With the ever-increasing proliferation of smartphones and tablets, mobile internet access and apps, consumers are becoming much more comfortable with browsing and shopping through the mobile.

As a result, many business sectors are having to really push forward their multi-channel strategy and approach to mobile, and travel is one of these.

There is one area of importance potentially above all others when it comes to successful mobile engagement – the experience.

Consumers have very personal relationships with their mobile devices, so it becomes even more crucial than on other digital channels, that the user experience is right and that the recipient is engaged with on their terms.

At Webcredible, we have been doing a lot of consultancy around the mobile user experience and have recently been working a lot within the travel sector.

A recent customer was Hotels.com, which wanted to optimise its mobile offering in line with customer requirements with the further aim of producing results that would improve brand experience, customer satisfaction and loyalty through the mobile channel.

This is a common problem, for many travel brands when looking to make moves in mobile.

The approach to mobile will differ according to the brand itself, but there are some best practice tips that travel brands can follow when looking to optimise the mobile experience for their customers.

1. Reduce the amount of content

Not everything shown on a PC site can fit reasonably onto a mobile web page, where space is short and every pixel counts.

It’s important to reduce the amount of content shown on the mobile-optimised version. Only include the most important content or features.

2. Use single column layouts

Website pages are difficult to view on small mobile phone screens. Even on smartphones like the iPhone with their relatively large screens, standard web pages load up zoomed out so that they can fit on the screen.

Instead, create single column pages that use up the whole width of the screen.

To add additional content the page should expand downwards rather than across, as scrolling down is easier than scrolling across and users generally prefer it.

3. Present the navigation differently

It’s difficult to fit the navigation across the top of the screen on a mobile web page, therefore you must look for alternative options to display the navigation.

A few options include:

• Place the navigation and site search at the top of the page and leave the content for later pages. This is suitable for users who want to navigate or search upon immediately finding the site – a common action with travel websites
• Place the navigation at the bottom – still accessible but doesn’t get in the way of the content
• Place the navigation in a dropdown link at the top of the page

4. Minimise text entry

Text entry on a mobile phone is much more difficult than when using a desktop or laptop keyboard, so mobile websites must take this into account.

Allowing users to store details in their “My Account” section is helpful, and if they already have an online account, then linking this to them as a mobile user will also avoid any unnecessary text entry.

5. Decide whether you need more than one mobile site

If your mobile website is only going to be seen by smartphone users with fast download speeds then one mobile version will be ok.

However, if you want a broader reach then you should consider creating a paired down version. Facebook goes as far as having three main mobile versions.

6. Take advantage of inbuilt functionality

Many mobile phones have an advantage over PCs – they come with lots of inbuilt functionality that most PCs don’t have.

You can make it easier for users to perform certain tasks by utilising a mobile’s inbuilt functionality and thereby remove the need for manual steps, for example; making calls, seeing an address on a map and finding the nearest.

However, although these kind of best practice guidelines can help with some ‘quick wins’ for your mobile proposition, travel brands must ensure that their mobile strategies are based on real insights into the behaviours and needs of their audiences and target markets through the customer lifecycle.

Live example

In the case of Hotels.com, Webcredible worked to gain more of an understanding of smartphone users’ use of mobile sites and applications (and any other activity) to guide the development of its mobile website and iPhone and Android apps.

The main objectives of the research was to learn:

How people use smartphones in relation to researching, planning and booking travel
How smartphones are used by travellers while they travel to their destination and how they’re used during holidays and business trips
What are the current barriers that prevent some users from travel-related smartphone use

We used diary study methods, interviews and expert analysis projects, along with its mobile industry knowledge and integrated research, to produce a set of guidelines and recommendations for Hotels.com to build its mobile strategy, which were detailed in a report which:

• Mapped smartphone use against the travel lifecycle
• Updated existing personas to include smartphone use
• Highlighted current attitudes and behaviours towards arranging hotels, flights, meals entertainment and other activities across digital channels
• Reported on how smartphones are being used to store travel-related information
• Discussed current barriers to using smartphones for bookings
• Offered ideas and suggestions for future smartphone opportunities

The importance of a mobile optimised website cannot be underestimated in the travel industry.

When online, if a user struggles to complete a task on your website, they are very likely to simply “drop-off” and go to a competitor’s site.

With the increase in speed of mobile devices and connections, this type of behaviour will become increasingly prevalent on mobile devices as well and travel brands need to ensure they’re providing a mobile user experience that seamlessly matches the online experience, making it easy for consumers to complete the tasks they want, when they want, through whichever platform they want.

NB: This is a guest article by Trenton Moss, director at UK-based Webcredible.

There is one thing those “Ten secrets for a successful startup” articles never mention – the critical business need for a fuzzy shark suit.

Who could have predicted that a costume purchase would spark a burgeoning embrace of social video for marketing and PR at TravelShark?

Even if you don’t have a college-football-quality mascot, and whether you’re a scrappy travel startup or an iconic hotel, here are nine signs it’s time for your company to dive in:

1. You own a fuzzy shark suit, or its metaphorical equivalent

Last June we changed our name from Swiftrank to TravelShark. The inspiration to create a company mascot named Mako Mark and make him our video leading man seemed nearly inevitable.

We binned our plan for a standard press release and instead shot a playful Shark-on-the-Street newsreel outside our office, capturing opinions from the hot dog guy and our mailman. Total spend for the video press release and a few shorts: under $10,000.

The videos made a huge splash in social media, exceeding every expectation, with traffic spikes, thousands of views, Twitter traction, and incoming sales leads. Did we celebrate when we got the news that we won a Gold Adrian Award for this grassroots campaign? You bet we did.

2. You are marketing something with a visual “story”

Video conveys visual and emotional touch points, which are present in almost every travel offering.

Our case and point. Last week we launched TravelSharkPix, a social travel-photo sharing service. We added a charitable component and asked users to help us pick three charity partners.

Cause marketing plus photography made video PR a natural choice. Our tongue-in-cheek launch video shows Mako Mark’s foiled attempts to find a partner.

Over the next week, we are releasing short follow-on charity stories like this one shown first at Tnooz today:

3. You can defuse the “Honey Badger” cynics in your office

I see fear about using video. You pitch an idea, and you get the “this is no Honey Badger” backlash. Instead of comparing your concept to one of the most popular viral videos ever, compare it to your other alternatives.

If your other option is a staid media release with a few photos, you don’t need blockbuster badger stats to score a win.

4. You want to reach consumers

C’mon. You know this one. YouTube is the second largest search engine. Facebook is clocking billions of video views each month.

If you are marketing a travel business to consumers, it likely has a visual story. Video is a must.

5. You want to reach forward-thinking travel executives

You know who they are. Tieless conference-goers mobbed with groupies. You take notes when they talk. They are the new media thought leaders in travel, and if they can influence your customers (or they are your customers), reach them with every arrow in your social media quiver, including social video.

6. You still care about SEO

If in the post-Panda era, you still work at reaching incremental customers through organic search, the YouTube-Google nexus means video matters.

Don’t miss out.

7. You’re allowed to wade in the perfect-is-the-enemy-of-the-good waters

Viral video marketing and PR success rests a great deal on something you can’t control: luck. It’s tough to predict virality, and so don’t break the bank (money or time) on any one video because our best-laid ideas may fall flat.

If your company allows experimentation and testing of “good” ideas, this is your game. If brand standards make “good” not good enough, you’ll spend too much money and time for the likely ROI.

8. You want to get the viral ball rolling with your staff

All those folks in your office may work for you, but if you want them to pull a social media oar, you need to inspire them.
Here’s the math:

Number of employees x (250 Facebook friends + 150 LinkedIn/Twitter) = WOW!

Impressive numbers, but your team members will only advocate for company initiatives on their social graphs if you give them material their friends will love.

A dull industry release is a cul-de-sac. Highly visual video that tells a compelling story – “Check out our new hotel in Da Nang! Let’s go!” – is great fodder for all-company engagement to get that social ball rolling.

9. Your employees aren’t having any fun

Sign out of your email for a minute. Walk around the office and check out the creative energy. Is anyone laughing? Our companies all have stories.

Stories build emotional glue. Videos are a great way to tell those stories, and your people will love being involved in planning, shooting, and giving feedback.

Ask yourself: “What’s my company’s shark suit?”

Armed with that answer, make your iconic story a video star!

NB: This is a guest article by Sue Heilbronner, CEO of TravelShark.

Fifteen years ago, when I worked in a large TMC, one of the sales agents rushed to claim his prize for outselling every other agent in the UK: return flights, first class, London to Sydney.

The thing is, the agent was earning mostly commission and couldn’t really afford a holiday. Taking three days off work, he flew to Sydney, spent long enough in the airport to buy souvenirs and some coffee, and flew straight home again.

Airlines sometimes act as if that guy were representative of their customers as a whole!

When it comes to selling anything beyond the flight ticket, airlines fall broadly into two camps – the white label versus the travel retailer.

Battle lines drawn

In the white label camp are those airlines that are unwilling to take what they see as a business risk of understanding and managing any products other than flights.

They don’t know hotels or car rental, and they let someone else sell them. They are essentially selling advertising space or renting out part of their shop front or brand. The white label travel providers step in, happy to take the bulk of the sales margin, own the customer engagement, and have the revenue up front.

The airline industry is never dull, and management has to focus on fuel prices, route network, mergers, labour negotiations, and so on.

Part of the attraction of the white label model is the belief that there’s nothing to do except embed some contextual links in the selling flow or the confirmation page and the commission cheques start to arrive.

The other camp, those airlines who try to be travel retailers, see it differently. They see the real value of their website in terms of complete customer engagement and the potential for the airline to take a bigger share of the travel spend.

They will use aggregators to give them access to a broad range of products – hundreds of car suppliers, tens of thousands of hotels – but will also manage some products themselves.

• They will marshal or create content for key destinations.
• They will directly contract some suppliers.
• They will talk to some hotel properties directly.
• They will decide which non-air products are complementary to their brand – what they want to sell.
• They will try to own the entire customer booking process, giving them true merchandising capabilities – a travel shopping cart, in-line cross sell, and the opportunity to personalise, creating a differentiated user experience.
• Commercially, they will try to become the merchant for some or all of the non-air products.
• They may try to grow this business in-house, or they may have a holiday subsidiary already.

If you aren’t in the travel retailer camp already and you don’t have a holiday subsidiary, it can seem like a daunting task. It is not just an IT project, to realise any significant benefit there will be changes to the business.

The good news for you as an airline is that there is a middle ground between handing the customer away or trying to do it all yourself.

Using the right technology, it is possible for your airline.com website to transition from white label to retailer, stopping at any point where the risk / reward balance is right for you, and the customer experience is right for your passengers.

Rather than taking an all or nothing approach to selling the high revenue ancillary products, consider some of the activities that could be done in a more gradual way, or even partially outsourced.

Hotel contracting is something you can grow into, so here are two steps to think about:

• Start with one content feed and one API to a hotel aggregator and you can get up and running with hundreds of thousands of properties – initially no different from the white label camp. Gradually you could start to contract hotels in your key destinations, or home market for in-bound. You can go from having the same 100,000 hotels as everyone else, but also 1 or 2 hotels at rates that no one else has. You can do this in-house (one FTE can contract 30+ properties per season) or outsource the contracting piece, as long as you ensure rates can be loaded that are unique to your channel.

• Consider being the merchant for the entire shopping cart and earning all of the revenue up front. You may want to act as merchant in some countries but not others or you may want to act as merchant for some products but not others. You have to consider bonding and duty of care and how it varies from market to market. Find partners that will allow you to operate different models in different markets but pick a business partner and technology platform that leaves you in control of the product, the experience, the consumer data and the payment model.

Finally when it comes to paying the suppliers, reconciliation is also something that can also be outsourced. Avoid the “special” airline back office system built in 1978, or having your retailing strategy derailed by a three-year ERP project.

