Sharing The Travel Industry's latest Technology
Posts tagged travel technology
Travel Technology Review Podcast
Dec 17th
The Travel Technology Weekly Review is, as you can imagine, a weekly review of the latest happenings in the Tourism Technology industry. We examine the latest trends, research, sites and happenings in the the Tourism Tech world.
Stephen first talks about Travelbookmarking.com, it gives travelers the ability to bookmark their own sites to make a travel guide.
He then talks about Travbuddy.com and how hotelscombined.com have partnered to allow site users to book hotels while browsing user generated content
Stephen finishes his commentary with a study conducted by the Kelsy group and how user generated reviews effect customers spending habits. Thanks to Joe Buhler for brining this to our attention.
In my segment of the Podcast I talk about research my friend Claude Benard found from Fabernovel regarding Facebook applications.
I then discuss a new Beta travel guide site, Nile Guide. This site has the potential to revolutionize the travel guide industry, you should check it out.
Lastly I cover some observations from the ever wise Vicky Brock regarding the influence of social media on online reservations.
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.