on 18 December 2009
I am a logical fellow, at heart just a code developer, hence when I look at what is happening I tend to analyse from what is possible, regardless of probability.
Code developers have to handle the one in 1,000 chance that a particular section of code will run hence we have to consider everything. That is just how it is.
But our logical minds don’t work quite so well when it comes to business.
Business seems to be more about emotion and connections than about whether something works or not.
- A to B – Take for example the humble online travel agent website (OTA). Historically they have been designed around how to get customer/user from A to B. User chooses departure (A) from a dropdown list. User chooses destination (B) from a dropdown list (that may or may not have updated depending upon the choice made in A). Simple. Basically this is how travel agent systems worked so early travel websites were bound to reflect that. Some argue that this meant that consumers were more likely to want to select destinations they knew. Long Tail destinations (that would have been suggested by an experienced travel agent in a human conversation with a customer) were not popular.
- A to anywhere – Next we hear about inspiration websites but, frankly, I haven’t seen one that I really like yet. Some local single destination inspiration websites are noteworthy, but no global sites that help with choice of destination in the first place. What is an inspiration website? In essence it is an A to anywhere website. You are in a fixed place where can you go? Most have to earn their income from media or commission from flight sales as with almost unlimited destinations it would be impractical for a company to have interesting commercial deals in every single destination that was in their inspiration tool.
- Anywhere to B – This is the logical combination that my code developer mind keeps coming up with. If you are going to have A to B and A to Anywhere surely there has to be an Anywhere to B option. It’s just logical. Except no one seems to be running a service with this combination. Thousands of A to B OTAs, tens of VC-backed A to Anywhere inspiration websites. Can’t think of any Anywhere to B sites/services.
Who would want such a service? Well many existing destination based travel companies for a start. Events also.
Imagine you sell tours in Morocco. All you really care about is how to get people to Morocco.
You have customers arriving from UK, from USA, from continental Europe, from Middle East etc. What you want is a really nice iframed content source that you could put in your website and explain how to make your destination attractive (reachable) from all sorts of source markets.
Doesn’t have to actually sell the flight ticket (for commercial/regulatory reasons) – just make the end user aware that they can actually get from Paris to Morocco for their 1 week holiday and who to check flight availability with.
The point about Anywhere to B is that there is money here. These destination websites/companies have real customers, real transactions. They are crying out for some kind of clever iframed/affiliate system.
But travel entrepreneurs have gone down the A to Anywhere route – complex, hard to monetise and technically challenging to build something that can come up with great advice to all sorts of different use cases.
Perhaps 2010 should be the year that startup entrepreneurs park the fancy concepts and focus on back-to-basics revenue generation? Anywhere to B would be a great place to start.
Related posts:
; ?>&n=a724587a)
Skyscanner has been doing Anywhere to B for a long time and their embedded widget meet precisely the goal you describe for destination sites who would want to promote fares to that destination from many possible departure cities.
I don’t know of any sites who use it though (and have not done any research).
Daniele is correct.
We offer ‘anywhere’ to B searches on our free widget (http://api.skyscanner.net/api/ajax/snippets/search-panel/introduction.html) and have done for well over a year.
Lots of sites are using the widget, from big tourist organisations like VisitScotland.com – to ‘mom and pop’ B&B sites.
We also offer A to ‘anywhere’ searches as standard.
(And of course A to B!).
cheers
Sam
Skyscanner.net
Anywhere to B is exactly the DMO play. They (generally) don’t care from where visitors come, how they travel there, who brings them etc. but they want everyone to visit them.
What they need to do is work together with those companies that enable them to make the most compelling, inspirational, motivational case to visit. By that I don’t mean a fare comparison site or tool but a trip planner tool. In many cases the traditional destination site just doesn’t do that job well enough for reasons mentioned many times in these columns before.