What you need is effective accounts payable and financial reporting, and that is something you can buy.

Travel retail technology and business process outsourcing providers now exist to allow airlines to retail the full travel experience without the need to build or buy a large scale tour operator business.

If it still feels daunting, consider what the first step would be: If there was one thing you could change about your white label solution to provide a better product offer to your passengers or a better commercial model to yourself, what would it be?

NB: This is a guest article by Mark Lenahan, vice president of product strategy at OpenJaw Technologies.

NB2: Airline and suitcase image via Shutterstock.

Despite some very high profile and recent setbacks, generally the cruise sector is growing – 16 million passengers cruised in 2011, a 7% increase over 2010.

Around 11 million were North American – heading primarily to Caribbean posts of call. Occupancy rates exceeded 103% demonstrating that demand outpaces supply.

Last year 12 new ships set sail with guest capacities ranging from 101 to 5,400 passengers. By far, the most popular destination is the Caribbean accounting for nearly 42% of all bookings.

According to the Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association:

“We enter an era distinguished by fourteen additional innovative, feature-rich ships; international ports-of-call; and convenient departures from proximal embarkation cities.”

Not only does demand exceed supply in the cruise industry as a whole, growth also supports peripheral markets at destinations where 17 million people descend upon multiple ports of call.

Departure as well as destination

These peripheral markets are more important to the cruisers than any of the amenities on their ships. 74% of potential cruisers regard “visiting multiple locations” as the primary reason for cruising.

By comparison, onboard activities such as fine dining (62%), onboard activities (58%), romance (46%), and family fun (53%) are less significant.

The list of reasons to engage cruisers in off-board experiences is long when it comes to destination marketing at points of embarkation and ports of call.

Not only do three quarters of all cruisers regard visiting new places as essential to a successful cruise, 70% of them experience these new locations for the first time and 50% return based on favorable first impressions.

Moreover, cruise ship calls generated an estimated $2.8 billion in direct spending by passengers, crews and cruise lines. In the Caribbean alone, services and opportunities at ports of call comprise 56,000 jobs.

Since so much money is involved, questions must surround whether peripheral markets can expand and whom these expansions will benefit. To answer these questions requires fundamental re-assessments of what constitutes a peripheral market to cruising and what technologies can reach it.

Traditionally, markets peripheral to cruising have been defined as economic activities at ports of call. There is no argument about the importance of these markets in terms of motivating people to cruise and their positive impacts on local economies.

The term “peripheral markets” has had less to do with activities and opportunities prior to or immediately following cruises.

While there is little doubt that a lot of money changes hands before and/or after actual cruise events, the mechanisms for exploiting them are less readily defined or coordinated among the various operators and local destination marketers at points of purchase.

With this in mind, I would like to expand the definition of what constitutes peripheral marketing to cruising to include the economic impacts on the ports of departure in the days immediately prior to and after cruises.

To do otherwise is foolhardy given that this niche is huge and easily exploitable using innovative and agile travel technologies.

Where technology becomes important

I first got this idea after talking to a smart fellow who prints and deploys QR codes in Florida. What he said was this. In his area, thousands of pre-cruisers show up all the time looking for places to stay, things to eat and things to do during the time leading-up to their embarkation.

Cruise operators and destination marketers must ask how they can satisfy this demand for a variety of reasons. In the case of operators and booking agents, the need relates to offering a wider range of more satisfying services to their customers.

From the perspective of local destination marketers, the need surrounds bringing business to local merchants and introducing the destination as a place that demands further exploration beyond the cruise.

There can be no argument about the breadth of opportunity associated with pre-cruise markets. The point drives home when it is compared to traditional and more well defined opportunities at ports of call.

Average cruise passenger spending per port of call is between $97 and $193 depending on the port.

While the port of call market is worked to death, a market at ports of departure remains largely disorganized despite it’s being more valuable in a hypothetical sense. Consider.

The average hotel price in Miami is $140. Given that cruisers spend approximately $1,770 per person per week as compared to $1,200 for non-cruisers, one might expect cruisers to spend more than the average on nightly lodgings prior to their departures.

Add meals and cruise-related shopping to the mix and actual expenditures at the port of departure can easily exceed port of call expenditures by as much as 288%. Furthermore, these expenditures exclude things-to-do which would be added if the pre-cruiser arrives a day or two before he or she actually embarks.

What we’re talking about here is an enormous market of a type that is highly personalized and can only be responded to through targeted technology and creative solutions that include a confluence of mobile and QR code-led strategies.

To date, I know of no published study of this market niche. What is offered here is a first glimpse that deserves more in-depth investigation.

As you review the graphic below, bear a few things in mind. This survey comprises 76 cruisers. It is confined to Caribbean cruising from east coast US ports of departure. It also derives from surveys conducted through Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter and may disenfranchise some older and less technologically sophisticated cruisers.

Be that as it may, I believe strongly that survey opinions reflect an evolving marketing paradigm in all travel arenas.

When seen from the perspective of greatest good, this survey provides a rationale for affecting a synergy between the cruise industry and local destination marketers.

If successful, it will form the basis for a re-evaluation of techniques as they relate to new directions in mobile applications, webs and social medias at ports of departure.

Summing up

Certain things jump out from our sample and were doubled checked by phone calls to cruise operators and their booking agents.

Across the board, cruise lines and destination marketers fail to coordinate when it comes to pre-cruise logistical technologies related to air travel, hotel reservations, food and local tourism.

While destination marketers do their part and cruise agents chip in, no one seems to have lifted the phone and said something like, “hey, let’s work together and put QR codes in your pre-cruise packages that link to a mobile displays, maps, and/or coupons from local merchants”.

While most cruise lines and their agents offer help with travel and hotel bookings, most defer to local destinations when it comes to street level activities or commerce. The question is why?

All stakeholders should be eager to target as many as nine million pre-cruisers that arrive early, hungry, and eager for something to do.

To get the creative juices flowing – in order to incentivize collaborations among stakeholders toward a technology solution that addresses niche markets at ports of departure – I put dollar signs on the graphic below in all areas where technology can monetize the pre-departure niche market.

As Sherlock Holmes would say: “The game’s afoot.” Let’s go!!

NB: This is a guest article by Mark Mattson, a former university professor who writes agile software solutions for the travel industry through TravelTools, a service for destination marketers.

NB2: Ship in Miami image via Shutterstock.

Travel suppliers are constantly looking for better ways to effectively market themselves on the internet and inevitably I get asked the question: “Video or virtual tours?”

It is just not that black and white, just varying shade of gray. Imagine you’re the new marketing manager of a resort hotel and the boss asks if you think they should create a promotional video or create virtual tours.

The first question you would ask yourself:

“How’s the photography!?”

Great, still images should be your foundation – that’s the starting point for prospects that may be motivated to see and learn more if they like the photos.

This is where videos and 360-degree virtual tours play a role.

The second question to ask the boss:

What’s the budget?”

A respectable video will cost $10,000 and up! This is not a place to skimp on cost and look for the cheapest production you can find – even when they brag about creating videos in HD (High Definition).

Video options

My six year old can shoot 1080p HD video using my iPhone, but she lacks composition and lighting skills. Good video requires some thought. You should expect a two to three-man production crew with a respectable production package (camera, lens(es), tripod, light kit, etc.).

Additional funds should be considered for production toys like a jib arm, dolly, steadicam, etc – things that help create fluid movement (otherwise you’re shooting postcards).

Other budgetary inflating elements to think about: scripting, voice over talent, music, aerials, on-camera talent (do you get paid models or wrangle hotel staff and guests), hair and make-up, wardrobe, art direction, graphics and special effects in post-production, etc.

You get the idea.

Video can get pricey, but an effective video generates higher conversions and increases the average daily rate because the consumer perceives greater value. A property with no video, or even worse a crappy video or a poorly created photo slide show, may devalue your offering.

Video should be a visual a teaser of the property highlights and your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). Video, especially a video viewed online, should be short – no longer than one to one and a half minutes.

The average viewer abandonment rate is 45% after the first minute (higher if the video lacks appeal). If you feel you can’t showcase the entire property in a minute or less, try breaking it into sub videos – an overview video, and sub videos to focus on specific areas: meeting spaces, golf course, spa, dining, activities, accommodations, and local area (highlights nearby).

360-degree tours

Back to our dilemma – video can be sexy and pricy (done correctly), but virtual tours (also referred to as 360s, 360-degree virtual tours, panoramic images, and virtual reality to name a few) are more affordable, provide a slightly different function in the sales cycle and in may deliver greater value or return on investment (ROI).

The investment to create good looking 360-degree virtual tours ranges from $250 to $500 per image (location). The crew would consist of one photographer with a camera, wide angle lens and tripod (with rotating head).

The production process is much faster and less intrusive to the property’s guests and staff. Like video costing, you can find VT photographers who produce “cheap” 360-degree virtual tours – but the old adage generally applies: you get what you pay for.

360-degree virtual tours have improved dramatically over the last decade – visuals that rival any high quality photo can now be displayed with full screen panoramic imaging that allow consumers to virtually look all around. It gives consumers an honest and accurate representation of the room, lobby, meeting space, restaurant, pool, etc.

Simply put, what you see is what you get.

Consumers interact with 360-degree virtual tours more with by clicking or selecting what they want to see and spend as much time as they want viewing them, whereas video is a linear presentation.

Many of the newer 360 virtual tour players provide additional interactive elements such as detailed text descriptions, interactive property maps, supporting photos, and weather forecast.

Look at the booking cycle from the consumer’s perspective, the first elemental component would be good photography. If your property comes up when a consumer is searching for you and they see appealing photos they will stop and look.

If they like what they see (and it’s in their budget), they will go to rich media and reviews to vet and validate their selection. In the final stage of selecting a room type, a 360 image is a tremendous help.

Luxurious position

If the budget Gods have descended upon you and you can afford to do both, do it – they will both be used in the booking funnel and there’s something for everyone.

Make sure your visuals are in as many touch points with the prospective consumers as possible.

Don’t create a great content (video or VTs) and only show it on your website expecting prospects to flock – your job, as a marketer is to get your best visuals in front of as many prospects as you can within your budgetary constraints – distribute your content everywhere!

NB: This is a guest article by Henry Woodman, president of ICE Portal.

NB2: Hotel filming image via Shutterstock.

NB3: 360-degree tour image from The Raviz Hotel.

It’s not unusual to hear people say that over the past few years, travel companies worldwide have witnessed tremendous change in the industry.

But as more and more wholesale resources become available via XML connections and online B2B systems, travel agents are forced to access a growing number of platforms to perform queries.

At the same time the industry has witnessed (and continues to witness) strong growth in new distribution channels (mainly mobile and internet). It is not always clear how a single agency can manage them all, allowing large OTAs to fill the void.

The main challenge and the key for future success lies in one’s ability to establish an efficient distribution network of competitive products, accompanied by effective business controls with automated administration tools.

Here are five areas which are pivotal to the success of any travel business in 2012.

1. Access great resources and improve your offering to customers

A vast majority of travel product suppliers, wholesalers, and brokers provide online access to their inventories.

Online B2B systems allow travel agents to instantly access a multitude of inventories when searching for the best rates and availability for their clients, across all product categories.

Not long ago, strict financial terms hampered one’s ability to contract with many providers simultaneously. Many of these providers now offer flexible financial arrangements, making it feasible for travel operations to access and distribute their products to their travelers.

Creative travel companies are constantly on the lookout for new providers: With the right resources you can provide your clients not only with the best rates, but also with highly specialized products that are difficult to find elsewhere – providing your company with an essential competitive edge.

2. Access all of your resources from a single point of access

The hunt for the best rates and availability has led travel companies to simultaneously manage a multitude of B2B systems.

