Will easyJetHolidays be a hit with customers?
March 10, 2008
After listening to the presentation by John Kohlsaat from easyJet I wondered if easyJet’s foray into selling holidays will be a success with customers. I try to look at things from the consumer perspective. I’d done some research in October 2007 for my blog and found that prices for accommodation and car hire booked on the easyJet site were considerably higher, compared to shopping around.
On my return flight from Berlin with Easyjet, I glanced through the in flight magazine and was dismayed by the easyJetHoliday three page spread advert. One page described the tale of woe of a couple who’d put together their own holiday, spending all evening looking for hotels which caused the computer to crash twice, then discovered that the flight price they’d seen earlier had increased and to cover this increase had to book accommodation in a cheaper, less desirable locale. However the second couple who booked it all on easyJet saved time and money.
I’m not convinced the second couple saved money booking with easyJet. That couple may have been the ones comprising on location as easyJet has an exclusive accommodation partner Hotelopia., so is unlikely to offer the full range of available hotels. As for price, a price comparison site such as HotelsCombined searches more than 30 suppliers so is far more likely to find the lowest price. As for the time factor, yes it would be quicker just to book everything with easyJet. However using a price comparison site doesn’t take long.
But it states in the easyJet ad that they guarantee the lowest price. Cast your eyes to line 4 where it states that the guarantee doesn’t cover flights and hotels booked separately. So why are easyJet bothering to mention the guarantee in the context of an advert where the first couple book the elements separately, so they wouldn’t even be covered by the guarantee?
Are easyJet relying on customer inertia i.e. customers can’t be bothered to look at other sites and believe that a low cost airline must also offer low price accommodation? Are customers reassured by the lowest price guarantee?
It seems to me that easyJet should consider some type of accommodation price comparison tool on their site to reassure customers that they are getting the best deal and widest choice of accommodation, rather than a list of hotel options from their exclusive partner. Although easyJet might not make such a high commission per booking by ditching the exclusive partner they could end up with higher overall revenue if a higher percentage of customers book their accommodation through the easyJet site, which is more likely to occur if customers are reassured that they are getting the lowest price and widest choice of accommodation on the easyJet site.
Overview of Global Reservation Systems Tomorrow - Today
March 6, 2008
This is a subject that really interests me, primarily because it takes some of the new paradigms of web 2.0, social media, and user generated content and combines it with the underlying reservations model. Tina Fitch, CEO of EzRez even mentioned that bloggers were the pioneers in the space of aggregating information and providing user specific knowledge for their readers by digesting and re-interpreting information in a way that is attractive for their readers. The same holds true for the next generation of reservations systems. Ms. Fitch describes a system that aggregates data from a variety of systems and combines it with customer behaviour. This allows suppliers to better anticipate future market patterns by analyzing buying behaviour across the entire network. In order for this to be viable, the GRS would need have the following attributes:
Size - it must have a large amount of inventory.
Diversity - it must have a variety of inventory.
One area of opportunity is in the unified online profile that allows the same customer to use the same profile on a variety of supplier and OTA websites. The other opportunity is in collaboration between companies in order to allow data sharing across different areas. Is this realistic? Ms. Fitch suggests that some of this is happening now but is not yet broad enough to be all encompassing.
Will customers be intimidated by the “Big Brother” concept of having their profiles available in such an open manner? Ms. Fitch seems to think that travel is actually behind the ball on this concept. Many other e-commerce and social networking tools already utilize open profile technologies in order to support profile data. I think this is an issue of allowing customers to maintain and manage their own profile data. Like Facebook, for example, there are options for maintaining privacy, the issue is whether or not customers will adopt a profile sharing mechanism like the one being suggested. Travel, in general, however is not regarded as a particularly high trust industry. If it were, credit card processing companies would not regard it as a restricted business in the same category as gambling and adult entertainment. So consumer adoption of open profile sharing between travel companies even with opt out tools may see significant resistance.
It is a very nice notion but is it realistic to expect consumers to tell you all their preferences in order to help them make purchasing decisions. Perhaps if there is some integration and interaction with existing social networking tools, there may be some ways of getting that profile data in a way that is less intrusive and provides immediate value to the customer.
Feedback on the Blogger’s Summit
March 6, 2008
Both sessions for the workshop went very well. We had over 150 participants in the audience who were, from what I could tell, very engaged with the subject matter.
One issue that came up during the feedback session was whether or not the topics was relevant. One blogger argued that the subject matter of the workshop was not really relevant to the consumer blogger or to the consumer in general. My counter to that argument however is that the subject was originally developed for the travel industry and so it does not necessarily apply to the consumer audience. That said, I think there is a huge opportunity to open up the discussion and conversation to the consumer blogging community, this however would probably be a different conference and a different subject.
An underlying theme that arose from the discussion is that the web is chaos, it cannot be controlled or contained. In order to survive and ultimately succeed, you must be able to sail the ocean of the web. In other words, blogging and user generated is not going to disappear and certain aspects of the blogosphere will become more important while some will disappear into obscurity. The question is how travel blogging and more specific travel industry blogging will affect the industry as a whole. Most agreed that we are at the beginning of the journey and it is better to be guiding the boat then to be left in the wake.
Overall, the feedback was very positive, although there seemed to be some argument about the real value of the morning interview sessions. This was a new addition to the summit (which by the way is also new) and the feedback was appreciate. Thanks to all the bloggers who participated and we are very excited about continuing the conversation into future conferences.
