Then ask yourself these questions:

• Are high volumes of supplier booking payments creating an accounting nightmare for your payments teams?
• Are you sacrificing control, or having difficulty managing to contracted rates with your supplier base?
• Do you spend too much time resolving payment disputes?

If so, our panel of payments experts in travel booking will help you tackle this problem in a different way.

In this webinar, payment experts from Wright Express, Expedia and HotelTonight will discuss how single-use virtual accounts can help drive efficiencies in the payment and settlement process.

You will hear tips – and potential traps to avoid – when evaluating the landscape of electronic payment solutions for travel booking.

Our webinar panelists are:

• Jim Pratt, Wright Express, VP, corporate payment solutions
• Chris Richter, Expedia, Senior Project Manager, financial operations
• Jared Simon, HotelTonight, chief operating officer
• Marc DeVallette, Wright Express, product manager

Moderator:

• Kevin, Tnooz, co-founder and editor

Attendees will be able to interact live throughout the event using the webinar’s chat facilities.

This FREE 60-minute webinar takes place on Thursday 23 February 2012 at 11am US/4pm UK/5pm Central Europe (all times local).

You can reserve your FREE seat at this webinar HERE.

The webinar is powered by GoToMeeting. System requirements: Windows7, Vista, XP or 2003 (PC users) or Mac OS X 10.4.11 Tiger or newer (Mac users).

We will record the webinar and publish on Tnooz following the event for those who cannot attend live.

Space is limited. Register for FREE now!

NB: Credit card image via Shutterstock.

The Specialist Holidays Group division of TUI, which counts the likes of ski brand Crystal, Hayes & Jarvis, Sovereign, Thomson Tailormade and Jetsave on its portfolio, is introducing a platform where agents – both in-house and third party retail – can interact with tour operators.

Made possible by creating a network within the Yammer enterprise system, the idea is to give agents up-to-date information from tour operators about products and services, as well as allow them to liaise with officials with any questions they or a customer may have.

SHG claims it is the first of its kind in the UK.

As well as product information, including images and videos of services and other elements of a package trip, selling advice and tips will be streamed through the system.

Incentives and prizes will also be given to those using the Yammer tools.

SHG online director David Jarvis says since mid-December around 60 agents have signed up to the service and are already interacting with providers of packages they are trying to sell.

The network tools give SHG an opportunity to develop stronger relationships with internal and external agents, Jarvis says, but also allows the agents to send feedback to the operators so products can be improved or customised.

“We’re looking to involve agents more in our business and think that social networking is an ideal channel to communicate and get feedback from the trade.”

TUI says it is considering extending the Yammer platform so other suppliers can be included, such as accommodation providers and airlines.

Agents already have a number of similar social networks available to them, but these are provided by the GDSs, such as the Travelport Opinions and Sabre AgentStream platforms.

The announcement puts an end to a long-running debacle which included the collapse of the UK-based BlueSky Technologies two years ago at a critical point in the first delivery of the so-called Globe project to put the reservation system of every Thomas Cook tour operating brand on a single platform.

In the delayed annual results for the year ending September 2011 released today, Cook says £86.3 million of its financial write-off relates to “historic costs associated with a long running major IT project”.

The wider £428 million figure relates also includes “impairment of goodwill in our UK and Canadian businesses”.

It is still unclear the total costs incurred by the failed reservation system project, although a string of people familiar with the programme over the past 12 months have put the project well into six figures.

An official says:

“Over the past five years, we’ve continually reviewed the development of an integrated tour operating platform across the business. Compared to when the project was initially scoped, Thomas Cook is now a totally different business with many brands and tour operators with specific IT needs.

“As a result, the increased costs, time and risk now far outweigh the potential benefits of the project.”

The announcement comes as Thomas Cook prepares for another round of retail shop closures, restructuring and job losses, amid high losses during 2011, £398 million for the 12 months ending September this year, despite a 10% increase in overall revenue.

The company says it will close around 200 “under-performing” shops within the next two years but invest in its online offering, including relaunching its websites “in time for peak trading”.

It expects to see the total number of bookings made online increase to 40-50% over time from the current level of 25%.

The Globe project will no doubt enter folklore as one of the most problematic IT programmes in travel tech history, with millions spent on consultants, in-fighting amongst executives and, today, the eventual axing of the entire scheme.

A number of companies were invited to pitch for the project in the mid-2000s, with BlueSky winning what was seen at the time as a flagship project for the company but a massive undertaking for both it and Thomas Cook.

It has since emerged that at least one large travel tech company declined the opportunity to run the project – and told Thomas Cook as much – as it believed the job was simply impossible to do, given that the tour operator had a myriad of brands on different and very complex systems, each with their own vastly different requirements.

Despite the warnings, Thomas Cook went ahead with the programme and pretty much came into difficulties within the first year as BlueSky and Thomas Cook’s then-IT provider IBM fell out over delivery schedules and integration.

Disagreements at board level then came as costs spiralled, leading in September 2009 to the collapse of BlueSky and a switch from IBM to Capgemini as its main IT provider and consultancy.

Despite the dismay which the project appears to trigger from many of those involved in it, internally and externally, very few have spoken publicly about it.

Perhaps the only senior executive to have since hinted at the differences in opinion over strategy is Russell Gould, the company’s former-ecommerce director.

Speaking at a conference in September this year, he made a general but pointed remark about travel technology projects:

“It’s about lots of little agile developments every month, because if you start to build a new platform it will cost a fortune and be likely to be redundant.”

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

Distribute was set up to enable new distribution opportunities for tour operators and OTAs, and provide businesses breaking into travel with a powerful platform to do this.

Our senior team:

• Nic Costa, managing director – Nic has been instrumental in the development of travel advertising technology products and services since 1997. He was a founder of travel specialist affiliate network, AffiliateFuture and instrumental in building the business to be the fastest-growing affiliate network in the UK with an unrivalled stronghold in the travel sector when it was sold in 2007.
• Giles Parnwell, commercial director – Giles is a well-respected travel industry figure, having won personal and company awards for services to the travel industry. He started at Singapore Airlines 20 years ago, responsible for UK sales and driving a number of online firsts in online advertising and marketing for the airline. He has extensive knowledge of affiliate marketing and travel technology, and proven commercial experience at managing business portfolio’s exceeding £180 million per year.
• Daniel Chick, technical director – Like Nic, Dan was with AffiliateFuture from the start and was the technical force behind its award-winning technology. Since selling the business in 2007 Dan has taken an advisory role for many big names in the industry. He has a strong background in all aspects of Internet related technology, with specific expertise in scalable web application infrastructure, online advertising, tracking technology, API development and ‘Cloud’ based computing architectures.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

We’re self-funded so far.

What problem are you trying to solve?

We’re helping to create new high-volume distribution opportunities for tour operators and OTAs and providing complimentary brands with new revenue streams from travel without any technical resource requirements.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Distribute’s technology aggregates live data from a wide range of big name travel suppliers for syndication to high-profile web sites looking to promote holidays. The flexibility and open nature of the product uniquely allows any brand to deliver live pricing into websites, email or specialised marketing campaigns such as retargeted banner advertising.

We publish white label holiday search websites for complimentary brands, such as web portals, tourist boards, and price comparison sites.

