Sharing The Travel Industry's latest Technology
Posts tagged booking trends
Facebook Consumerism?
Oct 29th
Microsoft’s recent $240 million investment into Facebook.com has resulted in a valuation of over 15 billion dollars for everyone’s favorite social networking app. Why so much? Do we honestly believe that the company has a business / revenue model that would warrant such a price?
Many people have speculated that Facebook’s advertising announcement on November 6th will pave the way to revenues for this darling social community, but what are they thinking? Are they planning on leveraging all of the profile and demographic information to allow advertisers to send targeted advertising messages? If they are, so what? Are people really open to advertising messages when their primary goal on the site is to communicate and “SuperPoke” their friends? Look was happened / is happening to Myspace.com, once the site became saturated and cluttered with advertising, it started to loose its key influencer user base and their growth stagnated.
What about add on apps, or widgets? There has been a lot of corporate buzz about buying your own widget, and companies such as Tripadvisor, eBay, Zoho, Jobster, and Blue Nile have all created or purchased existing apps. These widgets are used to complement the user experience on Facebook and to have banner ads or links back to the corporate site. But this whole process still needs to have a long tail marketing approach, users are there to communicate, if you don’t facilitate that, then your app will not survive.
How does this relate to the travel industry? Can a connection be made between travel experiences and face book? Would users be willing to share their experiences in a non-travel related site? How can a travel company effectively advertise or promote using this media?
There are 197 applications that attempt to bridge the gap between travel and the general online community. The sad thing for travel industry companies is that the most popular apps have the least functionality. The most active widget is one that allows you to have an image of a car on your page, and your car gets better with more points. This is followed by a number of apps that show a dot on a map or a flag from the countries that you have visited. You may speculate that this is a result of Facebook apps being in their infancy, and that greater functionality will follow, but that is not the case, there are some apps that are not popular that have a great list of features, one app Travel Map can:
“Plot your travels with this quick and easy tool and show the world how well-travelled you are. Brought to you by Travellerspoint, where you can also upload photos, start a blog and get all the travel help you need.”
This sounds mightily impressive until you realize that there are only 388 daily users.
What is the point?
If you are thinking about creating a widget for Facebook, keep it simple, complement the communication process, and give friends something to chat about. Have a soft ad, and link to your site through the widget. You may want to finish your development before November 6th, as there are going to be some BIG changes.
Amazing Online Reservation Statistics
Aug 30th
Recently I found an article that combined a number of interesting statistics relating to online reservations and sales through the Internet for the travel industry. These are really worth looking at:
- In 2007, nearly 40 million U.S. households will book travel online, spending $86 billion Web travelers now make up 79% of the U.S. travel population and 55% of them buy leisure travel online.
- High-income travelers, households with annual incomes of $100,000 or more a year, account for just 16% of the U.S. online leisure travel population – a market that represents 10.9 million households and spends $60 billion on leisure travel.
- In November 2005, reports that 79 million American adults are now using the Internet to plan their trips. Also growing rapidly is a propensity to book online, with nearly 65 million U.S. adults now booking this way.
Webtrends: Passport To Success
- Online sales of leisure and unmanaged travel in the U.S. are estimated to be $122 billion in 2009 – up from $65 billion in 2005.
- Half of U.S. interactive marketers questioned by Forrester Research in April 2006 said that they either used or planned to use blogs.
- The average rate for room nights booked through travel agents was 33.3 percent higher than the average rate for room nights booked via the Internet.
- In 2007, nearly one-third of all reservations in hospitality in North America will be generated from the Internet (29% in 2005).
- By 2010, more than 45% of all travel reservations in the U.S. will be done via the Internet (Merrill Lynch, HeBS).
- By 2010, the Internet will contribute over 45% of all travel-related bookings in North America.
- The ratio between the direct and indirect online channel continues to improve in favor of the direct channel: from 52:48 in 2002 to 56:44 in 2006; it is projected to be 62:38 by 2008. Some major brands already enjoy a very healthy 80:20 direct vs. indirect online channel ratios.
- It is much more expensive to book through a third party:
- Customers were more satisfied with the Internet travel service provider they last purchased from than they were with Internet travel services in general.
- According to a new report from PhoCusWright, Inc., next year, for the first time, transactions on the Internet will account for over half (54 percent) of all U.S. travel bookings.
What does it all mean?
There are defiantly trends that emerge from all of this information, but it is safe to say that online sales for the travel industry are becoming the norm. There are many vendors and resellers that will help distribute products for tourism companies, but the wise company will always give the customer the ability to accept bookings through their own website.
Accepting bookings on a companies home page will save company from paying high commissions and booking charges for each of the products that are sold. This passes on savings to the consumer and the company with the inventory, and eliminates the unnecessary middle man.
Check out www.Rezgo.com if you are interested in a powerful booking solution for your tour inventory. We created Rezgo with the latest trends in mind.
