The PhoCusWright perfect mini storm session was facinating, and featured a great panel of industry titans. Doug Quinby hosted Tina Fitch (EZRez), Rod Cuthbert (Viator Inc), Kenneth Purcell (Iseatz.com), and Ranjan Singh (Isango!).

Here is a summary of the session with some thoughts at the end. These are not quotes, but I tried to capture the main points:

The point was brought up that there are thousands of varied suppliers, what is it that they want?

RS: Differentiation

TF: Sexy representation and and easy to implement system.

KP: Multi Payment options, ie reward miles etc. Also are looking for priority placement.

What do consumers want from these sites?

TF: Consumers want alternatives during the buying process, early packaging options and multiple paths to the booking. The business should have the capabilities to upsell during and after the initial booking. (Email followup/rewards)

RC: Consumers treat destination product differently than other ingredients of the travel picture. Flights, hotels and cars are like bugers, fries and drinks, while activities are purchased after, and are like the dessert. There is not a large opportunity to bundle with other travel products.

RS: I agree and disagree. There are ‘Why not’ products like hop-on hop-off tours that can be bundled well with other products, and the ‘Why’ products which are often the reason WHY people are traveling to these destinations.

KP: Things like groud transport/parking are the most relevant to bundle with other travel products. 80% of the sales we see are in the transfer/parking market.

Will you look to develop Mobile apps?

RC: It is a great opportunity, however we would need an infrastructure upgrade to accommodate our vouchure confirmation model.

RS: Technology maturity will need 3-5 years.

Will these transaction based sites eventually change over to an ad based revenue model?

TF: We give our customers the tools to decide. They can combine onsite booking as well as ads.

Thoughts

This is a developing market that really lacks an underlying infrastucture. The lack of standardization is a barrier to further innovation. There are underlying issues such as the lack of consolidated availability means that consumers are often given bookings that can not be confirmed, and in certain cases, have to wait for a confirmation email. Free sell products represent the minority of destination suppliers, and there is a massive opportunity to bring these long tail suppliers online, well that is probably why I work with Rezgo

Photo back: Tim Hughes, Kevin May, Phil Caines and Stephen Joyce. Front: Jaime Horwitz, Claude Benard, Sean Keener (Thanks Jamie for the great photo!)

Well the bloggers are joining forces once again at PhoCusWright. It was good to meet some old blogging associates after Stephen and I prepared for the Travel Innovation Summit. We are excited and ready to go as we are presenting at 12:08 on the dot today.

I am currently in the TIS showcase surrounded by some great companies. It seems like we are the only ones in our space for this competition, and there are many opportunities to network/partner with these innovators.

More info to come!

50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing

If you are not familiar with Social Media, the great people at CommonCraft have a video explanation, Social Media in Plain English:

This concept has been applied to the tourism industry, and there is quite a fit. PhoCusWright brought this to our attention at the Sept 2007 conference in Florida, and Alan A Lew wrote a great article on it in 2006.

In Mr. Lews article he makes some claims about the long tail market. “The long tail market has huge potential. However it is highly distributed and highly individualized. Therefore, accessing it requires marketing and distribution channels that are both broad and deep. To sell relatively less popular products requires being able to store smaller inventories and being able to minimize distribution costs.”

Being in a business that is attempting to help small and niche tour and activity operators, these books and articles have influenced my business development. In an attempt to provide a solution that encompasses all of the many facets and challenges for marketing and distributing a long tail tour providers product, we have revamped our product, Rezgo.

We are releasing Rezgo Free on June 1st, and are confident that this solution will consolidate the long tail of tour and activities.

We recognized that suppliers needed more than simple book-now functionality; we found that they need a tour management and distribution suite that centralized all of their sales channels. We found that tour operators were more concerned with power and simplicity then with a “feature rich, function less” system.

Rezgo Free eliminates all of the traditional barriers that tour operators face when trying to adapt a new technology. It is intuitive, 100% free to sell products through their website, and it also has the capabilities to increase distribution and consolidate all of their sales channels. This will help ease companies into structuring their products for online sales, and will give them a platform to grow their business with expanded Internet distribution and marketing.

Offering this solution for free is a challenging proposition for the business stake holders, but empowering tour operators to standardize their products will help the long tail of tourism flourish. What do you think? You can find more information on www.rezgo.com.