Second Day @ PhoCusWright ITB - OTAs Speak Out
March 6, 2008
An interesting session with the leaders of some of Europe’s leading OTAs including: Alan Josephs, MD ebookers.com, Ignacio Martos, CEO Opodo, Ian McCaig, CEO Lastminute.com, Jens-Uwe Parkitny, VP & MD Expedia.com Gmbh, Javier Perez-Tenessa, Founder eDreams Inc. During the session Philip Wolf conducted an informal survey to determine whether the audience felt that the OTAs were doing a good job of differentiating themselves from each other. The resounding response from the audience was that they were, infact, NOT doing a very good job of differentiating themselves. So what can the OTAs do to make themselves different from each other? Not surprisingly, none of the OTAs had an answer to this question. Why is this? In my opinion, the question of differentiation implies that the underlying business models are different, and since all the OTAs share the same underlying business model then there is very little they can do to truly differentiate themselves.
So the question was asked whether or not the tabs that are viewable across all the OTA sites will change over the next few years. Again, the answer to this question was “NO” because the model supports the products that currently exist. When presented with the change in interface that Starwood had created for their Fourpoints Hotel brand, Mr. Martos stated that if Opodo only sold one specific product then they might be able to remove the tabs, but the types of products sold through OTAs is too complex for a simple interface, like the one used on Fourpoints.
When presented with the growing trend of experience based searching and integrating the dreaming and planning process into the OTA booking process, Mr. McCaig and Mr. Parkitny both talked about how their brands are trying to do more to build out experiential search into their brands. Mr. Josephs however questioned whether there was true value to the customer of providing non-monetized destination content along with the bookable content that ebookers provides.
The question of monetization was a particularly contentious one and all the OTA leaders seemed to have varying opinions regarding the issue of monetizing the traffic that visit their sites. While some, like Expedia, are already starting to move towards a mixed monetization model of providing pay per click as well as commission based bookings, other OTAs like ebookers had no plans to move into the mixed model and seemed to be reluctant to drive traffic away from their sites to their suppliers.
So what new technologies can we see from OTAs moving forward. Given the undeniable move to more social media, the impact of blogging, and the demand for customer reviews, we can start to see that OTAs will have to start integrating more of these social components into their sites. Expedia’s purchase of TripAdvisor is one example of how OTAs are purchasing and using social components to increase their penetration. Can we expect to see more travel social networks to sell to the big OTAs? Quite likely, given the amount of money that OTAs have. Will consumers support social networks that are purchased by OTAs and will they maintain their bias free status once purchased by an OTA? That remains to be seen. I would hope that they would try to keep the social components as separate as possible to maintain their perceived independence, but only time will tell.
Isango
March 5, 2008
Ranjan Singh, CEO and Co-Founder of Isango!
Mr. Singh joined online travel with Expedia and then become Managing Director for EBookers. What he found is that companies like Expedia and other OTAs are focused on the logistics of travel versus the destination products or the reasons why people go on trips. A recent survey stated that 66% of search is for things to do and attractions. For end consumers, there are many choices for booking the logistical pieces of travel but there are very few choices for the attraction and thing to do products. Therefore, a consolidation model works very well for this space and it is for this reason that Isango was created.
The reason for Isango’s growing success is based on the increase in broadband proliferation, a desire to consolidate product, and the rise in experiential travel. Isango provided a distribution model that allows partners to monetize their existing traffic.
A big question for me is how is Isango! different than Viator, which already has very strong penetration in the things to do market? Unfortunately I didn’t get to ask this question but if anyone else can provide their comments on this question, that would be great.
Mobile Travel Technologies - Gerry Samuels
March 5, 2008
Gerry Samuels, Founder & Executive Director, Mobile Travel Technologies Ltd.
Who are MTT’s customers?
Hotels, airlines, and intermediaries. Their core technology enables certain aspects of the customer’s mobile services. The technology can do things like deliver travel information, select seats, and even have boarding passes sent to the phone. The technology connects on the back-end with the customer systems and cherry pick the information that needs to be delivered and modifies or smart edits the information in order to be viewed on both high-end users and basic mobile devices.
Do companies need to change their websites in order to support mobile moving forward?
Yes, because the activities that mobile users do on their mobile devices is different then what they do on their PCs. It is expected that there will be 500 million mobile users by the end of the year. In many markets like India and China, mobile is the internet. In these markets there is a significant opportunity to utilize the mobile web services for transactional services.
Mobile Commerce is actually more advanced in India then they are in Europe and North America primarily because of the lack of use of credit cards in these markets.
What is the opportunity?
Mobile travel services are still primarily used by business services. We are at the point where we are looking at delivering very light travel information versus the multi-media downloads that would be provided to a more leisure market. The opportunity is delivering important key travel services that can be used and are valuable now versus trying to deliver products and services that are not well supported.
Finishing The ITB 2008 Blog Site
February 20, 2008
Hi Everyone, I hope you enjoy the Tips From The T-List’s ITB 2008 Blog. We are finishing all of the YouTube.com and Flickr.com aggregation, and we are adding this snazzy photo viewing app, PicLens.com that will allow site users to manage all of the photos from ITB. Stay tuned as we get all of the T-List bloggers into the system!
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