Google’s acquisition of Frommers may have left a few in the travel guide world quaking in their boots – but My Destination is coming out fighting against the Big G.
Alongside signing content deals with HotelsCombined, Skyscanner and CarTrawler it has also revamped its suite of sites to make them easier to navigate, it claims.
My Destination currently has 68 different destination websites within the portal with content, including virtual tours and videos, developed by a bank of locals.
The company says this local expertise provides value to users and describes Google’s content search and processing muscle as a “commodity”.
However, given Google’s purchase of destination content specialist Zagat a year ago, the search giant clearly has designs on the sector.
The video platform has been also been made more user-friendly and further developed with 90% of clips now available in HD.
My Destination is hoping to add a further 55 destinations to its service in the coming months.
The company secured ÂŁ1 million in funding a year ago from its ‘franchisees’ who also develop content for the site.
Related posts:
About Linda Fox
The franchise model is an interesting one for travel.
One advantage is that the franchisee should be a truly local source of what the best places to visit are, but for well traveled places it will still be hard to differentiate their suggestions from existing travel guides.
Another advantage would seem to be the ability to quickly scale beyond the “usual suspects” of places already covered by travel guides. However in the franchise world the key to expansion is usually the “system” that the franchisor has put in place and tested out, so the real key is whether that system for the accumulation and display of interesting & compelling destination information is truly proven.
And of course the big question is whether people looking for travel destination information will find My Destination easier or better to use than Google (or whoever)? A couple of thoughts:
- The My Destination map is certainly very spare for things to do in the U.S. (two pins), and even in the U.K. Maybe they are still scaling up, but that doesn’t look good for a first-time visitor.
- Whereas Google Maps let you zoom in to find places by location, My Destinations starts with a map and then switches to seemingly endless lists of choices. They need to decide on a better search metaphor.
- Search categories like Accommodations, Restaurants and Shopping don’t overlap – you can only see one category at a time. How do you find the locations to visit that have the most things to do?
- It’s not clear how I remember choices.
- Lots of clicks. If they want to be better than Google, they have to be at least as good as Google in getting information to the user quickly.
This is a tough segment, and maybe My Destination will evolve into a strong competitor. But I think they still have work to do on being easier to use.
Hi Rob
You raise some good points and here are my comments in return:
“The franchise model is an interesting one for travel”
I’m glad you picked up on this. It certainly is and it’s the backbone of our business and has given us some very unique advantages and certainly strengths over others in the travel space, the most important of all is the ability as a global organization to actually cultivate face to face contact and relationships with tourism business owners & operators thanks to this local presence.
=====
“One advantage is that the franchisee should be a truly local source of what the best places to visit are, but for well traveled places it will still be hard to differentiate their suggestions from existing travel guides.”
It is certainly true and from our experience that we uncovered some hidden gems – obviously we realise how immensely valuable this is to our users.
As for the well traveled places, we would actually argue that our local expertise comes even more to forefront here. Like you suggest, users will find pretty much the same information for a popular destination from a myriad of other sites, so we strive to offer additional information on our site which is based on the local’s knowledge. I think many people will agree that no matter how well traveled a place is, there are still a lot of hidden ‘treasures’ that not everyone know about, and certainly if the traveler is coming from afar. That’s the whole point of our USP at My Destination.
Another dimension to our unique offering is that our on-the-ground franchisees can deliver comprehensive content in the medium of videos and virtual tours and these are a big push on our site, having already built up a large library of such content (and we continue to do so). A third dimension is that we’re tagging all our content so that soon users will be able to search for a type of attraction (for example) at a destination and then further refine the results based on for whom it is most suitable, for what of experience, etc, and again this is all powered by the knowledge of local experts
=====
“Another advantage would seem to be the ability to quickly scale beyond the “usual suspects” of places already covered by travel guides. However in the franchise world the key to expansion is usually the “system” that the franchisor has put in place and tested out, so the real key is whether that system for the accumulation and display of interesting & compelling destination information is truly proven.”
You’ve hit the nail on the head here, Rob. We’ve grown from 31 destinations in 2009, to 75 in 2010, to just over 100 in 2011 and now have more than 123 (68 live, 55 launching this year) with lots more interest following the launch of our new site.
As for the ‘system’ or platform, again you are right. We’ve been building and optimising (and at times even almost fully revamped) over the years to the extent that now it is quite a sophisticated and comprehensive set of systems covering Content Management, Email Marketing, Social Media Analysis, Web Analytics, Online Support Forums. In addition we have ‘systems’ of human-based support for the franchisees such as Sales, Technical, Social Media, Editing, Graphics, Video & Virtual Tours, as well as support be the community of existing franchisees themselves. In this manner, as soon as we sign up a new destination the franchisee has the full support and resources to get them launched as soon as they can. Finally, we also run an annual conference for planning, knowledge sharing, etc. To give you an example, this was a 4 day event which we held in Dubai and attended by close to 15 people in HQ and 85 franchisees including some new franchisees. This year we’re holding it Bangkok and its the highlight of our franchisees calendar year.
=====
“And of course the big question is whether people looking for travel destination information will find My Destination easier or better to use than Google (or whoever)? A couple of thoughts:
- The My Destination map is certainly very spare for things to do in the U.S. (two pins), and even in the U.K. Maybe they are still scaling up, but that doesn’t look good for a first-time visitor.”
