It took me about 15 years from when I started travelling for business and pleasure to appreciate the value of a professional travel agent.

In 1979 as a junior MadMan I relied upon secretaries and expense accounts for guidance, while personal travel was collaboration between an advertised special, a travel agency storefront, and my girlfriend.

By 1996 my prospering Internet development company was flying people around the globe and Ann Marie, our independent travel agent, made several dozen bookings a week seem trivial.

What’s more, she made personal travel an exciting purchase, something to anticipate enjoying for all 200+ of us when we needed to get away for a week or weekend. This was personal service with expertise and excellence.

While we worked to transform ecommerce and marketing on the internet for companies including American Express, Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, Microsoft, AT&T and Martha Stewart, our objectives were known but the consequences continued to manifest as browser interfaces transformed customer relationships while click processes pinpointed purchase pain points.

To a marketing technologist, uncovering the consumer behavior and purchase process is critical to creating the benefit in a unique user interface with data presented just so.

Once structured so the servers can spin the data, much of the creative expression is forever cemented into a template in a consistent process. Some content is enriched through data feeds from news, weather and review sites, but mostly the template makes the asset uniform; seat, bed, wheels, ticket — at a place for a price on a date certain.

At the time (circa 2000) we thought this was a job amazingly well done: margins increased, salesmanship elevated, process simplified and customer satisfaction enhanced.

Now. Not so much. The pendulum has swung too far the other way.

Data has become the soul of the interaction, and a uniform template the face of the relationship, so the personality, knowledge and insights integral to our travel experience have become a casualty. Unfortunately there is no such thing as a romance feed; when we lost Ann Marie, we lost that loving feeling.

We’re at another inflection point where margins, value, and customer loyalty are at odds with Internet access, matrix shopping options, and price driven purchase behavior.

As an industry we face a few multi-billion dollar questions:

• Can we affordably change our systems, processes, and interactions?
• Can our data be enriched with personality – ie, can we craft a romance feed from a big data knowledge base?
• Can a deeper relationship at multiple points in the purchase funnel create loyalty by adding value to the customer?

How do we technologists (including myself) want to be regarded: as sales advocates delivering revenue or programming pragmatists wedded to legacy systems and outflanked by newbie start-ups?

Semantics and semantic technology are technical and marketing solutions that enable us to create “knowledgebase and data response personalities” akin to individual emotional, attitudinal and behavioral response patterns.

First, we start by creating product/benefit data packages, which are the substance and content from a search of rich databases or deep web data. Created from a search query, packages span two layers of information:

• Benefit data: the surface web or presentation layer of matrix results, displayed in a browser template, for the customer to consider and interact with
• Product data: the deep web of highly structured product, inventory and pricing data housed in one of more internal siloes.

Nothing particularly new here, but as Dr Alfred Lanning says in iRobot:

“I’m sorry. My responses are limited. You must ask the right questions.”

In other words the key is to accurately query for data that is then reconciled with and mapped to the true meaning of the question; ie. data fields aligned with the semantic meaning.

Semantic technology gives us another layer for metadata and ontological meaning that currently does not exist; over time we’ll create a rich knowledge base.

The business and marketing outcome is ability to wrap this package in and with many other knowledge and data stores (CRM/loyalty programs), data feeds (Facebook, news, weather, TSA), and other linked data repositories (TripIt, TripAdvisor).

This product/benefit package can be further linked to and marked-up with smart branding data so we may present richer or more relevant benefits outside the norm.

Eventually we may enable machine reasoning to deliver greater value to the consumer in a modified matrix with fewer and more relevant choices, enhanced with knowledge points; at the minimum we can increase the number of templates to deliver more tailored results based upon performance and yield.

Further examples are discussed in a prior Tnooz article from us.

For example purposes, two primary points of reasoning through inference and deduction involve dates and places.

There is a high probability that a family traveling to Orlando in April is on school Spring Break and wants a rental car for flexibility, as compared to the college student, also on Spring Break, who wants a bus to Coco Beach for a premium hotel room on the Boardwalk.

A same day round trip to Bentonville, Arkansas, means a visit to Walmart, and a mid-January trip to Detroit means the Auto Show or CES if the destination is Las Vegas. There are thousands of smaller but no less obvious times and places where people travel and seek obvious value-adds, bundled packages or are willing to pay a premium price when placed in the proper context.

