Shortly after the tie-up between eBay and Octopus Travel was announced, we had eBay director of partnerships Phillip Rinn write a column for Travel Weekly.
Here's a snippet:
"In the past year, eBay has seen its holiday and travel category grow significantly in response to consumer demand for new ways to book a holiday. As a consequence, the travel industry needs to change the way it works.
Many retailers have opened up to the world of online but not explored its full potential. eBay has proved that retailers can have great success and benefit from incremental sales to their existing channels.
Travel retailers must now look at harnessing the web beyond their existing offering to reach new online shoppers."
A general call to arms? Or does it translate as "swallow your fears and work with us"?
Hey.
Read the column in TW with interest.
I would say it was a mixture of the two. They know travel is a popular vertical so clearly need to capture a bit of the buzz.
The column is weird though, for a number of reasons.
First of all, why make a plea to the industry when they've just signed a co-branded hotel channel deal with a partner? How many co-branded can you have??!
Secondly, most people know that previous efforts to integrate and work with travel firms have failed, so he should've addressed that as well.
Just sayin'. :)
For fear of blatantly plugging a link, we wrote an analysis about the old deals and some of the other things they plan.
http://www.tnooz.com/2010/01/28/news/ebay-says-flights-cruise-package-holidays-are-next-admits-previous-deals-failed/
Maybe it isn't about big partnerships and co-branded stores... Cheapflights was talking about breadth of advertiser base recently, & perhaps eBay sees TW as a route to the hearts and minds of 'mom and pop' retailers?
...and when have you ever been afraid of promoting a post? ;)