PhoCusWright’s Predictions on the Long Tail of Tourism
Jul 24th
Long Tails
For those of you that are not familiar with the long tail of tourism, the Long Tail includes the more diverse, less popular travel and tourism products. The breadth of these companies makes it attractive for all of the niche markets that are growing. This is where the market is predicted to experience the largest growth.
New technology is benefiting the consumer to enable greater access these smaller companies, thus helping the industry as a whole.
PhoCusWright offers five predictions about the future of the Long Tail in travel:
Prediction 1: The Long Tail era will drive a new economy.
Prediction 2: The Long Tail facilitators – content providers, software suppliers and ASPs – are in pivotal positions.
Prediction 3: Technology and standards will evolve.
Prediction 4: The democratization of supply will open up new marketing and packaging opportunities.
Prediction 5: The success of the Long Tail in travel is directly proportional to the quality of search – making metasearch, geographically-oriented search and vertical search key enablers.
The potential for tour operators and software developers to great greater access to the end consumer is growing every day, you can only imagine what types if niches will be catered to. (Space Travel Anyone?)
CTC has UGC (And more initialisms)
Jul 24th
It is becoming the most trusted source of information on the internet, and it is coming from a complete stranger. User generated content (UGC) is now the most trusted source of travel information on the internet (90% trust it, TripAdvisor).
This UGC was most often reserved for big travel sites like TripAdvisor.com and Expedia.com, well now Destination Management Organizations (DMO) are getting on board. The Canadian Tourism Commission (CTC) has just recently partnered with Real Travel to allow users to generate their real, travel stories about Canada. How the CTC will leverage this content in their marketing mix is yet to be fully seen, but I am glad to see the big guys jumping on this trend.
LinkBaiting For Tourism Companies
Jun 21st
There has been a huge focus on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in recent years. People hire companies to optimize their website and streamline the page results. It has now been realized that small companies can increase their SEO presence through more creative and innovative means. The way that sites like google.com and yahoo.com index their sites makes it very beneficial for companies to have links to their sites from other websites. This is termed linkbaiting, or agreeing to host another non-competitive website’s link on your site in exchange for a similar service. The Canadian Tourism Commission recently released 5 suggestions to maximize your web presence with minimal cost. These recommendations are focused on small independent tourism companies:
- Top 10: Creating a ‘top 10’ type list closely related to your industry usually gets quality results. It is therefore important to define which subjects truly interest your target market and to evaluate what is already available on the internet.
- Resource site: Listing the blogs, forums, directories and so on that are of interest relative to your domain can attract numerous links. In fact, the creators of these sites will probably be interested to create a link to a resource site, especially if it is in a neutral field.
- Humour/Controversy: According to your industry or positioning, humour or controversy could be a good link generator. If you’re lacking imagination, you can check Flickr or YouTube and find an amusing video or image with a link to your products or services.
- Useful functionality: Developing a tool that can be used by your potential clients has as much of an effect on links to your site as your renown for being forward‑thinking in your area of expertise!
- Link a study or report: A report with different content and exclusive data will be sure to attract quality links.
Linkbaiting or link exchanges have been a very effective driver to our site, Rezgo.com. Recently when looking at our google analytics we have noticed that 65% of our site traffic has been directed by companies that we provide booking server CMS solutions for. People are finding our link on accomodation and tour provider’s websites and following the link to our site. These click-throughs have a low bounce % and spend an average of 5.5 minutes on our site. These are people you want looking at your site.
What have you found with Linkbaiting?
Has it worked for you?
Booking Travel Products Online
Jun 15th
In the last quarter of ‘06, Forrester Research released findings on why there is still a resistance for consumers to book their tour and travel plans through the Web. Over 5,000 North American tourists were polled to reveal the top 3 reasons why they put down the mouse and pick up a phone to book their travel plans. The top of the list is an obvious choice, people are affraid to put their personal information over the Net. With the rampent credit card fraud and identity theft in the news, people don’t know what they can trust. In 2006 32 percent of those polled said that the reason they use traditional travel-reservation methods is fear of identity theft.If you are an online retailor you better make it clear that your site is secure from the beggining of any transaction in order to appease any of these fears.
The second largest turn-off of those polled was the lack of customizable options for their selection. Whether it was a type of model, room configuration, dietary requirements, the people want to be heard. Give the options when customers are booking, you never know this could lead to an upsale!
The last reason people preferred not to book on line was that there were user interface problems. If a common tourist can not figure out how to book and what the result will be, they are not going to follow through with the reservation. Give the consumer some scope, let them know how many steps are required to complete the booking. Tell them what the outcome will be, will they receive an email? Will they get further confirmation once the tour has been validated? Give them a sense of control of the situation and you will guarantee more reservations streaming in through your website.
Source:
http://www.infoworld.nl/idgns/bericht.phtml?id=002570DE00740E18002572A400017306