Using product/benefit packages to pull data and present unique merchandising offers with relevant information to the consumer is the way to put knowledge and personality back into the process.

The richness of semantic tools and processes will permit everyone to spin the data to their own unique presentation, to enhance brand personality and deliver an engaging attitude. This will also expand distribution opportunities, and enhance affiliate programs.

Though the yield management department already knows this “in theory”, for the first time, marketing and sales can work with the IT and Internet staff to put this into practice. The web page is no longer about the price, it’s all about the options and value-add of things that make sense for the trip.

• The Bentonville trip is enhanced by seeing the Avis Chauffeur option to pick-up, wait, and return the car thus being on-time or catching an earlier flight.
• Booking air, room, and wheels for the The Detroit Auto Show is enhanced with points to OpenTable for dinner reservations at an exclusive table, which makes the client happy to renew a contract.
• Downloading a branded app with the schedule and locations at CES in Las Vegas is free when booking via this supplier or agent.

Adding a layer of semantic technology allows data locked into multiple data stores to be extracted from legacy systems and displayed in more powerful and profitable ways at lower cost and accuracy.

Over time, this data will become knowledge enriched with analytics to permit value calculations that support the bottom line.

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

NB2: Image via Shutterstock.

Several hours after Tnooz posted a story exposing Carnival Cruise Lines’ first social media policy for travel agents, which would go into effect Jan 1, 2010, the cruise line conceded it erred and will amend the policy.

“It wasn’t our intent for the social media guidelines to be as far-reaching as the current wording would indicate,” says CCL spokeswoman Jennifer de la Cruz.

“We are re-examining the wording and will be making some adjustments so it is more clearly explained what requires written approval and what doesn’t.”

De la Cruz says the amendments will apply to CCL’s policy only. She was unsure how Carnival Corp.’s other North America brands would handle social media policy.

The spokeswoman says CCL’s goal is to modify its 2010 travel agency policy “very quickly”.

“Clearly, the wording was over-reaching and that wasn’t our intent,” de la Cruz says, adding that the Tnooz story spurred the about-face.

At this juncture, she declined to outline the specifics of the planned changes.

A closer examination of the wording, de la Cruz adds, proved the policy needed to be modified.

CCL has long restricted travel agents’ use of trademarks in marketing and promotional materials, in part to clamp down on unauthorized discounting. Transitioning that policy to social media is where the cruise line apparently ran into some problems.

Without seeing the substance of the planned changes, it is impossible to evaluate CCL’s new social media.

ORIGINAL POST:

Carnival Cruise Lines intends to introduce a new travel agency policy that bars partners from using any Carnival trademark or intellectual property on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, LinkedIn or a blog – any social media website, really – without prior written approval.

This is Carnival’s first social media policy for travel agents, and it’s a bruiser.

Travel agencies violating the policy, which social media purists might say amounts to a form of censorship, could lose their right to book the line’s sailings and commissions.

If social media is supposed to shine sunlight on friendships, vacations, business, news and trends, Carnival’s shortsighted policy seems to be drawing a steel curtain.

The policy, set to start 1 January 2010, covers travel agents’ use of dozens of Carnival’s trademarks ranging from Carnival Miracle and Fun Online to The World’s Most Popular Cruise Line and Skipper’s Club.

If this post was written by a CCL travel agent partner, this story apparently would be violating the policy and would be subject to the cruise line’s enforcement actions because prior written approval was not given to use these trademarks in a WordPress “blog.”

After all, the policy applies to “any profile, account, page or post on a social networking website…” CCL states.

The cruise line’s new travel agency policy is part of a larger effort to shore up its trademark and intellectual property rights, including as they relate to paid search and internet domains.

Other Carnival Corp North American brands are implementing  new travel agency policies, according to Travel Weekly, but it was unclear whether they would tackle social media issues in the same way that CCL has done.

CCL’s social media policy lumps together the company’s legitimate concerns about possible hijacking of its trademarks for unauthorized Twitter accounts, user names, profiles and social media advertising, but goes one step further by banning the use of any of these trademarks without prior authorization in tweets, blog posts or YouTube broadcasts.

For example, consider this Dec. 14 tweet from buycruises: “Continue your New Year’s Celebration (it doesn’t have to end: Santa said so) 7-nt Carnival Liberty Caribbean 1/2: $439 #cruise”

In theory, this tweet, if it were aired in 2010, would violate CCL’s new policy if the travel agent had not received prior written authorization from the cruise line.

