Innovation. This is the final round of the PhoCusWright Innovation Summit, where the presentations were very good.

If you missed my last reviews, here they are:
Round 1 Live Reviews
Round 2 Live Reviews

The final round of reviews:

Innovation. Here are the second set of presenters at PhoCusWright’s Innovation Summit. This is after seeing the presentations at the innovation summit with +/- on the ratings. Here is my original overview. The ranking is not a measure of how successful their business is, but rather what I fell their impact will be on the travel industry as a whole. 0 would be no change, 10 would be the industry will never be the same, exciting stuff:

Were my adjustments fair?

Innovation. After my preliminary reviews, I wanted to provide live feedback on the presenters during the innovation Summit at PhoCusWright 2009.

Here are the first round of presenters:

Innovation. Here are the second set of presenters at PhoCusWright’s Innovation Summit.  Here is the link to the first set of reviews that I did. The ranking is not a measure of how successful their business is, but rather what I fell their impact will be on the travel industry as a whole. 0 would be no change, 10 would be the industry will never be the same, exciting stuff:

Were my ratings fair?

Innovation. Last year I had the privilege of presenting rezgo.com at PhoCusWright’s Innovation Summit in 2008. The format is intense, 12 minute presentation after 12 minute presentation. While this can be a little overwhelming, I will be putting together a brief overview of all that are presenting to give some background knowledge on each company.

Here are the first round of presenters:

I was looking at Morgana Travel’s Website and found a really great case for using a travel agent as opposed to booking online. It was so well written that I will use it verbatum:

You can find the original at http://www.moragatravel.com/whyagent.php

5 Reasons to Use An Agent

1. Travel agents get amenities

In most cases, your travel agent can get you prices that are competitive with what you would find online. However, what you book online is almost always going to include less than what you will get when you book through an agent. Another way that vendors encourage travel agents to book their customers with them is by offering amenities. These amenities can be anything from a bottle of wine in your room or free breakfast to free room upgrades and special events or activities. Travel vendors tend to look for ways to give special treatment to people who have booked through an agency because they know that the best way to get an agent to recommend their product is to have one of our customers comeback from their trip happy.

2. Travel agents answer the questions you don’t know to ask

Half the fun of travel is experiencing something brand new. However, when you book through a faceless website or big conglomerate you learn a lot of things the hard way. Travel agents are perpetual students constantly taking online classes and many times even visiting firsthand to learn about the places they are sending clients. They’ll be able to help you not only with how to get there, where to stay, and what to do but also what to pack, when is the best time of year to go, what time of day to do what, and things to make sure to eat while you are there.

3. Travel vendors are more flexible with agents than they are with you

Anyone who has booked online knows that most of the time you have to take the non-refundable option in order to get the best pricing. In most cases this is not true for travel agents. Travel agents offer the opportunity for future bookings to a vendor. In exchange for that they are afforded much more flexibility in booking and payment terms. Not only can a travel agent hold space for an amount of time without and deposit, they can also make changes that an Internet traveler can’t make and in many cases they can get price adjustments if the pricing comes down between when you book and when you travel.

4. Travel agents don’t call customer support

When something changes or goes wrong with a trip you’ve booked yourself you’re forced to enter that dreaded abyss that is phone support. In most cases, travel agents don’t call this number. They have an account representative or a business development manager that answers to them when things change or go wrong. This person is compensated based on how much business the agency does with them so they are highly motivated to keep your travel agent happy. Not to mention the fact that you can go back to enjoying your trip instead of waiting on hold once you’ve called, emailed, or even text messaged your agent as you can rest assured you’ll be hearing back from them shortly with a solution to your issue.

5. Travel agents have firsthand experience

When you book on the Internet there is no real way to know exactly what you are getting. Descriptions are purposely vague. Photos can be distorted or chosen carefully to avoid undesirable items. User reviews are unreliable seeing as many positive reviews are obvious fakes and even the negative ones need to be taken with a grain of salt as they may only reflect an isolated occurrence. When you work with a good Travel Agent not only have they probably been to the places they are recommending themselves but they have established a trusting relationship the vendors they book for you and can usually apply a large amount of pressure to make things right if you are ever dissatisfied. Travel Agents know that they are staking their reputation and any future business on what they book for you and they take that very seriously.