Many attempts were made to aggregate resources using XML technology – somewhat simplifying the search process. However, while XML integration is simple and inexpensive, several crucial problems remain:

• Wholesalers providing XML connectivity to their inventory transmit imperfect data – as they compete against others for your attention they strive to differentiate themselves with unique product IDs, and product categories. XML aggregation is of little help, if for example, you cannot instantly compare all of the offers for the same hotel, or immediately identify the best offer for a specific car.
• Moreover, an imperfect merge of several XMLs, without the proper business logic and sophisticated system infrastructure, cannot be used to develop a network of sub agents and affiliates – which can serve as a catalyst for significant growth of your distribution network.
• Systems allowing multi-product search of ‘Mapped’ content from numerous suppliers – enable travel companies to quickly put together the most competitive travel package – online, over the phone, or in person.

3. Grow your B2B/B2C presence and expand your distribution network

No doubt, the more points of sale you set up – the greater your chances are for success. It’s no wonder that all of the large OTAs offer affiliate programs – iFrame distribution is cost effective, and gets them featured on numerous websites, ultimately leading to exponential sales growth.

HotelsCombined has had tremendous success in this respect, while Expedia’s Affiliate Network has become a major source of growth for the company. How can you compete with that?

• By providing sub agents with a unified access point (B2B) to all of your resources, complete with a B2C booking engine to place on their website.
• The ease of becoming an affiliate of a large OTA attracts novice travel entrepreneurs, but has little value for professional travel agents. If you can provide instant access to a unified and intuitive B2B system suitable for local travel professionals, and compliment it with an online booking engine to place on their website (all under your agreements). All this complete with professional support stemming from your market expertise – and you are bound to become an attractive partner by local and international travel professionals alike.
• If you can get 100 travel agents to make five bookings a month on your system – you’ve already won. Now all you need to focus on is negotiating better rates, and finding new and exciting resources.

4. Business controls: Margins, user access, credit, risk, currency conversion

Managing multi-user operations requires having sufficient controls in place.

Your system must be able to define role-based user-access to information, grant your authorized agents the ability to instantly control margins across products, suppliers, users, destinations – down to single properties and bookings, etc.

i. Access Control

• Managing numerous users calls for role-based user setup. Who is authorized to make reservations? Create new users? Control mark ups? Cancel orders? Modify credit limits? See the original supplier price, or the supplier’s identity?

ii. Margin Control

• Growing your distribution network implies working with a variety of financial arrangements each with different profit margins. The ability to establish a hierarchical fee-structure will simplify your revenue-stream control on one hand, while providing the essential freedom to your sub-agents to manage their own sales.

iii) Credit Control

• Providing travel agents with access to your supplier agreements requires you to control when and how financial concerns are addressed. What happens if a booking cancelation date is coming up and no payment from your agent is in sight? How much can a single user book before having to clear his balance with you?
• It is essential that your system provides you with automatic notifications of approaching deadlines, and even auto-cancel the order before your account is charged. It should allow you to set up booking caps, and release credit as payments are received. Ultimately, it should allow you to do so across numerous levels, and according to varying user specifications. A well designed distribution system should provide you with tools and automated controls that are essential for safe and efficient operations.

iv) Currency Conversions

• Make sure you don’t lose money due to outdated currency conversion rates with manual and automatic-updating of representative rates, and even add a percentage or fee for currency conversions.

5. Streamline processes (multi-segment reporting, CRM, data entry)

Working with several suppliers on their B2Bs poses a huge data-entry challenge. Booking a flight from one source, a car from another, and a hotel from a third, requires someone to access three different systems, pull out three different reports, and consolidate them into a single accounting management system.

Multiply this process by all sales handled by your in-house and sub agents, and your online booking engines. Your data entry task must be error prone, arduous and time consuming, and ultimately a very expensive task.

The advantage of managing all of your suppliers from a single platform is that your order management process is considerably simplified to: working with a single XML or CSV file which includes all of your orders, across all product categories.

The result: substantial time savings and significant data entry error reduction.

The need for travel operations to adapt to the changing nature of the global travel industry, and at the core of this process is the deployment of the right technology portfolio.

This technology mix should not only enable uniform connectivity to existing resources, but to also to take into account future content needs. It is of an essence to be able to push the resulting output across as many channels as possible – sub agents, affiliates, and direct consumer facing websites.

The right technology should allow an effective control of the entire cycle – both to protect the operation from unwanted credit exposure, as well as to provide independent users with the best set of tools to grow their sales.

At the end of the day, it’s all about being able to offer the best and most comprehensive travel product – to as many consumers as possible without losing your pants in the process of doing so.

NB: This is a guest article by Andrey Spektor, CEO of Gimmonix (owner of Carsolize).

NB2: TLabs Showcase – Carsolize.

NB3: TLabs Reprise – Carsolize 12 months on.

NB4: Image via Shutterstock.

There is a certain helplessness creeping in around online hotel distribution which is worrying hotels in Europe and worldwide.

In recent weeks, Germany’s market leader HRS increased commission fees by more than 15 %, just two months after acquiring Hotel.de, the number three in the German market.

Simultaneously the screws were tightened in a frightening manner as rate- and availability-parity clauses applicable throughout all (!) online and offline distributions channels were inserted into the terms and conditions.

Now we are not talking only about last room availability, but we are confronted with anytime-access to the entire hotel inventory, a veritable product-parity.

Since then there has been increased murmurings in the discussion forums and chat rooms of the hotel industry.

For the sake of fairness, it should be mentioned that HRS also announced an automatic GDS-connection via Amadeus for HRS hotels, including a flat fee.

This particular booking portal’s power and the eventual dependency of hotel businesses on it raise fundamental questions.

Why couldn’t the hotel industry oppose these mechanisms of online distribution in time, and why did it leave the increasingly one-sided booking conditions in place?

At least in Europe the cause lies in the conditions of the market, where a constantly narrowing oligopoly on the side of the supplier faces a fragmented hotel sector.

As a consequence, unfair market practices are established which the hotel industry can barely defend itself. In economics this effect is known as The Prisoner’s Dilemma.

What is the way out?

Sure, every hotel has a whole lot of homework to do to strengthen its direct bookings via its own website.

Hotel associations inform their members and give a wide variety of help with direct-booking strategies, hotel reviews, content, customer loyalty, context and search engine optimization.

The development of a booking system belonging to the hotel industry is hardly the tool of choice due to the market and painful experiences of the past, no matter how promising new approaches, such as RoomKey, may sound.

And also Google will not incorporate the heroic epic of the so-called White Knight into its repertoire.

But how can the markets be held open in the medium and long term?

The hotel industry must have a vital interest in preventing monopolies in the growing markets of online travel agents, hotel review sites and search engines.

For this the barriers to entry for third parties such as agencies, app-developers, booking service providers, channel managers, online-merchants, search engines, think tanks outside the industry, garage startups and any other market participant, must be kept as low as possible.

This enables real and latent competitive pressure to be generated though alternatives, which sustainably prevents monopoly rents from being siphoned.

This allocation of industry know-how must be perceived and organised as a public good, the use of which is accessible to the general public at a low cost, or for free.

Why don’t we, as an industry, combining our knowledge and expertise, build a comprehensive hotel database – a worldwide Hotelwiki?

It would include unique global identifiers, address data, GPS-coordinates, photos, videos and in particular deep links to the favourite booking page of each hotel would have to be added and inserted there.

This project could be cast in the shape of a foundation. Or it could be built up from already existing industry initiatives such as Dothotel, HEDNA, HFTP, HTNG, OpenTravel Alliance, RoomKey or TTI, you name it.

Who takes the lead is secondary in the end. We need this industry’s joint show of strength – worldwide, undistorted, neutral.

It’s time for a Hotelwiki!

NB: This is a guest article by Markus Luthe, CEO of the German Hotel Association.

NB2: Images via Shutterstock.

Is NFC ready for prime time? 2011 saw just four articles on Tnooz tagged with NFC (Near Field Communication), one of which was a futuristic video.

2012 will undoubtedly see a lot more written about NFC (starting here), but the real question is, will passengers see widespread use of NFC-enabled smartphones?

In truth, it’s unlikely.

In this article, I’ll go into some detail about some of the lessons we’ve learned during a SITA Lab proof of concept project (developed with Orange Business Services), list some problems limiting adoption, and what the industry is doing to address these problems.

Why NFC has value for passengers

NFC offers many benefits to the travel industry but I’ll focus on the passenger self-service uses identified by the IATA Fast Travel Programme, and highlighted in the joint GSMA/IATA document on mobile NFC for Air Travel.

Of course passengers can already use mobile boarding passes at self-service touch points in the airport – automatic security gates, lounge access, self-boarding. But the experience is not as smooth as it could be, especially at the point of use in the airport.

For example, with self-boarding the passenger has to visually present the barcode by unlocking the phone and then accessing a web URL or navigating through a phone app. In the SITA Passenger Self- Service Survey (2011), SITA found that 21% of passengers did not use a phone to board because it was perceived as too complex, and 12% cited the risk of the phone not functioning properly.

NFC promises a simpler experience as passengers simply place their phone on the reader and the boarding pass is read automatically. Passengers don’t even need to switch their phone on, they just “tap and go”.

For NFC to justify the costs of rollout and deliver real benefits it must simplify the passenger experience, and not just be a technology swap. And this makes the “tap and go” experience important.

But NFC phones are already here – what’s the problem?

The major device manufacturers have either released devices with NFC capabilities, or have announced that they will do so in 2012. But not all NFC phones are made equal, and what is not made clear is what type of NFC communications they support.

By and large, they all support basic NFC tag reading. But, the most exciting thing you can do with an NFC phone ’off the shelf’ is to hold your phone to an advert and get even more adverts. So, what are the different NFC types, and why does it matter?

NFC comes in several flavours:

1. Reader/writer mode.

The use case here is to tap your phone against a smart tag (e.g. embedded in a poster) to get more info about that poster, maybe launch a web page. The phone reads data from the tag.

This is a good way for a passenger to get data but not a good way for the airport touch points to get data from the passenger.

2. Peer to Peer mode.

Hold two NFC phones together, or hold a NFC phone to a device and the devices will exchange information. This data can be anything from business card data to videos, to passenger data.

But Peer to Peer mode is user-initiated and features proprietary data exchange protocols. Again, not a great way for the airport touch points to get data from the passenger.

3. Card Emulation mode.

In this mode, the phone emulates a contactless smart card (such as the London Underground Oyster Card). A reader (e.g. boarding gate) can read a boarding pass from the phone.

And crucially, it does this without any user interaction.

When it comes to simplifying the user experience, card emulation is the crown jewel of NFC. It is the only NFC mode that will let a device read data from a phone without requiring the phone user to initiate the process or even take any active part in the process.

But to understand how it does this is to understand some of the problems holding NFC back. So, let’s consider what happens in card emulation mode.

Cardlets – not your ordinary app

But first, an introduction to the Secure Element and cardlets. The Secure Element is a special chip on the phone that can store data and run cardlets. There are multiple implementations of the Secure Element:

• In the GSMA model, the SIM acts as the Secure Element.
• Google Wallet uses an embedded Secure Element
• Visa is proposing using a secure memory card

In all cases, the cardlet is an application that executes on the Secure Element to manage data. It runs in this secure environment outside of the main phone OS. A Secure Element can contain multiple cardlets – each cardlet has a unique ID.

So, in the self-boarding scenario, the following sequence of events happen:

• The passenger holds the phone near a boarding gate NFC reader
• Boarding gate reader selects the cardlet from the Secure Element using the pre-assigned cardlet ID (there may be multiple cardlets on the Secure Element)
• The cardlet validates that the boarding gate is authentic by using a secret challenge/response
• The boarding gate reader then issues a query to get the appropriate boarding pass from the cardlet. (there may be more than one boarding pass on the phone)
• The cardlet responds with a boarding pass (data is encoded in format IATA Resolution 792 just like 2DBCs)

This brings up several problems, for which there are currently no standard solutions. Some problems must be solved by the air transport industry, and some must be solved by the mobile industry (mobile network operators, device manufacturers and mobile operating system vendors).

