Tourism Tide » Rants and Reviews

All Hail Our Google Overlords

Phil — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 23:37:38 +0000

A recent comment by Stephen Budd raised my awareness about how involved the Internet is becoming in our day to day lives. I use Google services everyday in my life, from email, search, maps and public transit. I like the company and I feel that they have profoundly altered the way that humans access and interpret information. Some people however, are starting to feel that Google has gone too far. If you search ‘Google’ the quoted term “Google Overlord” for instance, it will bring up over 8700 instances.

Is there a Google backlash? A little.

Are they still making money? Over $4 Billion a year in profit.

They have just launched their first mobile OS equipped phone, their first satellite, their own browser, and basically own online video, free email, online advertising, and oh yeah, the search world. So now they know what you are looking for, they know where you are, who you are talking to, and can take a photo of you where ever you are. This brother is getting bigger! Andrew Keen, a British-born author and entrepreneur in California’s Silicon Valley said, “‘They have amassed more information about people in 10 years than all the governments of the world put together.”

Look no further then Kevin May and company’s Travolution blog to see how the travel industry is taking to Google’s recent changes to their advertising model. Seems like travel folks are starting to feel peeved.

Well it turns out that the travel folks are not alone, the Guardian released this article highlighting some of the Pros and Cons of a Google world.

This is not to say that I am against Google, but that I am starting to be aware of its impact in my life, could you go a day/week/month with out it? I don’t think I could, and that is mildly concerning.

Travel Innovation Summit - The Battle For Centre Stage Part 2

Phil — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 23:47:39 +0000

The list of competitors is complete, the first ever Travel Innovation Summit will now feature 28 travel technology competitors that range from small bootstrapping startup (Stephen and I…) to large multi-nationals (Sabre Rattling??).

Bruce Rosard (VP at PhoCusWright) just sent me some of the trends that have surfaced for the competition:

1. The growth of pure Travel 2.0 businesses is slowing—dramatically.
The Travel Innovation Summit demonstrators, along with applicants who were not selected for this year’s event, described very few applications involving new social networks or pure social networking.

2. Travelers will enjoy easy access to rich subjective, objective and experiential content for trip planning.
Look for the pairing of trip planning and established social network brands and other sources of objective and subjective content. To facilitate the learning and shopping process, first movers are emerging in semantic search. Tools that facilitate an easier trip planning experience by narrowing alternatives based on profiles, stated preferences and observed behaviors are coming.

3. Abundant, varied mobile applications are beginning to emerge.
Interestingly, many of the emerging mobile application innovations focus not simply on shopping and purchasing, but on a variety of content, including day-of-travel and concierge applications. Creative approaches to the mobile business model challenge also are arising.

4. The Long Tail is coming of age.
With low cost computers and more pervasive Internet access than ever, the Long Tail of travel is poised to spread beyond the traditional air, car and hotel market. Unique approaches, including Software as a Service (SaaS), are on the horizon for the effective, efficient distribution of additional content and services.

5. Air shopping is still a work in progress.
Innovators like Air Canada are redefining the airline seat as a product—think of a world where every seat is a SKU with unique characteristics and services—rather than a mere commodity. The complexities of air shopping mean new approaches are still in their infancy—with ample room to grow and mature.

6. Attention shifts from “learn, shop, book” in the travel value chain.
Innovators are recognizing that elements beyond “learn, shop, book” in the travel value chain can be monetized. Expect pre-trip, trip experience, and post-trip technology models to arise.

7. Building supporting business applications loses its luster.
Innovators are focused on the customer-facing applications in the travel value chain, with much less emphasis on the infrastructure services that support content development, content distribution, financial accounting and settlement, and even provisioning of Internet access.

I originally did a brief review of the original competitors and this post will finish with some of the latest entries into the arena. I have also added two new indicators, funding, to let readers know who owns the company and how much has been invested (I may need your help) and target: b2c, b2b, b2b&c.

I am biased in my reviews (maybe a little) because Rezgo is one of the competitors in this competition, so feel free to let me know if you think I am crazy off base.

Adventure Link

URL: http://www.adventurelink.com

Overview: Aim to be a GDS for the adventure travel segment. They claim to be “the 21st century equivalent to the ancient Roman Forum (minus the toga’s, of course)”. I am not exactly sure who powers who, but it seems that their back end in run by Trisept Solutions, and their product is fed by VaxVacation Access.