This has always been our biggest limitating factor – our USP of local expertise and the strength that delivers is dependent on us having the right local franchise partners. This is something which takes time to find and has a vigorous vetting process. We also then have a stringent launch and quality assurance procedure before we go live with that destination. At this moment in time we have no less than 55 destinations, including several in the USA such as Miami and Los Angeles where teams are already going through our program and should all launch before the end of 2012. If interested you can see our full list of signed up franchise partners here – http://www.mydestination.com/corporate/our-local-experts.
As for finding destination information on Google, whilst Google will no doubt be pushing its (Frommers’) content on its search result the important point is one of choice, and our point is that users see the value in information that shows local expertise and in many instances choose us over more generally available (‘commoditised’) content including Google-owned Frommer’s. It’s vital now as a brand that we find ways to be constantly communicating our USP so that more and more people do get to know the My Destination brand. With 18 million travellers accessing our platform in the last 12 months we have a good foundation to build upon.
=====
“- Whereas Google Maps let you zoom in to find places by location, My Destinations starts with a map and then switches to seemingly endless lists of choices. They need to decide on a better search metaphor. ”
I guess we’ve slightly missed a trick in the final delivery and execution of our map, so appreciate the feedback. Our map on the homepage does in fact let you zoom and pan and find places by location. The list view is an alternative, not a replacement to the map. But otherwise, yes we are looking to introduce lots of fun tools to help give people inspiration of where to go and we also have a new site search function which currently is only available once you have selected a destination, but that we hope to soon bring to the main pages as well.
=====
“- Search categories like Accommodations, Restaurants and Shopping don’t overlap – you can only see one category at a time. How do you find the locations to visit that have the most things to do?”
Yes, definitely we will be looking to do this.
=====
“- It’s not clear how I remember choices.”
This is our one big gap at the moment, we’ve got a few things to focus on right now, but its our intention that very soon we will work on delivering some basic user/member functionality so that you can remember choices and even build an itinerary.
=====
“- Lots of clicks. If they want to be better than Google, they have to be at least as good as Google in getting information to the user quickly. This is a tough segment, and maybe My Destination will evolve into a strong competitor. But I think they still have work to do on being easier to use.”
Not sure whether we are comparing like-for-like here, Rob. We’re certainly not competing with Google as a search engine, and obviously we’ll continue to rely on appearing on Google’s results page. The navigation and information architecture between a search engine such as Google and content site such us our site is vastly and inherently different. A better comparison would be between us and Frommer’s, say. That said we appreciate the feedback and warm words…As we continue to scale and release more and more destinations we will absolutely make sure we work to improve the usability of the site in terms of making navigation even better.
Cheers,
Neil
Thanks for the detailed response Neil.
One of the big challenges for all travel content sites has been in staying memorable in between the brief times of the year that people plan travel and actually travel. No one seems to have cracked that nut yet, and if you’ll notice Google is coming at it from the other end of the proposition – they provide a service we all use daily (i.e. general search), and now they are adding (thru their Zagat & Frommers purchases) deeper local content.
And make no mistake about it, in this day and age of online research, you are competing with Google. But Google can be a fire hose of data, so whoever can help people find the information they are looking for quicker than what they can do with a Google search is going to be well thought of. As of today I don’t see My Destination able to do that, for the reasons I pointed out previously.
You also point out that you think you are really competing with Frommers, but in my household our Travel Planner in Chief (i.e. my wife) uses Frommers et al. as a starting point for her Google searches. So what Google is doing is connecting the CONTEXT that Frommers provides (the “why should you go here”) to their search (the “what”) and maps (the “where”). We already see the integration with Zagat on their maps, which provides very quick feedback for whether you should consider visiting a particular restaurant, and I’m sure we can expect the same soon for attractions and other categories.
Now the good thing is that Frommers doesn’t cover every city or region, but they do cover the most popular ones. And Google can expand them pretty easily if they want.
The good news is that there is plenty of room for niche services, and you have some momentum going. I know you have lots on your plate, but the two features I think would help build your customer base the most would be bookmarking/saving and better maps. Bookmarking give your users the ability to use you as a resource (they come back to see what they saved), especially if they can share with others. Better maps is part of providing better/quicker search.
My $0.02
Oh, and the name is Ron, not Rob.
Thanks Ron, I appreciate the two cents. As you can probably tell by our response to your initial points that we are by no means sitting back down thinking we are done with development of the product and we will have two releases before the end of the year that will help people find what they are looking for easier as well as save their choices so they can come back and continue planning at another date. Watch this space.
I must say this is a really interesting business to learn about. I had not heard of mydestination.com before today, but wish I had. I’ve been to several of the holiday destinations that are covered and having seen the website now I am sure our family holiday would have been so much better if we had known about it.
I actually do agree with the suggestions that Ron has made, I did not so much have an issue with the navigation (I actually thought it was really good) but having some way of remembering those companies I would like to look at again would be a big help, I may for example do some research in my lunch break and then want to show my wife in the evening when I get home those thing I think she would like.
Either way I think mydestination.com is a fantastic website and congratulate them on a great job. I’ve not come across the level of detail and local advice anywhere else, the move around picture tours are just amazing and I loved watching this Amsterdam video http://www.mydestination.com/amsterdam/802/about-us (a city I used to live in).
Hi John,
Thanks for the comments, I’ll be sure to let our team in Amsterdam know you enjoyed watching their video. We will certainly work on making it much easier for you to share things more quickly with others in your family
Cheers,
Neil
Unlike the TripAdvisors et al of the world, I would imagine that this business model depends entirely on the individual franchise owners in each privately managed location around the world making significant money out of their investments, and regardless of features and design, this is what will make or break it in the end. I do like the concept though, I’ll be watching this one with interest.
Interesting acquisition. It will be interesting to see how it pans out.