Or so says the TNT Travel Show, which surveyed over 1,o00 Brits aged 18 to 35 ahead of its annual travel exhibition in London in March.

Supposedly modern methods of travel research, such as scouring social media-led efforts for ideas for travel recommendations, were favoured by just 14% of those in the survey.

This compared to almost three-quarters (73%) who claimed to prefer word-of-mouth as the best method of getting tips when researching a trip.

Of course, a survey commissioned by an exhibition which features over 100 stands from brands giving word-of-mouth advice would be expected to say as much.

But the results are still interesting.

Travel blogs, lest we forget about their impact on travel planning, appear to be almost nowhere on the radar as influential channels to find advice on places to go, scoring a lowly 13% in the poll.

So perhaps this new generation of supposedly tech-savvy travellers are just a bunch of luddites after all?

According to the survey, 85% of Blackberry users and 68% of iPhones owners would leave their mobiles at home when travelling, preferring (90%) to simply pack a camera (presumably a digital one!).

But surely the cool kids would still be logging into their social networks and updating their own travel blogs when on the road?

Nope.

Three out of ten would prefer to use email to keep in touch, compared to a quarter that use Facebook, 16% opting for SMS text messages, 15% with Skype, 12% preferring to call, 1% via Twitter.

NB: Backpacker image via Shutterstock.

A number of properties – some of which are very high profile – have recently been contacted by an individual claiming to be the new “director of traveler reviews at TripAdvisor”, offering what sounds like a curious and potentially explosive new development from the user review giant.

The email, which included a sign-off with the address of the company’s official Massachusetts headquarters in the US, says the company is launching a programme known as TripAdvisor Select.

TripAdvisor is looking into ways of giving a select number of hotels on the site with the best reviews a rubber-stamp of approval to say that the property has been audited and verified for high quality by the company itself following a visit.

This could take the form of a mystery shopper or official visit.

Hotels getting the official thumbs-up from TripAdvisor would be rewarded with a logo on the site to say it is one of the best in a particular city under the TripAdvisor Select programme.

Furthermore, and most importantly (and outrageously), having the official sanction would prevent other users from leaving negative reviews about a property.

Such an idea would fly in the face of conventional wisdom of giving visitors to the site a string of consumer generated reviews and an overall score based on the quality of certain amenities, staff, ambience, etc.

While the idea is indeed used elsewhere, where third party and official reviewers write about and rate properties, bringing such a process into TripAdvisor would be a fundamental change in policy.

The problem with the strategy and approach, which is apparently targeting a number of properties around the world, is that it is complete hogwash.

The executive asks the property owner to respond and they will be contacted shortly to sign up to the scheme.

It is unclear how many hotels have so far been contacted in this way, but rumours have started circulated this week and there is indeed some confusion as to the validity of the programme.

The first sign that something isn’t quite right comes if recipients check the sender’s email address: despite the sign-off and official-sounding references, tripadvisor******@gmail.com [deliberately redacted] is clearly not one that would be used by the headquarters of the company.

Tnooz decided to see what happened when a response was sent to the sender.

This is the reply:

“Thank you for your interest. We are only working with a select few hotels around the globe currently. We are still in the very early stages of development but are testing this new program out in a few of our markets.  As soon as I am at liberty to discuss the program in more detail with you over the coming few weeks, I will forward you all of the literature.”

Tnooz:

“I understand you are director of traveler reviews at TripAdvisor. Are you based at its offices in the US or UK?”

Sender:

“I’m in the US. Which hotel are you affiliated with?”

Tnooz (which had its official email sign-off and journalist disclosure):

“I concentrate on a number in Europe. This sounds like a really interesting programme. I had no idea TripAdvisor was doing this. How long have you worked with TA on this initiative. I suspect lots of hotels will be really keen to learn more about this given the focus on quality and reviews, in Europe especially.”

Sender:

“That’s great! I will definitely keep your contact info, and stay in touch with you regarding progress and advancement of the program. As I mentioned, it’s still extremely new but I expect great things to come of it. Not just in Europe, but around the globe.”

Tnooz:

“Just one question: when did TripAdvisor officially start the TripAdvisor Select programme? I’d not heard about it at all until today.”

Sender:

“It hasn’t launched yet… We are still getting the program going behind the scenes and running focus groups etc. with hotels and also the public. I have an email list that I’m sending updates/progress to so I will include you on that and you will be one of the first to know.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss anymore about this program (which I’m sure you can appreciate) but stay tuned! Very soon…”

Tnooz:

“Sorry, just a final thing: I’ve known many people in TripAdvisor for a number of years. When did you join the company? Do you report into Christine Petersen [president of TripAdvisor for Business]?”

