Thoughts on the PhoCusWright Bloggers Summit and Conference @ ITB
March 8, 2008
As I’m getting ready to go back home tomorrow, I have had some time to look back and try to summarize the experience of attending the Bloggers Summit and the PhoCusWright Conference @ ITB (as well as ITB itself). The Bloggers Summit brought together several eTourism bloggers from various parts of the world. Unfortunately, the sessions were so busy and bloggers’ schedules in some cases were so tight that I did not have time to meet all the bloggers who attended. However, I did have time to chat at various times with Stephen Joyce of (T4 Tourism Technology Trends) and Phil Caines (Tourism Tide) from Rezgo and get their opinion on my social network Canadamigos (they both liked the potential). I also met Guido Van Den Elshout (Happy Hotelier) in person for the first time and enjoyed our conversations very much. Guido is avery likable guy and very active industry blogger. His blog Happy Hotelier is a very interesting and eclectic collection of post on various eTourism and Tourism topics. Check out his list of Unusual Hotels. I did have a chance to say hello to Jens Thraenhart who has been very busy since leaving his post at the Canadian Tourism Commission (Tourism Internet Marketing) and I also met, for the first time in person, Kevin May from the UK the editor of the excellent eTourism and tourism technology mag Travolution and blogger of the blog by the same name. I highly recommend the magazine to any tourism business interested in maximizing eTourism opportunities. During the couple of days of the event I also chatted a bit with Yeoh Siew Hoon (The Transit Cafe) from Singapore, Claude Benard (Les Explorers) from France, Vicky Brock and Stephen Budd (Tracking Tourism) from Scotland. I barely said hello to Joe Buhler (Travel Marketing in the Age of WEB 2.0 & Beyond) and I met a young blogger Abbas Nokhasteh ( Openvizor) from the UK.
To summarize the conference is a challenge, but I can try. Most of the presentations and talks focused on the technology that drives the revolution that has been taking place in the travel industry worldwide. However, questions arise as to whether companies are making use of the right technologies for the right purpose and whether they are using available technologies correctly. On the user side, as Philip Wolf, CEO of PhoCusWright, mentioned on his remarks to the bloggers during the Bloggers Summit: “consumers took control and went from looking for the cheapest trip (Web 1.0) to looking for the perfect trip (Web 2.0).” This phenomenon disrupted the industry with the advent of social media. February’s Travolution Magazine (Issue 14.0) is dedicated to the User Experience asserting that content is not king anymore, but rather User Experience is. This makes a lot of sense from the travellers’ pont of view. The User Experience is King may summarize the subtext of all the presentations, whether it was about the Reservation System of Tomorrow Today, the Hotelier’s Perspective, Journalists or Bloggers, the OTA’s perspective or about the new eTravel startups (five minutes of fame). Having said all this and listened to all the presentations one must not forget that there is still some ways to go in the space to achieve the perfect user experience. In closing, a key thing for companies to remember, to paraphrase Philip Wolfe, is that “winners will focus on customer preservation rather than on business model preservation.”
See you in Hollywood
Jaime
I’ve never been to Berlin. So, how have I planned my trip?
February 29, 2008
This will be my first time visiting Berlin. Though I am familiar with some of its history and I am aware of its reputation as a creative and dynamic Euorpean capital, it has never been on mine and my wife’s top ten desinations we want to visit or revisit soon. Since this will be a business trip, my wife had no input in the decision to go other than making sure our schedules allowed for my absence. She has also asked me to do some shopping while I’m there. What made me decide to go to Berlin is simply the opportunity to participate in the Bloggers Summit, meet and network with other tourism bloggers from around the world plus the opportunity to visit the massive ITB show.
This being a tourism blog and event, I thought I would share my travel planning process. Being time crunched as most professionals with families in North America are, I did not want to spend to much time researching hotels and flights. So I first checked on Expedia Canada, which I have been using to book travel since it was launched in Canda many years ago. I had two criteria to work with - price and proximity to the ICC but not too far from central Berlin. Naurally, my search on Expedia produced hundreds (or what seemed like hundreds of results). So on my first try (several weeks ago) all I accomplished was to confirm that the trip was within my business trips budget. But that first time I did not have time to look at the hotels in more detal. A few days later while I was on Facebook I figured I would ask my Facebook friends, many of whom are in the eTourism space and have travelled everywhere, to recommend a hotel in Berlin. I asked for something cool but not expensive (meaning less than $250/300 per night). My question was sent to about 30 friends but I only got about 6 responses. I did check out all of them. One was too low end (but very cheap), another was too expensive, and the others were either booked solid during ITB, not in the right location or did not appeal to me.