5 Travel Agent Myths

1. Aren’t travel agencies going away?

Travel agencies still account for 51% of all travel sales in the US and preliminary indicators show that this number is actually starting to grow. Sure, the Internet caused a shakeout in the industry and many of the Agencies that were not able to adapt to the shift from being travel gatekeepers to trusted advisors on a complex industry have closed down. However, many agencies are not only surviving but thriving in the current world as Travel continues to become more complex every day.

2. Travel Agencies Charge all sorts of fees

In most cases the only difference between a Travel Agent and your favorite website or package dealer (ie: Costco, American Express, etc.) is that your neighborhood is upfront with you about their fees. The book yourself places still charge many of the same fees but they hide them in markups and fine print. It used to be customary for Travel Agents to get paid by the supplier in commission. That all changed several years ago when the major US airlines stopped paying commissions. Travel Agents still earn commissions on some things but not enough to stay in business without charging a fee for their service. Most people who use a travel agent will tell you that theirs is worth his or her weight in gold but all he or she will really charge usually amounts less than 10% of the cost of your trip. You tip your waiter more and your not trusting him with your precious vacation time.

3. Using the internet is just easier

It’s hard to argue that anything could be much easier than booking a trip at 11:00 PM on a Saturday in your underwear. Super simple, right? Unless you would like more information than what is provided in the 4 sentences and handful of strategically composed photos you are given. Or if you change your mind after you click “Book It” and want to make a change. Or if you arrive on your trip only to find that your flight/room/rental car has been oversold or a mistake has been made. Any of these things result in the dreaded travel purgatory of waiting on hold with some phone support person hoping that they will be generous enough to grant you a solution. Sure, you have to actually pick up a phone or send an email to get in touch with your travel agent and they’ll ask you lots of questions at the start to get to know you so they can make sure to find the right trip for you. After that however a short call, email, or text message and your agent is busy at work making sure everything is just right for your trip so you can worry about the important things like how many pairs of flip flops to pack.

4. This trip is too small to use an agent

It’s true you won’t get much benefit out of using an agent if all your doing is booking a quick flight to visit your sister for the weekend. It’s also true that your travel agent won’t make any money on a trip like that. Most travel agents however prefer to be your all purpose travel advisor and don’t mind booking trips like that for you on just an email. Your travel agent appreciates any opportunity to get to know you better as a traveller and the more trips they book for you the better they get to know you no matter if the trip is 11 days in the Mediterranean or 3 days in Bakersfield.

5. A Travel agent will pressure me into buying

It is true that some travel agents have been trained to be high pressure closers but these days those types of agents are going by the wayside. Successful travel agents depend on business and referrals stemming from the close personal relationships they painstakingly cultivate with their clients. No single trip is worth sacrificing the hours of effort it takes to get to know a client well enough to be their true trusted advisor. Even working on a trip that you don’t end up taking gives you agent ideas for trips to watch out for you in the future. So, have no fear of pressure sales and if you don’t feel comfortable calling or emailing your agent with even the smallest question you should find someone new.

What do you think? Do you still use a travel agent for your small bookings? Have you found that the time and energy saved using a travel agent is worth the benefit gained?

You have heard all about Twitter, you know what a tweet is, but as a travel company where do you start?

Businesses are finding it harder and harder to have their websites found on the Internet. With rising Cost-Per-Click (CPC) rates and AD Word costs constantly on the rise, who can blame them? The Travel Industry is intensely competitive, and in order to compete with the giants in the AD Words game you have to spend an arm and a leg.

Social media marketing has given small businesses a chance to compete and also continue what they have always been good at (socializing and maintaining relationships). Twitter is just one of many tools that are available to help with this, but with its ease of use and large share of the market, it makes sense to start connecting and interacting with potential customers here.

What is it?

