Sharing The Travel Industry's latest Technology
Events
PhoCusWright Blogger Summit 2009
Sep 21st
We all know the key to a great blog is high quality content. Your readers rely on you for a unique perspective on the hottest issues in travel. You could not ask for a better way to meet leading travel executives, learn about the biggest trends in travel and see new travel technologies firsthand than to attend The PhoCusWright Conference (November 17-19, 2009 in Orlando, Florida USA).
Experience The Travel Industry Event of the Year—a special discounted registration price is available for qualified and approved travel industry B2B bloggers. For just US$400 (save over 75%), you will have full access to all three days of The PhoCusWright Conference:
- The Travel Innovation Summit—30 companies demonstrate travel technology innovations
- Deal Day—the perfect opportunity to interview speakers and attendees
- Center Stage—get the inside scoop on how travel companies are implementing “Money. Media. Mobile. Moxie.“
- Private Bloggers Town Hall Breakfast with PhoCusWright’s president and CEO, Philip C. Wolf
- Bloggers Workshop presented by Tips From The T-List
Learn more about the Bloggers Summit@The PhoCusWright Conference and the application process at www.phocuswright.com.
Use this link to submit your application today.
I look forward to seeing you in Orlando!
Regards,
Bruce Rosard
+1 860 350-4084 x375
brosard@phocuswright.com
PhoCusWright 2008 in Photos
Dec 5th
I have found several photos from the PhoCusWright 2008 conference, and I thought I would share them with everyone:
Stephen At the Innovation Summit
The Innovators at PhoCusWright
Claude Benard, France's travel blogger
Joe Buhler and the bloggers row
Steve Joyce, Tim Hughes, Philip Caines, Claude Benard
Tom Romary on the big screen, go Yapta!
Claude in Hollywood
The Force is strong with this one, Ralf Von Sosen
War not make one great, Claude Benard
Named must your fear be before banish it you can, Steve Joyce
Me asking Rob Torres about his favorite colour in the Google rainbow. Green, no surprise there.
The PhoCusWright Whirlwind From The Storm
Nov 19th
PhoCusWright has again packed a lot of amazing networking, workshops and presentations into one conference. Well the morning of the main center stage conference is in full swing and the trending is looking interesting. We have heard from the VC community; William Carroll, Cornell, Jeff Clarke, Travelport Inc, Sophie Frost, Brightspark Ventures, Jake Fuller, Thomas Weisel Partners.
While there were strong references to economic trending with Philip C Wolf saying that “it didn’t look like a economy in recession at the bar last night”. Jeff Clarke was confident that there will be an upswing eventually. Jake Fuller on the other hand pointed out that there was no denying the current economic climate and how there was an inevitable loss of competition with smaller innovators being pressured out of the game. Sophie was talking about the drying up of investment capital for the next 18 months. She stated that that they are going to tighten their belts, cut expenses where ever possible, and then also lower their level of investment by an additional 10%. With Brightspark having a notable portfolio, this could be indicitive of a far reaching down swing in travel technology investment. Lets hope not..
Travel Innovation Summit – The Battle For Centre Stage
Jul 16th
We are really excited to be participating in the PhoCusWright’s Travel Innovation Summit (PCW TIS). Rezgo has come a long way since its inception, we are gaining attention, building strategic partnerships and have a robust feature set that really sets us apart from our direct competition. Well I may be a little biased, and I realize that our competition at PCW TIS is not direct market competition. As we are competing for innovation and ingenuity, I thought I would do a brief review of the presenters at PCW TIS.
This is not a complete list, and I will be adding others as more information is made available. I will be giving an overview of what they do and a rating based on potential to shake the industry, how innovative they are, and the likelihood of success. So here is a brief rundown of the presenting companies at PCW TIS thus far.
Cadabra
Overview: Looks to be a one stop shop for those going to New Zealand. PRO: You can generate a customized itinerary including hotel and activities and even book all items through their website. CON: Currently only in New Zealand, search for hotel etc can not be filtered and organized (price, stars etc)
Site look: 8/10
Potential to Shake Industry: 6/10
Innovation: 7/10
Success: 8/10
ekit
Overview: Their primary business is selling of SIM and calling cards for travelers, as an ancillary bonus, users are given a travel journal and a secure travel vault for storing important documents digitally. PRO: Free add-ons to a comodity type product. The live tracking features a really cool. CON: Not really an innovative product, there are numerous free mobile blogging and document storage platforms on the market.