Mobile Industry Challenges:

1. How do you install a cardlet app on the Secure Element?

Not through the app store, that’s for sure! An update to the Secure Element can typically only take place over a contactless interface (e.g. charging your Oyster card) or Over The Air (OTA) via a Trusted Service Manager. But the developer community needs an API or a Service for this.

2. How do you send the boarding pass data to the Secure Element?

Again, the developer community needs an API or a service for this.

Air Transport Industry Challenges:

The challenges facing the air transport industry are ensuring the appropriate boarding pass is presented securely to authorized readers. A passenger can have more than one boarding pass stored on the phone but a security or gate reader should get the appropriate boarding pass automatically.

The appropriate boarding pass depends on the location (airport), the date or time, and the context (passenger boarding a flight, at security, duty free, lounge access, etc.).

• A reader must know the cardlet ID in order to query that cardlet. Should there be one cardlet for the ATI? Or a cardlet per airline, per alliance, airport or country/region? Given that each cardlet app must be uniquely identified, who will manage and allocate unique cardlet IDs?
• How to ensure security and a consistent way to retrieve a boarding pass between the reader and the various NFC- enabled phones.

For the mobile industry issues, we are seeing solutions emerge from GSMA (promoting the use of the SIM as the Secure Element).

They have established the Open Mobile API initiative which has already been incorporated into some Android NFC devices as a way for the application to access the Secure Element in an Android NFC phone.

Google has its Google Wallet which uses the embedded Secure Element, but it is a closed shop and there are no public APIs for Secure Element access. The picture is less clear when it comes to the other players such as RIM, Nokia and Microsoft. Apple, as is the norm, is silent on the issue.

IATA is taking the lead in the air transport industry and the Fast Travel Workgroup is working through the problems and opportunities to define the necessary standards to ensure NFC boarding passes can be use consistently across different airlines and airports. Interoperable standards are key to the success and adoption of NFC.

Next steps?

In 2012, SITA Lab will continue with NFC as a research project, both with Orange Business Services and others. Our aim is to release the current proof of concept “into the wild” (albeit on a limited basis), and to continue to work with industry organisations – such as IATA – airlines and airports to establish global standards to ensure the NFC ecosystem is as interoperable as current e-ticketing or 2DBC services.

As an industry, air transport must push the mobile industry players to solve problems that are blocking adoption. Watch this space.

Here is a clip:

NB: This is a guest article by Kevin O’Sullivan, lead engineer at SITA Lab.

NB2: Image via Shutterstock.

It’s hard to find any business better suited for the internet than travel and hospitality. What industry can show “pretty pictures”, display the cost, collect money, send a confirmation email and wait for you to show up?

Not to minimize the complexity of travel technology but, let’s be honest, the consumer could care less.

So what exactly is the consumer looking for?

Specifically, according to internet psychologist Graham Jones, the leisure traveler is looking for one of two things – an escape or new experiences. The challenge for travel marketers is to effectively inspire, educate and motivate consumers with various online tools to show value for money spent.

Brain research demonstrates that human eyes are capable of registering 36,000 visual messages per hour, and 80% of information absorbed by the brain is visual in nature.

Therefore, it is critical that travel marketers consider the significant role visual factors play in both online and offline sales. Considering the sheer number of marketing messages that we are bombarded with on a daily basis, the goal is product differentiation.

According to Wikipedia, product differentiation is defined as: “… the process of distinguishing a product or offering from others, to make it more attractive to a particular target market”.

Your differentiators or USPs (unique selling propositions) should be something that is of value to your target consumer.

Three steps to help you differentiate:

• Identify your target customer. It’s impossible to be everything to everyone. As the expression goes, “one size does not fit all, one size fits one.” Imagine creating a marketing strategy that appeals to honeymooners as well as families – good luck.
• Identify what your target customer finds valuable. Once you’ve identified your target customer, find out their likes and dislikes. If you can satisfy the customer’s likes (eg. a secluded, quite escape), that becomes part of your overall value proposition, a differentiator, or unique selling proposition.
• Create attractive visuals that resonate emotionally with your target customer. Now that you have identified your target consumer and what they value, show them what they want to see. Let the visuals “talk” to the target consumer in terms that clearly shows your value.

Putting price aside for the moment, visuals are the most important element to market and sell travel.

That was true before the internet, and is even more so for any internet marketing strategy. The web still offers a cost effective storefront (website) that can be accessed by almost two billion people (28.7% global penetration and growing) that are online 24/7/365 and your goal is to get your best visuals in front of as many of your target eyeballs as possible.

This means your website, your brand website, the OTA websites, social networks, everywhere!

According to a recent study by Cornell University on the so-called billboard effect, almost 75% of the traffic that booked on a hotel brand website visited an OTA prior to making the purchase, and three to nine of those bookings, were directly influenced by the OTA listing. The take away: a listing on the OTAs, will generate more bookings (on your site and the OTA).

Furthermore, if you have high quality, large photos, videos and/or 360-degree tours on your website and on the third party sites you will generate more booking, period.

Take a moment to audit your current visual assets (photos, 360-degree panoramic images, videos, slide shows). Do your visuals provide a good representation of the property, the rooms, and the differentiators?

If not, make it a priority – at the very least, update the photos. Consumers want to see the actual hotel and the rooms they can book – they should be able to clearly imagine themselves there. Primary benefits of rich visuals are to increase traffic to your website and improve look-to-book conversion.

It’s tempting to break out your digital camera and snap some images of the property, but customers can tell the difference between photographs taken by professionals and those that weren’t, and perception becomes their reality.

Quality visuals will create a positive and lasting impression of the property that helps customers decide where to book. Even a slight increase in the percentage of bookings from rich visuals shows a significant increase on your bottom line.

Let’s connect the dots. Consumers seeking a vacation are looking for rich visual content to help them understand the value. The visuals keep them more engaged with your property, no matter what site it is on. If the visuals are enticing enough, they will do some research on your property – read reviews, go to your website to find more information and rates.

If the same rich visuals are shown everywhere, the consumer gets more comfortable and will book the room.

Bottom line, creating high quality videos and/or 360 tours to show on your website as well as the travel sites selling your property delvers tremendous benefits. Studies have shown:

• Total unique visitors to the hotel website will increase an average of 13%.
• Rich content click-through (to booking engine) rates 4 to 5 times more than static images.
• Rich content generates post-impression activity (return visits) rates twice those for non-rich content and 46% more sales for those activities compared to non-rich content.
• The bounce rate (number of visitors abandoning site after viewing only one page – home page or landing page) improves by more than 5 percentage points.

Rich content is no longer a “nice to have” – it has become a “need to have” element in travel marketing strategy. Technology has made it easy for travel suppliers to create spectacular, rich content at a cost that will not break the budget.

It’s your image, how do you want prospects to “see you”!?

NB: This is a guest article by Henry Woodman, president of ICE Portal.

NB2: Image via Shutterstock.

The last few weeks haven’t been great for Google, especially for its operations in Africa.

On Friday 13 January, no less, Kenyan local listings site Mocality, ultimately owned by South African multinational Napsers, dropped a huge piece of detective work that appeared to show sales agents for Google’s Getting Kenyan Business Online programme cold-calling Mocality clients with fraudulent claims of a partnership.

Launched in September 2011, GKBO is essentially a free site builder, though domain upgrades from KBO.co.ke are available for a fee.

Pundits have claimed there’s no revenue here to justify underhand or illegal activity, but of course GKBO is a market share play for Google’s data and location services – the package has Google Analytics and a verified Places listing baked in – and there’s potential for search advertising revenue down the line from the businesses they bring to the web.

This is a long game.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s middle classes are swelling, which means more consumers, more prosperous SMEs, more internet connections, more searches. And there is, as Oxford Internet Research Institute fellow Dr Mark Graham recently pointed out in the Guardian, a global north-south content deficit.

The internet simply has far less information on it about the south. There’s money in filling some of those gaps – in the words of Ghanaian tech entrepreneur Herman Chinery-Hesse, “every aspect of underdevelopment requires a business”.

Mocality filled them by riding Kenya’s M-PESA mobile money service to build a business database; Google is ostensibly filling them by riding the need for a cheap, reliable web presence. The question now is whether it illegally used Mocality’s name to give that approach some momentum.

Google’s European VP for product and engineering Nelson Mattos issued an apology to Mocality on Google+ late on Friday 13, and Mocality boss Stefan Magdalinski has updated his original post to say that G’s sub-Saharan boss Joe Mucheru has been in touch.

But publicly the company has conceded little. Internal investigations continue, and some commenters on tech sites have argued that Mocality’s log files and call recordings could simply point to clever confidence tricksters faking Google IPs.

Even if that proves to be the case, the Western Goliath versus African David narrative will be a tough one to reverse.

And it gets worse for the folks at Mountain View, because the same week saw Google extend the beleaguered programme, rolling it out in Ghana under the Get Africa Online banner.

GKBO appears to herald a continent-wide strategy, and that leaves Google with some serious reputation-cleansing to do – particularly with Mocality now making noises about legal action.

All this is particularly pertinent to the tourism sector in Ghana, where Google has scored a high-profile agreement with the Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA). The two have had a relationship for some time, with Google’s country office helping GTA to optimise its own website.

According to GTA director of research, statistics and information Nana Dwum Barima, 100 businesses have expressed an interest since an initial stakeholder meeting and launch event last week, with 30 committing to register for the service – 1% of the partnership’s official 3,000 target.

Barima expects the project to capture mainly downstream businesses, which could prove a boon to travellers.

West Africa’s low internet penetration, limited leisure tourism and volatile business environment mean official, MSM and UGC profiles for small hotels and restaurants are thinly spread and frequently outdated.

Where they do exist, they’re often dominated by business travel and expat tastes – hence Lonely Planet’s users collectively rating a pizza restaurant and an Irish theme pub among the five best things to do in Accra. They aren’t – I’ve checked.

In the coming weeks GTA will be holding stakeholder meetings through regional offices, and is looking at organising radio discussions across Ghana’s 10 regions.

Barim says GTA believes it can reach 5,000, but that will depend, of course, on how seriously the Mocality affair dents its technology partner’s African ambitions.

NB: This is a guest article by Nathan Midgley, a freelance writer and web editor based in Accra, Ghana.Nathan Midgley. Follow him on Twitter.

NB2: Image via Shutterstock.

If we look at online travel around the globe, we can see that the four key global emerging markets – Brazil, Russia, India and China – are showing substantially greater growth than the developed world.

And they are already have a significant share of global online travel consumption.

This is beginning to show itself in the distribution of value – out of the top five most valuable publicly traded OTAs, three are outside the US (CTrip, MakeMyTrip and eLong). But who wins in those markets, and, more importantly, why?

In this article I am arguing that local players have an overwhelming advantage versus global players, and also describing the key characteristics of the local players that end up winning.

This perspective is based on our experience building Ostrovok (an online hotel booking product for the Russian market), as well as extensive research on key winners and losers in China, India and Brazil.

Why being local is an overwhelming advantage

At first glance it isn’t clear why the market leaders in BRIC countries are local. It seems that the Pricelines and Expedias of the world have significant advantages:

• Large pools of capital
• Established global supply bases appealing to BRIC consumers
• The ability to direct significant flows of global customers to BRIC hotels
• Experience developed over many years of success.

However, those advantages aren’t as significant as they initially seem:

1. Funds

Capital isn’t an advantage against local teams that know how to raise it.

A BRIC startup can raise $100 million in venture capital to invest on the way to success; any public company executive that spends that much money to fight in a non-core market will have the shareholders clamouring for his head.

2. Supply

Global supply is freely accessible through many of the local and global market leaders that are looking to aggregate demand into their core markets via affiliate partners.