Twitter has been described as “micro-blogging”, which basically translates into you writing a 140 post updating your contacts about something you find interesting. These posts can include links to other sites, pictures that you just took, even links to short video clips. Companies use it to reinforce their brand, get feedback, advertise, share news and also have a dialogue with existing/new customers. If you are familiar with text messaging on a cell phone, or instant messaging then you are familiar with the format. The main difference is that instead of you communicating with an individual at a time, you now have the potential to communicate with a much wider audience.

Who should start?

According to Richard Earls* “Twitter will appeal to those travel agents most comfortable with developing a casual marketing persona. But to Twitter well, it’s important to take a very concerted examination of your branding, the development of your online persona and the content you develop to post.”

How do I get started?

Tom Humbarger has a great getting started list*:

• Go to twitter.com and sign-up. Pick a Twitter name that matches your company name or alternatively a name that includes your company name such as @companyteam
• Build up a level of tweets so other users will see you as credible and relevant – the minimum number of tweets that you should accumulate before you start promoting your account is somewhere in the 50 to 100 range  (most users will ignore you if you have few tweets or haven’t been tweeting for very long)
• Fill out your profile completely including a URL as most people will not follow anyone with an incomplete profile
• Create a customized Twitter homepage (that matches your corporate brand as much as possible) to provide additional information about your company and products

Getting your message out

• Try to tweet 5 to 8 times per day, and you should space them out throughout the day if possible
• Only 20% or so of your tweets should be related to your company or include a marketing or ‘advertising’ message – the others should be tweets about related topics that provide value to your followers or show a more human side of your company; people will stop paying attention to you if you use Twitter exclusively for self-promotion
• Most of your tweets should contain a link to a website, blog post, article, etc. – these  are the types of tweets will establish your Twitter account as being a source of great content and worthy of being followed back
• Use HootSuite’s to schedule your tweets and to track your tweet clickthrus and their Hootlet app to easily tweet the URLs of content at the source – Hootsuite also lets you include multiple users on the same account which can help to spread out the Twitter workload

Following people

• Use one or more of the Twitter directories (WeFollow or Twellow) to locate potential users to follow based on their interests and geography
• Follow anyone who mentions your company or keywords that important for your business
• Periodically do a Twitter search on your company name or click on @yourname from right panel to see who is re-tweeting you or mentioning your name
• @reply people to thank people or to just reach out to them
• RT or re-tweet posts that you think are worthy – generally these people will notice and start following you
• You don’t want to grow your Twitter following too quickly – steady growth is better and a goal of growing 100 to 200 per month is a good start for most businesses

I know the basics, now how do I make MONEY!!

This has to be part of a larger strategy, you will not make money buy tweeting “Please book all of your travel with us, we are really good! REALLY!!”

You have to identify your specialty. The Travel Industry is massive, and if you don’t focus on your specialty then you have little hope of being found online. There are so many different niches in the travel industry that you need to spend energy identifying your ideal customer as well as the type of travel that they are most interested in booking. This will allow you to focus on what your end objective is. Do you want more views/bookings on your websites? More phone calls? More additions to your emailing list? These questions are fundamentally important to understand before you start developing your revenue generating strategy with Twitter.

Once you have a customer in mind, a consistent branding message and know your end objective you need to find a way to give value to your targeted customer. This is where your creative juices need to start percolating.

Some ideas could include:

• Trivia questions with the answers on your website. This would be an opportunity to get them on a mailing list.
• Hot deals of the day updates – you could post one hot deal every day that links to your website. You could then track traffic coming from Twitter.
• Twitter coupons – Picture a “$500 off a Caribbean cruise for the next 5 people to tweet @XYZ Agency is the best!” tweet – This would drive existing followers to book as well as gain additional followers on Twitter. Win Win!

There are so many different things you can do with Twitter to drive traffic and get action, this is only scratching the surface.

Additional Resources

For those that are still getting started with Twitter, here is a good getting started resource, (http://bit.ly/j1Bw2) and here is a video that explains Twitter in a very simple manner: http://bit.ly/11XCTM

This is a list of travel companies already on Twitter: http://bit.ly/DdvY.