Maybe I’ve misunderstood your “code developer mind”, but I’m pretty sure my Sharing Travel Experiences site (http://www.sharingtravelexperiences.com) is exactly what you describe. We provide several types of resources to help our readership (anywhere) reach B (our travel tips, recommendations, and special offers).
As Daniele says, that is what Skyscanner is doing too, however, we’ve opted for a travel concierge model, which provides the same end product (reservations) but in a different way.
Alex, great post. Trying to get in the mind of the traveler is what we are all trying to accomplish. PlanetEye was built on the premise that people want to be inspired when they travel. Many sites do a great job at what you call A to B. Similarly, A to Anywhere is well covered too. The penultima is trying to help people who know they want to go, just not sure where to.
When Planeteye was born, the idea was that geo-tagged photos would inspire people to help make those decisions. We added in tons of relevant information on dozens of destinations world wide to help fill in the gaps. Our premise is that using photos. a map, videos and user reviews to help plan that trip for business or pleasure would make doing so easier. Travel today is a pain. If we could ease the suffering in the planning stage we thought we would be on to something.
I still believe in that premise. I feel that the consumer today is faces with the problem of too much information. It is simply too difficult to navigate the waters. As a result, speaking from personal experience, all my travel, personal or business is now booked directly with the supplier.
Today, what we are trying to do is help those suppliers, the DMO’s the CVB’s, airlines, hotels etc with their presentation. The truth is, when it comes to tourism content (if you will), they have the best information out of anyone. We try to help them sell their tours in Morocco by using mapping technology, photos, itinerary tools, videos and reviews.
Again, kudos to the great post Alex and for Tnooz for becoming the place where these discussions can take place.
Sorry for rambling.
Jonah
I’m not sure I agree with the author that “anywhere to B” is the next great opportunity. Essentially the question is how to distribute destination content to a broad audience irrespective of origin, and how to connect that content to trip planning and logistics. However, I agree with Jonah that sites like NileGuide and Planeteye are striving to do just that…connecting the dots between inspiration (”where should I go?”, “what kind of trip should I take?”), logistics planning (”how can I get there?”) and quality local/destination content (”what to do when you get there”) is the key set of offerings for a complete customer value proposition.
Josh Steinitz
CEO
NileGuide
For a humble programmer, Mr Bainbridge certainly likes to roam outside his patch, but as always thought provoking! In answer to the question posed by the title, I think the days of having the luxury of chasing audience regardless of revenue are over for most of us. There are precious few investors who will allow us the luxury of playful innovation without an eye on hard revenue. But then the post is not really about that.
Totally agree that Anywhere to B is an opportunity. In a small way, contextual ad networks are in this space – if you are on a page about Paris, Google ads give you some clues of how to go on holiday there. What’s needed now are some more useful, intuitive, contextual booking tools that destination sites can utilise to push users into the booking funnel for that destination, having inspired them to travel there. Simple contextual ad units will become multi-layered booking paths, and the company that can do this well will be on to a winner, because there are loads of travel guide sites, inspiration sites and newspaper sites out there who find it really really hard to monetise their content.
Hi Alex:
Great article and pretty well thought out. We watch out for Morocco travel news and such and your article came up. I wanted to present to you our company, Journey Beyond Travel LLC.
We are a small, eco-friendly, and culturally responsible tour operator who live and work in Morocco. We have an awesome Website (which I run) and do special tours to one destination. We do not even get involved in plane tickets (which if you know the business, you know is a dying breed of a way to make money).
So, because you mentioned Morocco, have not been impressed lately, and wanted someone who really cares about people’s experiences rather than where the money is at, I can tell you we are those people. And, while not so many of exist in Morocco, other tour operators around the world offer an intimate experience and truly care about your journey, its impact, and what you gain out of it to share with others.
Additionally, I see Website starting up everyday offering generic travel excursions. Yes, they suck. I can also say that their chances of making it big time are nill to none. Moreover, niche marketing, and focus is the way travel is evolving. People are getting tired of generic big bus tours and that’s where we come in. So, don’t give up, we do exist. It just takes some searching, although we rank pretty high for our keywords.