Customers can be directed at live results pages in many ways:

• Via a colour customisable search box. We provide simple tools to do this
• Via a holiday search website homepage
• Via links within website text, email, banner ads, Google PPC ads to specific results pages, eg.
• Holidays from East Midlands Airports to the Canary Islands leaving in the next 6 weeks
• All inclusive holidays from London to Kos for 2 adults and 2 children next summer

The underlying high-capacity holiday price and availability data is also fed direct to existing leading travel aggregators and specialist advertising and marketing agencies for use in their own products and services.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

• Travel suppliers: Thomas Cook, Lowcost Group, On Holiday Group, On The Beach, Expedia
• Travel aggregators: TravelSupermarket, Teletext Holidays
• Agencies: Struq & Flashtalking (retargeting), Rocketer (social), Fusepump (affiliate feeds & tools)

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

We presented the first version of our white label technology to Thomas Cook five months ago. They were clearly impressed, and suggested a use for it that we hadn’t thought of; on the late deals section of their own website. They carried out split tests to validate the technology, and found that conversions significantly increased. We couldn’t have asked for a better test case.

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

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) with monthly licensing fees dependent on volumes. Our strategy is simply to sign up more partner websites to increase our distribution network and revenues for all parties. In 2012 we’ll be adding flights, hotels, dynamic packages, car hire, and travel extras.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• The technology is extremely complex and volumes of data are huge. Our team have obsessed about travel distribution for years and have worked with most of the parties involved on the supply side with different hats on.
• We’re specialised in travel, and our technology has been designed from the outset to deal with the volatility in pricing and live availability specific to the travel sector.
• Having access to new cloud technology products in development before they are launched

Weaknesses:

• It can often take our suppliers months to track down the source of their data, or it may be tied into other distribution systems.

Opportunities:

• Substantial new distribution opportunities for our travel suppliers
• A hungry set of clients that are keen top showcase their product in new areas online
• High traffic websites that are keen to offer travel products to their visitors

Threats:

• Other players coming to market, but as we’re already working with the big players, and there is so much development work involved, we’re at a distinct advantage

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

We’ve only had encouragement so far.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

• Substantial levels of targeted visitors delivered to our travel clients’ websites via our technology.
• Providing a genuinely simpler, more useful way for travellers to compare holidays, flights, and hotels.
• Creating a new revenue stream for many large players keen to break into travel.
• Expansion into other countries.

NB: Here is a Prezi overview.

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

So what happened in the intervening 12 months?

Are you making money yet?

Yes.

What has been the biggest problem – building the product/service or marketing it to consumers/travel industry?

Marketing it to the consumers and to the different businesses (travel agents, DMOs, tour operators) in the tour industry.

Biggest assumption in the business plan that was wrong?

That traditional Travel Agents would pay for our service.

By opening up our search engine to the public, we have seen that agents are in fact using it and like how they can search and compare all the individual tours from all their suppliers in one place, but we realised the signing up before they could see how it worked was a real barrier.

One nice surprising thing since we launched our suite of Facebook Apps for the tour industry is that we’ve had some of the more savvy Agents contacting us about putting our Tour Search App onto their Facebook Pages too.

After listening to a number of agent’s requests/needs, we’ve recently launched our Tours App for agents where they can feature all of their preferred operator’s tours on their Facebook Page, so their fans can search tours and send the agent direct enquiries about specific tours.

Is your current customer base as predicted?

Mostly… primarily the business revolves around tour operators and that has remained the case.

Did you achieve your 12 month goals? If not, why not?

Again… in most respects, yes… in others, no.

The number of tour operators we have on board now has skyrocketed in the last six months.

Our platform now has over 300 operators (small, medium and large) who operate 12,500 tours to 206 countries of the world (when we launched we only had around 3,000 tours).

There are just under 20 Publishers in our PPC Affiliate Ad Network and we have 2 DMOs in Australia who are showcasing their tour operator member’s tours via their Facebook Pages.

The only goal, as mentioned above, we didn’t reach were the agents. But with the recent interest shown in our Facebook App we’re confident this will pick up.

Has the problem you were trying to solve changed?

The goal posts are always moving in this travel tech space.

However the root problem of there being no single platform that complements the entire tour industry still remains and TourRadar continues to be at the forefront of helping tour operators distribute their products across all of the channels available today.

Sure there are aggregators of aggregators and booking engines for tours and activities popping up nearly every day, however they are all going for the short-term win of taking a booking commission from the operators.

From the beginning TourRadar has focused on the long-term, with the view of building an eco-system for the entire tour industry… and with our progress in the past 12 months and what’s in the current pipeline we are standing in very good stead to achieving that.

Which startup that has launched in the past 12 months did you think “Ah, wish we had done that!”?

To be honest in the tours and activities space, even though there has been a plethora of startups launched in the past 12 months – there hasn’t been any that have really shown or proven anything extraordinary to what we already do at TourRadar or what the other known players like GetYourGuide etc currently do in the day tour booking space.

We’ve also seen a few Groupon style deal sites for tours and activities come and go which I think we’ll continue to see happen.

If you could go back in time and tell yourself one thing, what would it be?

Good things really do come to those who wait (and work hard!).

NB: Tnooz launched TLab Showcase in March 2010, a dedicated channel to give startups in the travel, tourism and hospitality sector an opportunity to explain their vision, company background and strategy to a wider audience.

As well as publishing an elevator pitch-type questionnaire for each business, Tnooz committed to following up with each startup after 12 months or so to see how well (or not) each performed.

NB2: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

This is a question that we have been pondering – why the iPad is the final nail in the “all internet is free” coffin?

Here are some points to consider:

• It is the fastest selling consumer electronics device in history.
• The iPad is the first truly video-centric guest Internet device.
• iPad places huge demands on hotel Wi-Fi systems, consuming 400% more wifi data on a monthly basis than the average iPhone, iPod or Android device, according to a recent report from Meraki.

So why should hoteliers care?

The average hotel’s wifi system is already overloaded. Some 60% of surveyed travelers in America, Europe and Australia indicate they already have had a poor downloading experience in a hotel because the system was slow.

The advent of the iPad can only increase the number of unhappy guests. A key driver of future success for hotels will be the ability to provide guests with the same level of technology capabilities they have in their homes and offices.

With 67% of guests stating they will not return to a hotel where they have had a poor technology experience, the ability to provide good experiences in using the same devices guests use at home while they are traveling is now an imperative.

Why worry about iPad?

A recent YPartnership study of frequent business travelers indicates that nearly 30% of respondents say they are likely to carry only a tablet device like the iPad when on future business trips.

Then, consider that more than 25 million iPads have already been sold and the message should be clear: hoteliers must quickly be able to support these devices.

What’s the relevance to hoteliers?

To understand the impact of the iPad, consider that three million iPads were sold in the first 80 days of its availability – more than 37,000 per day.

And, by the iPad 2 launch in March 2011 (less than a year from the iPad 1 launch), more than 15 million iPads had been sold – selling more than all other tablet PCs combined since the iPad’s release.

Gartner Group, a leading US-based research firm, predicts 100 million iPads will be sold by the end of 2012. And that’s only the Apple tablet format — there are more than five dozen competitors.

According to a 2011 Yesawich Partnership survey, 40% of business travelers have incomes well above the norm in developed countries, thus providing higher disposable income. They are further likely to spend it disproportionately on new technologies like the iPad.

What makes iPad different?

