on 18 November 2009 
(No Ratings Yet)
Tnooz conducted its first U.S. event last night, #tcamp1, at the PhoCusWright conference in Orlando, and it began a little raucously.
Big-wigs from #tcamp1 sponsors Amadeus, its sibling TravelTainment, TripCase and Tourabout sat on-stage to review the day’s events, competing with the not-so-hushed voices of hob-nobbing attendees armed with alcoholic beverages.
A section of the crowd — representatives from all over the travel-techosphere — just wasn’t in the mood at first for another panel discussion after sitting through almost three dozen, 12-minute presentations at the Travel Innovation Summit earlier in the day, but Tnooz Editor Kevin May, the low-key, grand-master flash of the evening’s town hall-style event, eventually got the throng’s attention as he meandered throughout the room, microphone in hand.
One of the most-speculated about questions was how many of the day’s innovating presenters — ranging from 10Best Solutions at 9:15 am to Travelport’s Journey Manager around dinner time — would survive to pitch their stuff next year at this time.
Andy Owens-Jones, the CEO of TravelTainment, definitively answered 11, and naturally included TravelTainment as one of the companies which will live to crunch another day.
When asked how he came up with that precise number of start-up survivors, Owens-Jones quipped something to the effect of: “Because that’s what I think.”
Hey, we don’t hold back on analysis at these events.
A bunch of other #tcamp1 participants were a bit more optimistic — some would say overly optimistic — believing perhaps 20 or so would still be around next year.
Tim Hughes, an Orbitz Worldwide exec from Australia, blogger extraordinaire and Tnooz Node, was speaking for himself when he chimed in that the success of a company may hinge not only on its technology, but also on context and timing.
For example, Hughes lamented the passing of Yahoo’s GeoCities, which was a pioneer in local/user-generated content but was shuttered because it didn’t mesh with Yahoo’s corporate priorities.
I mentioned that I was looking forward over the next couple of days to hearing from Priceline and Expedia, now that Priceline, riding on the shoulders of Booking.com, has surpassed Expedia’s market cap.
Adam Healey, co-founder and CEO of hotelicopter, said Priceline’s market-cap mark was an interesting data point, and he began pointing to the lack of innovation in the travel industry and the paucity of new brand-launches over the last decade, with the exception of Kayak. Healey added that we always seem to be talking about the same, large OTAs at these events.
Healey’s former company was based in Prague, but Hughes reminded Healey that there is a whole big world out there outside the U.S. when it comes to launches of major brands over the last 10 years.
So, let’s not forget Ctrip, Jalan and Hotel.de, Hughes pointed out. He also mentioned Rakuten Travel as another significant brand launch, but a day after the get-together mentioned to me that Rakuten Travel actually was created in 1996, beyond the 10-year window.
Journalist Edward Hasbrouck isn’t a fan of OTAs and OTA focus, and at one juncture challenged the assemblage to disprove his notion that the OTAs really are servants of suppliers with no real loyalty to customers.
No one defended the OTAs on that point.
Hasbrouck, too, bemoaned the fact that there has been little discussion at the PhoCusWright technology conference of the Amazon Kindle, which may one day turn out to be an important distributor of travel and nontravel content.
Some of the most intense audience discussions occurred toward the end of #tcamp1, as people batted around the challenges of destination marketing organizations (DMOs.)
The consensus seemed to be that DMOs, often reluctant to step on suppliers’ toes when promoting destinations, must embrace user-generated content or be left in the dust.
When the dust settled at #tcamp1 and the program ended, there were more drinks, informal discussions and gab as camp was over for the day.
Not a bad start for the launch of a new media brand, Tnooz, of which I am not a disinterested party.
Related posts:
Great event guys. Loved the format and discussion. I would have loved it to go longer next time.
Great work guys. Dynamic, if slightly alcohol-induced conversation
Sean and Adam: Thanks for the feedback. Let’s do it again.
Excellent comments and very insightful coverage of the event. As for the DMO challenge it goes beyond user generated content to embracing the idea of partnering with some of the many new trip planning innovators to turbo-charge their websites and make them into the essential tools they should be, or become soon, for them to stay relevant. Attending conferences like PhoCusWright and look at the bigger picture is a good start. Congratulations for that to the quite impressive Canadian contingent.
Ed Hasbrouck has a point — anyone that publishes print content should start getting involved with the Kindle. Amazon is trying to make it dirt simple for any publisher to sell their book or blog for display on the Kindle…it takes about 48 hours to set up, including the time to provide Amazon with a bank draft (the key hurdle is making sure you have a bank statement that includes the relevant “dotcom” Internet domain on it).
It’s really easy – if your content/galleys/whatever are in PDF format, simply open the PDF with Stanza (link to PC/Mac/ below) and then do a “Save As” in Kindle format.
In fact, perhaps it’s too easy. TechCrunch reported earlier this year that someone had managed to set up a duplicate of TechCrunch’s blog in the Kindle store, thereby allowing him to offer paid subscriptions to TechCrunch’s feed and profit from those subscriptions.
http://www.lexcycle.com/download
Joe: You are the expert on DMOs, and it seems like you have really pointed to the challenge ahead for them. Yes, it’s way more than ramping up user-generated content.
Like everything else in the travel industry, it also represents changing a mindset to embrace new ideas and technologies.
The best will do so and succeed.
Those DMOs which are scared or lazy will languish.
Brian: Good point about Kindle. Interesting, too, that Priceline CEO Jeffery Boyd commented during his interview on center stage at the conference that he suspects that mobile devices will get larger in size — i.e. Kindle-like — because he doesn’t envision that the future of mobile search will involve consumers typing in search terms on tiny keyboards. Maybe some form of visual search or something that we haven’t contemplated yet?
He said whatever that new device emerges to be….Priceline and others likely would end up aligning their online strategies with the new format.
Dennis – you should become familiar with Adobe AIR, which is not only being used by applications like Tweetdeck but is going to become part of the mobile experience on most mobile devices within the next 18 months.
As the descendant of widespread technologies like Flash and PDF, Adobe is investing heavily into authoring applications for AIR, so that publishers need not learn new skills to adapt existing content to AIR. I’d argue that it would be easier for Priceline et al. to leverage existing PDF or Flash content rather than add new staff who only focus on a new device.
And as far as the evolution of the display experience — I’m reminded of the early days of the notebook computer, when people couldn’t imagine the utility of putting an external monitor jack into a notebook. With the cost, size and utility of projection screens improving like gangbusters, I think it’s only a matter of time before mobile devices act as set-top boxes, capable of either sending a 3G/4G-delivered video signal to an existing HDMI-compliant monitor or projecting a video stream onto a flat surface.