Travel minds in the snow
March 5, 2008
Some of the most sparkling travel minds are getting together at the Bloggers summit in Berlin. Bruces Rosard, VP Sales and Marketing of PhoCusWright welcomes us to the summit. A number of 25 bloggers are present, which is good number considering the snowy conditions. 
Philip Wolf, President and CEO of PhocusWright kicks off with a interesting story on travel. One of his themes is the long tail of travel, selling less of more. New shopping and comparison technology will dramatically change the travel industry, which already has been affected very much by radical changes in the past years. PPA/PPC is the new commission model. Not pay per acquisition that is, but pay per action. With acquisition being the highest form of action. But it is important not to focus on your own business model but on the customers (it is the customer stupid!).
Hugo Burge, founder of hereorthere.com adds to the discussion on PPA/PPC, that it doesn’t make a difference for him. All participants in this game judge eachother on conversion. True, but I questioned this a bit by stating that if you’re a small media startup ppc will be much more difficult to negotiate with travel companies than if you’re a large player (e.g. Google). Pretty impressive bio Hugo has, vice-president of Cheapflights and investor in a lot of startups. Hereorthere is made about inspiration, which is partly professional, partly user generated and all this combined with deals and local services. Reviews and ratings are very important to their story. It is about personalised and relevant travel experiences.
More speakers 
were present during the welcome but I’ll mention just two others. Gerry Samuels, of Mobile Travel Technologies spoke on mobile travel technology. His company licenses technologies to airlines, hotelgroups, intermediairies. The possibities they provide to customers are for example sending a boarding pass to your phone, and facilitating a later or earlier checkin. The company will connect the website of their clients to all mobile devices. Most of the request of their clients are on mobile internet, but also a lot on sms/text. And thirdly “on handset applications”. End of year 500 million mobile internet phones will be used around the globe. Transactions on the phone are possible and some examples were given. Lastminute bookings are perfect for the phone! In China and India mobile internet is thé internet. In the US/UK 20/30% are using mobile internet regularly. 10% of travellers use travel internet services. For example to find out where the hotel is. GPS is also an important driver. Broadband is important, wap is too slow. Google android will have an impact. In India travel is the killer app for mobile! India is also more advanced on mobile payments. US/UK is still on creditcard payment. Walled gardens are being taken down. Tariffs abroad are still very high, people are scared to get really high bills when they get back.
Last speaker was Ranjan Singh, Co-Founder & CEO of Isango!. Very interesting company on travel experiences. Packaging by yourself or DIY (do it yourself) travel is getting bigger and bigger. Most people know how to book hotels and airlines, but local activities is still dificult. Isango! is the solution for that. Isango is consolidator for travel experiences. Worlds largest. Just being funded for 8 million! Chapeau!
CEO Briefing at PhoCusWright Blogging Summit at ITB Berlin
March 5, 2008
PhoCusWright CEO- Philip’s Wolf
Philip traced the evolution of the 13 year journey from 0 billion to $ 100 billion!. Where the paradigm of travel 1.0 saw Expedia’s blow out conventional travel purchase and then emerge as the establishment in 2005. Then the travel 2.0 and long tail kicked to spur innovation and fresh startups to focus on not the cheapest trip but the perfect trip
The key point that Philip shared is that company that focuses on maintaining the business model and not on the customers will always be challenged and the relevance questioned. The PhoCusWright theme for 2008 is around the Perfect Storm where there is now a blurring or search, shop and buy. Its all seamless.
Other briefings..to come
Distinction Between Bloggers, Journalists Blurring More Than Ever
March 5, 2008
MediaShift Digging Deeper::PBS deals with the topic the panel I’m on this afternoon at the PhoCusWright Blogger Summit at the ITB in Berlin will address.
The title is journalists vs. bloggers, by itself a misnomer, as the lines have blurred between what used to be until quite recently very different categories as the article makes very clear. Like so much else, the role of journalists has been affected by how the web develops and this will very likely continue to be the case. The conversation continues……
Berlin: Snow and Strikes, but Bloggers come Through
March 5, 2008
Very unusual: I am the first to find the meeting room where the first informal get together is taking place.
I have seen some fairs. I am not impressed by the way Berlin Messe provides road signs.
As to snow: Detlef comments this is the start of ITB and the first snow of Berlin this winter.
A huge strike lames the whole Berlin public transport system, but at around 11.30 AM I count around 25 Bloggers. Chapeau to the Bloggers.
