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Travel & Tourism
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Internet, personal, Travel & Tourism
Travel Bloggers Summit
03.05.08 | Permalink | 4 CommentsThe Travel Blogger Summit was great yesterday. Just like Orlando, we had a lot of turnout for the blogger private meetings. The discussions were great. Not just about blogging, but we talked about a range of relevant topics that’s impacting the travel industry. It was really nice to have a bunch of smart people in the room to share thoughts with.
The workshops were well attended. We had a Phocuswright style session, complete with the professional AV set-up. The panalists were very diverse, both from different areas of the industry as well as different countries. Jens and Yeoh Siew from Shyventures did a good job moderating. I received great feedback from the audience including some who emailed me since (thanks for emailing me the picture below Barrett)
On the workshop pannel.
Next time I think we can make the sessions even better if we take some of the conversation from the private sessions and take them into the workshops. Either by introducing an unconference format, or by having the panelists talk about the topics of their blog. I think people were checking out a bit after two hours of bloggers talking about blogging 😉
Now it’s 5:30am and I’m wide awake again and hungry. Gotta love a jet-lag. Breakfast in one hour. -
Internet, Travel & Tourism
Phocuswright Travel Bloggers Summit: Introduction by Philip Wolf, CEO of Phocuswright
03.05.08 | Permalink | 4 Comments
It’s always great to get confirmation about what I believe the future of travel is going to be. Philip has been a leader in identifying trends that will impact travel in the future. He spoke about the resistance of companies and preserving business models. “Winners focus on customer preservation, not business model preservation.” was a quote that resonated with me.
During Travel 1.0, travel distribution moved online. Traditional companies resisted this change because it impacted their business model. As a result, virtually none of the traditional brands became online travel leaders.
Now in Travel 2.0, social media, web services and the resulting long tail opportunities are impacting the online travel space. And again, companies are resisting this change. But now even travel 1.0 companies (online travel agencies) are trying to preserve their commission based business model. They initially rejected meta search for example, and companies like Kayak are becoming the next leaders in the travel space.
So what’s the future for distribution? According to Philip. Pay-per-Click (PPC) and Pay-per-Action (PPA) models are changing. Expedia’s agreement with IHG to move to a PPC model is a clear indicator.
I agree. The distribution is going to be dominated by the supplier because they want to control the transaction. They are interested in qualified leads and will pay websites that deliver the most qualified leads that drive transactions. Instead of paying a commission, they will pay for the lead and monitor the cost per transaction. As soon as this drives enough business, they will abandon commission based distributors. -
Internet, Travel & Tourism
Search and regions
Karin has a good entry about an experience she had on a DMO website recently. She talks specifically about Search but her comment about the federal provinces is also interesting. We’ve dealt with this as well on HelloBC. DMO’s often stick with their standard approach to destination hierarchies in their site architecture (provinces, regions, etc) and force consumers to follow it down to a community level. But consumers often don’t know (or care) where a particular community fits in the hierarchy. That’s why we have a drop-down with all our communities right on the homepage. Karin wouldn’t have to use our search engine in the first place. Little things can make a huge difference.
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Travel & Tourism
Second Ski Video
Chris went to Whistler last weekend. I should have applied for that job…
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Internet, Marketing, tourism bc, Travel & Tourism
And the winner is….
Remember our call for a video host? Well, here’s our first video. Watch our youtube page for more videos by Chris. Have a cool BC Ski video yourself? Submit is at hellobc.com/skivideo. You can win a ski or snowboard package.
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Internet, Marketing, tourism bc, Travel & Tourism
Gotta Ski BC Facebook Application
Today we launched Tourism BC’s first Facebook application. I’m very excited about it. Our team has done a great job at packing lots of information and functionality into a small space. Snow heights, new snow, places you’ve skied, places you want to ski, looking at where you’re friends have been, comments about current conditions, photos, it’s very impressive. I think it’s useful and fun for all ski and snowboard enthusiast. Go check it out for yourself.
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Internet, Travel & Tourism
Is there a place for a destination based Social Network?
11.19.07 | Permalink | 8 CommentsThere are opinions floating around about the viability and usefulness of destination based Social Networks. Karin Schmollgruber for example doesn’t have a lot of faith in a social network for a single destination.
A touristic social network is not about a destination, but about travelers of that destination. Which in turn means, that a community cannot be established around a destination. It has to be created around the emotions, experiences, likes and dislikes of real people.Karin is one of the thought leaders in the travel 2.0 blogging community and I respect her opinion a lot. But I disagree with her about this one. I think the CoolAustria and Holland 2.0 experiments have taught us a few lessons. But I don’t reach the same conclusion.
The destination based Social Networks mentioned above (and now Sweden as well) all implemented some form of “be like Facebook” strategy, combined with a plethora of Web 2.0 tools. The core challenge with this approach is that travelers who are planning trips need information and don’t necessarily want to become part of another Social Network, create a profile, make friends and more, they just want to plan a vacation.