There are several characteristics of the iPad that make it different from other devices currently carried by hotel guests, such as laptops and smartphones – which mean that hoteliers will have a new set of requirements in order to support their guests’ activities:

• It is designed, built and used for the viewing and dissemination of video. According to Cisco, video traffic is more than 600,000 times more data intensive than equivalent text.
• It is driven by a highly intuitive user interface, thus requiring no significant existing computer skills. New users are up and running with an iPad at an average of one hour. (Apple)
• The majority – some 75% — of iPads are equipped with wifi, which is already creating hotel network/bandwidth problems – especially when coupled with the high video needs of iPad users.

The antenna receptivity on iPads is significantly lower than other devices, particularly laptops, creating a setting for negative guest experiences.

The following chart shows that mobile devices like the iPad are (on average) about 30% worse in receptivity compared to devices like laptop computers.

Based on network data, iBAHN estimates that approximately 25% of the devices on the iBAHN network are now iPads.

And considering the fact that this device was specifically designed to allow users access both to their own content, as well as cloudbased content, and that video streaming requires significantly more bandwidth for an acceptable experience, it is easy to understand the coming challenge for hotels.

In fact, the average iPad user downloads three to four times more data than they would on a smartphone, directly due to video download and streaming demands. And, The antenna reception of the iPad 2 is worse than the iPad 1, not better.

So what?

This means if your hotel’s Wi-Fi system was designed prior to 2010 around laptop antenna reception, your iPad-carrying guest is likely to have a bad experience. We’ve observed hotels where the iPad works at the desk but not on the bed or vice versa!

Data versus voice traffic growth is another indicator of guest behaviour changes in hotels – much like mobile phones changed the telephony picture in the hospitality industry.

In looking at the following iBAHN network usage chart, while there is continued incremental growth in voicetraffic, the geometric growth for data (read: video) traffic will change the requirements for hoteliers.

So what’s the takeaway?

Hoteliers need to prepare to support their guests who are currently traveling with iPads, and should expect that number to continue to grow rapidly.

Among those preparations, hoteliers should consider these four points:

• If hotels’ wifi system was designed before 2010, it likely needs to be reconfigured to support the video demand arising from new devices like the iPad.
• Unlimited free Wi-Fi makes little sense in this new environment, unless hotels have unlimited bandwidth, along with unlimited budget to continue adding additional bandwidth.
• Get in front of the iPad curve by identifying a partner with depth of experience in developing and implementing these new system designs before it is a scramble to keep up with guests’ needs.
• Analyze the capacity of your existing bandwidth circuits to the Internet at peak hours to anticipate guest satisfaction levels before it is too late.

In short, the advent of the iPad has created both a challenge and an opportunity for the hospitality industry – this device has already begun to show its power to change how travelers work and play while staying at hotels.

The hotel industry has a unique opportunity to show the worlds’ travelers that it is in synch with their needs, now and in the future.

NB: This is a guest article by Graeme Powell, managing director for EMEA at iBAHN.

The 500,000 room-night milestone doesn’t exactly put LivingSocial in the category of Expedia, which sold 79.7 million room nights in 2010 and recently began powering Groupon Getaways, but it’s a relatively big number nonetheless.

Doug Miller, LivingSocial’s senior vice president of new initiatives, says travel has become “material” to the company’s financials.

And, Miller is well-positioned to consider the evolution of online travel into social travel since he worked at Expedia for eight years.

Miller, who formerly handled the media business for Expedia.com, Hotels.com and Hotwire,  says online travel agencies aren’t generating demand, but are giving consumers choices once they’ve already decided to travel.

Miller provides some LivingSocial statistics to back up his claim that LivingSocial Escapes, which often pairs hotel stays with lift tickets or restaurant credits, is “telling a story” and providing a dose of travel inspiration.

Miller says:

• 70% of LivingSocial Escapes purchasers indicated in a recent survey that they weren’t actively looking to travel when they purchased their Escape.

• And, 30% of Escapes are purchased within 15 minutes of subscribers opening their LivingSocial emails.

And, a considerable number of these travel-voucher purchases took place within minutes of the consumer opening their LivingSocial Escapes email, according to the survey.

In other words, these Escapes purchases took place early in the travel-planning funnel and didn’t involve searches of dozens of travel sites before a decision was made, Miller says.

“We are very focused on inspiration and discovery and getting people out from behind the screen and doing something they didn’t think of doing,” Miller says.

But, aren’t flash sales customers focused on price?

Miller prefers to say they are focused on “value,” and open to an inspiring travel story.

In tandem with its LivingSocial Escapes initiative, the company launched LivingSocial Adventures in July, and this has LivingSocial taking on what might be considered a tour operator role.

LivingSocial employees are acting as tour guides for the paintball, Bourbon tasting, sailing and OKtoberfest sessions, for instance.

And, Miller says LivingSocial Adventures is in the initial stages of acting like a tour operator by packaging tours and activities with hotel stays.

For example, LivingSocial Adventures is combining a yoga and wine-tasting excursion with a stay at Kokopelli Suites in Sedona, Arizona, for $169.

Speaking of inspiration, perhaps other flash sales sites will follow LivingSocial’s tour operator-like lead.

But after years of hyperbole (much like mobile, again) the reality is finally starting to really kick in.

In particular, and no surprise given the size of their respective populations, are India and China, which are forecast to dominate growth in online travel over the course of the next few years.

Presenting data at the WebinTravel conference in Singapore this week, PhoCusWright analyst Clement Wong says Asia-Pacific has already overtaken the US in terms of growth rates in online travel.

Furthermore, in 2012, Europe will become the largest online travel sector, while Asia-Pacific will account for roughly 20% of the market worldwide.

Wong and others in Singapore signal a number of key factors driving growth:

• Growing middle class (with a desire to travel, especially overseas) in both India and China
• Rising adoption of credit and debit cards across the region, giving users easier means of securing travel products immediately over the web, although some countries still have widespread book online-pay offline policies in place.
• Similar to the spurts in growth in the west in the early to mid-2000s, rapid expansion of web connectivity in the home and businesses – alongside prolific use of mobile web.

Interestingly, according to Wong, car rental will form a significant part of the services in demand by travellers.

The iPad app, published in early August, features photos and short videos on 26 “iconic destinations” from Angkor Wat to Machu Picchu.

There’s a travel map built into the app and users can customize it to display destinations they’ve visited or locales on their bucket list, and then they can export the map to Google Earth and share it with their friends and family.

In another twist, users of the app can search for a destination under several categories — Exotic Adventure, Family Travel, Culture & History or Nature & Wildlife, and then create a customized, electronic postcard out of one of the destination photos and send it on its way.

When you tap on the A&K logo in the app, you navigate to the Abercrombine & Kent website for more information about the destination. There also are options to contact an A&K specialist to fine-tune your vacation.

There are plenty of social media sharing options within the app, as well.

In addition to its applicability for travelers, the app would seem to be an ideal tool for iPad-carrying travel agents, who might be able to show off A&K destinations to clients coming into the travel agency for a visit.

Here’s an A&K video describing the iPad app:

Unfortunately, a good plan also isn’t created overnight, so ask yourself these questions:

• How far are you with your targets, budget and plan of attack for next year?
• What REVPAR and GOPPAR do you need to achive?
• Is your hotel marketing plan complete?
• Does it describe all actions in detail?
• Does everyone on the team know the objectives?
• What steps will it take to get there?
• Did you make your 2012 budget already or are you right in the middle?
• What methodology are you using?
• Are you simply adding a 3% to 5% each month based on last year’s performance?
• Are you really putting your teeth into it and drilling down per segment, per channel, per account, per day?