Bonjour 2-0-2-work - Tourism, Web 2.0 & 5 Myths unveiled
March 4, 2008
In 2008 I am looking forward to tourism companies putting my advice and the knowledge you and I have gathered about this so called Web 2.0 to work. Here are five reflexions on 2007 myths about tourism and the web 2.0.
Every tourism company should offer at least one blog.
No way. I remember talking to a manager of a very large Austrian tourism business last year. He complained that their CEO did not have what it took for a corporate blog. My take: While a blogging CEO does have some signaling effect within the company and the industry, CEO-blogs are not mandatory. On the contrary. Companies should first think hard, before embarking on a corporate blog. I do believe in blogs, but there has to be a payoff. That said I fully encourage small companies like family hotels and museums to blog. If they have something to convey and are determined to take their time integrating this medium with their communication goals.
Nobody knows what Web 2.0 means anyway.
Recent studies in Austria prove that the term Web 2.0 is still widely unknown in my country. However, the different platforms are very popular and widely adopted. I remember asking my young students (22 - 29) last fall what they thought about Web 2.0. Only one in 30 even had heard of the term. But many of them knew MySpace, most knew YouTube, blogs and so on. Meaning that people are using what the Web 2.0 has to offer, while companies are still struggling to come up with a pragmatic integration of the different services and platforms.
Online-reviews of strangers have little or no credibility.
Think again. Austrian studies have shown that 80 % will rather believe an unpolished online-review written by a total stranger than elaborate claims agencies came up with.
Every national destination should start their own social network.
Not at all. There are quite some examples of national tourism networks that do not work. This does not mean, that Web 2.0 was a no-good-hype in the first place. The challenge is to integrate these new “points of communication” (borrowing the term from “point of sale”) into your strategy. I am pretty sure, Canada has been the smartest so far.
Virtual worlds like Second Life are dead.
This one is just as untrue as claiming they were the future before. I guess it will take more time. Maybe it will be the digital natives that will fully embrace virtual worlds in a corporate environment.
What is your opinion? Feel free to comment or mail me.
Original post January 21, 2008 on FastenYourSeatbelts.at
Alternatives to Hotels - powered by Web 2.0
March 4, 2008
If crashing on a stranger’s couch for free in your vacation is beyond your imagination (www.couchsurfing.com), try the Austrian alternative www.prooms.com. This new Web 2.0 - or may I say Travel 2.0 - platform enables would-be hosts to offer their spare beds or even entire apartment. The prices are pretty reasonable. Unfortunately, so far limited to the Austrian and Swiss host cities of the Euro 2008 . As of now, I can only detect a German language version. Update: The English version is due by the end of February. Hm, I do have a spare room. Will talk this over with my husband.
Destination Marketing: It’s about service, stupid
March 4, 2008
Let’s recall how quickly things are changing these days. Remember the times when you had to actually go see your local travel agent to book a flight and when airlines had large offices in the capitals? Then came low-cost-carriers and ticket-free online-booking. A model that was quickly adopted by the traditional carriers in the aftermath.
Then hostels started adopting the low-cost-first-come-first-serve booking-model. Many even send confirmation SMS to make things easier for you. A free service! See the SMS AirBerlin sent me after I booked my flight to the ITB Bloggers Meeting. And I also got a free SMS plus a customised sightseeing and shopping brochure by the hotel booking platform I chose. All without ever coming near to Berlin’s official tourist website.
Official tourist board sites “failed” me again, when I was planning my summer hiking vacation a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to hike in the Attersee region, a breathtakingly beautiful Austrian lake and mountain region where I spent a week in summer 2006. I was unable to find information on the official site of the Austrian Tourist board.
So I checked out the website of the regional tourist board www.attersee.at for B&B and apartments in the village of Unterach. I know there are dozens of places that rent rooms and apartments. Nevertheless, the online-results were so meager, that we decided to go hiking in South Tyrol (Italy) instead.
We will be staying in the wonderful hotel Schönblick Belevedere in St. Genesio where I gave a speech last October. I called their reception desk - using Skype - and checked the best dates, while screening the booking engine of the LCC Skyeurope at the same time. I loved knowing who I was talking to and where I will be arriving to. Again their tourist board’s website is bad - but Flickr offers lovely views (here are my pictures).
Now don’t get me wrong. This is not about Web 2.0, it is about giving the potential visitor what they need to support the decision, planning, booking (and bonding) process.
I have not mentioned this before, but the website of the village of San Pedro de Atacama in the desert of Chile made me decide to travel to South America in March 2004 within seconds. The term Web 2.0 had not even been coined then. And no, the site has not really changed since then. Why? Because they had already done a wonderful job without any Web 2.0 hocus pocus in the first place. But, and this is the message, they already made use of old fashioned tools to integrate pictures and comments of happy travelers. Social Web 1.0 so to speak! And they already featured short easy to stream videos back then. In 2004!