3. Customers

Global customer flow to BRIC hotels is important, but:

• Local customers eventually become the dominant source of local hotel demand
• Global customers have little brand loyalty to global OTAs: they metasearch and go to whoever has better rates/availability for the BRIC hotel, i.e. the local OTA.

4. Legacy

Experience is of dubious value. Most successful Internet companies were built by outsiders because in rapidly changing markets flexibility matters more than legacy knowledge.

For evidence of this, look no further than at how online travel incumbents struggle with exploiting new distribution channels (social/mobile).

On the other hand, local players have substantial advantages that aren’t immediately obvious:

• Local fulfillment
• Local marketing
• Local supply

Let’s look at those elements in further detail:

Fulfillment

1. Local Payment Solutions.

The way people pay online varies significantly from country to country.

This is why CTrip has messengers collecting cash from people; Despegar sells a large portion of its hotels on installment plans; and Ostrovok processes payments via ATMs and mobile retailers. Global players do none of this, and lose a huge chunk of potential customers as a result.

2. Local customer support.

Consumers in BRIC countries need telephone support and transactions; help with visa issues; help learning to trust the Internet.

For example, CTrip embraces high-touch customer support, staffs its call centers with thousands of people and delivers a level of service unmatched in the West – a live agent answers 99%+ of calls instantly 24/7.

This enables the development of far greater trust with consumers.

Marketing

1. Local channels.

As the platforms through which users can be reached are substantially different in emerging markets, local marketing focus is a substantial advantage. SEM/SEO on Baidu or Yandex is quite different from CPC on Google; other channels with negotiated deals are even more so.

2. Local offline marketing.

Global players tend to be unable to stretch their organization to do offline advertising and tend not to appreciate its strength.

For example, MakeMyTrip in India or Despegar in Brazil both used TV campaigns to build much stronger brands than the global players.

3. Local culture focus. It should be self-evident that a person in another country that doesn’t even speak the local language can’t notice the nuances of cultural perception, morphology and many other issues obvious to locals.

Supply

1. Local focus.

Hotel supply is a high-touch, local business driven by relationships. As a result, over time local OTAs take the lead in terms of breadth of hotel coverage and in terms of rates and availability domestically.

This has already happened in Brazil, India and China and is happening in Russia right now.

2. Local hotel solutions.

By being attentive to the needs of local hotels, superior results can be delivered. For example, CTrip and eLong in China work with hotels in an on-request fax-based way, as well as via an extranet, and even today approximately 40% of Ctrip’s bookings are done this way.

Another example is that Ostrovok in Russia uses local-law contracts which are significantly preferred by local hotels for tax and accounting reasons.

Getting a strategy

Overall, a good way to summarize the advantages of a local player is that they are developing a custom solution for the local market, which is an easy sell against one-size-fits-all template solutions provided by global OTAs.

A final note to make here is that while the particulars may vary, the dominance of local Internet companies in emerging markets is not unique to online travel.

China is well-known for this, but the same is true in Russia, where hardly any of the Western internet companies have succeeded. Google trails Yandex with one third of its market share. Facebook is only the 4th biggest social network.

Groupon (which started as a leader in a market it has invented) has been overtaken by local player Biglion. Amazon, eBay, LinkedIn, Zynga and other global titans are nowhere to be seen.

So while many global players will attempt to compete in emerging markets, there is no reason to believe that they will be successful

What determines which of the local players will win?

Now that we have established that local beats global in the online travel industry, which of the local players actually do win?

In the process of figuring out the right strategy for Ostrovok, we have attracted investors/advisors from key global players in developed and emerging markets, and have done a lot of research on such players.

We have learned a lot about the strategies used and reasons behind the success of CTrip, eLong and Qunar in China; MakeMyTrip, Yatra and Cleartrip in India; Despegar and Viajanet in Brazil.

When we asked those players and their competitors about what determined the winners, the first factor everyone mentioned is “a very strong team”.

This was too obvious and generic an answer, but when we dug deeper we found three specific unifying characteristics at the winners in China, India and Brazil:

• Prior knowledge of the local market in executive teams.
• Technical engineering ability on the team.
• Ability to raise Western capital on the team.

What was also fascinating was that those three strengths taken together worked to create significant competitive advantages. Having talented engineers brought in more talented engineers.

Having executives with local experience helped bring in suppliers. Having the technical and supply capabilities brought in more capital, which helped bring in even more talent.

Once this virtuous cycle got started, other local players were unable to catch up.

How we built our strategy as a result of this research

So when we started Ostrovok, we built our strategy versus domestic competition around these key strengths:

• We are unique amongst all Russian online travel companies in that we have a team of more than 25 people who write code (not counting QA, designers and the like), many of them from top tech companies in Russia like Yandex. Techology is always the bottleneck to all other parts of the organization, and we are planning to expand to 150 people writing code by the end of 2012.
• We used local supply expertise to build the largest hotel supply acquisition team in Russia, and grow our local hotel supply base faster than that of any other player. This was done by Andrew Pyner, who was previously CEO of the Russian office of Booking.com, led Russian supply acquisition efforts for Expedia and GTA, and worked for Radisson in St Petersburg.
• Because of the strength of the team (and the past experience of the founders as entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley), we have been able to raise more capital than all other local players combined from leading global investors – General Catalyst, Accel and a number of others.

In conclusion, our prognosis is that the winners in emerging online travel markets will turn out to be local players with strong technical teams, a deep understanding of local suppliers, and the ability to raise a lot of capital.

And, over time, today’s situation will be reversed as those younger, faster and more aggressive players will begin to compete in developed countries.

NB: This is a guest article by Serge Faguet, co-founder of Ostrovok, a Russian-based hotel-focused online travel agency.

NB2: Image via shutterstock.

I don’t know any tourism business with more polarized TripAdvisor reviews than Swarovski Crystal Worlds in Austria.

This theme park from the crystal maker Swarovski stirs a wide range of emotions.

“Philalady” from Philadelphia wrote:

“Loved, loved, loved this!”

…while “mad_aboout_travel” from Illinois called it differently:

“Complete waste of time”.

Crystal Worlds is clearly a LOVE IT or HATE IT experience. This is not uncommon. Every tourism experience will have people who love it, people who hate it and a whole group in the middle who shrug their shoulders and say, “MEH”.

The lovers and haters are usually the people who are most vocal in social media. When was the last time you shared a mediocre experience on Facebook? Have you ever?

And when was the last time you raved (bragged) about a great restaurant you visited? Probably not that long ago. In social media, the people who love or hate you can have a profound impact on your business.

They influence other people who would love you and the MEH people in the middle of the chart with their online and offline chatter.

In conversations with many hotel operators this past year, I’ve learned that a single point drop in a property’s TripAdvisor ranking has an immediate and measurable impact on the bottom line.

Michael Luca at Harvard Business School conducted research in Yelp restaurant reviews and concluded a one-star increase in Yelp rating leads to a 5-percent to 9-percent increase in revenue.

Maybe social media is measurable after all.

But old school marketing doesn’t work anymore. Consider a business-oriented city hotel that dumps excess inventory at heavily discounted rates.

In the short term, the hotel will pick up some business from people who typically cannot afford it. By doing this, the hotel risks having guests who will HATE IT – especially when they face additional fees for parking, WIFI and an expensive breakfast that could easily spark to anger.

That anger can lead to complaints on TripAdvisor that result in an immediate drop in revenue.

Tourism businesses need to market to the people who love them and avoid attracting people who won’t. It’s better for your guests and it’s better for you.

Delivering remarkable experiences is more important than ever. This is what make people love you and what gets people talking in social media. What is it about your experience that will make somebody want to brag to his or her friends?

I’ve spoken to hotel operators who research their guest lists and give preferred treatment to heavy social media users. Others randomly select somebody for something unexpected and special, hoping to trigger a positive review.

By shifting more people from MEH to LOVE IT and avoiding people who HATE IT, you create loyalty and consumer advocates who will do the marketing for you.

NB: This is a guest article by William Bakker, chief strategist at Think Social Media.

NB2: Image via Shutterstock.

The previous week’s second and third places, held by Marriott and Hotels.com respectively, switched positions, while Carnival Cruise Lines soared to fourth spot from ninth and Vacation Rentals by Owner jumped from eighth to fifth.

Most popular travel websites in the US for the week ending January 7 2012:

Agency

Rank	Website	Domain	Percentage of Visits	Previous Position
1	Expedia	www.expedia.com	12.72%	1
2	priceline.com	www.priceline.com	8.98%	2
3	Orbitz	www.orbitz.com	7.16%	3
4	Travelocity	www.travelocity.com	6.39%	5
5	Yahoo! Travel	travel.yahoo.com	6.26%	8
6	CheapOair	www.cheapoair.com	5.86%	6
7	Kayak	www.kayak.com	5.26%	4
8	Hotwire	www.hotwire.com	4.74%	7
9	Cheap Tickets	www.cheaptickets.com	2.81%	10
10	bookingbuddy	www.bookingbuddy.com	2.44%	-

Destinations and Accommodation

Rank	Website	Domain	Percentage of Visits	Previous Position
1	TripAdvisor	www.tripadvisor.com	8.38%	1
2	Marriott International	www.marriott.com	2.74%	3
3	Hotels.com	www.hotels.com	2.65%	2
4	Carnival Cruise Lines	www.carnival.com	2.23%	9
5	Vacation Rentals by Owner	www.vrbo.com	2.17%	8
6	Hilton Hotels Online	www.hilton.com	2.09%	5
7	InterContinental Hotels Group	www.ichotelsgroup.com	2.00%	4
8	Booking.com	www.booking.com	1.87%	7
9	Walt Disney World	disneyworld.disney.go.com	1.65%	10
10	Harrah's Casino Hotels	www.harrahs.com	1.35%	-

Airlines

Rank	Website	Domain	Percentage of Visits	Previous Position
1	Southwest Airlines	www.southwest.com	22.03%	1
2	Delta Air Lines	www.delta.com	12.20%	2
3	American Airlines	www.aa.com	9.45%	3
4	JetBlue Airways	www.jetblue.com	8.50%	4
5	Continental Airlines	www.continental.com	6.56%	5
6	United Airlines	www.united.com	5.52%	7
7	US Airways	www.usairways.com	5.12%	6
8	AirTran Airways	www.airtran.com	4.69%	8
9	Allegiant Air	www.allegiantair.com	3.60%	9
10	Spirit Airlines	www.spiritair.com	3.35%	10

Travel search terms

Rank	Search Term	Percentage of Clicks	Percentage Paid	Percentage Organic	Previous Position
1	mapquest	3.97%	0.08%	99.92%	1
2	google maps	1.47%	0.68%	99.32%	2
3	southwest airlines	1.42%	40.72%	59.28%	3
4	expedia	0.80%	57.36%	42.64%	5
5	maps	0.74%	0.68%	99.32%	4
6	map quest	0.69%	0.00%	100.00%	6
7	travelocity	0.69%	57.48%	42.52%	7
8	continental airlines	0.59%	8.86%	91.14%	9
9	american airlines	0.57%	2.67%	97.33%	10
10	google earth	0.51%	17.13%	82.87%	8

NB: Data couresy of Experian Hitwise

Though loyalty programs in various forms have been in existence for a long time, credit for popularizing and institutionalizing them goes to the airline industry.

American Airlines initiated the advent of well-designed and structured frequent flyer programs (FFP) in the early eighties.

The success of AAdvantage spawned many other programs that number close to 150 today. Originally meant to increase stickiness to the airline, the accrued miles earned were meant to be redeemed for free flights.

In a hyper-evolutionary mode, the FFP rapidly transformed into coalition loyalty models that enabled the participation of other allied businesses.

The partner-rich program model created a large accrual and redemption ecosystem for the loyalty member, presented enhanced revenue opportunities for the airlines and increased business for partners.