The basis of the target or budget lays in a detailed demand calendar. Get a clear overview of what drives revenues each single day of the year.

Map the events, conferences, exhibitions, trade fairs, concerts, holidays, vacations, long weekends, etc through 2012. You will start seeing a clear shift already.

Perform displacement calculations on all segments, channels and accounts to uncover hidden revenue potential.

Incorporate channel distribution cost like travel agent commission, agency fees and marketing investments, payroll for sales, marketing and reservation, to determine the true net value of each segment.

It seems though, however, not everyone goes into as much detail when making their budget. To demonstrate, I will share with you a intriguing story about budgeting.

So we work with many hoteliers, and in this case it relates to the management of a resort.

Hotels in vacation markets for many have been influenced (indoctrinated) by tour operators on how to manage their property. As a result, budgets are made per person rather than per room, meaning that the total revenue objectives become “flexible” if measurement of results does not incorporate enough factors.

In this particular case, management were under the impression the hotel was performing on target as the correct average rate per person was achieved.

Unfortunately the average occupancy per person per room was actually 20% lower than normal, which made it impossible to reach total revenue target, because the average room rate was totally off.

Stick with me here… When we were working through the budget for each month, we noticed that several months had targets at revenue levels below last year. After looking deeper, we were told that some tour operators had informed them they were expecting 10% less bookings from a particular country.

No one ever raised the idea of initiating partnerships with other distribution channels to offset the possible decrease in demand. Capturing more market share, or penetrating new markets was just not in the team’s mindset.

Unfortunately this tale is very typical of our industry.

Especially in resort hotel markets, tour operators have for too long influenced hoteliers on how to run their business. Hoteliers need to get more strategic insight and understanding of the financial side of the business. Moreover they have to become more creative in methods to increase the revenue performance of their property.

Franjly, hotel marketing plans in general are too superficial. It is time they are taken to a more professional level, and become complete. Hotels are multi-million Dollar or Euro businesses and they demand an expert strategic and structural approach.

So what are elements you need to incorporate in your 2012 marketing plan?

Taking into consideration the continuing growth of online sales and the quick adoption of mobile technology by consumers, we have put together some questions that will need your attention in 2012:

1. Internet marketing

• How much revenue do we expect our hotel website to produce in 2012?
• What growth are we expecting from 2011?
• What is the balance between print and internet marketing?
• Are we shifting budget from offline to online?
• What is our plan to attract more traffic to our website?
• What will we do to increase more conversion of our hotel website?
• What new online marketing initiatives will we launch next year?
• How will we collect more emails, mobile phone numbers, and FaceBook connections to be able to directly engage with our guests?
• How will we attract our different client target markets and niche guest segments?
• How will we measure the effect and ROI of all our marketing actions?

Furthermore, what will you focus on, how much financial and human resources will you dedicate to:

• Website redesign or optimization
• Links from local and travel directories
• Search engine marketing SEM/PPC
• Search engine optimization/SEO
• Banner advertising
• Advertising on metasearch, review websites and travel forums/social networks
• Interactive campaigns/promotions (contests, games, quizzes, sweepstakes)
• Email marketing
• Mobile website
• Mobile search engine marketing SEM/PPC
• Social media marketing / Travel 2.0
• Online reputation management
• Blog
• Video
• Analytics / ROI tracking
• Webmaster
• External marketing agency (experts)

2. Online distribution

• Have you identified new local or international sales channels your hotel needs to be on?
• What are your key segments, niche segments and feeder markets?
• Are there any travel agency channels or forums out there that can help you attract these customer target markets?
• How will you manage to keep a healthy balance between direct and indirect (third party) sales online?
• What is your approach to protect your hotel from brand hijacking by OTA?
• Are your FIT and wholesalers respecting the contract?
• How will you prevent wholesalers to distribute and publish package rates as room only deals on online travel agency websites?
• How will you control your cost of distribution?
• Will we use rate parity as a strategy to drive business through more cost-effective distribution channels?
• Will we guard against cannibalization by costly distribution channels like Flash, Group and Lastminute sales websites?
• Will we let ourselves be caught up website trends and hypes which only lead to an erosion of the hotel’s net rate?

As you can see, many things have to be considered and included in the hotel marketing plan. We need to look at these aspects of the business, and many more, as they influence your financial results.

I hope these thoughts will help you to make a more complete hotel marketing plan for 2012.

NB: For more ideas, visit the Xotels blog.

NB2: Image of 2012 movie from Sony Pictures.

In other words, with countless other channels to coordinate, often the Facebook page looks a bit empty or lacking in effort.

But with hundreds of millions of members and an increasingly varied user base (over half of over-65s in the UK have a profile, for example), some companies do take their Facebook page very seriously.

Step forward Australian tour operator Intrepid Travel, named this week in a study of 1,400 brands as having the best Facebook page of any small business in the world.

Nice accolade from the popular Social Media Examiner (process: nominations, then a panel of judges), so what has Intrepid produced to deserve such a title?

Strong use of images – judges especially liked a “photo of the day”…

Regularly chatting to fans…

Product search…

And a Meet Others section…

NB: Full list of Social Media Examiner’s top Facebook pages.

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

The co-founders of Kutoa are a husband and wife team who share a passion for travel. Josh has a background in business, and Tessa has a background in international policy.  Both have law degrees and are currently working full-time as attorneys in Kansas City.

Tessa developed the idea for Kutoa after years of traveling the globe as a student, volunteer, and adventure-seeker.  In her travels, she came across impressive lodges, hotels, and adventure companies that were deeply intertwined with their communities.

She stayed at a bed and breakfast in Peru that ran a home and school for orphaned children; an ecolodge in the Ecuadorian Amazon that operated as a 100% partnership owned by the indigenous people who used the profits to support the local families and their schools; and a hiking lodge in Lesotho that, during her stay, was the subject of a responsible tourism study by a PhD student from the UK.

Connecting with local people and cultures has always been important to Tessa, who volunteered in Tanzania in 2001 and subsequently raised the tuition money to put one of her most promising students through both secondary school and university.

That student is now getting ready to graduate from university in Tanzania with a degree in teaching and is funding her own siblings through secondary school.

Tessa realized in early 2011 that hotels, lodges, and travel companies around the world are impacting, improving, and empowering their local communities, yet no centralized place existed to locate them.

Both Josh and Tessa realized that other like-minded travelers out there want to find trips that make a difference.  And thus the idea for Kutoa was born.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

We put our own savings into the website development and marketing.  We did not receive any outside funding.

What problem are you trying to solve?

Kutoa aims to fill a gap in the market by connecting socially conscious travelers with hotels and travel companies that already donate money, goods, and services to important local causes.

These two market sectors already exist, and Kutoa provides the first centralized and user-friendly way for them to find each other.

Kutoa ultimately hopes to inspire hotels and travel companies that currently do not meet Kutoa’s selection criteria but that develop socially green practices in order to benefit from Kutoa’s growing network of socially conscious travelers.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Kutoa is an online community where socially conscious travelers can find accommodations and travel companies that make a positive difference to the communities in which they operate.

