Here or There - Are we there yet?
March 12, 2008
The PhoCusWright@ITB Bloggers summit gave bloggers exclusive press time with a number of travel industry executives. Hugo Burge, Vice-Chairman & Head of International at CheapFlights was one of the presenters at the bloggers briefings. He was talking about a new ‘experience inspiration’ tool that he is working on as a side project, Here or There.
This new site is focused on travel experience sharing as opposed to travel transportation and accommodation selling. This reminds me of the 4 steps that Joe Buhler identified (Dream, Learn, Plan, Go) in my Expert Interview, and it is good to see more focus on the dream stage in travel preparation.
His site monetizes itself with ‘targeted’ Google ads, and currently does not send any referrals to travel suppliers. Hugo believes that “Pay per click is the new commission.” It is hard to argue with his success, but with many sites starting to combine all of the steps in the travel planning process (Isango sort of comes to mind) and with the never ending increase in niche and fragmented communities, it seems like a challenge to force people to utilize even more sites and tools, when there is the potential to facilitate the entire booking process in one site.
If Hugo was to add some top level tabs that isolate the various steps in the booking process, giving each a distinctive look and feel, I am sure that customers would be receptive to take all of their dreaming into the next step towards booking their trip. What do you think?
Originally posted at: http://tourismtide.blogspot.com/2008/03/here-or-there-are-we-there-yet.html
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4 Responses to “Here or There - Are we there yet?”
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During Hugo’s presentation I thought this all sounds familiar and then it struck me that World Reviewer, http://www.worldreviewer.com/, for which I’d recently written some “expert” posts was very similar.
I do agree that dream is a crucial part of the travel planning process but a site that operates primarily in the dream step is probably not going to make much money out of the traveller. However if the dream stage website begins to look too much like an OTA and/or is full of ads iit may lose some of it’s appeal to consumers who’ll begin to think this site is not trying to give me inspiration, just sell me something.
There are a few sites in this area but I’m not sure I believe in the typical structured approach. On hereorthere.com I am looking to really let the community define what travel inspiration is all about. I disagree that consumers are looking to book on the same site - I think inspiration must be pure and not influenced by booking options, which are likely to be restricted/ bias.
Hugo, I understand why you want to leave hereorthere.com uncontaminated but don’t you think this restricts its earning potential? The problem with having Google ads as the main source of income iis that they aren’t always in context. I looked a page on your site about experience 1175, Vancouver, and the first ad on the list was for Slovakia.
Hi Hugo and Karen,
I agree that trying to directly sell a travel product on an inspiration site can potentially create a bias, if it is done improperly. Your site has such authentic, inspiring content, I can see a consumers next action to go to a different site in search of deals to some of your featured locations. I am not suggesting the ad saturated ‘Trip Advisor’ model, but facilitating the next natural step in the travel planning process in an open/transparent way can add value to your site guests, and hopefully revenue to your pocket.
I like the direction your site is going. Keep up the great work.