Two recent studies point to the emergence of the newly chastened traveler. So what are we – victims or champions?
Forrester’s Henry Harteveldt outlines such concerns in one about the fate of eBusiness and in other concerning optimism amongst travelers.
Harteveldt notes: “The travel industry is coming out of 2009 like a war-battled soldier — exhausted and aching” – his point being that the industry as a whole needs to take on the challenge to support the now battered and bruised traveller.
So far I see little to nothing I would have thought would be a tilt in the direction of addressing what can be done to stimulate traffic. So why is this?
My sense is that the different parts of the distribution and sales process have truly fragmented and have not yet figured out how to be individual champions for their own part of a new pie type.
Further it shows that the days of the travel agency as a passive purveyor of the airlines’ product line is truly dead.
Those who operated thus are now officially roadkill and I doubt there are any left. The airlines, too, are not able to move the needle on the direct vs indirect split.
So perhaps now is the time to finally declare a truce in that war and focus on a modus vivendi in this new world.
Indeed, I believe we are at a new point in the evolution of the travel distribution model.
For sure there are new players who have some influence on the traveler – for example, metasearch (such as Kayak) and social media portals (such as Facebook in general and TripAdvisor in particular).
We are also at the point where the breadth of services that can be provided to the customer – both corporate and leisure – is greater.
The ability of the various players in the channel to be aggregators has risen.
Thus dynamic packaging can be initiated as much by a supplier as it can by an intermediary seller.
If you do not believe me, how else do you interpret this Delta scheme for cruise partners – similarly the ability of an intermediary to create new products has risen.
Acknowledging this new world order should give rise to all players taking a fresh look at how they promote and indeed to my core point WHAT they promote to their user communities to stimulate traffic. This is everyone’s responsibility, not just those traditional supply side players to initiate.
So chaps – time to dust off Marketing 101.
Time to re-assess how you market and sell. Time to provide real discernable value.
Failure to do this will hurt us all. We are at the pivotal point that will determine whether 2010 is a great year or “another year we survived”.
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About Timothy O'Neil-Dunne
Timothy: I agree we are dealing with a whole new ball game in travel distribution. We’ve known that for some time and travel agents long ago ceased being “passive purveyors of the airlines’ product line.”
A truce in the war? Are you referring to the airline.com versus OTA war? I don’t see no white flags coming over the next hill.
Your remedies sound like slogans: “So chaps – time to dust off Marketing 101.
“Time to re-assess how you market and sell. Time to provide real discernable value.”
I’m in favor of discernable value. Who isn’t?
But what does this say? Most companies are striving to provide discernable value…..
Just sayin’:)
Also I’m interested in your reference to “Delta scheme for cruise partners.” Got any details?
OK, I see the Delta stuff here. SkyMiles Cruises http://www.skymilescruises.com/default.asp?
I see this article as a challenge for debate rather than a thorough trend analysis.
If that is how it is intended then I agree the traveller is exposed to much more information breadth (not necessarily depth) than before, and the 2009 contraction has certainly contributed to that.
However it is doubtful whether the travel agency channel, and even airlines (Which airlines? Network carriers? Low costs?) should be written off so soon as an influencer in the travel purchasing or channel selection process. At least not in some parts of the world, like Asia for example.