I recently read that online travel sales are decreasing. Given my experience I do not find it hard to believe. What is your opinion? Do you know any good tourism sites?
Posted at 01:22 PM in a) English+posts, b) Travel 2.0, e) Destinationmarketing | P
Travel 2.0 - not only an issue for hotels anymore
March 4, 2008
Gone are the days when only hotel managers and some destination marketers would bemoan authentic customer rating platforms like Tripadvisor & Co. as a potential threat to their business. Think again, more and more of these platforms have quietly added other subjects as well. It is not a matter of hotels and destinations anymore.
Would you like an example? You might know the Austrian crystals company Swarovski. More than 700.000 saw their visitor attraction Kristallwelten Crystal World in Tyrol last year - including me twice (my pics).
Their brochure and website quote CNN saying: “As beautiful as one of the Seven Wonders of the world.” Not quite in line with the opinions visitors have posted on Tripadvisor: Only 11 have reviewed their experiences online, but the message is pretty dramatic. Opinions range from “tourist scam” to “waste of time” - and what really made me laugh: “I had expected displays of how crystals were formed or how they are turned into jewellery and objects of desire. What I got was bizarre and consisted of: a zebra in a stiletto (yes, really!)”.
If you are in charge of a tourist attraction, reviews like these are exactly what you should be looking for. Could there be a grain of salt in them? Are all 11 reviewers just plain wrong? Could these reviews be a chance to set things straight or develop new strategies? This is the subject of a speech I am going to give for 200 directors and managers of tourist attractions next week.
YourTour’s trip engine technology: exclusif interview
March 4, 2008
Decizium team launches their “YourTour’s trip engine technology” , a new step for the mass-customization of travel packages and itineraries.
They have a stand at ITB (hall 6.1, stand 141). I suggest you contact them and make a appointment and business!
Emmanuel Guisset tell us more about Decizium and the YourTour technology.
> Emmanuel, can you tell some information about you and the Decizium team.
Well, Decizium started in 2005 after 10 years of R&D in collaboration with the Polytechnic Faculty of Mons. Last year, we received some private and public investments and since then we’ve been working on improving our technology, business development and creating a B2C website.
As far I am concerned, after receiving my international business degree, I traveled quite a lot and completed a few internships abroad until Decizium allowed me to stay in the travel world and be part of a new exciting challenge: changing the way Internet users buy travel packages.
Currently, Decizium, located in Belgium employs a young international team of 10.
>Can you give us some outline about your goals with YOUR TOUR!
We have spent years developing our YourTour system, under which it is no longer necessary for tourists to make a trade-off between a tailor-made holiday where he/she might need to wait days before obtaining a first trip proposition, and a pre-packaged offer that is not tuned to his/her wishes but that is immediately available. The system makes possible what seemed to be impossible: the mass-customization of travel packages and itineraries.
YourTour’s trip engine technology allows travel companies to go much further than the currently available packaging solutions by taking into account the appropriate on-site activities for the tourist and automatically arranging it all (transportation, accommodations and activities) in a coherent way, using multiple criteria.
This results in a comprehensive and detailed travel itinerary, accommodating the restrictions imposed by the tourist (trip duration, areas to visit, travel budget, etc.) and respecting the tourist’s compromise between the various costs (for transportation, accommodations and activities) and the appeal of the trip (quality of the activities, hotel comfort level, etc.).
In addition, we are currently developing a B2C website that will allow tourists to build and book their customized self drive trip in France in a few clicks. Indeed, we feel it was necessary to have something online to reach better the B2B market. You’ll have to wait until it’s online to learn more…
Happy Hotelier - Off to ITB Berlin
March 4, 2008
Before I jump in my limousine, I would like to feature two great Bloggers who I will miss at this summit, pictured here together at WTM in November where the three of us shortly met and unfortunately had no time to get acquainted better Time is an asset Bloggers have not much of, which reminds me I had not enough time to update the T-List ranking as per March 1. It is almost finished, but publication has to wait until after ITB.
To your left Guillaume Thevenot of Hotel Blogs by Guillaume Thevenot and to your right Albert Barra, author of many Blogs among which: Spanish language Blog Albert Barra Com, the Enlish version Thoughts on Hospitality Marketing and Distribution and Travel in Blogs with which he tries to build a Travel Bloggers community. More success has his Spanish Travel 2.0 portal, but I lost the link for the moment. (Update: Albert kindly provided it in a comment elsewhere).
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