Sender:

“Nope. Different dept.”

Tnooz then contacted TripAdvisor to ask if indeed the individual was “director of traveler reviews” and if TripAdvisor Select is a valid programme being considered by the company.

The answer, inevitably, was “no” on both counts.

Tnooz:

“I have just spoken with TripAdvisor in the US. It is my understanding that you are NOT an employee of TripAdvisor and TripAdvisor Select is NOT an official programme which it is authorising.

“As you probably realise, I am a journalist and writing a story for Tnooz.com on the approach you have been making to hoteliers, offering a service under the guise of it being an official programme, when it is clearly not.

“TripAdvisor is issuing a warning to hoteliers about such activity. Do you have a statement you wish to make on this matter?”

Sender:

“It’s a class project/focus group I’m working on to learn if there is any interest in such an initiative. I was waiting for somebody like yourself to ask questions about the proposal and I wanted to get feedback from hotels to see if they would be interested in such an idea to have less criticism when it’s not warranted.

“What do you think about it? Unfortunately, it’s not possible to actually have reps go around the world but a fun idea!

“I am trying to see how many hotels around the world would be interested in such an offer and then possibly offer these consulting ideas to enhance revenue to large travel companies on consumer awareness.”

Tnooz:

“But you are masquerading as an employee of TripAdvisor. This is behaviour not approved by TripAdvisor and therefore unfair to hoteliers. What do you have to say about that?”

Sender, in what could become a classic and somewhat understated defence:

“Now that you mention it, it probably wasn’t the best way to go about the research. You can let them know that it was an error in judgement and won’t happen again.”

Indeed.

It is unknown how far the sender had got with the activities and whether the approach was for genuine research or the beginning of an elaborate scam is unclear.

Either way, preying on nervy hoteliers with the impression that TripAdvisor is launching a programme of such kind is just one a number of initiatives being adopted by opportunistic folk around the work.

Confirming again that the sender was not an employee of the company and the programme is a work of fiction, a TripAdvisor official adds:

“We recommend that hoteliers check the email address. They should be particularly suspicious if the address is from a free email account. We also encourage hoteliers to contact us if they have any concerns and report suspicious activity to solutions@tripadvisor.com.”

Another recent example, TripAdvisor says, are emails being sent to hotels claiming to be representatives of the company and offering to remove negative in exchange for a stay at the property.

“This was done illegally and without permission by a third party misappropriating the TripAdvisor brand. We are taking all appropriate measures to reduce the incidence of this type of spam.”

So whether an official kitemark of some kind against high performing hotels on TripAdvisor might get some interest (although the blocking negative reviews element would be pretty outrageous), on this occasion such an opportunity does not exist.

UPDATE: 

TripAdvisor says it is preparing to contact all hoteliers on its database to notify them about the TripAdvisor Select scam.

NB: Review image via Shutterstock.

Simpliflying has taken a look at what airlines are doing with Google Plus and came up with the following findings:

• There are now 70 airlines with brand pages on Google Plus.
• The vast majority of the pages are in English – about 78.5%. But on average, pages in Spanish are “liked” more often.
• The airline with the highest number of “likes” (known as “+1″s) was Mexican low cost carrier Volaris with almost 3000, double that of the second most popular page.
• The most common type of content on Google Plus pages is brand-related (as opposed to sales related on Facebook or customer service related on Twitter).

Opinion is still pretty divided as to the overall value of Google Plus, compared to rival platform Facebook, but certainly those that have managed to harness some kind of value from it are seeing some results.

Matt Rhodes, strategy director at UK-based agency Fresh Networks, for example, believes Google Plus has the ability to change search in fundamental ways over time and the data which Google is capturing and re-serving through its other, connected platforms is becoming a critical element of the social graph which, inevitably, brands will need to understand and utilise better.

Early days, early days.

Anyway, here is an infographic from the Simpliflying team to showcase the results:

The people behind the annual love-in that is Social Media Week produced a video to mark next week’s event to capture the thoughts of pensioners in 2062 reflecting on the heady days of social media, circa 2012.

It’s rather funny (especially the QR code reference, which is absolutely brilliant).

But as Mike Butcher of TechCrunch Europe says: “Social Media Week in danger of satirising itself.” Suspect it has already.

Enjoy…

David Chapple, event director at Travel Technology Europe 2012, which is including a dedicated zone for business travel technology in its coverage this year, reckons technology companies are unable to innovate or push developments in the sector forward “unless they have customers”.