Funding: Not Sure

Target: B2B

Site look: 7/10

Potential to Shake Industry: 7/10

Innovation: 6/10

Success: 7/10

Clairvoyix

URL:http://www.clairvoyix.com

Overview:This is not my area of specialty, however their easy to understand design allows the common man to understand the process of Database marketing and the value it can have for any business. They give clear examples of this and it looks pretty good. They do need to update their Legal information on the bottom of the page though…

Funding: Seed/Early stage funding from goffventures.biz

Target: B2B

Site look: 7/10 (Update Legal)

Potential to Shake Industry: 6/10

Innovation: 5/10

Success: 8/10

Deal Base

URL: http://www.dealbase.com

Overview:A user generated hotel deal website that accepts deals from any source. They currently host over 7000 deals across multiple sites. Site guests can link directly to the hotel or booking site to complete the booking. I wonder if they have referral agreements in place or if they have an advertising based business model. Their Alexa ranking is quite low considering they are B2C.

Funding: Not Sure - Any Ideas?

Target: B2C

Site look: 7/10

Potential to Shake Industry: 5/10

Innovation: 6/10

Success: 6/10

escapia.com

URL: http://www.escapia.com

Overview: I think Bill Furlong (CEO) has been listening to some of Rezgo’s meetings, his model is very near to ours, except it is for a completely different market, vacation rentals. His system gives property owners a booking system (front and back end) that allows them to accept bookings through their website as well as through 3rd part marketing sites. (Not a bad idea;)

Funding: Venture Capital - At least 2 different rounds equaling over 2.8 million

Target: B2C

Site look: 8/10

Potential to Shake Industry: 7/10

Innovation: 8/10

Success: 8/10

17 More reviews to come. Look for them in the following days.

What the blog?

Phil — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 18:15:35 +0000

“The issue is no longer distribution; rather, it’s relevance.”

Brad Feld
Managing Director
Foundry Group

I couldn’t of said it better myself; the publishing landscape has changed for ever, the democritization of information and the proliferation of tools to distribute this information is impacting society as we know it. traditional news media has responded with over 95% of the top 100 newspapers all have blogs.

Technorati, the online blog catelog, has just released its 2008 State of the Blogosphere which highlights trends and themes from the blogging public, definately worth a read.

Some interesting highlights about corporate/professional bloggers:

There is a strong differentiation between a ‘corporate blogger’ and a blogger who writes about their industry. With only 12% identifying themselves as truly corporate, while 46% are ‘professional’ (this is what I identify myself as)
Corporate bloggers are pretty homogeneous (Male-70%, in relationship-75%, college grad-74%)
The blogs are not making much money, of those that advertise, the median annual revenue was between $200-$300… better hope that added brand exposure can be justified

The future of blogging

The article also asks senior analysts about their thoughts about blogging, and what lies ahead. I found an interesting comment from Jeremiah Owyang:

“The future of blogging will be an auto-synching of our lives directly to the web —often a quiet recording in the background”

I hope this comment was taken out of context, because I feel this 1984, Big Brother view of the future of blogging is kind of bleak. I find that blogs are most effective when they are not simple ‘reporting’ but add a human editorial view that sparks thought and conversation.

Testing New micro blogging app

Phil — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 20:00:59 +0000

Well the Internet is so interconnected, I am now testing Utterz. This is a mixture of Jott, Twitter, Qik, and Shozu. Seems interesting. This post should be linked all through my other accounts… Lets see!

Mobile post sent by philcaines using Utterz. Replies.

Uttered Content

Phil — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 19:56:15 +0000

Mobile post sent by philcaines using Utterz. Replies. mp3

The Top 27 Free Press Release Sites

Phil — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 23:13:08 +0000

The Internet has changed how the press looks for and finds news stories. While the conservative news industry is slowly warming up to this fancy thing call the Internet, there are a number of Press Release sites that allow you electronically submit articles and even embed links!!

The fact is, the written press seams to have more credibility then online news and media distributors (for now ) and having your company featured in an official press article is still great, free publicity. So for now you have to play their game.

Here are a number of Free Press Release Sites that I use to help promote Rezgo, and hopefully get picked up by official news agencies. If you don’t get featured by a large news agency, at least these sites will help your rank with Google. They are geared for the Tour and Travel industry and some may require payment, but most are free and generalized enough to help any company promote their press releases. Enjoy, and let me know if you have any others.

Is there life for traditional marketing?

Phil — Tue, 20 May 2008 21:45:45 +0000

With the level of directly traceable and testable configurations that are available with online advertising, does traditional media stand a chance?

TravelMole just brought this interesting article to light. It turns out that for the first time ever, online ad spend has ‘outpaced’ traditional spending at $8 billion last year. It is projected that this will continue to increase to $22.8 Billion by 2012.

While this article does not contrast these findings with the dollar amount spent on traditional media over the past few years, it does raise an interesting point, where does traditional media fit in?