Tweetdeck is a great, free tool for helping you organize your Twitter experience.

Inspired from a post by Tom Humbarger: (http://tomhumbarger.wordpress.com/2009/08/28/best-practices-for-corporate-twittering/)

And a post by Richard Earls: (http://www.travelresearchonline.com/blog/index.php/2009/04/the-travel-agents-guide-to-social-marketing-a-twitter-overview/)

Here are 5 hints and tips that will help Travel Agencies start out using social media. They are not all tactical suggestions, but also some strategic suggestions:

Social  Media is a 2 way street -

no matter which sites / technology you use it is always going to be about openness, transparency and relationships. If you are constantly sending messages out there, and not engaging in conversations, then you are missing the point.

Know Yourself -

The Travel Industry is massive, if you don’t focus on your specialty then you have little hope online. There are so many different niches in the travel industry that you need to spend energy identifying your ideal customer. This will allow you to focus.

Hang Out -

Once you know who you are looking for, you need to find out where your target client hangs out online. There are hundreds of social media communities, groups (Facebook shows over 500 groups when you search ‘Travel’) and many amazing blogs. Start by reading what everyone else is talking about, and see if they are similar to your target group, and then start to join the conversation. A good way to start is look for people with travel related questions, and then help them out.

Tweet-le Dee, Tweet-le Dum -

Twitter is growing in popularity very quickly, and businesses are able to use this channel to drive business and gain new customers. For those that are not familiar with twitter, here is a good getting started resource, and here is a list of travel companies already on Twitter: http://bit.ly/DdvY. It is a good idea to see how others are using the service before you dive in. On that note, Tweetdeck is a great, free tool for helping you organize your Twitter experience.

The Blog Fog -

Some people think that they don’t have time to blog, and if they think it is a good idea, they fear that they don’t know what to write about. The great thing is that once you get started, it just gets easier and easier to write, and if you are writing about something you are passionate about, then it is even easier. If you use your website to generate business, then blogging is the cheapest and most effective way to generate traffic to your site. It may take some time, but it is well worth it. Some hints are:

Use your own domain:

Your blog should be similar to http://yoursite.com/blog

If you use a 3^rd party blog that doesn’t use your web URL, you loose all of the SEO benefits. (Read bad)

Use a designer to get set up

If you are not comfortable with HTML and design, you should skip the hassle and pay a professional to setup a blog for you.

These 5 suggestions will give you some direction on how to get started. Let me know if you have any other hints for travel businesses in the comments.

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

“Making the Web Social”

Sounds like a pretty lofty plan, but that was the goal of the founding members of OpenSocial said Jeff Huber, senior vice president of engineering, Google. This is a technology that I feel is beginning to alter the way that people interact with the Internet, and is also effecting business. This post will give a brief history, show some current utilization, and then ponder into the void of the future to predict the evolution of OpenSocial and related technologies.

Short History

In 2007 Facebook made a bold step by releasing its API to developers to create applications on their platform. They did this because they soon realized that once users sign-up and start linking with their friends, they will eventually get bored. So adding the ability to continuously add new features that allow users to connect was a great plan. The problem with this scenario is that there are more than just 1 Social networking community (believe it or not!) In some regions, Facebook is not king, plus there are numerous niche community sites (add link) that do not want the same generic reach that Facebook offers, but they do want to have the ability to add applications and gadgets to their social community.

Enter OpenSocial. OpenSocial is basically a set of web standards that give programers the freedom to write code for a cool app, and have the ability to integrate it with a number of social communities and web sites. This makes developing a application much less of a daungting task, as you write it once, and instantly have an audience in the millions.

Some of the early adapters of this technology were virtual Tourist, myspace.com, Linkedin, Salesforce, Ning, hi5, FotoFlexer, iLike.com, orkut.com, RockYou.com, Slide.com, Flixter and Viadeo.com.

So what?

Open social has been deemed the main competitor to Facebook as it allows for one identity to be shared across several web based services. With the future of computer development transitioning to online software as a service, it will be interesting to see if there will be one dominant player, or if we will continue to juggle “just another inbox“

Have you noticed open social technology?