This argument may not chime with some of the firms trying to bring new products to market to ride the technological revolution currently taking place in business travel.

But Chapple has a point.

He believes there are a number of companies that are doing creating interesting products to help save corporate travellers money in the long term.

But “they need companies that are willing to be their guinea pigs”, Chapple says, claiming that “at the end of the day, tech guys are just the facilitators – without a customer there wouldn’t be any technology”.

Chapple also believes there is another interesting evolution in travel technology, with tools which perhaps previously would’ve been seen as the preserve of leisure travellers, are now finding a role in corporate travel.

Travel managers use mobile travel tools for their own personal use, Chapple says, but increasingly their companies are realising that some of those services are useful for corporate clients as well.

There is therefore a need to pull leisure content into business travel services, especially in the mobile space, where travellers on-the-go can be serviced quickly but effectively, he adds.

This not only helps out the business travel world, but leisure travel technology and product suppliers as well.

“For leisure agents, it’s about diversification and tapping into new opportunities,” Chapple says.

NB: Tnooz is a media partner (and has a stand this year) for the show on February 7 and 8 2012, running four high-level debates over the course of the event.

NB2: Register for free here.

NB3: Play the TTE 2012 game.

NB4: Travel Technology Europe 2012 – Every exhibitor profiled

NB5: Globe image via Shutterstock.

Babai is one of the figures behind a new wholesaler focusing on group travel, known as G2 Travel, a remarkably similar offering from the GTA (launched as Gullivers Travel Agency in 1975) business he sold to Travelport-forerunner Cendant in 2005 for an eye-watering $1.1 billion.

In Blues Brothers style, Babai appears to be getting the old band back together, too, assembling the senior management team at G2 Travel from various GTA alumni.

The only named employee so far is David Littlefair who will run G2′s offices in Bangkok after leaving GTA in September 2011 as managing director of operations in Thailand.

Other regional offices include Hong Kong, Jakarta, London, Rome and Bucharest.

G2 says it plans to offer “group land services” such as hotels and other local products from around the world, with a particular focus on the Far East, but only as part of a third party, wholesale-type relationship with travel agents.

G2 is not using third party suppliers for Europe, however non-European destinations will be through third party suppliers, an official says.

Very little information is coming out of G2 so far, but the rhetoric is there:

“We recognise in this world of mega company buy-outs and mergers, on-line hotel distribution and multi layer sales and distribution strategies that the traditional values and skills of servicing wholesale groups business has been neglected.

“Specialist group purchasing requires unique skills, experienced and tailor made IT systems, not only to satisfy our clients, but also our suppliers. We recognise that hotels do not want to be dictated to by multinational giants on how to sell their rooms, encompassing the whole spectrum of wholesale, retail and on-line distribution.

“We recognise the service supplier needing a choice of a partner who truly appreciates the word partner in both buoyant periods and testing times.”

Babai’s disappearing act (and previous well-known lack of enthusiasm for personal publicity) was intentional, with Cendant locking him down with a non-compete for six years after the sale of GTA in 2005.

Travelport offloaded GTA to Kuoni for $720 million in March last year, just a month before Babai’s expulsion from the sector ran out.

ViewTrip is an existing desktop service for Travelport-connected customers, but the latest incarnation has been developed solely for Android and iPhone mobile devices.

ViewTrip Mobile is essentially a mobile travel concierge service which will be made available via travel agencies, primarily in the corporate travel sector.

Travelport CIO Mark Ryan first hinted that a mobile version of ViewTrip was in development in January this year.

Tools included on the service range from live flight alerts and updates and airport/city guides to GPS-enabled amenity and service finding tools (such as restaurants) and a currency converter.

But clearly the main element of the app is the management service, allowing users to add and edit travel arrangements from their handset.

Travelport’s ViewTrip Mobile joins the likes of the Mobile Travel Assistant from Amadeus and TripCase/GetThere mobile products through Sabre.

Travelport is introducing its effort in the UK first, with other countries expected to come on-board from the second quarter of 2012.

Corporate travel agency Chelsea Travel Management was involved in a testing programme for the tool, labelling it “one of the richest apps of its kind”.

Since the ship hit rocks just metres from the island on Friday 13 January, a series of webcams from around the immediate vicinity have come online, giving viewers a dramatic view of the Concordia as it rests awkwardly on the seabed.

Here is one of the live webcams, showing just how close the listing ship is to both the rocks and harbour area:

And here is a grab from the webcam taken during daylight hours (just in case the above live shot is viewed after dusk):

And then there are the metasearch engines such as Hotelscombined and Kayak looking for a piece of the action.