This has resulted in the creation and sustenance of one of the most viable loyalty models. Some of the prominent FFP partners include credit card companies, rent-a-car companies, hotels and a host of retailers.

Today, this potent combination has ensured that all accruals happen only from flight-related activities.

An authoritative study (Web Flyer Group) has indicated main sources of accrual transactions-43% flight, 25% from credit card transactions and hotel stays.

Assuming these figures to be close to reality, then the rest of the 32% should come from retail, restaurants and numerous other partners. Substantial amounts of points are accrued through non-flight activities.

High accrual velocity of miles vouches for the popularity of frequent flyer programs. It has been estimated that in the last 25 years, more than 19 trillion miles have been awarded to FFP members.

However, despite its popularity, these programs have also been characterised by low redemptions and high breakage ratios. While breakage is booked as revenue and helps in reducing liability, in excess it becomes self-defeating.

Some of the airlines we worked with have indicated that they are striving towards 75-80% redemption (which is not an easy task) and would like to limit breakage to 20-25% which was considered as legitimate revenue.

It has been an accepted fact that earning ‘margins’ on redemptions is a sustainable model than seeking breakage.

The primary factors contributing to increased breakage are low exchange value of miles accrued, fewer number of redemption seats and lack of alternative and attractive redemption choices.

It is estimated that there are trillions of unredeemed miles in the member accounts (it is estimated to be between 14-15 trillion). Redemption velocity may be a critical parameter to assess the efficacy of a frequent flyer program.

The airport opportunity

For FFPs, airports are logical loyalty partners that help in accelerating redemptions.

This is primarily because, despite having distinct business models, airlines and airports are intrinsically linked together and are also reliant on each other for operational efficiencies.

Responding to changing times, airports are also being unshackled from governmental control and its management is becoming more privatized. Increasing competition among airports has also triggered the need to treat airline passengers as customers especially frequent flyers who spend considerable time at airports.

The airports today focus on offering a positive, integrated passenger experience. Extensive revamping and expansion of airports with focus on not just function but form is a sign of changing times.

The increasing popularity of low cost carriers (LCC) and increasing number of small airports catering to short-haul flights have offered tough competition to larger airports. Contemporary passengers have the choice of not only choosing airlines but airports too.

Revenue pressures have also pushed airports to seek ‘non-aeronautical’ revenues. They have metamorphosized into an open format to survive in a marketized rather than subsidised environment. Contemporary airports are no longer utilitarian hubs geared only towards handling passengers and baggage.

By launching or sponsoring airport-specific loyalty programmes like Thanks Again (JFK, EWR & LGA airports), Privium (Schipol airport), Via-Milano (Milan airport), World Miles Program (British Airports Authority) etc, airports have indicated that they are becoming more customer-centric.

These loyalty programs are predominantly driven by technology and help airports to identify passengers, understand their needs and customize travel experiences. They also provide the scope of earning substantial non-aeronautical revenues by presenting enhanced retail opportunities to travellers.

Like new airports that have incorporated substantial retail space in their architecture, existing airports not initially designed with retail business in mind are also adding more non-aviation areas.

Breaking new ground

Examples are Frankfurt airport with 30,000 sq m (570 squre meters per million passengers), Heathrow Airport with 68,750 sq/m (1,050 sq/m per million passengers) and Vienna International Airport with 11,500 sq/m (580 sq m per million passengers).

The inherent need for airports to increase non-aeronautical revenues mainly through retail sales combined with the compelling need of airlines to provide credible redemption choices makes a loyalty partnership between the two entities a ‘natural’ one.

The psychological convergence of airports and airlines makes passengers more amenable to making loyalty transactions within its precincts. Redemptions can be facilitated via vouchers or by enabling instant earn and burn through multiple channels including mobile phones.

Passengers would only be happy to redeem their miles for preferential parking, spa services, or indulging in a bit of retail therapy as they can subsidize spend through miles which they might otherwise not have used.

Brand value of airlines would also go up as the redemption choices need not be dominated by the already scarce redemption seats. It’s a win-win situation for passengers, airlines and of course, airports.

NB: This is a guest article by Sanjai Velayudhan, senior consultant for loyalty programmes at ITC Infotech.

NB2: Image via Shutterstock.

The UK government’s Foreign Office is testing a new online “Traffic Light” system for travel advice – but it does not go far enough.

The idea has already proven controversial with Iraq appearing, at first glance, as dangerous as Thailand.

But rather that sit on the sidelines, after triggering some of the debate around the issue in an earlier article for Tnooz [How governments can improve travel safety alerts through technology and social media], I thought it might be more constructive to design a perfect online travel alert.

First of all, the official test version looks a bit muddled (slightly confusing messages for Thailand, for example):

Here’s my (admittedly, very poorly designed) wireframe alternative:

Here is an outline of all the elements I have included in the new design:

1. Can you travel?

“Yes” or “No” – two colours, green or red, very simple.

2. How dangerous?

This is probably the most controversial of my proposals, but possibly the most important.

In the words of the FCO:

“The ‘don’t go to’ list of countries is broken down as follows: where we advise against all travel to the country; where we advise against all travel to parts of a country; where we advise against all but essential travel to a country and where we advise against all but essential travel to parts of a country.”

Well I think the problem is in that breakdown. The new “Traffic Lights” system has thrown up some anomalies, such as Iraq appearing as dangerous as Thailand, but I believe a scale judging a country’s “dangerousness” from one to ten would be a lot easier to read.

Every number could be defined, transparent and relevant.

For example:

1. Sweden
2. Dubai
3. USA
4. Russia
5. Indonesia
6. Thailand
7. Iran
8. Pakistan
9. Afghanistan
10. Yemen

And although I like the idea of the Lodge Scale™, I do believe that we should call this the Hague Scale™ – it might have a better chance of being adopted, being named after the UK’s foreign secretary William Hague.

3. Latest news

Important news stories up front and centre, above the fold.

4. Maps

I think everyone thinks maps would be a good idea. At the moment there is one on travel advice to Kenya. As guide book author Richard Trillo said on Twitter whilst discussing the latest Kenya advice:

“@FCOtravel know you’re underfunded – but there needs to be a map for every country”.

He’s right. The real reason to get maps is that it’s important to highlight regional issues within a country. Very important for the local economy

But as anyone who has ever designed a site knows maps can be expensive to design and update. Does anyone have experience on decent map programmes? Or maybe Google or Bing Maps might be willing to lend expertise?

5. Advice

It’s there already. Just make it more accessible.

6. Twitter

It gets updated automatically. Keep it on the site. Useful and keeps the page fresh.

7. Facebook

Good way of sharing information for international tourists and travellers. Maybe alternate with FCO YouTube videos (which can be excellent).

8. News and tips

FCO advice can sometimes be too technical, and the new and ephemeral can often drown out the important. For example, folks not using helmets on scooters in Thailand is a major issue. Let’s highlight that.

9. Changes

Flag up recent changes. Can be linked into the database. Not that difficult

10. Contact

Do you know what, there’s actually a lot of good content on the FCO Travel site, intelligently thought out. Keep it. Just maybe rearrange it a little.

These is just my ideas. Anyone have anything else they’d rather see added or removed? Please comment below…

NB: This is a guest article by Stuart Lodge, director at RoundTheWorldFlights.

I have learned many things as a chronicler of the digital media industry over the last decade plus.

But one of the definitive items is this: you will always be proven wrong about any prognostication on Yahoo, not because what you said wasn’t the path Yahoo took, but that it didn’t take any.

Unless of course Yahoo’s procrastination was your prognostication.

With a brand new CEO now at the helm, Yahoo’s choice on running-while-standing-still has run out. That much is sure.

Besides the industry-mystifying choice of ex-PayPal president Scott Thomson, there’s a lot of movement on disposing off its Asian stakes, part of its “trying to unlock the value” of its assets.

And it looks like it is happening soon: now there’s a M&A wish-list as part of “a tax-efficient asset swap with Alibaba and Softbank,” according to a report in Bloomberg this week.

The list includes the likes of WebMD, Weather Channel and AutoTrader. Previously, other names like Hulu and Bankrate have also been thrown around.

All which seem very random, only being considered because their size may fit what all parties need in terms of size of transaction to close the swap-deal. And that they’re conveniently part-owned by private-equity firms, all of which happen to want to part-buy Yahoo as well.

But let’s step back a bit. What does Yahoo want to be when it, well, gets born again?

Nostalgia

Back in 2005, when Yahoo was trying to reinvent itself under Terry Semel, I suggested that it buy Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia — back when Martha mattered — as a way to double down on women’s media and lifestyle play, a huge market, and more importantly, a unifying plan.

We all know how that and subsequent attempts went.

With the Asian sell-offs, it will have around $10 billion or more in cash, and why not use it for transformative acquisitions to help build around a theme? What could that theme be, large enough for Yahoo to continue to be one of the largest Internet players in the world?

Here’re my humble suggestion for Yahoo: start by redefining yourself as the “people-powered listings business”.

And it won’t be a stretch: after all, Yahoo started as a listings layer on top of the web, with its directory service, which curated everything interesting to “surf” at that time.

Why not go back to that theme, and stretch it to the users?

What that means is instead of investing everything in expensive original content (which it needs to do in certain verticals like news, sports, finance, if only as a glue that holds everything else together) or tech (a losing battle in face of Google, Facebook, take-you-pick-startup), use your users to help build the next version of Yahoo.

Let them curate the real world, through reviews and ratings of these listings. This isn’t a small vertical business, this is a huge intelligence layer over the world that Yahoo, with its money and users, can piece together better than almost anyone can.

And there’s a perfect and newly independent giant waiting for Yahoo (or anyone else, for that matter) to start with: TripAdvisor, fresh from its spinoff from Expedia.

User generated opportunity

TripAdvisor is about a $630 million (2011 estimates) revenue business, about $3.5 billion market cap, top-line revenue growth of over 30% over the past several quarters and at least 50 percent operating margin, so those numbers themselves paint a big story.

It has a huge repository of user-gen content that actually works and leads to transactional and advertising
opportunities, and has a big worldwide footprint and potential.

It also plays into the two biggest growth “sectors” for anyone in digital: mobile and social, and TripAdvisor, in its own messy way, has done a lot in both.

Of course there’s the small matter of trying to convince Barry Diller, who continues to be TripAdvisor (and indeed Expedia’s) largest shareholder, but when has Diller ever shied away from a large M&A deal?

Another adjacent, people-powered listings business is Yelp, smaller than TripAdvisor, and private, and Elevation Partners, its major private equity shareholder, would be happy to do a deal, anything that will make its much-panned portfolio and exits look better.

Yelp’s numbers are less readily available, but it is viewing an IPO, according to a November report by WSJ.

Revenue estimates for Yelp are around $100 million in 2012, and the IPO is expected to value it anywhere between $1 billion to $2 billion. Yelp is TripAdvisor’s cousin, with potential to be joined at the hip when put together with TripAdvisor, exact same philosophy in the transaction+advertising mix.

An expansion on that theme would include listings (and resulting transactions) businesses which could use that reviews layer added to them: HomeAway in the TripAdvisor-adjacent vacation rentals business, and OpenTable with its Yelp-adjacency.

Further down the line, real-estate listings business could be added to the mix, which would make companies like Trulia and Zillow attractive targets for Yahoo.

A global web layer

All of this also helps Yahoo forge a path independent of the other better-positioned internet giants like Google and Facebook and even similarly-troubled ones like AOL.

Almost all of these and smaller startup players are better at tech, Yahoo will never win that game in Silicon Valley or outside.

And every large media and every tech-trying-to-be-media company will continue to build content assets, and chip away at the media ad dollars, with the resultant downward ad pricing pressures that all of us are aware of.

This plan leverages its user base, still the second largest in the world, to build its future.

It allows Yahoo to be the utility layer of the world, a daily use across all forms of digital delivery, online and mobile, and at the nexus of every large internet trend: be a platform, and leverage local, social and mobile (there, I finally used that buzz phrase!).