Kutoa is the first company that exclusively lists hotels, lodges, and travel companies that donate money, goods, or services to local social causes.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

Our key users are travelers with flexible travel plans who are looking for ideas about where to go on their next trip.

Kutoa caters to travelers of all styles, budgets, and adventure levels.  But Kutoa’s largest user-base will be the “grown-up backpacker” who wants to see the world and connect with local people, cultures, and causes in the places they visit.

Kutoa travelers are people who care about sustainable development, the environment, and philanthropic causes such as health and education.

Our actual customers are the businesses who meet our selection criteria – the hotels, lodges, and travel companies that donate money, goods, or services to important local causes.

Kutoa sells the listing space on its website to these member businesses, who can leverage their socially green practices to gain a competitive edge in marketing to travelers.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

We did not have formal testing phase for customers to validate, and we did not solicit investors.

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

The revenue strategy is to attract qualified businesses to purchase listing space on Kutoa’s website, which is free for travelers to search.

Currently, during our launch phase, we are offering a free six-month membership to qualifying hotels, lodges, and adventure companies in order to populate our database and provide travelers with a wide selection of socially green travel opportunities around the world.

At the end of the promotional phase, we will begin charging an affordable flat-rate annual fee to member businesses, with options for upgrades and additional advertising opportunities both on the site and through our newsletter.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Co-founders have extensive personal knowledge of the types of businesses they aim to attract as members, and they personally identify with the types of travelers they know will place value in choosing socially green travel over other options.

Weaknesses:

• Small staff and limited budget for marketing.

Opportunities:

• Connect with target travelers and businesses through pre-existing blogs and other online communities that have an established readership.  The more website traffic we can generate, the more member businesses we can attract to join Kutoa.

Threats:

• Copycat websites with less rigorous selection criteria selling a watered-down version of Kutoa at higher volume.

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

Some of the website developers we interviewed expressed a lack of understanding over the concept of socially green travel, which is understandable given that Kutoa coined that phrase and the term has yet to gain wide familiarity.

We believe in the concept and have faith that enough people out there are looking for trips like this, and we knew from extensive research that countless hotels and travel companies would already qualify thanks to their selfless dedication to their local communities.

The fact that some people did not know or understand the idea of socially green travel simply reinforced our notion that the concept needed a home and a platform to promote it.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

Twelve months from now, Kutoa hopes to reach a membership of one hundred businesses who meet our socially green criteria.

Success will depend on continuous incoming interest from new businesses and travelers who are excited and eager to become a part of Kutoa and the movement it represents.

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

Such details would include name, address, postcode or zip code, contact number plus the primary brand/chain ID to which each property belongs, according to the TTI.

TTIcodes, chairman Peter Dennis says, will solve the “de-duplication nightmare faced by every travel company that takes several bedbank feeds,” saving travel companies, generally tour operators, time and effort.

What a swamp the TTI has waded into!

A unique identification number for every hotel worldwide has gone from being a nice-to-have idea when there were less than a dozen distributors worldwide in the 1980s, to a must-have 25 years later, with the explosion of distribution channels and points-of-sale, and the increasing sophistication of search.

But it’s not easy. As a past director of data for a worldwide hotel company, I can tell you from experience that each of our hotels had the following:

• Multiple “unique” ID numbers in their property management/reservations systems
• One for every GDS
• One for every OTA/bedbank/wholesaler
• One for every switch
• One for every major tour operator
• One for every representation company
• … plus a few others I’m sure I’ve deliberately forgotten.

In today’s environment, add commission payment processors and gateways, direct connect partners, channel management tools, local booking services and DMOs, not to mention Facebook and TripAdvisor, and you’ve got a massive identification data headache.

Managing these multiple identification numbers was hard enough on hotels, but it has been even harder on distributors because of the multiple points of sale a distributor might serve – GDS, OTA, TMC, switch, etc. – so distributors had, and still have, the unenviable task of creating endless mappings from hotels to points of sale and back for both booking and commission reconciliation.

The search for a unique hotel identification number is an old one.  A written proposal was floated in 2002 by Hsyndicate outlining the commercial case for such an initiative, and was championed by Worldwide Payment Systems, a Spain-based commission and payment processor serving the hotel industry and travel agencies.

The business pain was to better track, assess and distribute agency commission payments through the establishment of a “unique global identifier”, a hotel equivalent to the IATA travel agency number.

The Hotel Electronic Distribution Networking Association (HEDNA) agreed to support the initiative and committee work began in 2006.

In the interest of full disclosure, OpenTravel Alliance was originally approached to host this work but as it didn’t fit into our charter, we demurred. We have, however, had a seat on the HEDNA committee since its inception.

By 2010, the UGI committee in HEDNA had not made substantial progress, so HEDNA brought the initiative to the Hospitality Technology Strategic Initiatives Council (HTSIC), an informal affiliation of hospitality organizations whose work includes technology (including HTNG, AH&LA, HFTP, HSMAI and OpenTravel amongst others).

HEDNA wanted to enlist the other organizations’ support to leverage their abilities and members to move this project forward.

HTSIC believes that for a true global identification number program to work, hotels must be able to control the data.

The data does, after all, reflect the property information from flag to owner to operator to address to website to proper name, and can extend to history of the property (previous names, flags, etc.), and who better to own the data than, well, the owner?

And with the quickening sophistication of search algorithms and the aggressive move of search companies into the travel industry (see Google acquisition of ITA Software), it’s becoming imperative that a single “master” identification code exist.

But this isn’t some boring B2B problem. This directly affects consumers.

I recently had to go to Brussels for a meeting, and I found a hotel with a great location and decent reviews.

But I found it listed by three different but very similar names, with three pins at the same address on the Google map. Why?

Because Google was pulling information about the hotel from three different sources. This is confusing for the consumer and endlessly aggravating for the hotel operator.

TTIcodes is a white label of a product that already exists from GIATA, a Germany-based content provider for travel agencies, tour operators and hotels, and was created to provide a valuable solution for tour operators who struggle with access to updated hotel information.

According to GIATA CEO Andreas Posmeck, GIATA will be “responsible for the management, update and distribution of the codes. GIATA is continually researching and updating property information & more importantly cross referencing property information between its master property catalogue and the operators’ systems”.

While this initiative may serve a clear commercial and simple need for tour operators, it’s less clear that TTIcodes will address the larger problem faced by hoteliers – the ability to fully control information about a given property across multiple distribution channels and points of sale.

Nibbling at the edges will work in the short term, but kudos is due to TTI and GIATA for broaching a solution that appeals to at least part of the travel industry, and putting it into the market.

But for hotels and distributors, the TTIcode is just another number to add to the list.

Not many raised their eyebrows when in 2007 he was appointed group CEO of the newly formed Thomas Cook Group following the merger with fellow tour operating giant MyTravel – he had, after all, been CEO of Thomas Cook from 2003.

A Spaniard by birth who moved to the UK at an early age, Fontenla-Novoa was genuinely liked by many in the industry (as plenty of the comments here illustrate), was a talking head at endless European conferences and seen as an example of how someone could move up through the ranks to reach the top of the executive ladder (he started in the print room at Thomas Cook in 1972).

With a career in tour operating, covering Cook, International Leisure Group Sunworld and then back at Cook, what could go wrong for Fontenla-Novoa as he stepped in to oversee one of the biggest travel businesses in the world?

