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The next Travolution Question Time brings together a stellar line-up of executives from across the travel industry for an intimate and engaging evening of debate.

September 23rd in London. Full details here.

Expedia’s new vice president for EMEA, Alex Zivoder, will make his UK travel event debut alongside other well known figures in the online sector, Paul Evans (Lowcostbeds) and Chris Loughlin (Travelzoo). Joining them will be Mark Tanzer, chief executive of Abta, and Justin Cooke, the man behind award winning digital agency, Fortune Cookie.

This, the fourth in the series of Travolution Question Time events, promises to be yet another excellent opportunity to interrogate and network with some of the leading lights in the industry.

Get a ticket (£65+VAT).

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

[UPDATE at bottom of post]

Some interesting stats...

Expedia: started 2008 on $0.31 a share. Now $0.25. -19%

British Airways: started 2008 on £3.09 a share. Now £2.48. -19%

EasyJet: started 2008 on £6.13 a share. Now £3.24. -47%

MoneySupermarket (owner of TravelSupermarket): started 2008 on £1.40 a share. Now £1.14. -19%

Orbitz Worldwide: started 2008 on $8.50. Now $8.78. +3%

Priceline: started 2008 on $1.15 a share. Now $1.26. +10%

Ryanair: Started 2008 on Euro 0.39 a share. Now Euro 0.30. -23%

SilverJet: started 2008 on £0.48 a share. Now £0.15. -69%

Thomas Cook: started 2008 on £2.82 a share. Now £2.66. -7%

TUI Travel: started 2008 on £2.94 a share. Now £2.41. -18%

Travelzest: started 2008 on £1.01 a share. Now £1.02. +1%

Travelzoo: started 2008 on $0.14 a share. Now $0.11. -21%

UPDATE:

Sam I Am asks in the comments about the market conditions as a whole.

FTSE 100: started 2008 on 6456. Now 6215. -4%

NASDAQ: started 2008 on 2652. Now 2464. -7%

So one might say that the Orbitz and Priceline in the US - and not Expedia - are bucking the trend, while airlines in the UK are seeing a decline in share price worse than the overall market decrease.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

That's actually 500% more money channelled into online advertising (display) in 2007 than in the previous 12 months.

The figures from Nielsen Media Research [here on Brand Republic - registration required] reveal Thomson spent £4.6 million in 2007, a figure which accounts for 26% of its overall adspend and puts it in 17th position overall in the UK.

[Obviously PPC keyword spend is not included in any of these figures]

Other travel firms featuring in the top 100 UK spenders include:

• 32: British Airways - £2.7 million - up 47% (9% of total)
• 40: Expedia - £2.1 million - up 53% (14% of total)
• 52: Travelzoo - £1.6 million - up 662% (100% of total)
• 54: Lastminute.com - £1.6 million - up 124% (26% of total)
• 73: P&O Ferries - £1.2 million - up 88% (34% of total)
• 76: MyTravel - £1.2 million - up 279% (30% of total)
• 87: EasyGroup - £1.1 million - up 2000% (98% of total) Yes, up 2000%
• 88: Eurotunnel - £1 million - up 26% (52% of total)
• 95: Hotels.com - £992K - down 20% (26% of total)

PING! Email arrives from Yellow Pages in the US, which is going down the meta search route.

A new site, Yellowpages.travel [remember dot-travel?], searches across Travelocity, Hotwire, Kayak, Expedia, Orbitz, Travelzoo and a few others for flights, hotels, cars and packages.

What seems like a nice idea actually then throws up a rather odd interface - perhaps it's just us? - where the source brands are displayed across a horizontal and the user then clicks on each to get results, or sent off to the website.


Thoughts?

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: yellow pages expedia kayak orbitz travelocity

Tim Hughes on The Boot points to the imminent launch of Travelzoo in Australia (since confirmed by Travelzoo).

There is a beta version of the site already up and running.

Marginally less glamorous news, some might argue, is the launch of a Travelzoo office in Manchester, unveiled this week.

It may not hit the highs in the attraction stakes but it is certainly a signal that the company is expanding rapidly to the extent that it needs a regional office just to cope with advertisers from the Midlands, the North of England, Northern Ireland and Scotland.

Either that or Travelzoo is apeing the BBC and moving all its operations to Manchester. Perhaps not...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: BBC travelzoo australia manchester

Search engine optimisation can be a fickle business at times. Indeed, travel companies up and down the land are known to agonise long into the night about where they appear on that Official Gateway to Instant Traffic, Google.

Digital marketing agencies are appointed; months are spent on designing Google-friendly landing pages; complicated keyword folksonomies are created – all in the hope that the consumer will chance upon seeing an entry in natural search listings for a company, product or destination.

And then some upstart comes along and shows them how it’s done, without any special investment.

Type “flight search engine” into Google and appearing in first place, as you might expect, is a high profile meta search engine – Skyscanner, in this case.

But what is this? In second place is that pesky Travel-Rants consumer blog.

In fact, the US version of Sidestep, IfYouSki, GooFlight and VisitBritain are the only pureplay "flight search engines" to appear on the first page.

So, well done to Mr Cronian of Travel-Rants – a developer by day with a passion for travel, writing his blog purely as a hobby.

The message here is simple: good content – or content deemed important by others on the web – can be as valuable as any investment in a digital marketing strategy.

NB: If anyone doubts whether “flight search engine” is a phrase in demand (it not being destination specific, for example), just check out the number of companies bidding against it in Google’s pay-per-click listings.

TravelSupermarket, Travelzoo, Opodo, Ebookers, Airline-Network, Kayak, SkyScanner (again), DialAFlight, Expedia and Travelocity obviously consider it worth paying money for every click.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: search engine SEO pay-per-click natural search

Two travel publishers, but two very different people, take to the stage to debate the merits of travel deals.

Cheapflights chief executive David Soskin has battled with TravelZoo managing director for Europe, Chris Loughlin, many times and it appears that actually rather relish the duel.

The interesting part of all this is that they actually sing very much from the same song sheet: both are publishers of travel deals and both run newsletters programmes – both pretty successfully.

Cost per acquisition models attract the ire of both men. “Fundamentally misaligned,” says Loughlin. “If there was good tracking in place we would consider it more,” adds Soskin.

Loughlin, answering a question from the moderator, PhoCusWright chief executive Philip Wolf, who has a strong presence on the room as paces around continuously, also criticises the affiliate advertising model.

Large sums of marketing money have been spent on travel portals with noticeable results, Loughlin says (500,000 subscribers at the last count), but so-called blind deals across “thousands of sites” have yielded very little.

Strange, then, that affiliate deals are apparently going to help secure 20% of sales this year…

UPDATE: Apparently Sidestep is unhappy at Loughlin's reference to the company being a "meta search company".

Kevin May, editor, Travolution