Of course, online travel agencies (especially Booking.com) are still immensely powerful players and then, most recently, Room Key crash landed on the scene with a promise of multi-brand search utopia.

On the periphery are the startups, such as Room 77, which launched in a blaze of publicity and has since gone on to raise over $10 million in funding from, amongst others, the backers of ITA Software, General Catalyst.

It now turns out that travel expense management giant Concur (also owner of TripIt) was part of the funding round last summer when it took a minority stake in the business, an investment revealed today when Concur announced record results of its first $100 million quarter in revenue for Q4 2011.

Clearly Concur sees something in Room 77 that it feels is worth taking a punt on.

So with 12 months now passed since launch, and having backers with a pretty high pedigree, on both the investment and operational side of the industry, is Room 77 about to start shouting a little louder?

It would appear so.

Founder and chairman Brad Gerstner says: “We think there’s a lot to be done in hotel metasearch – we’re going to out-Kayak Kayak by focusing like a laser ONLY on hotels just like Hotels.com and Booking.com, but better.”

Fighting talk, indeed.

Back over at Concur, CEO Steve Singh is also talking up his company’s profile, referring to Room 77 as the “Zillow of hotel rooms”.

Zillow co-founder and executive chairman Rich Barton also happens to be an investor in Room 77, of course.

Singh says Room 77 would benefit both hoteliers and their customers if its content about individual hotel rooms could be integrated into hotel CRS and property management systems.

“It would allow hoteliers to monetize their properties at a more granular level and push choice to the end customer,” Singh says.

He believes resistance from hotels would “change over time”. He adds: ”I run a business that gets resistance all the time.”

Concur made a relatively small investment in Room 77 and a “more substantive one” in Taxi Magic, which enables business travelers to purchase ground transportation and integrate the expense into the Concur Expense system.

Singh says two things drive Concur’s investments: the ability to create as much content choice as possible for business travelers, and the ability to make it available to customers.

“If we can help foster that kind of innovation, bring it to market and make it available to our customers, then that delivers a tremendous user experience,” Singh says.

The Concur CEO argues that mobile is blurring the lines between corporate travel and consumer tools.

Singh believes corporate travel policies are diverse and he could see business travelers using Room 77 to pick hotel rooms in conjunction with corporate travel policies.

Alternately, he adds, perks outside the parameters of corporate policy could be billed to business travelers’ personal credit cards.

Asked if he could envision a larger investment in Room 77, Singh says: “What guides us is this: if it is innovative and delivers greater choice to end customers, we are interested in developing it.”

NB: Additional reporting by Dennis Schaal.

While analysts and tech-heads pored over the finer details of the S1 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, shedding light on some of the company’s financials for the first time, TripAdvisor will no doubt be overjoyed at the inclusion of the Trip Friends system it integrated in June 2010.

Facebook is looking raise around $5 billion from the IPO in the US.

The S1 revealed Facebook’s profit in 2011 was a staggering $1 billion, gleaned through revenues of $3.71 billion, while founder mark Zuckerberg still owns around 30% of the business.

Facebook currently has 845 million users worldwide, with more than half using the network every single day.

What surprised some was the letter from Zuckerberg at the head of the filing, in which he pretty much warned investors that Facebook wants to stick to its so-called ethos:

“Facebook was not originally created to be a company. It was built to accomplish a social mission — to make the world more open and connected.

“We think it’s important that everyone who invests in Facebook understands what this mission means to us, how we make decisions and why we do the things we do.”

He continues:

People sharing more — even if just with their close friends or families — creates a more open culture and leads to a better understanding of the lives and perspectives of others.

“We believe that this creates a greater number of stronger relationships between people, and that it helps people get exposed to a greater number of diverse perspectives.”

In terms of the integration used by TripAdvisor, basically a enhanced version of Facebook Connect, Facebook says the service illustrates how third party sites can “design more deeply integrated social experiences built around users and their friends”.

“By tapping into our rich social data, TripAdvisor connects users to their friends and shares relevant content about where their friends have traveled and where they would like to visit in the future.

“While on the TripAdvisor website, friends can discuss their travel plans and recommendations and build out personal profiles of places they have been.”

While initially it did seem to some sceptics to be just another fancy feature that people wouldn’t use, over time it appears to have started having quite a significant impact.

A TripAdvisor official says by December 2011, over 57 million people had “personalised their trip planning experience” on the site using Trip Friends.

Furthermore, these people are twice as more likely to contribute content to TripAdvisor than its other users.