With Holland as an exception, these social networks are also separated from their official websites, a huge missed opportunity. The result from all of the above is that all these networks suffer from low participation, where high participation is needed. facebook is great, but a ‘be like Facebook’ approach is not going to work for a destination. Karin is absolutely right about that.
Some suggest that travel related social networks is just another source for content. Simply aggregate User Generated Content from third party networks, and you’re done. New Zealand has done it, Canada has done it. This is definitely useful content for travelers. And I like simplicity, but I don’t like to oversimplify things. I thought Web 2.0 was about interactivity and two way communication. Aggregating User Generated Content and publishing it on a website is Web 1.5.DMO’s need to build strong relationships with consumers, and help them plan and book vacations, before and during their trip, by allowing all relevant stakeholders to participate on a destination website. These stakeholders are:
- Travelers, planning a trip, or sharing experiences and content about a trip
- Residents, they are a sub-group of travelers, but a very important one
- The tourism industry, selling their tourism products
- The DMO itself, providing the ‘official’ information
The opportunity for a destination based social network is to harness industry, passionate residents and past travelers, and engage them in a dialog with travelers to assist them with their trip planning. This is a natural extension of what DMOS’s do. They sell the destination by connecting travelers with tourism product (connecting supply with demand). Destinations already have relationships with their industry. They need find and encourage their ‘brand advocates’ to engage on their networks.
Groups for cities, towns, sectors, etc. will form. There will be differences of opinion, and that’s ok. That’s how trip planners can evaluate the opinion of many against their own criteria and make the best decision. Certain content can be sourced from third parties. What’s the point of creating your own product rating system when you can source it directly from Tripadvisor for example. Other content will have to be created on a destination based social network.
With the introduction open social standard, there is an opportunity to leverage existing networks people are already part of. If somebody can take their social graph with them, all of a sudden we can leverage the existing connections (friends) people already have, adding a whole layer of additional usefulness and credibility.
The social network I envision and intent to create for HelloBC.com is a mash-up of our official information, aggregated third party content, combined with our resident advocates, passionate past travelers and tourism businesses, all interacting with travelers in an open and transparent way. The direct, and two-way interaction is an opportunity to add the credibility, objectivity and authenticity travelers are looking for. And it will be nothing like Facebook.
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Internet, Travel & Tourism
PhocusWright Wrap Up
It was fun wearing two hats at the PhoCusRight conference the last week. I heard about the production PhoCusWright puts on for this event and I wasn’t disappointed. Very slick. And it’s never bad to spend a week in Florida in November.
Wilhelmus (BC), Jens (Canada) and Charel (Holland)
In my role at Tourism BC, I’ve met some interesting people, had some great conversations, and heard things that made me think. In my role as travel industry blogger, I had a lot of fun on our panel and blogger summit. It was great to meet some of the bloggers I only know from reading their postings. I expected more destinations to attend the conference but it was great to talk to the ones that were there.
A big take away is the relentless change the industry continues to go through, with no end in sight. Keep up or go home. Lots of conversation about search, the move away from traditional media, social networks and user generated content, adding value to consumers instead of competing on price and a lot of rosy presentations from CEO’s, and interesting debates.
DMO’s as a collective need to wake up. There are only a few DMO’s who have set themselves up for keeping up with the changes in the industry. But when consumers don’t get the value from destinations collectively, there’s a risk they lose interest in us collectively. Collaboration and knowledge sharing will be important. That’s why it was great to talk to attendees from Austria, Holland, Quebec, Montreal and Canada. -
Internet, Travel & Tourism
PhocusWright Day 4 – Expedia
Just as I was thinking how I hadn’t heard much about direct marketing at the conference, Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi addressed how they are moving forward with smarter electronic direct mail efforts. As an OLTA, going beyond the lowest price by creating relationships with and relevancy for consumers is a core strategy to stop the bleeding (that last bit is my interpretation of Khosrowshahi’s words). Makes sense.
He threw out impressive numbers. I didn’t get a chance to write down all of them. The onces I did write down were that 40% of consumers will return to Expedia to buy a hotel in the same destination as the first time. 7% will return to book a hotel during a same time frame a year later (a holiday weekend for example). This kind of intelligence allows Expedia to create targeted email campaigns. He reported increases in responses based on this intelligence to emails of 20x and more.
Another example is a follow-up email to a abandoned flight search. If the price drops days later, a follow-up email converts 30x higher than a regular email. When you consider that Expedia sends over 1 BILLION emails a year, you can understand why this is an area of strategic focus. -
Internet, Travel & Tourism
PhocusWright Day 4 – Second Life
A session about 3 companies forays into Second Life at the PhoCusWright conference led me to conclude what I already suspected. The real value of opening shop in SecondLife is the associated PR value, although Costa Cruises also recognized the value of consumers engaging in their branded environment. The value of this is engagement is probably be more valuable than traditional advertising.
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William Bakker's Destination Marketing blog
William Bakker is Chief Strategist at Destination Think!. These are my personal thoughts.