Site look: 4/10
Potential to Shake Industry: 5/10
Innovation: 6/10
Success: 6/10
Innovata LLC
Overview: Innovata is positioning itself as the leader in Airline timedable data managing, hosting, and reporting. They have a number of services ranging from Data Licencing, Hosted Services to Analitical Services. PRO: Seem to have multiple strong revenue streams. CON: I am not sure how scalable this business platform is.
Site look: 7/10
Potential to Shake Industry: 6/10
Innovation: 6/10
Success: 8/10
NileGuide.com
Overview: I met the CEO Josh Steinitz at last years PCW, he has made NileGuide a shaker for the trip planning and UGC review sector. PRO NileGuide has great filtering features to help find hotels and activities that interest you, and they have a growing database of product. CON: Lack of transaction capabilities limits their revenue potential.
Site look: 9/10
Potential to Shake Industry: 8/10
Innovation: 7/10
Success: 7/10
Update:
It is refreshing to see the updates to content, UGC and usability on Nile Guide. Josh Steinetz is heading in the right direction, the guides that can be dynamically generated are a great merger of oldword guides meet custom travel planning. I will be using this site.
Roundtrip Systems
Overview: Roundtip Systems seems to be giving emails a dynamic booking capability. PRO: Piggy backing emails for booking, saves time, widely used technology. CON: Product bookings lack scope and range of options and media.
Site look: 5/10
Potential to Shake Industry: 6/10
Innovation: 7/10
Success: 7/10
WorldMate Inc.
Overview: World Mate offers mobile information for traveler. Their free product has weather, currency and time information, and their subscription service has flight information. PRO: Nice interface, free account is a good incentive to use. CON: With the proliferation of mobile information, all of their data can be accessed through traditional websites.
Site look: 8/10
Potential to Shake Industry: 6/10
Innovation: 7/10
Success: 7/10
UPDATE
Worldmate has just presented their live software, it looks to have a great user interface, and a impressive feature set. I am happy to see the progress in such a short time period. Good job guys!
Yapta.
Overview: I met Tom Romary and the Yapta Team last year at PCW. These guys have a great product for the american traveller. They track flight pricing for consumers and can help consumers get reemburced if the price of a flight changes before they fly. PRO: Huge market potential. CON: I hope they have a solid revenue model ;)
Site look: 8/10
Potential to Shake Industry: 9/10
Innovation: 9/10
Success: 8/10
Rezgo
Overview: Well I can’t really be objective here, but I think we have a great product! So feel free to go to Rezgo.com and leave a comment on how you would rate Rezgo:
Site look: ?/10
Potential to Shake Industry: ?/10
Innovation: ?/10
Success: 11;) /10
Travelocity’s Michelle Peluso’s Thoughts
Mar 20th
I found this old blog post that I never published, it is a bit of free hand note taking when I was listening to Michelle Peluso at PhoCusWright Orlando 2007. I have cleaned it up a bit, and there is some interesting thoughts:
What is the future for Travelocity?
“Expanding into the Asian and European markets. Shift from a price focused commoditization into an experience based format. Using Kayak, they still recreate the the Travelocity experience. More emphasis changing a transactional interface into experiential purchase.”
How do you plan on doing that?
“We need to separate and segregate the customers base. Different people have different travel needs. Experience finder helps people scroll through a series of media and reviews. We need to partnership at a deeper level. Leverage the relationship and maybe integrate UGC to enhance the online experience.”
How will you handle Longtail product?
“So far we are all terrible at it, but getting better. There is an audience for a smaller product, and the trick is to not crowd the site with all of the content out there, provide relevance, and great parters.”
Build vs. buy
“We will not be specialist content providers, we can do it through partnerships.”
Charge booking fees?
“Increased services, and consumers have confusion with service fees, if you provide value, consumers will pay for the service.”
Her thoughts on long tail products make me think of how Sentias can leverage Rezgo to help OTAs distribute disparate tour suppliers. Give me a call Michelle, ;)
Germany embraces travel industry communities.
Feb 26th
Communities are powering the internet, collaboration is the new norm, and Germany is the new Hotspot for Travel Industry internet communities. They will be hosting 2 grass roots events in a one month time period, Tourismus Camp and the PhoCusWright Bloggers Summit@ITB.