No wonder Facebook likes talking up the Trip Friends integration in probably the most important documents the company has ever produced.

NB: Facebook Like image via Shutterstock.

The UK’s RNIB says it has decided to take legal action against BMIBaby this week (papers filed at the Central London County Court) after the airline failed to make “vital changes” to its website to allow some customers to use online services.

Currently, the RNIB claims, partially sighted or blind visitors to the site are “forced to search for flights or make bookings via a call centre”.

Concerns were initially raised with BMIBaby in 2010 after customers complained to the RNIB about the airline site.

The legal action is the “last straw” in order to force the changes required, an RNIB official says – a process the organisation has never put in place before with any other consumer website.

RNIB campaigns officer for inclusive society, Hugh Huddy, says blind and partially sighted customers “deserve to have access to the best online prices and flight information, just as any customer of BMIBaby does”.

“Why should those with sight loss risk missing out on a web-only deal or be forced to ring a call centre simply because companies are failing to take accessibility standards seriously?”

Responding to the legal action, BMIBaby says it commissioned a report by the RNIB and received recommendations only in November last year.

A BMIBaby official says:

“We have a project team in place to action the recommendations which requires the bespoke development of bmibaby’s website technology.

“This inevitably takes a period of time to develop but in the meantime we have a new local rate telephone number for people to call to speak to our call centre to obtain our discounted website fares.

In the meantime, BMIBaby says it has now added a dedicated accessibility page to the site in order to keep customers up to date with its progress.

The case will be welcomed by campaigners, as some argue that the area of accessibility has fallen down the agenda in recent years as sites have become more interactive.

The globally recognised standard practice for web design and user experience in this area has been driven by guidelines put forward by the Web Accessibility Initiative.

NB: Hat-tip – Hayden Sutherland.

Most recent statement from Amadeus:

“Minimising such incidents and their impact on our customers is very important to Amadeus.

“During the incident, our priority was to return to normal service as quickly as possible; once it closed we focused on identifying the cause and analysing actions we could take to avoid reoccurrence. The cause of the problem appears to be a network component.

“We are continuing to investigate this in detail. Once again, we regret the inconvenience this incident may have caused.”

ORIGINAL:

The extent of a significant technology failure at Amadeus yesterday is beginning to unravel, as other systems across the industry are now known to have been affected.

Amadeus is remaining tight-lipped as to what triggered such a major collapse, when an outage which lasted a number of hours managed to hit passenger self check-in and reservation systems, agency bookings as well as airport counter systems.

A post on the Amadeus blog this morning said the incident had been fully resolved, with an apology for the inconvenience. Officials will not disclose the nature and size of the outage.

It is understood that although Amadeus customers were hit by the problems, other GDSs were also impacted as the Amadeus airline IT system ALTEA was involved.

ALTEA currently powers over 100 airlines around the world, including British Airways, Qantas, Iberia and Cathay Pacific.

Although it is an Amadeus-run platform, agencies on other distribution networks such as Sabre and Travelport which were trying to connect to some of the airlines involved were also unable to carry out fare queries or make bookings.

A number of insiders across the GDSs have confirmed that the outage was far bigger than initially thought given that the ALTEA system effectively controls how agencies on other networks connect to airline reservation systems.

NB: Image via Shutterstock.

The outage lasted a number of hours and hit passenger self check-in and reservation systems, agency bookings as well as airport counter systems.

Reports say British Airways, Qantas, Iberia and Cathay Pacific are among the airlines hit by the system failure.

In short: it could be the double whammy of a distribution service and airline IT collapse.

At around 2000 CET (1300 EST), Amadeus released a statement to confirm that all airline systems are restored.

“Some travel agency customers may continue to experience service disruption which we are investigating. We regret any inconvenience this may have caused.”

Amadeus says a detailed explanation as to what happened and which airlines were affected will be released in due course.

The problem is the second in as many months for Amadeus, after seeing Qantas hit by a major outage in December when passengers were unable to check-in with the airline for a number of hours in December last year.

More to follow…

NB: Image via Shutterstock.

The Australia-based site launched in December 2010 [TLabs Showcase - TraceMyTrip] with a promise of a platform where users can book trips, store photos, video and journals, and create maps.

Within its first four months, founder Ryan Adams was claiming 1.5 million people had registered to use the service after the company had secured a “small private investment” to fund the startup alongside his own personal capital.

At first glance, TraceMyTrip had a business model – using what it called a geo-located pay-per-click ad platform as well as a plan to launch a subscription fee for some services in the future.

