June 2009 Archives

PING! Email arrives this morning from Thomas Cook brand Direct Holidays to support the launch of its "first viral marketing campaign".

Now is it me or can a campaign only be deemed viral based on its success of word-of-mouth media channels - i.e. long after its launch?

Or maybe not...

Anyway, clip one of three videos was launched this morning on YouTube.

And, is it me or is it not exactly side-splittingly funny. (If that was the intention)

From - you guessed it - Ryanair.

Responding to news that British Airways has created a web calculator for users to compare fares against low cost carriers, Ryanair's Stephen McNamara said:

"It wouldn't matter if BA put pictures of naked women on their website, passengers will always go to ryanair.com to book the lowest fares. That is why Ryanair will carry over 67 million passengers this year - more than double BA's declining figure of less than 30 million".

Most people first learned that DialAFlight was up to something when the high profile Travel Rants blog suddenly issued an unreserved apology to the online travel firm two weeks ago.

The legalese literally pouring from the post indicated that popular editor Darren Cronian was, as one person put it to us, "up to his neck in it".

A similar retraction has been posted by review forum Grumbletext.

The apology, retraction and removal of the comment appear to - fortunately for Cronian - have kept the libel courts away from his door.

The threat of £50,000 damages is a sum that would cause most mainstream publishers to shift nervously in their leather executive chairs, let alone a part-time yet talented travel blogger from Yorkshire.

But this is not a question of the mighty Goliath winning unfairly against a lowly David.

The identical comments which appeared on seven sites (three of which were removed immediately, four were not - triggering the subsequent legal moves) and which we have since seen as part of the legal writ, ticked almost every box in the libel area.

[Below is a grab from the comment on Ciao.co.uk. We have shaded the potentially libellous areas, some of which would be considered defamatory in the context of the whole post.]



Cronian, in his apology, admitted to not making the necessary checks and has since semi-retired from blogging (though one suspects not for long). We hope he returns...

With laws varying from country to country, DialAFlights litigation flurry highlights the sticky issue of review sites and blogs responsibility not only for their own writings, but also for readers' comments.

In the UK, a BBC libel and defamation guide states: "Almost uniquely in English law, in libel cases the burden of proof lies with the author/publisher and not the complainant and publishers have to be careful about comments others post on your site."

In the US, the Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that blog publishers are not considered liable for statements made by guest bloggers or comment-writers, although several lawsuits have been filed.

Meanwhile, DialAFlight, which said review sites and blogs perform a useful function, hasn't been shy about taking legal action before.

In September last year, we cited a DialAFlight statement that the company had initiated legal proceedings against Flight Centre UK for infringement of its DialAFlight trademark on Google.

Anyway, the main point here is that a travel company has taken the most extreme measure it can in order to remove unsavoury comments on blogs and forums, regardless of the profile of the 'publisher'.

Those that thought bloggers were 'protected' from the legal might of corporations must take note - you are not free of legal responsibility for what is published on your website.

Unfortunately, on countless occasions over the past few years the conversation at events (including, ironically, one memorable exchange at Cronian's TravelBlogCamp last November) has often turned to how bloggers are immune because of their size or lack of overall influence.

Some might argue DialAFlight's recent actions are aggressive - that the comments were buried in ageing posts, where they are unlikely to be found again.

Excellent SEOed sites, which the four in question undoubtedly are, do not have that luxury.

Nevertheless, DialAFlight parent company, Lotus Group, has defended its recent actions.

In comments not used on our original story, but certainly worth publishing here, MD Peter Stephens told Travolution:

"In our business there will always be grumbles and every travel company will get a few brickbats as well as a few bouquets.

"However we draw the line at allowing a competitor to paste highly defamatory material about us on the internet."

"In this case we tried very hard over a period of time to get the issue sorted out including posting an invitation on each of the sites for the poster to contact us if it was a genuine complaint so that we could investigate.

"It then became pretty clear that this was not the action of a disgruntled holidaymaker at all. But simply a disingenuous attempt to smear a competitor.

"We would prefer not to have taken this action but the websites involved, as they have admitted, did not respond to our polite requests for the issue to be sorted out."