Take Care!
Thomas Hollowell
Hi everyone, thanks for the comments.
Anywhere to B is unlikely to be the next great thing (Josh did I say that, not sure I did!). What it could be is the next 1000 small things.
With A to Anywhere inspiration sites you have to magic up traffic out of thin air – from advertising, brand building, SEO – all that normal stuff that we know and love.
With Anywhere to B you are working on the traffic from real companies who have real customers travelling to that destination. Thomas from Morocco has an example of such a site. They probably get 50-200 bookings a month (not that I know who they are, just that is standard stats for a niche tour operator selling holidays). Get 1000 of them carrying your tool (which should be information based, not necessarily transactional) and you could build a solid revenue stream (from selling the tool on a subscription basis). Won’t be an overnight success, but would keep solid revenue coming in whilst working on looking at the data from the other perspective and building up your inspiration site that will exit for millions!
Hi Alex,
Thanks for your comments (they are spot on : )
I would like to talk to you about a tour operator system that I have been thinking about. Can you email me? jbt@journeybeyondtravel.com and tom@thomashollowell.com?
Bummer I don’t get any link love in my post above! c’mon : )
Thanks!
Thomas
Thomas: Thanks for the further comments. Yes, I deliberately deleted your suite of previous links, sorry.
I know it’s nearly Christmas, but our goodwill doesn’t extend to link love.
Besides, you got one link in the author title.
Hi Kevin:
Thanks! I didn’t know I got a link there. Sweet.
So, happy holidays and thanks for all! Maybe I will get more link love in my stocking? darn.
Take Care,
Thomas
Hi Alex,
At the very heart of WhichBudget model is A to Anywhere and Anywhere to B. That is where our name comes from: “which budget airline flies from A” or “which budget airline flies to B”.
Straight from the homepage, you can choose “I want to fly to Morocco”, then choose your arrival airport and we list all destinations from which you can fly, with budget airlines, to that destination.
And we have the widget too (and an iframe), which any DTM can incorporate into their website. See http://www.whichbudget.com/from-anywhere-to-morocco.html as an example.
We always focused on the “crowd” not on money! Airline XYZ does not pay commission but has budget fares? We will add it! Our visitors come back to WhichBudget over-and-over-again because they know we will: a) have a comprehensive, independently put together list of budget airlines; and b) always link them to the cheapest source for booking their flight (most often the airline website itself), even if we could make more money by directing them to an OTA instead.
We heard you though! In 2010, we plan to improve our product and move much more towards what you describe above as “inspiration website”: as well as adding more scheduled airlines to improve the offering, we will source inspirational ideas from our travel mag: TheTravelMagazine.net
Regards,
Martino Matijevic
Founder & CEO
WhichBudget.com
I am an inbound and niche hotel operator in Costa Rica. If I understand Alex correctly, what he is talking about is a tool that the visitors to my site could use to get all the flight options from anywhere to Costa Rica.
If that is what it is, and it is user-friendly, reliable and reasonably priced, I’d buy it in a heartbeat.
If the visitors could then go on to book flights at competitive prices, the tool would be more valuable to me whether or not I received a commission on the flight.
Much more important than the pittance that airlines are paying is the fact that once they have bought the flight they are committed to travel.
In any case if anyone is developing this put me on your list.
Hi Michael,
We have already developed an Anywhere to Costa Rica budget flights widget. I’ll get in touch via email.
Regards,
Martino
Merry Christmas everyone!!!!
Hi Alex,
Great post; thanks for sharing your insights.
My company, FatPassport, has a site in alpha and while we have lots of work to do, users tell us it is already one of the best places on the web for travelers to determine where they should go, based on their specific timing, interests, and budget. Let me know what you think!
Bob Thomas
CEO, FatPassport
Do any city/region/country destination websites have anywhere to B functionality?
It seems logical that they should or at leastprovide links to those that can.