On February 9th, the first TourismusCamp (think Barcamp meets tourism) was hosted in Eichstaett. This meet up was organized by my associate, Jens Oellrich who will also join the me at ITB. Here is a link to the event wiki, translated into English.
I have had the pleasure of coordinating the first international bloggers summit; the PhoCusWright@ITB bloggers summit is bringing a group of over 30 bloggers from more then a 12 different countries together. This event is combining a Tips From The T-List workshop that is open to the public, exclusive blogger interviews with travel industry executives, access to the great PhoCusWright conference information and some good times.
We have brought the bloggers together into one place for everyone to stay up to date on the latest blogger content, go to itb2008.tipsfromthetlist.com for photos, videos and the latest blog posts from an international group of bloggers on this amazing event!
Travel Technology Update Podcast – January 11th
Jan 16th
Have you heard the latest Travel Technology Update Podcast? Click on the link on the top right of my blog to hear the latest news.
Topics discussed for January 11th:
- The First International Bloggers Summit with PhoCusWright@ITB
- Site Review: www.Kango.com
- Joe Buhler’s Predictions for 2008
- Stephen’s 5 must do travel marketing investments with online services:
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- Blogging – Blogger.com, Wordpress.com
- Photos – Flickr.com
- Video – Vidler.com, YouTube.com
- Podcasting – Podomatic.com, Bigcontact.com
- Blog Directories – Blogcatalog.com, Mybloglog.com
5. IFITT Enter 2008 conference – www.ifitt.org
The First International PhoCusWright Bloggers Summit at ITB
Jan 7th
After the success of the Bloggers Summit at PhoCusWright 2007 Orlando, PhoCusWright has decided to grow the event to a truly international collaboration. The first International Bloggers Summit will happen at ITB Berlin in March. There have been whispers of this event for some time (Jens, Vicky, Stephen) and it is now official! The summit has several components that will ensure a great time for bloggers:
Travel Industry Bloggers welcome and idea sharing
Wednesday March: 10:30am – 12:30pm
Includes exclusive access to travel industry leaders, the Bloggers Briefing session will give bloggers a chance to generate the latest news.
Tips From The T-List presents Blogging with the Long Tail of Tourism
Workshop to be presented and open to all ITB Berlin attendees
Wednesday March 5 in Hall 7.1b, Auditorium London 3: 2:00pm – 4:00pm
This workshop will show how an active, content-producing network of bloggers can have a growing influence on customers’ online spending habits.
Travel Industry Bloggers meeting
Wednesday March 5, 4:30 – 5:30pm
Gather and share techniques, strategies, contacts and more
PhoCusWright@ITB Conference
Thursday March 6, Hall 7.1b, London 3: 10:15am – 6:00pm
Hall 7.1b, Auditorium London 3
Take advantage of PhoCusWright@ITB, one of the premier events of ITB’s Convention.
Bloggers Summit Final Gathering
Regroup after PhoCusWright@ITB and discuss highlights, lowlights and everything in between
Cocktails and chatter – this event will NOT be hosted, and it will be an informal gathering
Thursday March 6: 8:30pm – late
This wifi enabled trendy bar will be a great back drop to unwind and recap all of the great finds from ITB. Anhalter Bar Mövenpick Hotel in Berlin. A private area of the bar will be reserved, wifi will be available, and there will be drink specials. Hope to see you there!
This summit is included with your PhoCusWright admission, and travel industry bloggers can apply for a bloggers entry pass. For more information join the Facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6574840815
Email me if you are interested in attending: phil.caines [at] rezgo.com
Stephen Kaufer – Tripadvisor
Nov 14th
Get the truth and go. Sounds simple enough. Stephen Kaufer, President and CEO of www.TripAdvisor.com seems to think so. But in order to have truth, you need to also have trust.
At the PhoCusWright conference in Orlando, Stephen said “Trust online is gold dust.”
You need:
1. Honest brokers – People that can give you truth
2. Social networks – A group that you can trust
When travelers ideas are varying then the knowledge of the mass prevails and averages the results.
TripAdvisor has made headway in the social aspect of their online reviews. They allow you to get your friends on your own traveler’s network by connecting with friends with an interactive map. When you are browsing the site, your traveler’s network automatically populates their recommendations. This will give great trust based reviews with depth unmatchable by traditional travel agents.
Have you used Tripadvisor, or has your property been effected by a review? Do you trust the reviews?