

4 - EasyJet (2.49%)

5 - Cheapflights (1.94%)

6 - Thomson Holidays (1.78%)

7 - Ryanair (1.63%)

8 - Yahoo Search UK & Ireland (1.37%)

9 - Travelsupermarket (1.35%)

10 - MSN UK (1.12%)

11 - BMIBaby (1.08%)

12 - Yahoo Mail UK & Ireland (1.07%)

13 - Skyscanner (1.06%)

14 - Ebay UK (0.98%)

15 - British Airways (0.94%)


Once again, unsurprisingly, Google's UK and other dot-com sites are generating huge levels of traffic to the airline category.

But the data also indicates a number of other things.

Firstly is the potentially how influential an ad campaign for targeting consumers when they are using their email web services could be - Thomas Cook's recent deal with Microsoft is testament to that.

Most would agree that the consumer is probably far more discerning this year than ever before as they check prices on a number of sites before making that final decision to buy.

One thing which has confused us a little is the relatively high positions of easyJet and Ryanair. Could consumers be dissatisfied with what they are finding on the sites and heading off elsewhere? Or just being more astute during the purchase funnel?

And, lest we forget, is the position of eBay. There was plenty of talk a few years ago about its role in travel (plans which never really came to fruition), and here it is again as a top place where consumers are browsing, before heading off to one of the major airline sites.

The final table shows the downstream share for the month of February 2009 from Cheapflights.co.uk (where users are going after visiting the price comparison site).


1 - Kayak UK (9.82%)

2 - Opodo UK (8.13%)

3 - Travelrepublic (5.78%)

4 - Ebookers (5.64%)

5 - British Airways (3.79%)

6 - Netflights (3.51%)

7 - FlyThomasCook (2.47%)

8 - Virgin Atlantic (2.17%)

9 - BMI (2.13%)

10 - Travelsupermarket (2.02%)

11 - Flydeals (1.82%)

12 - Expedia UK (1.71%)

13 - Monarch Airlines (1.71%)

14 - KLM Royal Dutch Airlines (1.55%)

15 - Flybe (1.48%)


We do not have any information to show which of these sites spend money - and how much they spend - with Cheapflights (although one suspects almost all do).

But who would have thought that Kayak is the single largest beneficiary of outbound traffic from the site, as opposed to an OTA or airline?

We would welcome any thoughts or further analysis you have on any of the above.

Number crunching over...

We produced a list yesterday of the five major concerns the industry might have regarding their company's operations.

The post certainly sparked a response on Twitter and email, though interestingly not in the comments section (sign of the times for blogs, perhaps?).

Anyway, a reader got in touch last night with five of their own worry lines (one of which, admittedly, pokes fun at the previous list).

They also asked to remain anonymous.

Recovery - When the industry bounces back will it be in the same form as it has been over the last few years? For example with consolidation there would be fewer senior jobs? Will it bounce back online rather than offline? (leading to less newly generated senior jobs etc). Why does this person believe that an upturn would necessarily mean they would be reemployed?

Staying on Top - If you are currently out of a job - how are you keeping your skills current?

IT - With technology rising in importance within the travel sector, how will they pitch to future employers that they understand it and can master it? Stating that technology companies over promise and under deliver suggests that this person has a lack of skills in understanding how to ask the right questions to travel technology companies and probably misunderstands the nuances of their answers.

Company Structure - When green shoots of recovery are seen in the travel industry the chances are that any newly created jobs will be contract roles rather than perm (to enable flexibility to be retained if recovery stagnates or doesn't go as planned). Contract roles tend to be given to specialists to fulfill a specific short term need (vs perm staff who tend to be all rounders). If you are used to perm positions what research are you doing on what would be likely contract roles that may come up - and how are you tuning your skills to specialise in those areas?

Gardening Leave - It may be fun in spring and summer, but probably a little dull if still having to do gardening leave in the Autumn.

Do you agree?

So there was much bemusement at last week's Hotelicopter April Fool stunt - a helicopter transformed into, er, hotel. Geddit!

Anyway, those wags at Vibeagent.com - the US hotel search engine and creators of the video - actually had something far more substantial up their sleeves.

In fact, Hotelicopter is the new Vibeagent. Yes, indeed.

The new offering has a raft of new bits of functionality including what it claims is the first travel site to include Facebook Connect and aggregates reviews, pictures and video from partner sites.

The old vibeagent.com will be redirected to hotelicopter.com...

The decision to get a bit of buzz going with the April Fool joke seems pretty inspired to us.