Clearly something did, as his exit today shows.

There are at least two schools of thought:

First is that Fontenla-Novoa was simply the right person at the wrong time. He may have been a popular figure, but within a year of the merger of Thomas Cook with MyTravel the economy had already started to show signs of problems ahead.

Over the next few years, pressures on the business led to job losses and retail shop closures as consumers either tightened their belts and opted for cheaper holidays or tried other methods of taking a trip, opting for different products from Cook’s core package holiday business.

The company’s London-listed shares held reasonably steady until April 2010, when the price started its downward spiral to where it is now at 64p – down from close to 320p at the time of the merger.

Fontenla-Novoa could simply be doing the honourable thing and leaving the business as, on his watch, financial performance for shareholders has not been great, spanked by an economic crisis that is still showing no sign of letting up.

This doesn’t exactly chime with what has happened at arch rival TUI Travel, where the share price is still two-thirds of what it was when it merged with First Choice around the same time.

So then there is perhaps the wider strategy.

For Thomas Cook, brand is everything. It has 170 years of history in travel and is one of the biggest names in the business, especially since the 1970s when it pioneered the package holiday.

Since the mid-2000s, however, it has continued to push the package holiday part of the business, talk up the classic retail agent-operator relationship, while others around it have moved into new areas, trying models and products where there is arguably better growth.

Fontenla-Novoa has always been correct in that there is plenty of life and value in the retail model and advantages to owning assets such as aircraft, but some might argue that it isn’t the only route in a much more dynamic marketplace.

As one industry figure remarked earlier today,”doesn’t matter how good the skipper of the oil tanker is when everyone else is investing in renewable energy,” implying that Cook’s determination to stay on the traditional path made it more difficult to change when perhaps it needed to.

Technology is part of the issue.

While a brand such as EasyJet was overhauling its non-air product to become a major online travel seller across Europe, Thomas Cook was trying to merge with fellow, predominantly offline retail outfit Co-Operative Travel Group.

Meanwhile, under Fontenla-Novoa’s watch, Thomas Cook also had to deal with the debacle surrounding the failure of its reservation system supplier BlueSky Technologies.

The handling of that particular issue was, according to one senior figure, a “mess in itself which was then mishandled further by Thomas Cook right up to the top”.

Interestingly, Thomas Cook still refuses to disclose exactly how much it has spent on the infamous Globe project since the saga began in 2007, but some figures bandied around would be enough to make any investor’s eyes water.

The issue is still not resolved, with former-BlueSky employees battling with Thomas Cook for compensation.

Fast forward to 2010 and some talked of a change in approach and thinking at Thomas Cook, when in June the company outlined a strategy to evolve its web presence into a wider, online travel agency-type business.

A dedicated division was created in London and a steady stream of people have joined from around the industry.

Unfortunately, Fontenla-Novoa was perhaps always going to find his “rival to Expedia” promise might haunt him, despite saying from the beginning that the project would take three years to compete.

The company has continually said the OTA is performing in line with its schedule, although some of those on the inside say it is actually taking “a little longer than expected”.

Three years is a long time in travel, as everyone knows.

But perhaps it isn’t the length of time to get the OTA to operating fully that is the issue, but more that it took Thomas Cook so long to come up with the idea in the first place, while others around Europe such as Expedia, eDreams et al secured strong positions.

It is this issue in particular that resonates the most with those watching from the outside. Culturally, like the captain of the tanker, Thomas Cook may simply not have had the motivation to evolve at the speed it perhaps needed to.

This may perplex some, as the company had the potential to capture some of the enthusiasm for a new world through the merger with MyTravel. As early as 2000, boss of MyTravel predecessor Airtours, David Crossland was talking of:

“…a holistic approach, which integrates distribution and customer relationship management with appropriate content and product, encompassing the multitude of distribution channels… including interactive TV, mobile technology, the internet, call centres and the high street”.

This may have filtered through into the newly formed Thomas Cook Group PLC, but it clearly wasn’t the number one priority.

And perhaps this is one of the reasons, in the wider context, why Fontenla-Novoa has stepped down. Culture is, after all, driven by leadership.

NB: Picture from a YouTube clip of the Disney show Handy Manny.

Who are you and what are you?

The Company: Travel Affinity. Travel Affinity is a travel technology and marketing company set up two years ago by Alan Kersley, after the sale of his previous business, Access e-Media, to Amadeus’ Leisure division, TravelTainment.

Following the sale, he was retained for two years to oversee the development and implementation of the TravelTainment booking engine for the UK market, before leaving to start Travel Affinity.

With a background in publishing and printing, Kersley has had over 15 years running travel technology companies developing web technology for managing, distributing and publishing content, and delivering booking engines for online travel retailers.

Travel Affinity specialises in content management and distribution, alongside services in web design, development, SEO and marketing.  This August (2011) the company is launching its B2C solution to the industry and consumers – Appi Holidays.

Appi Holidays is a brand new holiday search engine which revolutionises the way travellers search for holidays. Available as both a free app and website, Appi Holidays provides thematic search options which allow consumers to cross-reference holiday types across a range of tour operators, helping them track down their ideal holiday.

Looking for a “villa” holiday with “beaches”, “air conditioning” and “private pool” that’s no more than “three hours” away from “Heathrow”? Require “disabled access” on a cruise to “the Caribbean”? Appi Holidays will help sift through the content of dozens of tour operator products to find the perfect result.

Appi Holidays is geared to help everyone find the perfect holiday to suit them – from the back-pack adventurer to the family of four. Available through the App Store for iPhone & Android.  Release date August 2011.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

The Travel Affinity business and the development of Appi Holidays has been privately funded by Alan Kersley.

What problems are you trying to solve?

Today’s travel industry has become dominated by brands owned by the two large operators. Despite this, there are some great products out there from many smaller and specialist operators that the customer would never easily find. We want to provide a neutral sales platform for all of these alternative holidays, alongside the traditional fly-and-flop product and to give holidaymakers more choice.

For many years, the industry has also been saddled with legacy system data structures for product distribution.  Not only has this severely restricted the available holiday search criteria and functionality used by the consumer, but has also excluded those companies without the ability to output such data. This is another area we want to challenge with Appi Holidays.

Today’s websites use this data structure for their search criteria, effectively forcing the customer to know criteria such as destination, departure airports and dates. Yet research shows that 40% of consumers don’t have an idea of where they want to go when starting their search, The result is high “look-to-book” ratios and selling on price instead of fitting customer needs.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Appi Holidays, due for launch in August, is a B2C solution, comprising a FREE mobile app, mobile website and web portal, based on a content platform developed by Travel Affinity. Tour operators participating on the platform will have their holiday content and pricing loaded into the CMS and delivered into Appi Holidays for sales of holiday product directly to the consumer via mobile devices and its online web portal.

Unlike other distribution systems, Appi Holidays is designed to feature the whole range of specialist holiday types, from simple sun and beach, to product such as safaris, escorted tours, disabled accessible tours, rail and coach tours, ski, cruises and specialist interest holidays such as wine, art and nature trips.

And to make researching the different product easy for the mobile user, Travel Affinity has developed some dynamic, lifestyle-led search technology.