A recent study by Click Forensics has revealed a frightening trend for sites that generate revenue through advertising: fraud is on the rise!

“The overall industry average click fraud rate grew to 17.1 percent for the fourth quarter of 2008. That’s up from 16.0 percent in the third quarter of 2008 and from the 16.6 percent rate reported for the fourth quarter of 2007,”

One of the main sources of this type of fraud is BotNet traffic generators. These little programs are often embedded in viruses, trojans, and backdoor vulnerabilities. They basically give some control over your computer to a third party that will use your PC as a money generating machine for their ads.

So what does this mean for the Travel Industry?

If you use Google Ad Words to market your product / website, the likelyhood is that your ad dollars are going to these scammers. In the long run if this issue continues to grow, your budget will have to grow in order to attract the qualified leads that you require to grow your business.

In the meta perspective, the faith in online advertising may begin to diminish. The number of scammers is on the rise, and they are constantly looking for new ways to cheat people for money (I was personally on the receiving end of a sophisticated BotNet virus last week). As the reliability of leads begins to deteriorate, companies may start to feel that the Internet is not necessarily providing the most trackable advertising model.

If online advertising is a major focus of your ad spend, you may want to consider using a traffic quality service like Click Forensics or see what Google is doing with the Ad Traffic Quality Centre.

Well aside from my less than sexy title, this is a great find! Hubspot has just posted their webinar that shows companies how to combine SEO, Blogs, and social media (which I would argue includes blogs) to gain marketing results.

Check it out the webinar:

http://www.hubspot.com/archive/sbsm-webinar/

Twitter, the next wave of social media microblogging is sweeping the net. This post tracks the history of the application, its current uses, and what the future may hold for this little app.

If you are not familiar with Twitter, think of it as a mix of a mini blog and an instant messenger program like MS Messenger or ICQ. Users create an account and are given 140 characters to express their thoughts, their finds, and respond to conversation. After users create an account they can connect with friends and business associates around the world to stay in touch, share links and have a conversation.

So who uses Twitter and WHY???

Recently at the PhoCusWright Conference in Hollywood, I was the “silent panelist” for a panel on social media and blogging. My responsibility was to ‘tweet’ or post to Twitter during the presentation, and the audience was able to follow the conversation during the workshop. This usage of Twitter brought a new level of interaction during the workshop, and allowed those at home to follow some of the themes of the discussion.

Kevin May recommended that everyone using Twitter ‘tag’ each post with #phocus08, as a group we were able to generate buzz, and were the 6th most popular topic using Twitter at the time, which generated interest and additional traffic for the conference.

If you are looking to start using Twitter, here are some good recommendations from Social Media Today. If you are interested in the Travel industry, and are looking for some people to follow, you should check out Elliott Ng’s blog post at Uptake. He introduces a number of great travel Twitter users and companies.

Real Value, or Really Distracting?

During the social media conference, a great question was sked from the audience, “Is there any real value in using Twitter? Are you sure that you are not just distracting yourself, and wasting time?” This question becomes more relavant as your friend list grows, (mine is at 522) and you are constantly inundated with updates that range from the mundane, “on train an hour after leaving the office” to the inspirational. One tool that William Bakker recommended to me was TweetDeck, it allows you to layout your twitter feed, all direct replies, and direct messages. This really help to keep any relevant conversations accessible.

What does the future hold?

Well despite how much we may all love Twitter, one fact remains, they don’t have a business model. Their service has been scaled back; not more sms notifications in Europe and in Canada, and shakeups at their headquarters. These facts don’t give me great confidence that we will have Twitter in its current form for much longer, but with the amount of interest and users, we may see some future iterations of the service.

Just my two cents..

If you want to follow me, just add: PhilCaines

Update

Twitter was just described as “a crowd sourced information dissemination system.” Could this be the future of news? Worth the read.

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 ;)

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..

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!

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.

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.

“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.