It can continue to focus on content assets that build on top of those listings and reviews assets, as a loyalty driver.

NB: This is a guest article by Rafat Ali, an entrepreneur, journalist and founder of paidContent. Ali is currently working on his new still-in-development-startup Skift, a travel intelligence company.

NB2: Disclosure – Ali is a shareholder in Yahoo.

NB3: Image via Shutterstock.

It surprises me that many hoteliers do nothing with review sites. Even if all the reviews are positive, there should still be some level of management response.

There are many other issues around how hoteliers engage with review platforms and with guests who may leave a review of a hotel, whether it is positive or negative.

So here are 17 mistakes I have found hotels often make with regards to review sites:

1. Not showing that you care

If a review has potential to be damaging to your reputation, somebody on your management team should respond to it.

A response should be written thoughtfully, carefully and intelligently… so that everyone who goes on to read it will get the impression you run a thoughtful, careful, intelligent business.

People want to see that you care. They want to know that if they have a problem, somebody at the hotel will seriously attend to the matter.

Another important thing, research from TripAdvisor shows that 71% of travelers believe management responses matter.

2. Hiding

People don’t like this. If you are going to write a response, put your name to it, and your title. When you don’t put a name on your management response, what you have written isn’t as authentic and human as it could be.

Your management response simply won’t mean as much. It shows that you are not 100% committed to your customers, whether that is the reality of the situation or not.

In summary, you weaken their trust and increase their skepticism when you hide behind a company facade.

3. Inadequate proofreading

It only takes one careless error to convey in some readers’ minds that the management at your hotel is not well-educated. Something as simple as using “their” instead of “there” can set that impression.

4. Using overly complicated words

Don’t take it too far with trying to impress the readers with your vocabulary. It isn’t helpful. Use conversational English.

5. Attacking the review writer

This is risky. Taking on a defensive tone, belittling the writer, accusing them of being dishonest, blaming them for the problem…

Though it may be tough to do, it’s better to take the high road with not even a hint of these elements being in your writing.

If somebody says there was a bug in their room, and you say it’s their fault for leaving the door open, it’s not going to go over well with a lot of travelers who go on to read that response.

Keep the tone of your response cordial. If the tone is too aggressive or comes across as immature, you could scare away potential guests.

6. Failure to deal with a seriously negative accusation in a review

If somebody says you have bed bugs, and you don’t respond, this probably will be severely damaging.

If you are certain it is a malicious, fraudulent post, then use your capability with the review site’s management tools to report it and to request its removal.

If the review has any chance of being accurate, then be completely transparent about how you are addressing the situation.

7. Failure to respond to positive reviews

You shouldn’t respond to every positive review. But do respond from time to time to show readers that you care about what people think, that you appreciate their comments, and take a moment to plug a few benefits connected with staying at your hotel.

8. Responding with a boiler plate response

If you write the same basic response over and over again, you will come across as kind of stupid, shallow and insincere.

You need to mix it up. Make each response unique. Show that you understood what they said.

9. Permitting a low number of reviews

In the minds of travelers, a small number of reviews compared to other nearby hotels could mean “beware” in their minds, unless your property is brand new. And if you have old reviews on the first page, those are stale.

Their value is questionable, because they don’t represent the current conditions at your hotel.

10. Asking guests to write reviews through the hotel’s wireless network

If you are asking people to join TripAdvisor for the first time, and they go on to write a very positive review from your IP address, this could cause you problems.

TripAdvisor might begin to think your reviews are being concocted by staff members, and this could lead to punishment by TripAdvisor, such as “red flagging” and a downgrade of your ranking.

Other review sites could react similarly.

11. Not taking full advantage of the visual content you can upload to a review site

Upload all of the photos and video you can. VERY FEW hotels are uploading any video content. A good video presentation could be very helpful.

Try to take advantage of Google’s special interior photography for businesses, where the 360 degree “street view” camera comes into your hotel. Check out this example of a bar.

Currently, Google is providing this service for free. If you can get in on this deal, it’s one extra free marketing tool that your local competitors might not have.

12. Failing to ask for positive reviews

Anytime you let an extremely satisfied guest walk out of the hotel without asking for a review on a specific review site, you are letting opportunity slip right through your fingers.

Extremely satisfied guests, especially those who are first-time visitors, are the most likely to follow-through and write a positive review for you.

13. Ignoring the potential of other review sites, besides TripAdvisor

Yes, TripAdvisor is dominant when it comes to hotel reviews, but you should be making efforts to raise your visibility on Yelp and Google Places too.

Devices with advanced voice recognition technology, like the Apple iPhone’s Siri, will become more advanced and widespread — soon.

People will be curious which hotel Siri, or Google’s upcoming system, will recommend, and they will say to their next generation iPad, Apple television or smartphone: “I’m going to be in Boston next week. And I want a hotel room for less than 200 bucks a night. Which one should I stay at?”

These new voice assistants will comb through Yelp and Google Places and make recommendations based largely upon reputation.

It’s going to be revolutionary. If you want your hotel to be highly likely to be recommended by these devices, you need to take steps now to position yourself for it by getting a dominant quantity of positive reviews on Yelp and Google Places.

Even if the voice recognition revolution is slow to come, there are still a lot of Yelpers out there and plenty of people hit Google up for travel info. It would be a good idea to establish a strong reputation on these sites.

Besides Google Places and Yelp, look for other review sites that might benefit you, like HolidayCheck, a popular site with Europeans.

14. Provoking a sudden flow of 5 star reviews on Yelp by people who are brand new to Yelp

Yes, it’s a good idea to encourage a strong reputation on Yelp, but you need to be careful about who you are asking to post a review there.

If suddenly you begin getting 5 star reviews from people who have just signed up for Yelp, you are in danger of having all of those new reviews taken away from you.

It is better to ask for reviews on Yelp from established Yelpers. (Yelp is tricky.)

15. Blocking access to managers and failure to head off negative reviews at the pass

A lot of hotels seem to have drawbridges around their managers, where the pathway to them is blocked.

It’s better to encourage guests to complain to someone in authority so that problems can be addressed.

If you don’t make it easy for dissatisfied guests to complain, they will make you pay for it with passionate, in-depth negative reviews and negative buzz, and they will gladly spread it around in attempts to reap some satisfaction out of the situation.

The average Facebook user has 130 friends. Do you really want the occasional dissatisfied guest telling 130 people, or more, how much you sucked?

Make yourself available to intercept those problems before they become damaging problems.

16. Asking for positive reviews on more than one review site

By adding complexity to your request for a positive review, you lessen the chances of getting any review.

If you are going to ask your customers for reviews on multiple sites, you’re probably asking for too much. Make it simple. Pick one review site and ask for nothing else.

And if you ask for a positive review and a Facebook “like” and a newsletter sign-up, your request has too much clutter and probably will result in getting nothing for your efforts.

17. Posting fraudulent reviews

This is risky. My gut feeling is that only a few hotels, here and there, are attempting this, for example, in the US. If you do get caught, you could receive some embarrassing attention.

Your ranking will probably be shot to bits by the operators of the review site, and if your hotel is in the US, you might even be prosecuted and fined by the FTC (Federal Trade Commission).

Why risk all that trouble? Just ask your most satisfied guests for the favor of a 5 star review.

NB: This is a guest article by Ed Ryder, a word-of-mouth strategist at OutRivalReputationManagement.

NB2: Download Ryder’s Review Trigger Cards to make asking for positive reviews easier.

NB3: Image via Shutterstock.

Interesting developments in the world of the official travel advice on the internet issued by governments.

Following industry discussion just a month ago on Tnooz, it looks like the UK government’s Foreign Office is testing a new “Traffic Light” system for travel advice.

It works pretty well for a country that shouldn’t really be visited, such as Yemen. Highlighted in red: “Avoid all travel to whole country”.

Also works well with countries such as Vietnam, with: “No restrictions in this travel advice”.

However the tricky bit comes when the advice is between those extremes. For example, this is Iraq’s advice: “Avoid all but essential travel to part(s) of the country.”

But here’s the rub – this is Thailand, which has two highlighted sections. It kind of looks more dangerous, at a glance, than Iraq…

As the FCO Travel Advice Team admitted on the original Tnooz article:

“Consistency across the whole travel advice piece is a challenge”.

However, TravelFish founder Stuart McDonald makes this good point:

“Highlighting the two ‘avoid all..’ options is extremely misleading, especially considering the vast majority of the country is fine.”

If nothing else, it does show how difficult a new, more efficient, and generally more informative travel advice system, is going to be to design.

This author has previously favoured the Lodge Scale™.

A star system – with email alerts/tweets when they change

At the moment the system used to advise travellers is a blunt weapon. Go, don’t go or go under advisement. I realise that this weapon is very much used as a political tool. But surely a more subtle, effective and pro-active system is a star system.

Perhaps where 0 = Stockholm and 10 = Timbuktu.

Think about the effect of ratcheting up the numbers. There could be tweets when the stars change plus auto email alerts (a system you have at the moment). I could imagine that a change in a country’s status might make front page news locally. You could call this the Lodge Scale™. After me.

However the FCO should be given credit for trying something different.

Maybe an increase in the size of boxes might help. Or an explanation as to what they mean. At the moment it does seem quite, well, confused. Can’t help thinking that a usability study or some A/B multi-variate testing is called for.

At the very least maybe the boxes should be a lot bigger, clean up the colours and only have one box highlighted at any one time.

What do you think?

NB: This is a guest article by Stuart Lodge, director at RoundTheWorldFlights.

In early 2011, OpenTravel gave the go ahead to a new project to produce a car rental ontology, building upon components donated by Avis Budget Group.

This was constructed by Thematix, a member of the Open Travel Alliance. The OpenTravel specification can be used to more easily build software that is interoperable with disparate travel systems.

But what does this mean for the wider travel industry? How do XML schema and ontologies connect? Why does it matter? Should you care?

Who will benefit when the schema and ontology are linked?

Think about a conversation in which both parties have a vocabulary of 200 words – it’s going to be a pretty limited discussion.

This is typically the case when computers talk to each other or to humans. People, on the other hand, can invent vocabularies and use the constructive principles of natural language to communicate just about anything.

To do this, they need both grammatical rules for constructing sentences (the syntax) as well as methods for encoding and decoding meaning (the semantics).

XML is like the syntax of a natural language – it tells you where the nouns, verbs and adjectives go, but does not help you make sense of the combinations of words.

When you add ontology to XML messages, you can make sense of the “words” that are the XML content using the syntax supplied by the XML.

Suddenly, you can have any conversation you like without having to change the syntax of the language.

When the conversation is between a traveler and a computer, the traveler benefits from greater freedom to express what they are looking for.

The seller, whose offers are mediated by the computer, benefits because the buyer is more satisfied (repeat business) and the margins are greater (customer demand, improved management of inventory).

Every buyer wants to deal with an understanding and helpful person, but this is expensive and there are not enough of them to go around. Talking with computers is efficient – they never get tired or make mistakes, and they are consistent.

People have to provide the computer with “person-like understanding” and creating this understanding via programming is very labor intensive.

Semantic technology is a shortcut. It allows people to tell computers what words and phrases mean. A “green car” is one that “seats four people and has city EPA mileage estimates of greater than 30 MPG”.

The definition of “green car” allows the car rental company to search its available inventory for a car meeting these criteria.

To learn more about Ontologies, view this primer.

What exactly does this mean for me, and what do I need to do to maximize value?

As a travel buyer, I get more freedom to express what I want and the reasons and conditions for the trip; e.g., family vacation with young children, romantic get away, sight seeing with lots of baggage, college reunion, stress free business trip with golf bags, etc.

I want to tell you what I want, need, desire so you can “unpack” implicit requirements and persuade me that you have the best package.

This fundamentally shifts the burden back to the travel supplier to sell me, rather than merely array the goods so I can buy them off of a price matrix.