By taking a fresh view of all the available data and descriptive content, Travel Affinity has been able to ‘mash-up’ the different holiday types, holiday ‘features’, availability and pricing data, to provide a completely new approach to the holiday search – we call it the Holiday Wizard.  This has been especially important in making Appi Holidays more suited to the new generation of mobile devices.

Using the Holiday Wizard, products are effectively filtered by type, lifestyle needs (features), flight durations, ratings etc. This provides a step-by-step method of reducing the holiday count to narrow the results down to a suitable level and guaranteed to match the customers’ choices.

Final choices can be saved to a wishlist or shared with friends via social media or email.  Bookings or enquiries from the applications are passed back to the tour operator to complete with the client.

Other features include a traditional destination-led search, travel company directory, latest hot offers and a Top 10.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

When it launches in August, Appi Holidays already have agreements to feature product from over 20 tour operators, including Cosmos, Olympic, Virgin, Balkan, Anatolian etc., as well as half a dozen Cruiselines and some more specialist companies, covering a range of holiday types.

There is a planned launch campaign for the App’s release on iTunes, including consumer PR, direct marketing to iPhone users and some social and online promotions.

Did you have customers validate your ideas before investors?

The concept was shared with several tour operators to test their views and all the consumers we have shown it to were very enthusiastic.

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

Effectively, Appi Holidays is an advertising platform for tour operator products – a mobile catalogue.

Revenue comes from monthly fees charged for listings, based on a sliding scale of product volumes.  We believe this is the fairest way of charging and gives the tour operators the choice of how much product to feature.

It enables a very cost-effective entry-point for tour operators to reach the mobile marketplace, with fees starting from only £100/month.

The solution can also be white-labelled and over-branded for individual tour operators or travel agents if they wish to have their own version of the technology, which could provide additional revenue streams.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Unique breadth of product content, the underlying platform and search technology, its ability to maintain a personalised connection to the customer, and its low cost of participation for tour operators when compared to other promotional channels.  It essentially is the only holiday ‘catalogue’ that the consumer will need and is always to hand on their mobile.

Weaknesses:

• are difficult to identify in something so new, but will probably revolve around the need to continually ‘upgrade’ the technology and features over time, to keep it fresh and relevant and maintain its customer base.

Opportunities:

• Continue the development of Appi Holidays as an application and brand, with version two being fully bookable and adding more on-holiday, location-based, in-resort product.  Version 3 will see the App becoming a fully socially-integrated solution for holiday-makers to share reviews, photos and experiences via the App, further enriching the content and reach for the brand. We also have the ability to sell/over-brand the technology for others to use if they wish.

Threats:

• Some may come from other similar solutions, but none will yet have the technology content to match our unique search functionality solution.

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

We’ve yet to receive any negative comments or arguments about our plans for Appi Holidays.  Let’s hope it continues in that vein!

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

We will measure our success by the uptake of the mobile app and website and by the revenue and profits generated after the first 12 months, with an eye on the future of the product.

Importantly, we will be recording all requests and transactions to our platform via the app, mobile site and web portal.

This will allow us to analyse just how people are using the technology and what they are looking for.  This will give us a good feel for improving the products featured and the functionality, as well as providing reporting for operators.

We hope to launch version two at the end of Q1 2012, with version three coming in Q4 2012.

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

Shares in the London-listed PLC nosedived in trading today (down 35% in the first four hours) after the company announced profits for the second quarter of 2011 would be lower than expected, with a full-year operating profit of £320 million but almost £40 million below results for the same period in 2010.

The company’s share price is now less than half its value in July 2010, with tough economic conditions in the UK and impact of political instability in its Middle Eastern destinations being blamed.

As a result of the squeeze on consumer spend in the UK hitting demand for travel, a “fundamental strategic and operation review of the business” will now take place.

The company’s new division devoted to turning its web presence into more of an online travel agency model is based in the UK and is still a young operation, having only officially launched late last year.

Although the company will not disclose any figures or give any indication as to the OTA’s performance so far, an official says the division will not be part of the strategic review as the OTA straddles a number of European markets.

In terms of web traffic, Thomas Cook appears to making some inroads on its OTA rivals in the UK, hovering menacingly behind Expedia in mid-June and now just 2% and o.5% behind Thomson and Expedia respectively.

The company is the major IT supplier to tour operating giant TUI Travel in Europe and has a number of other major travel clients.

But behind the 19% increase in revenue across the group to £93.7 million for the 12 months ending 30 April 2011, travel is performing “below expectations”, the company said this week.

The travel division saw revenues slide by 13% to £20 million and adjusted profit slump by a quarter to £4.2 million.

The company says the order book us showing better signs, with new business up 17% to £34 million on the previous year, buoyed by the signing of major deal with TUI Travel for the @comRes reservation system.

Central to the poor performance of the travel division is a “decline in legacy managed services and maintenance revenues,” Anite says, with the failure of tour operators Globespan and Goldtrail impacting year-on-year revenues.

The financial report says:

“In the travel market in recent years, a combination of consumers having tighter budgets; natural events, such as volcanic ash clouds, earthquakes and tsunamis; political unrest; and rising oil prices have put the leisure travel industry under pressure, and many smaller operators have struggled to survive or have gone out of business.

“The resulting consolidation means that, while the market itself has not shrunk, the number of operators has.”

The pair announced today that user reviews and ratings will be published for the first time against hotel properties on holidays supplied by First Choice.

This is an extension of a existing agreement between TripAdvisor and First Choice parent company TUI Travel, where the review giant’s content already runs against hotels featured on the website of sister business Thomson.

But those with reasonably long memories will recall TUI announcing in late-2007 that TripAdvisor reviews will appear on the First Choice website some time during 2008.

Surely some mistake?

It turns out that the proclamations at the time were correct and there was a plan in place to integrate TripAdvisor reviews on First Choice three years ago.

The idea, under the stewardship of then TUI new media director Graham Donoghue, was to expand the content system and reviewing platform used by Thomson over to First Choice, as part of a wider programme to integrate business processes following the high-profile merger of the pair in September 2007.

For some reason, integration of the platforms never materialised and hotel user reviews have never seen the light of day until now.

Coincidentally, Donoghue left TUI in early-2008 to become managing director of metasearch engine Travelsupermarket.

First Choice was contacted about this kink in the timeline, but has yet to give a reason as to what happened in early-2008 to stall the implementation of TripAdvisor reviews on its site for another three years.

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

We are Jamie Wong and Samrat Jeyaprakash. We’re both multi-lingual, avid travellers.

Jamie previously worked for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and consulted for tech companies as a writer and strategist.

Sam previously built a social network for travel and led the technology team at cancerquest.org.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

We’ve bootstrapped the business with modest savings from previous jobs.

What problem are you trying to solve?

We are trying to solve the “what to do when we get there” travel conundrum.

Right now people are spending an average of 29 days and visiting 22 sites to plan a single trip.  And on average people take 3-4 leisure trips a year.  This is a lot of precious time spent figuring out where to go and what to do!

We want help people take great trips by offering unique experience and activities that people can book in advance, the way they would a flight or hotel, by making it easy, fun and safe.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Vayable is a community marketplace where people can discover, buy and sell unique travel experiences. Local experts – those who sell experiences – can be individuals or independent businesses.

We currently do not support commercial tour companies or franchises.

Travellers coming to our site can be assured that they’re booking unique, authentic experiences offered by locals who care about giving travellers a safe, fun and authentic local experience.