A first violation requires the travel agency to disable or turn over control of all offending accounts or pages to Carnival.

And, a second violation of the social media policy gives Carnival the right to permanently revoke the agency’s ability to sell CCL’s sailings and enables the cruise line to keep any commissions the offending agency earned “during the period of an uncured violation,” according to the policy.

Of course, it’s up to the cruise line to determines if a violation has occurred.

Here’s CCL’s social media policy, which is slated to go into effect Jan. 1, 2010:

Social Media Website Requirements.

“For avoidance of doubt, the requirements of the Policy apply to any profile, account, page, or post on a social networking website (including by example, but not limited to, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) blogging website (including by example, but not limited to BlogSpot.com, WordPress.com, etc.), Video Website (including by example, but not limited to YouTube, etc.), or any other website operated by a third party, directly or indirectly controlled or posted by Travel Agency (“Social Media Website”). In addition, Travel Agency may not use Carnival‟s Property, anything substantially similar to Carnival‟s Property, or Typos in any username, account name, profile name, page name, or similar for any Social Media Website or display or otherwise use any of Carnival‟s Property or Typos in any page, post, application, or advertising on any Social Media Website without prior written authorization from Carnival.” [The bolded text is my doing.]

In the opening paragraph of its new travel agency policy, CCL describes what it means by the intellectual property that falls within the scope of its policy:

“Carnival Cruise Lines, a division of Carnival Corporation (“Carnival”), has established this Travel Agency Policy (this “Policy”) for the advertisement, marketing, selling and booking of, and payment for, cruises offered by Carnival and the use of Carnival‟s intellectual property, including without limitation trademarks, copyright material, imagery and ship photography (collectively, “Carnival’s Property”), whether as used and/or registered by Carnival or whether a variance thereof, whether used on the Internet, in print material or otherwise.”

Fellow industry marketers would probably have no problem with the cruise line limiting the use of things like its “imagery and ship photography”.

But, in its haste to protect its trademarks, Carnival has cast such a wide net — by limiting the mention of trademarks throughout social media without prior written approval — that it effectively gives it the power to severely limit how CCL cruises are marketed on agents’ own websites or if they wish to express their opinions about all things — or anything, for that matter — related to Carnival.

The result is that travel agents would become the have-nots, as it relates to CCL, in social media.

After all, anyone else is relatively unfettered and has the right to tweet, opine or post a status update about a Carnival cruise or policy while using the trademarks “Club Carnival” or “Carnival Bed,” for instance.

However, under the line’s first social media policy, travel agents must toe the line, at CCL’s sole discretion, or risk losing their ability to book one of the world’s premier cruise brands.

For its part, CCL states the social media policy was not drafted with the aim of muzzling travel agents.

CCL spokeswoman Jennifer de la Cruz says:

“The intent is simply to try to ensure that our agency partners are working with us in how they represent the Carnival brand within social media. If an agency wants to tweet about a publicly available Carnival special, they are free to do so.  If they want to upload Carnival assets such as video, photos and other content, they need our approval.

“The objective is to simply ensure that our trademarks are being used in a coordinated and on-brand manner.”

However, there is an extremely wide gap between CCL’s stated intent, and the language in the cruise line’s social media policy, which makes all use of Carnival trademarks by travel agency partners subject to the line’s prior restraint.

The stated policy does not merely pertain to “assets such as video, photos and other content,” but requires prior authorization for use of all CCL “property,” including trademarks, “in any page, post, application, or advertising on any Social Media Website…”

Asked to explain the contradiction, de la Cruz says she wasn’t familiar enough with the formulation of the policy to comment on the apparent disparity.

De la Cruz does say that the CCL policy enables the line to “cover our bases” to ensure that its trademarks and brand names are used in a manner consistent with what CCL is trying to communicate.

When informed of the cruise line’s new stance, Stuart MacDonald, founder and CEO of Tripharbor.com, says CCL’s social media policy “sounds like a legal attempt to have a reason to request a cease-and-desist or take action if something goes sideways”.

MacDonald adds: “The downside of them missing out on free mentions/promotion seems way more meaningful to me. But they likely need to demonstrate that they are trying to exercise some control over use of their marks if they ever want to have recourse down the line.”

If CCL’s new social media policy gets widely publicized, the cruise line indeed may get lots of free mentions, but they may be of the backlash variety.

NB: Pic from Kthypryn on Flickr