Fair enough. Lessons learned all-round. Story complete.

But is that end of the tale?

In the midst of researching the story this week we came across some other interesting information.

It turns out that in the past, DialAFlight has been involved with a service in the US known as PayPerPost.

PayPerPost, according to its website, allows bloggers to do the following: "Get paid for blogging. Write about web sites, products, services, and companies and earn cash for providing your opinion and valuable feedback to advertisers. Disclosure required".

DialAFlight has admitted to Travolution to using the service for a short while. It no longer does so.

[Some examples - and even a comment on Travel Rants!]

Stephens again: "A couple of years ago companies were getting bloggers to write articles about them to help with search engine positioning which is really just another form of PR . We tried it briefly but it never worked particularly well for us."

Someone this week suggested to us that this was, in the light of recent legal moves by DialAFlight, tantamount to a word beginning with 'H' and having nine letters.

And this is where it gets murky for some people.

In general terms, when a company pays bloggers to write positive posts about them, does it have the right to kick up a fuss when negative comments appear elsewhere?

We'll leave that question to be answered by you lot...

[Comments will, of course, be moderated ;-) ]

[Additional material from Dennis Schaal]

Observing how the likes of Techcrunch et al are using Twitter, we have made some changes this week.

The existing @travolution profile will now carry our regular news and blog feeds and other Travolution brand announcements.

Staffers will Tweet from their own personal accounts:

Editor Kevin May can now be found at @kevinlukemay. [Early morning Blips included!]

Lead reporter Linda Fox - @foxychops

Chief writer Martin Cowen - @beachboyintown

Sales and sponsorship manager Charlotte Davies - @lottemus

Cheers!

It was obvious that the PR-busting success of the Reef Island campaign earlier this year would spawn a round of similar efforts within a relatively short space of time.

Perhaps the first one out of the blocks is this wheeze from lastminute.com, which today launched a campaign to offer a "the ultimate career break".

The new employee will become LM's new 'official reviewer' of the best holidays and experiences on sale via the site.

The press release says over the course of the next three months, once a panel of industry experts have selected a candidate, the lucky winner will:

* Travel over 32,000 miles
* Spend over 60 nights away
* Visit eight cities across three continents - in three months - which could include Dubai, New York, Egypt, Paris, Barcelona, and Las Vegas.
* Experience a 5* lifestyle - equivalent to £20,000.

Etc, etc.

Nevertheless, PR is clearly at the centre of all this.

Lastminute.com has not only tried to tap into the psyche of credit crunched members of the public by espousing how the job is the "ultimate 'silver lining' to unemployed Brits", but a spokesperson admitted that the campaign was "a mixture" of a serious job and PR, Reef Island-style.

When questioned about the overall credibility of the position, given that lastminute.com clearly has more than 60 hotels on its books, we were told:

"We understand one person's reviews over a three month period may not be enough on their own to justify the role. We see our reviewer acting as a catalyst and start a social networking community on the blog around the destinations that he visits thus reaching out to 1,000s of 'reviewers'. We will be starting a dialogue on the blog where others can feed in and we will be using the 'chosen one' outside the summer period."

So lastminute.com will not only have TripAdvisor reviews on its site, but posts from its official reviewer, plus a blog, plus its Twitter feed.

Too much or too little of the social networking Good Stuff (the name of LM's recent ad campaign)?

UPDATE:

The judges will be:

Dan Bladon - Philias Blog
Chris Moss, Travel Editor - Time Out
Patrick Hoffstetter, New UK B2C MD
Mark Bower, Lifestyle Sales Director
Andy Washington, Travel Sales Director
Mark Fells, Marketing Director
Nichola Sharpe, Head of PR

Today sees the launch of Simonseeks, a service aiming to provide all the information anyone would need, via travel guides, to make that booking.

It has grown out of Simon Nixon's (Moneysupermarket founder) frustration at not being able to get to reliable, relevant information fast.

In a year's time we'll look back to see if it has fulfilled its ambitions - a million unique visitors a month and within the top 10 travel companies.

Bullish - yes, achievable, who knows?