It is great to acknowledge the growth of awareness and certifications and offset programs that are out there, but what is really being done in the industry. What best practices are driving the most changes and  making an impact on the world today?

Consumer:

For consumer tips we go to the UN’s green passport site to find relevant tips for travllers:

1. Know who you are booking with - When planning your trip, look for sites or travel agents that support concepts keywords like “sustainable, responsible, green, eco, smart, slow, pro-poor, fair trade, and ethical tourism.
2. Slow it down - Flights are the fastest-growing contributors to greenhouse gases, so the UN recommends that you travel locally whenever you can, and take walks and bike rides in your destination where ever you go. This gives you a true appreciation of the area you are traveling in, and gives you some great exercise.
3. Home away from home - Ensure that your accommodations support the same policies that you do for your house. Be sure to ask them about their energy/water/and waste policies.
4. Bring it home to momma - When bringing back souvenirs, try to support the local economy by purchasing locally developed or created goods. If you are planning on bringing animal or wildlife based products, be sure to check with CITES.
5. Spread the word - Share your ‘eco-experiences’ with others. Tell them the choices you made and the effects that you are making. Getting the multiplier effect going is the only way that we can all learn from others. I would recommend blogging about it!

Business:

For Tourism business best practices I visited the infamous famous Visit Scotland website, which has some great resources that any company can download, and I have a few of my own to add. Here is a brief rundown for various sectors:

Accomodations:

1.  Involve your guest - Let your guests know all of the programs you offer (waste, energy, etc.) and let them know what they can do to participate. This could look like a pamphlet or clearly marked recycling bins in rooms.
2. The new VT - No, not a tax, but a ‘Virtual Transaction’ encourage your guests to process the entire booking virtually, and ensure them that they don’t need to print their reservation.
3. Hit the road jack - Offer alternative transportation, partner with other properties and offer guests a shuttle bus, or even have public transport information available. There still will be Taxis on the street, however shared transportation is proven to lower impact.

Tours and Attractions:

1. Count your blessings - Do an energy Audit, find out what you consume, and seek alternatives. Heating, lighting and driving often take up a large portion of the wasted energy a company uses. Start to track your consumption and start to make little changes (ecolights, driving techniques, insulation etc.) and see the savings!
2. The new alternative lifestyle - What fuels do you burn. Did you know that most diesel engines can be converted to run off of a variety of alternative fuels. (Mc Fat, etc) This would lower your companies dependence on foreign products.
3. Keep it close - Shopping for locally sourced products will not only help to develop your local economy, but it will reduce the amounts of fossil fuel burnt to deliver it to your guests.

What best practices have you found? Am I missing any key points?

While this legislation is put into place to add validity to UGC online review sites ala Trip Advisor, it will be difficult and costly to enforce. It seems to me that this is another unenforceable law put into place to provide businesses with guidance for conducting business.

This article was picked up by Stephen Joyce and Joe Buhler who both feel that this legislation runs contrary to the “wisdom of the crowds”. They feel that the masses are able to sift through the ‘Flog’ reviews, and due to the number of reviews, get an honest opinion of a Hotel/Destination/Tour.

I am torn, as I mentioned in my recent article on authentic reviews on Trip Advisor, I think there should be accountability for those that submit content on a social review network. Should we not at least ask that guests can prove that they stayed at a location before they can submit a review?

This does have the greatest effect on properties with only a few reviews, but as more value is given to UGC, I can see corporations devising ways to cheat the system for their own purposes, and unenforceable laws won’t prevent this. How far fetched is it for a company to pay 100 people in India to write various reviews on a property for next to nothing, this would provide huge brand benefit.

What do you think? Do we need to legislate and add verification systems, or is the “wisdom of the crowds” sufficient for long term growth of user generated reviews?

The Next Wave of blogging is now available for the casual blogger - Vloging. You may remember in my last post on Google Universal Search, that Google now has a high weight on all content, including pictures and video. I encouraged everyone to start adding video content to sites like http://www.youtube.com, well now adding content is even easier then ever!

This video was made in two minutes using Windows Movie Maker and a digital camera. Future video releases will have better content!

As you can see, you can now easily implement video content right into your blogs! This is a great way to add rich media content and show your clients your tourism products first hand.

To add video to your blogs simply create a new post and click on the video reel button as seen in this image:

You can choose from most of the popular video formats and Blogger will convert it for you.

Let me know if you have been able to use this feature effectively.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TourismTrends