Within its first year Adams was hoping the site would reach six million active users around the globe.

However, something appears to have gone wrong as the site is currently inactive and redirects to an affiliate link-laden holding page – with the URL apparently no longer registered and now available to buy.

Adams hasn’t tweeted since June 2011 and the official TraceMyTrip Twitter account last posted a message the month before to announce its up-time had returned.

The site was taken down shortly after the TLabs Showcase article in April last year when a number of people questioned the veracity of the claim to have 1.5 million users register for the service.

Adams claimed at the time that the site had been the victim of a hacking attempt.

It is difficult to determine when the site was eventually pulled down completely and when the URL was handed back to a domain registration service.

Strangely, none of the 1.5 million registered users took to the social media airwaves to lodge their dismay at the end of the service.

NB: All reasonable effort was made to contact Adams to discover more about the fate of TraceMyTrip, but no response was forthcoming.

Luckily, such memories are fading away for many as tourism boards realise that the offline experience is equally important as ploughing money into online activity.

Take the UK city of Manchester, birthplace to one of the best music scenes of all time, home to a few mediocre football clubs ( ) but also including a centre which boasts vibrant nightlife as well as shopping and cultural attractions.

The BBC loves the place so much it has (controversially) moved large swathes of its operations to a new development known as Media City, in Salford.

Manchester’s Visitor Information Centre used to be located close to the city’s art gallery, but when major redevelopment took place in the Piccadilly Gardens, officials seized the chance to switch to a better spot, closer to busier thoroughfares and the main rail station.

But rather than simply replicating what went before, a new visitor centre was built with technology at its heart and a rather familiar looking design – that of Apple.

The idea was, in marketing speak, to “truly reflect the original modern essence of Manchester”, but more importantly those behind the new centre wanted to incorporate as much new technology as possible to simply improve the experience of the visiting the place in the first place.

In other words: make discovering information about the city both fun and useful.

The new centre included a number different tech-led activities and displays:

• Mediawall
• Twitter feeds
• Desktop computers
• Microsoft Surface tables

The Mediawall, for example, takes up the entire length of one end of the facility and is used to showcase events and products in the city – visitors will find it difficult to ignore, presumably.

Real-time information is streamed into the centre on screens mounted on the walls, each carrying messages not only from the VisitManchester website but also local tourism businesses as well as residents and visitors.

Andrew Daines, a former-VisitBritain executive who consulted on the project, says tweets are filtered to cut out non-desirable content.

A number of desktop computers are positioned throughout the story, allowing visitors to search and book accommodation, transport and events.

Lastly, and perhaps most impressively, is the use of Microsoft Surface tables.

Each device can be used to search and find content in a more sociable and fun way than a desktop PC. As with other deployments of Surface tables, props can be used to interact with the maps so that users can find certain services such as hotels, bars, restaurants, etc.

Daines claims it is the first time a European tourist office has used Surface tables in such a way.

The most striking aspect of the place is the design – a look and feel which may or not have been borrowed intentionally from the swanky designers that put together Apple Stores around the world.

But has it had much of an impact, got a return for the sub-£1 million spent on the place?

Daines says it has achieved a number of key milestones:

• 52% of visitors used the Surface tables or PCs to get more information – Daines says: “Younger respondents particularly were more likely to use the surface tables and computer without assistance by a member of staff – 43% of those aged 16 to 25 used surface tables independently compared to 20% of those aged 36 to 45″.
• 58% of visitors discovered new places to visit using the tech.
• Two-thirds of visitors cited the technology as a reason why they’d use the centre again.

NB: Daines was speaking at the ENTER2012 conference in Helsingborg, Sweden.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

Travelomy is a South Asia-focused travel portal that was launched in June 2011. The parent company behind Travelomy is Ciafo, which also has two other consumer web products.

The key team behind Travelomy consists of TWO people – Gurjit Sidhu and Amarpreet Kalkat, who are also co-founders of parent company Ciafo.

• Gurjit Sidhu handles engineering for Travelomy. He is a business grad who is a developer at heart. Sidhu has spent almost ten years working at companies like Cap Gemini, Trilogy or doing multiple entrepreneurial activities. He has coded Travelomy almost single-handedly. Sidhu holds an MBA from the prestigious IIM Calcutta and a B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from Thapar University, Patiala, India.
• Amarpreet Kalkat handles the product and business for Travelomy. Kalkat has spent almost ten years building internet products at companies like HP, Trilogy and Nokia before co-founding Ciafo. While he still dabbles in coding a bit, his core strength is in architecting and designing products that solve people’s problems in a simple and smart way. Kalkat holds an MBA from the prestigious IIM Kozhikode and a B.Tech. in Computer Science from Punjabi University, Patiala, India.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

Travelomy is currently bootstrapped by the co-founders and has not raised any funding yet.