The Youtube video has been watched by over 300,000 people, national media in the UK and the US named it as one of the best April Fools of the day, and people were talking about it.

Vibeagent/Hotelicopter founder/CEO Adam Healey told us on Monday night that the decision to switch brands was "pretty easy".

"We wanted to do a few different things. We realised that there's a huge opportunity in the hotel vertical. There was also a huge SEO benefit from the name," he said.

So fair play to Healey et al for having a go at something new and for coming up with something completely different in terms of a promotional push.

Lots more on the Hotelicopter blog.

UPDATE: One VERY unhappy punter.

In January this year our research editor Professor Dimitrios Buhalis produced what he said were the 24 things to think about if you work in online travel.

Three months on, and with the economy pretty much biting everyone in the backside in some way or other, we wanted to identify the main concerns travel companies are currently facing.

One of the (many!) senior figures out on gardening leave at the moment obliged with our request and put forward the following list.


Advertising - How do I make pay-per-click advertising work and give me real ROI? Should I do it in-house or use an agency? What should I be bidding on, and how does Google really work for me?

SEO - How do I make my site SEO-friendly and does it really bring strong results? How much do I have to invest, and who gives the best advice?

Customer Loyalty - I just keep on buying new customers and I don't know how to adopt CRM principles. Help!

Price - I am fed up just competing on price. How can I differentiate my product to move the focus away from price?

Technology - Who provides the best booking engine? Why do companies over-promise and under-deliver? Who is the best and will they value my business?

[Talking of five concerns, ABTA has a few of its own and has written to UK chancellor Alistair Darling]

Do you agree?

The ETTSA (European Technology & Travel Services Association) was formed last week with a pretty wide remit but including looking at the following:

* Measures introduced by airlines to prevent online travel agencies from making price comparisons.

* The implementation of the new code of conduct for Computerised Reservation Systems (CRS).

* Airlines' abusive (Preferred) fares and surcharge schemes.

Hot topics, indeed.

However, we want to know what you all think?

* Is this another toothless body that will make a fair amount of noise but avoid galvanising any major support for critical issues, or implementing any European-wide policies amongst like-minded companies?

* What should be its strategy for the First 100 Days?

* Too little too late?

* Is it under-represented from 'traditional' players who quite possibly also have related issues?

We look forward to reading your thoughts...

Hotel web and entertainment firm iBahn recently ran a survey of hotel customers to find out what facilities should be included in the perfect hotel room.


The OurHotelRoom initiative threw up the following results:

* Tiered internet connectivity - 17%

* Room charges lniked directly to services - 13%

* Personalised entertainment packages - 12%

* Docking stations for mobile and MP3 players - 12%

* Full digital TV service - 11%

* Biometric security entry - 10%

* Heating and lighting control via mobile device - 10%

* Free mini-bar - 9%

* Video conference facility - 3%

* Access to recorded content at home - 3%

Now one would expect the top requirement given that the survey is hosted by a web connection company, but some of the other results are quite surprising - not least the free mini-bar in a lowly eighth position.

Do you agree? What other facilities (keep it clean, please) would you have in your top ten?

Although the 'bloodbath' some industry experts were predicting didn't materialise, there are dozens of companies who didn't renew their ATOL licence on Tuesday 30 March.

There are also countless others which are currently sitting in the pending tray at the Civil Aviation Authority.

The CAA has produced two lists (we will be update these as they change over the next 24-48 hours):


* Late renewing ATOL holders who no longer hold an ATOL at midnight 31 March 2009

and...

* ATOL holders who will no longer be holding an ATOL at midnight 31 March 2009


A CAA spokesman explained that in theory any company on List One should not be selling any ATOL-bonded holidays during this interim period.

[Background: Beware the ides of March]

* Taj Mahal to be moved '800 metres to the South East' - Worldreviewer.com.

* Hotels.com to offer rooms on the moon - Hotels.com

* Travel Rants working with travel industry to improve British tourism - Travel Rants.

* Thomson space plane to launch by 2010 - TTG

* Ryanair to launch new Plus and Irish Gold luxury class flight services - Skyscanner

* Bailout special - Lincoln bedroom in the White House - IStopOver

* Great getaways - Lastminute.com

Earlier efforts:

* Boutique bendy bus hotels - Mr&MrsSmith

* The Hotelicopter - Vibeagent

Will add more when we hear of them... [or please post them in the comments]

[It's going to be one of those days - :-) ]

A fine effort from Mr & Mrs Smith:



Learn more about the boutique bendy bus hotels. No really...

From those North American wags, Vibeagent.com.