Here is the article for further reading:

PhoCusWright Debunks Six Online Travel Myths

Myth #1: The number of online travel buyers in the U.S. is declining. In fact, that number is on the rise, as documented in the recently published The PhoCusWright Consumer Travel Trends Tenth Edition. In 2007, approximately 70% of online travelers (that is, adults who have taken a commercial air trip and stayed at a hotel for leisure in the past year, and used the Internet in the past 30 days) bought travel online, compared to 63% in 2006.

PhoCusWright dispelled this piece of misinformation—and debunked five additional online travel myths—at its first-ever Analyst Forum, held September 10 in New York City.

In addition to the misconception that online travel buyers are declining, The PhoCusWright Analyst Forum corrected these five other online travel myths:

1. More and more online travel shoppers use supplier sites than online travel agencies. While this belief is widespread in the travel industry, it is simply untrue, according to PhoCusWright, the travel industry research firm. In terms of popularity, online travel agencies are making a comeback (source: The PhoCusWright Consumer Travel Trends Survey Tenth Edition or “CTTS10“).
2. Travel agencies are experiencing a resurgence as travelers return to traditional purchasing channels. Not so. In reality, even many formerly exclusive offline buyers are migrating online for travel shopping and buying, according to CTTS10.
3. The next generation of travelers prefers to do everything online. The truth is, less than half of what 18-28 year olds spend on travel is spent online, according to The NEXTgen Traveler™ report, jointly published by PhoCusWright and Ypartnership.
4. Social networks and travel reviews have the greatest influence on travel decision-making. The NEXTgen Traveler™ report reveals that while social media is widespread, destination Web sites and online travel agencies are favored by nearly half of next generation travelers during the travel shopping process.
5. Online travel markets need high credit card and Internet penetration to succeed. The structure and ambitions of the travel marketplace are even more important drivers than infrastructure. Case in point is India, one of the most dynamic online travel marketplaces today, where roughly 98% of the population does not use credit cards or have access to the Internet.

Ypartnership has released an expanded summary of the findings that they and PhoCusWright have found on the “Next Generation Traveler”

These findings are really inline with the projections of current online usage, here is a summary of the key stats for the next gen traveler:

• They are smart (30% with a 4-year college degree; 20% with at least one year of graduate school)
• Affluent (30% of households with an annual income in excess of $100,000)
• Multi Generational (50% Echo Boomers (18-28 years) and 50% Baby Boomers (43 to 61 years)
• 71% use the Internet to search for travel information
• 41% have taken a virtual tour of a destination
• 38% have built a trip itinerary online
• 58% cite the “ability to check the best fares/rates” as the most important feature in a travel web site
• 37% report being influenced by personal comments read on social networking or travel advisory web sites, but they frequent social networking sites such as MySpace.com (56%) and Facebook (30%) more than travel advisory or review sites such as TripAdvisor (14%);
• 33% have authored and posted a travel review online.

The summary goes on to state that these consumers are less likely to be influenced by advertising messages. With all of these stats taken into consideration, it is no surprise that the travel industry is in a battle against comoditization.

As Jeremiah Owyang points out with Facebook’s new advertising model, there are new attempts to engage this demographic, and advertisers are striving to penetrate this attention lacking group. These trends are leading me to believe that travel has to really engage the senses and imagination of this new market in order to prompt buying action. A recent interview with Jess Butcher, head of partnerships at online travel experiences company isango!, shed some light into this area.

She was asked what was on the horizon for travel, here is what she said:

“The marriage of ‘where-to-go’ inspiration and commerce functionality is still one that no one’s quite nailed online just yet and we really believe the opportunity here could be immense.   There are an increasing number of inspiration-style tools that take activity preference and demographic-detail into consideration, but they tend to culminate in standard flight/ hotel/ car booking engines.  There’s a proliferation of new community style-sites, technologies, widgets and trip planning tools emerging right now – from which we expect to see a bit of boom and bust cycle – but looking forward to seeing the winners.”

I agree, there is an ever increasing decline in what hotel, which airline, and which car rental company consumers choose, and more of a focus on “I did the most crazy tour when I was in ____________,  check out this amazing tour website!”

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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: