NB: We asked the Tnooz Nodes to reflect on their Predictions 2010 from 12 months ago – do they have Oracle status or did something come along to derail their forecasts.
Also, what were their favourite posts of the year, on Tnooz or elsewhere, by themselves or others.
Valyn Perini (OpenTravel Alliance)
Prediction 2010 #1:
More niche travel content – tours, activities, golf, vacation/villa rentals – will move online in consumer-friendly form, including rich media and content, real-time availability, perhaps even transactions where appropriate.
Consumer demand will grow, which will lead to more funding and more start-ups, which may finally convince the large OTCs and GDS’ that these segments are worth pursuing.
On reflection:
While it was true that long-tail content moved online at a pretty rapid clip, I’m not so sure about the ‘consumer-friendly’ part.
Certainly Facebook and other social media sites have been a boon for niche content, allowing suppliers and providers a fairly inexpensive way to getting their messages out.
Pegasus did make a splash in the vacation rental space with its announcement of a vacation rental switch, but the large OTCs and GDSs have generally remained on the sidelines in most niche segments.
Prediction 2010 #2:
Declining costs of technology, an increased awareness of the value of messaging standards, and the constant search by distributors for additional electronic inventory, will combine to allow small-to-medium suppliers in all segments to expose their inventory cost-effectively and competitively, increasing their market share and providing consumers with meaningful travel product choices.
On reflection:
If I measure the success of this prediction by the increasing enrollment of small-to-medium companies in the OpenTravel Alliance, then I win!
However, there’s a lot of frustration by the suppliers with the lack of affordable distribution channels available for content and inventory, along with the myriad of ways to connect to those channels. And generally these small companies don’t have the financial or intellectual resources to build their own solutions, which means the technology companies have to foot most of the bill.
Because of that, there are lots of companies floating lots of different models, with the end result being consumer confusion and no rationalization of distribution costs for suppliers.
Favourite articles of 2010:
- The problem with vacation rental websites [Tnooz]
- Four types of non-destination based search and what it means for online travel [Tnooz]
- .Net nested attributes and OpenTravel Scheme [OTA forum]
Related posts:
About Valyn Perini
The Travel Technology industry is a funny world. There are really big players (like the OTAs and GDSs) and then there are really small players. Unfortunately, the majority of real innovation is being produced by small to medium niche players who struggle with gaining scale for their solutions.
Industry standards help. Open Travel and the Open AXIS Group are working together to seek the common threads that allow these innovative models to emerge and grow.
It is time for the larger travel technology players to adapt and accept the inevitible and work with the industry at large to move forward. Rationalizing distribution costs for suppliers frees up capital to invest in new revenue streams that all players can benefit from.
Well – we’re not all in that boat