on 19 March 2010Suddenly, it’s all about local — news about your city, deals from your area and the best vacations from your airport.
TechCrunch reports that Rob Solomon, the former president and CEO of SideStep before Kayak bought it, will become president of Groupon, which offers deals of the day from your local area.
Solomon also is a partner in Technology Crossover Ventures — which made investments in CheapTickets, ebookers, Expedia.com, GTA, HomeAway, NexTag, Orbitz and Travelport — and he is a HomeAway board member.
Today’s Groupon deal of the day in Boston was for an introductory helicopter-flying lesson and the offer was creating a lot of aerodynamic lift.
But, Groupon does its share of travel or destination-related deals, too.
Here’s a recent deal for a “90-Minute High-Speed Boat Tour of the Boston Harbor.”
And, here’s a hotel deal from Groupon at Omni Resorts in Mount Washington, N.H.
Meanwhile, AOL, which was spun off from Time Warner Nov. 27, 2009, is “pursuing local opportunities,” according to its 10-K SEC filing.
“We believe that there are significant opportunities for growth in the area of local content, platforms and services, by providing comprehensive content covering all geographic areas from local neighborhoods to major metropolitan areas,” AOL states. “By enhancing these local offerings we seek to provide consumers with a comprehensive local experience.”
The Wall Street Journal reports this week that AOL has allocated $10 million to an internal venture capital fund to seed start-ups with a local focus.
AOL has long had local entertainment guide’s such as City’s Best, but acquired local news and directory site Patch.com for $7 million in cash in June 2009 in the belief that AOL can make headway with its media business — especially given the struggle of local print publications — if it focuses on small communities outside of major metropolitan areas.
AOL states: “For small communities, local newspapers associated with nearby metropolitan regions have been a central resource for news and events. We believe these local print publications are currently facing significant economic challenges. In order to take advantage of these dynamics we intend to significantly invest in this area and establish online destinations that provide comprehensive news, events and directories at the community level.”
AOL is in the process of rolling out additional Patch websites in small communities.
They are basically news websites, but they have travel and transportation directories which might be bolstered.
Interestingly, Travelocity still powers part of AOL Travel, but the word “travel” does not appear in AOL’s annual report.
In another manifestation of “local’s” cachet, BookIt.com, too, is trying to make its name locally, using its FROM technology to offer consumers the best vacations from their local airports.
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I believe we’re going to see a lot more interest in local areas. Big travel sites are great, but they often aren’t trusted enough because they don’t offer enough of the local spin. I think travelers and locals want “inside” information and tips they just aren’t getting from large travel sites.
@spencer – the interesting point here is from a content perspective. if sites want quality “local” content they may have to pay more for it rather than source generic content often found on other sites.
Kevin: And from the looks of it, Groupon has some unique content. And the user experience looks pretty appealing. I like how they give you a running count of how many purchases have been made for each daily deal.
And, I understand that Groupon earns huge margins on these deals.
Great article about this trend. When we started Spotted by Locals, there wasn’t much around yet. Now there’s more and more “local travel” content around. That’s great!
Together with WHL Group, we started a “local travel movement”. The focus is a bit different from the startups you talk about: we want to promote the local way of travel, because we think it’s a more rewarding way of traveling if you get in touch with the local people, and see places like a local!
Check: http://www.LocalTravelMovement.com, and if you’re in the local travel business yourself: join us!
Bart: I definitely like your slant on travel…getting in touch with the off-the-beaten path experts.
The locals.
Certainly if I’m traveling in Europe, I’m gonna use your service to augment my reality.
Good article – this area touches what got a ton of buzz at SXSW this year too. I mentioned Whrrl.com in another comment, and foursquare and Gowalla are interesting too.
If anyone likes, check out http://www.whrrl.com/blog and scroll to the CEO’s post – aside from the surface level aspects of local content, deals, and marketing, the psychology of all this is interesting too.
What do folks think of potential implications for hotel distribution, hotel/travel reviews, etc?