So then I went to Google and searched for Berlin to try and find a DMO. I only looked at the top five or six results of course and ended up on Berlin.de While I did not find the accommodations section helpful, I did like the site to explore what Berlin has to offer a new visitor. I decided to go back to Expedia and made a note to visit Berlin.de after I booked my flight and hotel. Given my time constraints (I never have enough time) I researched some hotels on Expedia as fast as possible looking at their location on a map having already determined where the ICC is (I started a Berlin Google Map for my own use and to share with other fellow bloggers). Once I had a candidate I would search on Google.ca or Google.de for the name of that hotel in order to visit their site to see if they had better rates and to get a further idea of what the hotel might actually look like. Then I went back to Expedia and searched for a few flight hotel combinations (similar prices but different flight schedules - some via the US, some via Europe). And that was that for the day. Still had some time to make a decision and book. Mind you I did check with some airline sites directly, but I found it easier and faster to do it on Expedia. I also checked out the IHG site because my own sites are affiliated to IHG and because I have a lot of loyalty points from Priority Club. The IHG properties for the most part had no available rooms. One thing I thought about, but felt it would take too much time was to check out TripAdvisor, so I skipped it.
Finally, another few days later, when I realized I better book or risk not finding a hotel I logged on to Expedia Canada and booked the package - flight (Continental), hotel (Berlin Econtel), travel insurance and $15 calling card pin.
Having booked the trip I have been going back to Berlin.de a few minutes at a time here and there to research the city and start planning what I will do with the one day and a half I will have to be a tourist in Berlin.
What do I conclude from this experience? That if I don’t have much time to surf, research or search, I will stick to a large player whose brand I trust - at least for the basic elements of the trip - flight and hotel.
Cheers,
(by the way, I don’t have a Flickr account and don’t really want to set one up - so forgive me if I don’t post a picture - I am use to the “other” platform and learning about this one as I go)
Jaime Horwitz
February 29, 2008
A few days to go. On Tuesday I will catch a flight to Newark, New Jersey and from there direct to Berlin. I am one of the T-List bloggers attending the PhoCusWright summit and I’m excited about the occasion. I have been blogging for a few years now. It began with my Blog de Canada, Spanish language blog, to complement my Web 1.0 Canada en Espanol sites. The idea was to have an online vehicle to get closer to my visitors and to allow them to interact by posting comments. The blog is a more personal medium of communication than the sites and it allows me to express opinions about Canada as well as to post content on current affairs at any time.
After the Blog de Canada, came the Canadian Tourism Blog. The idea for this blog came about because of all the talk about Web 2.0 in various canadian tourism conferences. I figured that it would be a good idea and a service to the industry to launch a blog for and about the canadian tourism industry and canadian tourism. This blog is intended as an open forum for canadian tourism businesses and organizations wherein people can express opinions, rants and concerns about what is going on in Canadian tourism. In contrast to my Spanish language blog, the Canadian Tourism Blog is not intended for the consumer.
I also keep a blog in Turismo 2.0, the tourism professionals’ social network founded by the indefatigable Albert Barra (among others) from Barcelona. I am not as active on this blog due to time constraints, but the site is a great place to learn and share knowledge about tourism with fellow Spanish speakers.
Finally (another blog) last December, I launched Canadamigos, a social network to foster travel and friendship among Canadians, Canadian Hispanics and Hispanics around the world. I also blog on this site which is doing well so far. The idea for this site is to take advantage of the growth of niche Web 2.0 social media to complement my business. I want to put into practice a “model based on knowledge,” as Edu William pointed out in his Tips from the T-List article (The abundance in tourism). The hope is that the site will foster travel based on a human recommendation system (a la TripAdvisor, but more personal) and, from the business point of view, bring in some abundance from the supplier side as well. Time will tell if the site will be successful as a complement to the business. As far as users is concerned, I feel confident given the growth in memberships since it began last December.
This brings me to Berlin, where I hope to acquire more practical knowledge from fellow bloggers. I also look forward to gaining some insight as to what tourism marketers are looking for from bloggers and social media as well as whether the industry is willing to support niche players.
See you in Berlin. Danke,
Jaime
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