I found an interesting article on the IAB site that displays advertising spending trends over a 13 year period. As no surprise, internet has been adapted much more rapidly than either broadcast or cable advertising. Definitely worth checking out. In 2007 Internet advertising has surpassed both Radio and Cable network ad spend.

So what will the future look like for the remaining top media providers? Here are some trends that I feel will negatively effect the penetration of traditional advertisers in the next 10-15 years:

The Attention Economy - Gone are the passive zombies media bystanders. With TV on demand, video websites and Tevo, consumers now get what they what when they want, and commercials are not part of it!
Newspapers - Great for regionalized penetration, but with no instant feedback, and a low traceableness, not to mention the lowing of readership, the skies look gray for the traditional printed newspaper.

What do you think the future of news paper and TV distribution is? Is is a good complement, or will it eventually disappear?

What are the latest buzz words?

Phil — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 19:59:26 +0000

I am not sure if it is a case of, once you hear it once you notice it more often, but I have noticed an increased frequency of Travel Industry buzz words that have been popping up everywhere. Do you know what I am talking about?

Here are a couple of terms that are really circulating on the news and at conferences. I will also give a brief definition to their intended meaning:

Perfect Storm - It now seams that everything is a perfect storm. Travel agencies needing help, airlines collapsing you name it.Â Here is the Wikipedia definition:

“The phrase refers to the simultaneous occurrence of events which, taken individually, wouldÂ be far less powerful than the result of their chance combination. Such occurrences are rare by their very nature, so that even a slight change in any one event contributing to the perfect storm would lessen its overall impact. “

Walled Garden -Â This term is of particular interest to me, I am all for breaking down the walls (I recently bought a piece of the Berlin wall This term is popping up in the context of media restrictions, inter-industry collaboration and especially the Tele-Com industry. Breaking down restrictions on collaboration is a trend that next generation businesses are going to have to adapt to. As Don Tapscott points out in Wikinomics “If you don’t stay current with customers, they invent around you”. This is in reference to restrictions on products that don’t allow for collaboration and modification.

Here is the Widipedia definition of Walled Garden:

“A walled garden, with regards to media content, refers to a closed set or exclusive set of information services provided for users (a method of creating a monopoly or securing an information system).”

So I hand it over to you, what BUZZ terms have you been hearing lately? Any interesting new ones?

Earth Day Essentials - The Tourism Industy Wakes Up

Phil — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 18:16:26 +0000

Today North America celebrates Earth Day (March 20th for the Euros I hear). This is one of the greenest days of the year, and a great time to reflect on how much the Tourism Industry relies on the Planet’s natural resources for sustenance. This is not a feel good, ‘I love Mother Earth’ post, but rather a resource that the tourism industry can use as a reference and reflection point.

Practical Ways that travel suppliers can get involved:

Back Ground information on Earth Day and related topics:

Earth Day Wiki - a good overview of the history of Earth Day
Environmental Accounting Wiki - This new approach to accounting incorporates externalities and gives the full picture of corporate impact on the environment, worth looking into.
UNWTO Sustaiable Developmensin Tourism - Great news and reports tracking the efforts that the UNWTO is undertaking.

Personal Goals:

I for one, am making little changes, I have sold my car and only walk, bike or take the bus. Here are some of my future goals:

Limit my garbage to 1 grocery bag per week.
Recycle everything that has the potential to be recycled.
Support local produce (BUT I LOVE BANANAS!!)

How about you, do you have any great resources that you use to guide your environmental strategy? How about your personal goals, what changes are you making in your everyday life?

Alexa Rank Spank?

Phil — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 19:12:50 +0000

Recently Alexa made a “big change” to their ranking algorithm. They now “aggregate data from multiple sources to give you a better indication of website popularity among the entire population of Internet users.”

I know this sounds like a better way of calculating an accurate rank, however, there is no knowing what “additional sources” they are using. You used to be able to calculate their bias based on the fact that you knew that their rankings came from users with the Alexa toolbar. You were able to gage the type of user that would have such a device, and have a better understanding of your ranking amongst those users.

Where do these new sources of user information come from?

Most of the sites that I work with have dropped significantly:

Alexa Rankings	Before	After
http://www.tourismtide.com	460,000	1,972,759
http://www.rezgo.com	180,000	201,794
http://www.sentias.com	320,000	304,776
http://www.tipsfromthetlist.com	260,000	314,818

Conclusions:

Where ever Alexa is getting their Internet usage stats from now, I can tell that they have less of an interest in Tourism Technology then the former data pool.
Changing your domain (tourismtide.blogspot.com to tourismtide.com) can be painful. Both my Alexa and my Technorati were destroyed.

Have you noticed a change in your rank? Do you know where Alexa is getting their new user statistics from?