What problem are you trying to solve?

Existing travel experience online is fragmented. There are travel guides that are primarily content plays, booking sites that are primarily pricing plays and half-successful social efforts in between to bridge the gap and build a wholesome experience.

Travelomy wants to build an online home for travellers leveraging social engagement and collaboration, which brings all of the thing mentioned above together in a sublime way.

While Travelomy is initially starting with South Asia, the ultimate aim is to build a global travel portal.

Describe the business, core products and services?

While Travelomy ultimately aims to be a comprehensive travel portal providing services that help in planning to booking to undertaking the trip, it is currently focused on the first phase, trying to build’s the world’s best travel guide.

Travelomy focuses on three key aspects – rich content, geo-location and social media – and uses them effectively to build a useful information source for a traveller.

Travelomy also differentiates itself in the way it collects and presents information. Almost all of the content on Travelomy is crowdsourced and can be updated by any user who is signed-in. There are no advertisements anywhere on the website, making it one of neatest user interfaces in some time now.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

An active traveller instead of a passive tourist is Travelomy’s core customer. We define a “active traveller” as somebody who like to go and do things rather than purely sight-see around as a tourist.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Yes. Travelomy now has more than 20,000 unique visitors a month and we have been getting increasingly better feedback with every new feature and iteration.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

Travel related ecommerce is going to be the core of the revenue model. Working with its partners, Travelomy aims to provide all kinds of travel related bookings – hotels, flights, packages, deals etc.

As building engagement with the travellers is the biggest single focus on Travelomy, we hope to leverage that as a competetive advantage for gaining a bigger share of the pie.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Technology is Travelomy’s biggest strength and we plan to leverage that effectively across all the product features. An example is the recently introduced “real-time curated travel feeds” based on Twitter which make Travelomy the first-ever travel guide globally to introduce a cool and dynamic element to usually static destination information. See the Kathmandu page on Travelomy to see how this feature really adds value to content.

Weaknesses:

• Operations is an area of weakness. As any travel product at some point would involve a significant operational aspect, it is a weakness we need to mitigate.
• While our goals are hugely ambitious, it also means that we end up pitting ourselves against many broad and niche players. As a startup, we might end up having one too many competitors.

Opportunities:

• The lack of a brand in the travel domain is the biggest opportunity. Almost all major players are either content or pricing plays. Lonely Planet is perhaps the closest travel has to a global brand, but it is almost entirely associated with the guidance phase of travel. There is an opportunity to build for travel what Facebook is to social, and that is what where we intend to take Travelomy.
• Active travellers are a growing tribe in travel. And one that traditional travel heavywieghts have ignored in favor of tourists where the volumes lie. While it is easy to find information or make bookings for a sign-seeing trip to Taj Mahal, it is not exactly easy to find information on motorcycling routes in Bhutan or make arrangements to travel by motorcycle. We are soon launching an Activity module built on top of Google Maps that would increase the quality of information related to things like trekking, hiking, motorcycling, biking etc. by a big margin.
• There is no truly platform company in travel. We intend to make Travelomy one.

Threats:

• Technology, which is our strength is not impossible to replicate. Our technology based advantages therefore might not sustain for very long, we would therefore need to pad them up with something else as well
• There are big players eyeing a pie of huge online travel vertical. Their marketing muscle gives them an enormous advantage in taking out smaller startups, how so much innovating. Travelomy would need to beat such players with speed, both of innovation and execution.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

Many of our peers advised that travel is a commoditized market with strong incumbent benefits.

We believe in innovation’s ability to challenge the strength of incumbency, so we chose to ignore thir advice and validate our product at a minimal cost.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

One million monthly unique visitors, with more than 30% direct traffic and a return rate of 30% is our (somewhat) stretch target at this point.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

Launching in early-2009, unfortunately just as the global economic crisis kicked in, Best Job in the World and its various offshoots captured the imagination of marketers for its cross-platform approach and original idea, but visitor numbers to the Australian state did not mirror the enormous praise it received in numerous quarters.

Which is a shame.

But it does beg the question as to whether so-called innovative marketing campaigns, which are said to hit potential consumers in many channels and get huge mainstream media attention, actually make a significant difference compared to “traditional” methods such as long-term efforts through PPC, SEO, above-the-line advertising and others?

