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!
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.
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