By providing a peer-to-peer marketplace we are also helping to redirect tourist revenues back to small businesses and local communities, which in turn help sustain the very destinations that attract travellers.

This model also opens up a market previously restricted to tour operators by providing individuals and small businesses with a platform to offer services to travellers hungry for them.

Some have described us as an AirBNB meets Kiva for travel, which closely hits the mark of what we do.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

We are targeting savvy and curious travellers who are seeking more out of their travel experiences than double-decker buses, duck tours and generic “city passes”.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Yes. Our users on both sides of the marketplace are growing, as are transactions before we’ve even sought funding.

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

We collect a 3% processing fee from travellers and take a 15% commission fee from local experts for each transaction that goes through our site.  Users on both sides have been satisfied with this model.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• We have designed the site with our users in mind: our inventory is based on specific traveller requests as well as the experiences locals want to offer. The interface is intuitive, clean and reflects the curious, fun and savvy attitudes of our users.

Weaknesses:

• Like most start-ups, we have limited time and resources to build everything users want at the rate they want them.

Opportunities:

• The travel experience and activity market is now the fastest growing segment of leisure travel, representing $26.7 billion in annual revenue, and yet no one has solved the discovery and booking problem for these activities. We believe we are finally providing a large segment of independent travellers with a discovering and booking experience that finally eases their pain and can claim a meaningful portion of the market.

Threats:

• Existing tour aggregators who have already claimed a significant stake in the market (though it’s a fragmented space that necessitates multiple players).

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

Everyone so far sees the huge potential for this idea and has been able to personally relate to the problem we’re trying to solve.

Some have questioned how we will be able to distinguish ourselves from existing players and our answer is that there is ample room in the space for someone to do this better, and we have several tricks up on sleeves (including the inventory, usability, design and community you already see on the site) that has and will continue to further distinguish us.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

We want to see the numbers of travellers discovering and booking travel experiences on the site to continue to grow and that the site continues to make the lives of travellers and local experts better.

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

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

SevenSails organises individual weeklong sailing holidays for non-sailors and sailors alike. SevenSails makes yachting holidays, normally reserved for the jet set, affordable and accessible.

We currently have tours in the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas, but SevenSails is looking to offer sailing holidays to some of the world’s most stunning sailing destinations.

Philipp Gaschütz is the founder of SevenSails. After heading his own data centre company for more than eight years and consulting for various IT related projects, Philipp decided he felt more at home at sea as opposed to being surrounded by a sea of data and numbers.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

None, SevenSails is 100% self-financed

What problem are you trying to solve?

In general, sailing, yachting, whatever you call it, is primarily aimed at three groups: 1) the über-wealthy yacht owners who spend most of the year voyaging from one port to another. 2) the professional yachter or the adrenalin-seeking sportsman 3) those who prefer the leisurely evening sail around the harbour, dinner cruises, or the ever popular mammoth cruise ships.

SevenSails is combining the best of all these worlds to make sailing 1) accessible and affordable, 2) fun for the non-diehard sailor, 3) equal parts adventure, relaxation and fun.

We are bringing sailing and all that goes with it to a younger generation.

In our core segment, we saw that many friends like to holiday together as well. Up until now, where could five, six, seven, or eight friends go together? You could rent out a few rooms at a hotel. You could rent out a finca. But every morning, you’d still be in the same place with the same surroundings.

A SevenSails holiday gives you access to a floating finca where each day brings new scenery, new destinations and new possibilities of how to spend your day.

Describe the business, core products and services?

SevenSails offers weeklong sailing holidays. We have 30 yachts (at most) on option for our different sailing holidays.

Customers must rent out an entire boat as opposed to a spot, yachts hold between four and 12 people. SevenSails creates a weeklong itinerary mapping out where the majority of yachts will go: uninhabited islands, quaint harbour towns, local restaurants, rented-out nightclubs, etc.

This itinerary serves as a guide of where the SevenSails planned activities will take place, but each yacht can choose where to go, when to go and with whom to go.

So SevenSails uses the term “tour” quite loosely, it’s not a yachting convoy, it’s more like: “Here’s where we’re going to be, stop by if you’d like to take part in the action.”

In terms of services, we take care of the booking, logistics and the overall planning of the route and activities.

We also take care of transfers to and from the marina, hotel bookings if required and most importantly we match up skippers to those people who have either no sailing experience or would prefer to have someone else do the navigating.

Furthermore we offer the SevenSails Water Taxi, enabling holidaymakers to get a lift to wherever they wish to go.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

We started out as a couple of friends renting sailing yachts for our own personal sailing holiday.

Word got out within our inner circle, our friends told their friends who told their friends and so on.

When SevenSails was launched, our customer base typically reflected the demographics of the original circle of friends: 25 – 45 years old, who enjoy holidaying with their friends, are looking for the right mixture of adventure, relaxation and fun and gravitate towards uncomplicated, but memorable holidays.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

The idea to create a company called SevenSails grew organically. It was the so-called validation and enthusiasm of friends and customers that led to more sailing holidays and ultimately the launch of SevenSails.

The interest shown in our sailing holidays was all the encouragement I needed to personally invest in this venture.

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

SevenSails weeklong holidays are being sold via our homepage, exclusively online. Currently, our revenue model focuses on renting out the yachts.

If we rent out all of the yachts per week, an average of 30 yachts, then we have done well from a monetary standpoint.

Our profitability derives from the commission we receive on the yacht bookings. Furthermore we are planning our first B2B events, which deem as an end-to-end incentive event package.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Easy and affordable access to sailing holidays.
• Easy booking and information platform.
• Information and promotion that is focused on non-sailors.
• Unique possibilities for where and how to holiday with your friends.
• The people that book SevenSails holidays normally have the same demographic, so you have a very good chance of meeting like-minded people and making new friends.
• The freedom of SevenSailors to follow your own course when sailing. SevenSails is not a tour guide at sea, but we provide advice and tips for those who ask.

Weaknesses:

• There are limited dates per year when SevenSails holidays take place and we do get many enquiries from people requesting different dates, which we simply cannot accommodate.
• The notion that people have to book an entire boat, forces them to coordinate their holidays well in advance, i.e. gather their friends.
• Last-minute bookings are therefore highly unlikely.
• SevenSails needs to provide a pre-determined route for the costumers’ orientation, BUT they do not need to follow it. Explaining this often proves to be difficult.
• SevenSails current range of destinations only includes Greece and Italy.

Opportunities:

• There is a general trend towards holidays that are different to the norm.
• Travellers want more experiential travel, holidays that are more than just a nice hotel room in a new destination.
• There are plenty of destinations around the world that are attractive for sailing holidays
• The B2B segment offers an attractive market for incentive and group travel experiences.

Threats:

• Other companies jumping on the bandwagon.
• Lack of on-the-ground knowledge when we expand our holidays to other countries.

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

Actually, as mentioned earlier, the very idea of SevenSails grew organically. SevenSails, before it even had a proper name, was a group of friends sailing together.

Friends of friends began to join us more and more. Right from the start, everyone was extremely supportive and encouraging.

So there really wasn’t anyone to dissuade us from what we were planning to do and even if they had, we would have tended to amend the course only slightly, since we know from experience that the overall idea works!

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

We would be looking at 10 fully booked events, with our first three B2B events successfully completed in addition to introducing SevenSails holidays in and around Thailand and the Caribbean.

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