A relatively recent viral from MySwitzerland, the consumer-facing website from the Swiss tourism authorities, is called Holidays Without Internet and is, once again, a prime example of a campaign which captured the attention of many blogs, marketers outside of the travel industry and consumers.

First of all, the premise of what looks initially like a promotional video is funny – two elderly farmers from the sticks visit a Swiss town on their tractor, but just when the viewer thinks the clip will focus on stereotypes of a demographic not in tune with the web, both men walk into a cafe and open up their Apple notebooks.

Immediately, the pair start talking via the chat tools on Facebook, making quips about the inevitably rather attractive waitress and if she’ll become a “friend”.

And then the clever bit starts.

The men invite the viewer to connect with them on Facebook. If the viewer agrees (the two men wait patiently for the user to click the Facebook Connect button)

Once connected, the farmers start looking around the user’s Facebook profile…

Checking how many “friends” a user has…

And browsing through the image pages…

Before uncovering the most brutal element of the whole thing – how much time the user spends on Facebook every day (tapping into the API). Which leads nicely into the point of the campaign: the user should be getting away from the internet and enjoying some piece and quiet…

Clearly the cleverest part of the entire campaign is the integration of the user’s Facebook content into the film. It’s very slick and smartly done.

But back to the question: would the user be compelled to research more on the MySwitzerland website to find out where those out-of-digital-reach places are?

Possibly – but not guaranteed. What is most likely is the user would simply send on the link to try it out to their friends or share, inevitably, on Facebook.

NB: For the record, the author does NOT spend 2.67 hours a day on Facebook – just leaves the window open to monitor the Tnooz Fan Page

NB2: MySwitzerland was showcased at the ENTER2012 conference in Helsingborg, Sweden.

Erik Blachford, the second CEO of Expedia joins Gregg Brockway, founder of Hotwire and Tripit, and Brad Gerstner, founder of Altimeter Capital and Room 77 in the latest investment round.

The value of the round is not being disclosed, but is understood to be significantly less than the $13.6 million Ostrovok raised in July 2011.

That particular round also saw a string of big names decide to play in the burgeoning Russian online travel sector, including General Catalyst Partners (backer of ITA Software and Kayak) and Accel Partners (HotelTonight and others).

Others supporting the round included Peter Thiel and Founders Fund (Facebook), Niklas Zennstrom and Atomico (Skype), Mark Pincus (founder of Zynga), Esther Dyson (Yandex board member) and Fritz Demopoulos (founder of Qunar).

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

Tripbox was born out of the need to provide cheap holidays for friends and family. Tripbox has since evolved into a fully fledged online travel agency, selling holidays to the wider public whilst adhering to its low cost ethos.

It was founded by Savio Fernandes, a travel enthusiast with experience in software development and design.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

Tripbox has been bootstrapped up to this point; however, we do have some exciting ideas that need developing which may require us to raise capital in the future.

What problem are you trying to solve?

Searching for a holiday on the web can be a stressful experience, not helped by the gaudy colour schemes and deals and advertisements that usually clutter travel websites.

So, we wanted to develop a website where the holiday search experience would be enjoyable with the information always displayed in a comprehensible manner.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Tripbox sells low-cost hotels, travel ancillaries and flights to a wide array of destinations. The website is plugged into most major bed banks and ancillary suppliers offering great choice to customers.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

Our key customers are couples and families mostly interested in beach holidays. Our main age demographic is 18 – 40 years old.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Customers have commended Tripbox for its fresh look and straight forward booking process.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

Tripbox is solely reliant on online bookings and does not take bookings over the phone. This results in low running costs and helps us sell holidays at a cheaper price.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Engaging website with an inspiring, clean and consistent layout different from the homogenous ‘travel agency’ look.
• Search results only display the essential information in an intuitive manner and a range of easy to use filters help make the volume of information easily comprehensible for the user.
• Straightforward booking process.
• Sell holidays as cheap as possible.

Weaknesses:

• New player in a very crowded marketplace and lacking brand awareness.
• Reliant on data from slow third party content providers.

Opportunities:

• Build a steady customer base as users become more price conscious.

Threats:

• Larger, well-established online travel agencies.

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

We’ve been fortunate to have a lot of support from people who have appreciated our concepts from the very beginning.

We did have some people say that good design is not the thing that may attract and inspire customers, but we believe that design coupled with low prices make a very effective combination.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

In 12 months time, we hope to have found a good foot hold with a decent customer base, aware of our brand and our low prices.

We would also like to further enhance our site and include some interesting features which are in a conceptual stage at the moment.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.