It has things going for it, the founder has deep pockets and a track record in start-ups. Search engine marketing expertise has been brought in from McCann Erickson and there are already 1,000 destination guides on the site. 

The revenue share model is interesting - a 50:50 split with writers based on consumers booking a hotel, car-hire, holiday...

It's a crowded although messy space and the onus is completely on the writers to make the guides inspirational and leave the consumer with no reason to go anywhere else.

It could be a vicious circle - to keep the content fresh and interesting the writer will want to see the regular paycheck but to see the money they will have to keep their reviews at the top.

Is it cynical to think that after the initial hype many will get bored, leaving a few to cash in?

But, then if you believe Tripadvisor's stats (20 new reviews added every minute) people's desire to share their experience knows no bounds.

One of the questions from the floor during the Barclays Travel Forum in London this week was about the CAA's plans to increase the ATOL Protection Contribution to £3.

Moderator Michael East passed the question over to Mark Tanzer, president of ABTA, who gave a detailed answer about how ABTA plans to respond the latest consultation

But haven't we been here before? How many times has a panel at a conference agreed that the protection issue needs to be sorted out, how the situation is so complicated that the business itself struggles with the issue, never mind consumers, how it creates an uneven playing field, how the strong end up funding the weak, etc, etc, blah, blah.

Has anyone given any serious thought to this idea -  no consumer protection. None whatsoever.  Caveat emptor. That would clear up any confusion over what is and isn't covered, for both consumers and the industry, while creating a level playing field.

Problem solved.

Martin Cowen

The following post was written by Warren Cowan, CEO of Greenlight Search, following the launch of Bing earlier this week and its use of Farecast for the travel channel.......:

I've always liked the Farecast interface. It gives that feeling of true flexibility of refining your choices without having to keep going back and endlessly redo your searches.

It is one of those few great examples of professional and expert power, put in the hands of the consumer by new web technologies.

The fact that it also lets you compare your results with other agent sites like Expedia is a boon too, because the consumer always wants to know what they could be getting elsewhere, and showing them, which no doubt will lead to a commission should they take that route, works out for everyone involved.

Integrating it into Bing's search results is a very nice touch, too, and puts it squarely ahead of Google on travel integration, and makes the Google SERPS seems almost vanilla by comparison.

 This will increase the reach of these powerful, yet underused services dramatically, and if Bing captures serious market share then I think larger travel sites on the agent and direct side who have historically abhorred these services, will have to fall in and integrate with them to maintain their slice of the action.

One thing which has cheesed me off already though, is the lack of customisation for geography.

Prices in dollars, deals from US departure points are not going to help a UK consumer, and is likely to make those tempted to experiment early, nervous that 'here's another big global American company thinking the world = The United States'.

Clearly it's a gap in the Farecast offering, and hopefully it will be bridged soon either by expanding or maybe by a tie up with someone like Kayak or Travelsupermarket who would be best able to satisfy the core functions.

Such a deal would certainly help the likes of Kayak, who despite being an impressive first mover and industry consolidator have achieved relatively poor growth.

Either way, Bing needs to sort it. Google has their geo strategy worked down to a fine art, and if you're going to go head to head in search, on a global stage, then you should have the global thing worked out or cut out where needs be.

A tie up is probably better. If I were Microsoft, my biggest problem is that I've got pots of cash but no search audience.

I can't buy one because there isn't one, at least not for one sale or of any magnitude to make a difference. But maybe... I can buy a vertical search audience, of which there are more, and which are of decent size, and perhaps are more willing as sellers, and so I could buy that, giving me the asset I'm after, and hope I can cross leverage that to grow loyalty in Bing as a search destination.

Or they could just spend alot of time and money launching a nice, but not so well known UK travel site, into nice not so well known or used UK search engine.

Just take a look at Gogole trends for searches for Kayak, TS, Farecast etc

Why would you even bother if you had MS's pockets.

Google is weak in vertical search. Trying to hit it head on where its most dug in and fortified, even if you are an 800lb well armoured cash rich gorilla is going to end in tears, and will just prompt them to get their 800lb gorilla out of its box too.

Go round the flanks.