This requires a vocabulary for content so that the computers can understand what I am saying.

As a seller of travel services or products, I need to commit to continually improving the ability of my computers to understand and respond to the requests from prospects and buyers.

It means backing up my advertising and merchandising content with vocabulary and understanding for my computers, and expanding the power of the knowledge base with reasoning.

In the beginning, success will be measured by stripping out irrelevant choices, and over time, learning what the words mean relative to final purchase.

Where can this be applied on the Travel Roadmap: Dreaming, Researching, Booking, Experiencing, Sharing?

The Travel Roadmap refers to a process that a traveler goes through when traveling. It starts with “Dreaming”, which entails forming ideas and gathering general information, perhaps serendipitously, to help formulate a goal.

“Researching” involves assembling information and plans that will help fulfill a goal. “Booking” is the implementation of a plan. “Experiencing” and “Sharing” happen during and after the travel, and involve the role of information in helping enhance and share the trip.

Dreaming and Researching are strongly coupled, at least online. Translating a dream into a research activity is all about words.

Pictures tend to be too literal – how can I tell whether a photograph of a handsome man lounging at a beach refers to any beach or the specific beach where the photograph was taken?

Words are explained by their ontology and construction – “a beach” and “that beach” mean quite different things in the context of a conversation.

Sharing is also a language activity. What words do I use to describe a travel experience and encourage others to have my experience, or be jealous of it?

Some of these words are value-descriptive: “fabulous”, “breathtaking”, “enriching”. Other words are found in the Dream/Research cycle: “resort”, “luxury”, “Hawaii” “surf and scuba.”

Taken together, these words enable others to convert their dreams into bookings by providing an effective starting point for the research activity.

When will this become really valuable?

We are in a position now where there are first mover advantages with consumer benefits powerful enough to create sustainable competitive advantage and lasting market share gains.

As with any first mover advantage, fast deployment with iterative improvement is the name of the game. Offering a new paradigm and transforming the interaction into one with more value and meaning will generate higher levels of satisfaction.

Many consumers are aching for more relevance and a spot-on recommendation; they are not asking for more choices that are largely out of band in the first place.

As with many technologies, there will be many ways to define and implement at your core site, cooperatively with trading partners and agents, and to explore alternative activities to broaden the scope via long tail key words, for example.

This investment is not without risk, nor should it be a singular IT or eCommerce implementation.

It is essential to carefully align your marketing strategy, product and content with your eChannel (internet, mobile, voice, etc.) support for the Research phase of the Travel Roadmap.

It is also essential to monitor how your buyers (potential and actual) respond to your eChannel capability and how they respond to the travel services you provide them.

In particular, you should consider engaging a monitoring service with the capability of digesting blogs, Twitter feeds, Facebook and Google+ postings for material about your brand and services.

Why should I care?

The travel services industry is in the midst of a major transformation to direct eChannel (internet, mobile, voice, etc.) interactions for Research, Booking Experiencing and Sharing.

Such transformations always create opportunity for growth by enterprises that fully engage them.

For those companies already using XML Schema, the addition of Ontology and semantics is the next logical step for improvements to the user experience and relevance of results, both within the booking engine and on search engines like Bing, Google and Yahoo!.

This technology is already being applied in many ways, by many sectors particularly Retail, Health Care, and Government, and is being deployed in Finance and Entertainment.

How do I proceed and how do I sell it to management?

How you proceed is dependent upon the role your company plays in the travel industry, and what your current eChannel strategy and capabilities are.

There are also other pesky issues such as planning cycles, development budgets, state of existing architecture, and other strategic imperatives.

Regardless, if you are a travel provider with strong eChannel capability and revenue dependencies, you will have a strong case for investment in Ontology and Semantics for revenue, competitive, and technical reasons. A logical first step would be to propose a limited scope pilot.

If your eChannel capability is not strong or represents only a small portion of revenue, it would make the most sense to partner with a complementary provider whose eChannel capabilities are stronger; work with them to test a few alternatives and enhancements to your interactions.

This technology is disruptive and is leading the next phase of travel buying and selling; management needs to know.

NB: This is a guest article by Jim Rhyne, a partner at US-based Thematix.

NB2: Image via Shutterstock.

In late 2010, we interviewed 650 destination marketing organizations to determine what they had in the way of tools for delivering web content to visitors.

By tools, we mean utilities such as interactive maps, itinerary builders, or calendars of events. We also asked about organizational tool selection processes and who operated new tool purchases after they were acquired. Tnooz published our inventory – Rough Guide to Tourism Websites and Technology – in January 2011.

Among our findings were stories that destination marketers told us about why they succeeded or failed. These anecdotes added context to our raw numbers. They also helped us understand the importance of organizational dynamics throughout acquisition processes.

As we teased out our data, we found that resources made less impact than we originally estimated. While funding directly impacted the number and sophistication of the tools that a DMO could afford, it had little to do with overall satisfaction or success in reaching organizational goals.

As it turned out, dissatisfaction surrounded peripheral issues to funding such as vendor and technology lock-in, inadequate staffing and institutional inertia brought about by policies and oversized egos.

Merging our factual inventory with these organizational anecdotes revealed a five-tiered break-down based on the numbers of tools, their types, and the organizational dynamics affecting their selection, implementation, and day-to-day management.

Empowered by what we observed, we spent a year building a comprehensive web framework.

In anticipation of its launch, we revisited our data to see if anything changed while we bent over the grindstone. Our re-visit involved an inventory of 60 websites that we surveyed earlier.

Our methodology consisted of comparing what we saw over a year ago with what we observed today.

Our findings showed us that changes were few when viewed through the lens of predictable change. While the technology paradigm shifted slightly, organizational positioning within the technology market remained fairly rigid.

In effect, organizations remained in their original class. What changed was what constituted a class.

For example, in our original survey, 54% of all respondent websites lacked interactive mapping functions. Now, 50% of those have interactive maps and itinerary building capacities.

Another 35% have Google maps that merely show POI locations, but not the spatial relationships between or among points of interests. None benefited by using their new functions to drill down into user preferences or spatial activity landscapes.

In the absence of harnessing the true essence of technology, the most poorly outfitted classes are still the most poorly outfitted.

The difference being that they now are at the bottom with features that more equipped organizations had a year and a half ago. At the other end of the spectrum, the rich didn’t get much richer.

Of the 16% that had mobile phone apps when we originally surveyed, none has added newer features such as media consumption on many screens, as articulated by Claude Benard in his Tnooz Predictions 2012.

Our observations show us that many organizations added phone apps moving into a higher class based on the number of capacities that they offer.

On a less encouraging note, our observations suggest that the state of technology is flat and the vision for media consumption on many screens is simply that – a vision moving forward for Google and Apple, but not trickling down to designated marketers.

Our observations are particularly true for Capacity Under Performers, Technology Prisoners, and Widows and Orphans.

1. Capacity Under-Performers

According to our findings this group comprised 55% of all organizations that failed to offer contemporary, industry-ready tools.

Today the class still comprises slightly over 50% and despite having added some capacities, it still lags behind because the definition of industry-optimal has shifted like a carrot on a stick to include smart devices, true interactivity, and data mining.

2. Technology Prisoners

Technology prisoners were those that were reluctant or incapable of changing course.

Included in this class were those that offered full capacity sets, but were burdened by onerous, long-term contracts for tools that have long-since passed their technological prime.

Technology prisoners are also well-meaning pioneers that made early and costly commitments to technologies that are now limited in their abilities to expand to accommodate new smart applications and advanced database queries.

Also mired among Technology Prisoners are organizations managed by individuals who justify or protect historical decisions for personal reasons.

Obviously, a simple 60-site web inventory can’t replicate the anecdotal information that we originally gathered, but we can see that little has changed in terms of the outward interfaces of these ego-driven organizations. Since this is the case, we have little reason to believe that managerial inertia isn’t still affecting progress in a negative way.

3. Widows and Orphans

These small organizations need new technology and efficiencies but lack finances and/or staffing. Our survey showed that 36% of our original respondents fell into this class.

Today, the number remains the same despite some improvements in services. Given the fall in price of adding interactive mapping 25% of our original widows and orphans can now afford them.

We can see, however, that most of these additions are not a database driven solution. We can also see that most of our widows and orphans still don’t have content management solutions (CMS) or evidence of customer relationship management technologies (CRM).

What to do next?

As we revisit this break-down, we must acknowledge limitations in the market. To do otherwise, ignores fundamental facts – positioning is relative to structures and resources in the industry, more than it is due to other factors.

If a technology heaven does exist for destination marketers, it is one in which every group has an equal chance of making it to the promise land. In this case, the promise land is where 650 organizations told us we could find it. It is a place where marketers find:

• Expert intelligent systems that learn who the traveler is and how to configure visitor experiences based on individual affinities or preferences.
• E-newsletters to inform prospective visitors of events, specials, or “hot deals”. (We think that QR codes would have fit this bill if they were around at the time of our survey)
• Online shopping and advertising to offset the rising cost of site creation and management.
• Tools that manage and record itineraries, traveler reviews, events, personalized travel itineraries, and maps for the purpose of facilitating destination-specific planning.

Given advancements in smart technology, we might add the following:

1. Using technology to enhance experience at point of contact

In another contribution to Tnooz, I called this “what-else-marketing” that employs newer technologies such as smartphones, social media, and QR codes to increase commerce at the POP (point of purchase or geographic location of the visitor, within the destination marketplace, at any point in time).

“What-else-marketing” harnesses the spontaneity of the journey in that it links physical world objects and opportunities to visitors at the street level in real time.

2. Recognition of personalization

Personalization, to me, means replacing the current destination-marketing model that is a mile wide and an inch deep with tailored communications that are a mile deep and an inch wide.

In this way, destination marketers can serve highly differentiated constituencies or affinities by compiling and utilizing the emergent properties of travel in the same way that an ornithologist might utilize the characteristics of singular birds to understand the behavior or affinities of flocks.

3. Use of multi-channel technology

In our way of thinking, technology isn’t about adding features. It’s about building frameworks that facilitate multiple visualizations in the same way that a user can use a menu to select multiple displays or print options.

To talk about new entry points such as smartphones, tablets, and e-books requires a wholesale re-evaluation of tools as a concept.

Moreover, if destination marketers are to remain relevant in the face of advances in multi-channel technologies made by Internet giants like Facebook, Google, and Apple, they must look beyond the simple addition of tools or capacities and start to invest in systems that are “all-tool”” and “all channels” simultaneously.

Summing up

In order to attain the aforementioned goals, we need to shift gears from tool counts to mission-based accomplishments.

None of these things is going to happen at the level of destination marketing without taking the vertical costs of invention and turning these flat against the democratic and universal needs of destination marketers of all sizes and capacities.

In other words, if marketers leave invention to billionaires like Apple or Google, they are sunk because no matter how flush they are with funds they can never hope to keep pace.

What the industry needs is a system that collapses the lengthy and costly assembly line into a simple and easy-to-use box that feeds highly specific individual and organizational content into one end and spits it out to any screen at the other.

This system needs to be infused with feedback loops—both longitudinal and real-time—that add traveler preferences, profiles, opinions, and experiences as emergent properties of a system that outputs to “screens” of all types.

To look to other solutions, to keeping adding tools as separate workstations on the destination marketing production line is the type of linear thinking that will never accomplish a holistic view or a multi-screened future.

NB: This is a guest article by Mark Mattson, a former university professor who writes agile software solutions for the travel industry through TravelTools, a service for destination marketers.

NB2: Mattson is about to launch a proprietary WordPress plugin that is a multi-channel and multi-screen solution that simultaneously runs DMO websites, interactive maps, smart phones, pads, e-newsletters, itinerary builders, HD kiosks, QR code integrations, and HDTVs from a single administrator panel and database.

NB3: Image via Shutterstock.