Two recent studies point to some interesting potential trends in online travel. If you are involved in travel in anyway – read on.

I believe that the hard line between online and offline is rather losing its luster. The consumer of travel products does not have a single interaction.

Buying travel is not like buying paint. It is a highly emotional experience and the inspiration to purchase chain requires many interactions along the way.

So travel and the acquisition life cycle is something that defies categorization and structure. As it rightly should.

Those wanting to play in it – they need to be very careful to heed the diversity of interaction and frequency.

In general, for commodity purchases, the web is ideal. Simple out-and-back air fares, hotels, cars, etc.

Complex and higher priced items do not do so well. In corporate travel the growing trend in online transactions includes statistics trumpeted by the TMCs (both traditional and new players like Egencia) belies the fact that a significant percentage of bookings made online have a “touched” element to them.

I still would like to challenge that the TMCs publish statistics showing not the online purchase but the complete touchless transaction.

[Also I would love to see some qualitative metrics as to how happy the users are compared to using a hands on agent]

Similarly the percentage of OTA bookings that generate a phone call or interaction should be reported. Here the number of calls that go to the suppliers’ customer service should be considered.

Recent studies from both PhocusWright and Forrester point to a shift in consumer attitude and behaviour.

In the PhocusWright study, Consumer Travel Report Second Edition, the top reason US travelers give for booking offline is that they are seeking personal service.

Forrester confirms this, but goes into more detail as to why. The quality factor trumps the hassle factor for many travelers according to Forrester’s research.

Roughly a third of all travellers in Europe and the US say they will pay above-average prices to save themselves time or hassle.

And this is where I agree with Forrester head travel man, Henry Harteveldt, when he says travel websites need to evolve with the consumer.

Speaking at the recent Amadeus eCommerce forum and quoting research from a special study commissioned by Amadeus, he exhorted the audience to move beyond the purely functional.

In my view the process of inspiration is not covered in the usual left brain-focused purchase sites such as the airline sites and the OTAs.

There are a lot of inspirational websites out there. But there is a lot of junk and no easy way to get your inspiration other than starting with search on Google.

Interestingly, the US consumer, according to Forrester’s studies, do not lead in any of the categories of inspiration (read blogs, read reviews, social networking etc).

But where to go from here? Developing a strategy for promotion of travel is complex. It is indeed multi-dimensional.

• Is there a single best practice out there?
• Can a single channel be used?
• Does the consumer actually notice or care about your activities?

I believe that there is an incredible amount of junk out there. A term I have created is to describe it as digital diarrhea.

This in my view just goes to feed the Google monster. What we thererfore need are fundamentally simpler and easier comprehension based tools.

Acknowledging our users ADD means that there needs to be both a simplification of the basic interaction yet allow richer content to sit easily accessible.

The whole dilemma of search vs navigation should evolve with an “and” not an “or” value.

A good example of this approach in my view is how Cleartrip in India does it. It has a basic transactional site, as clean as can be – yet bolted on the site is an inspirational and navigable alter ego in the Small World service.

There are many others but few are mainstream. While its still a 1.0 version, the point can be seen of how meandering inspiration as well as focused searching and navigating can be combined.

Some great examples are the oft-quoted JetBlue. But even bigger sites like AirFrance/KLM are getting into the act.

I foresee others doing the same. It also opens up opportunities for new smarter sites to emerge and not necessarily from the labs of the big players but the garage bands of some of the brighter sparks around.

But don’t just think of this as one size fits everything. It is most decidedly not.

Consumers are getting tired of the same old stuff, particularly online:

• They want inspiration.
• They definitely want more quality and value not necessarily demonstrated by the lower price.
• They want reliability and in my view above all they want Trust.

Until this is delivered, either through a hard statement of trust or by experience hard fought and won loyalty of a consumer, travel websites will continue to be just a click away from some other service.

Poor England boss Fabio Capello and his parade (charade?) of players – not only have they let down an entire nation of football-loving optimists but they are causing travel sites to crash.

UK-based online travel agency TravelRepublic says its website crashed on Monday this week after seeing a 33% jump in traffic compared to the same day last week.

The disastrous end to the England football team’s limp showing at the FIFA World Cup in South Africa is believed to have seen a sudden surge in consumers looking to escape with late deals.

TravelRepublic admits it was unprepared for the increase in traffic – pattern which eventually led to the site having its best single day with visitor numbers for “several months”.

IT director Chris Waite explains why the technology failed on this occasion:

“The crash was caused by our own bespoke visitor tracking software which was not able to cope with the load (slow write times to the database).

“We had to disable some of the visitor tracking data to get the site back online. Internally we call this the ‘Go Faster Button’, it strips away all the nice-to-have data (logging etc) to make the site go faster but leaves the customer experience unchanged apart from being faster.”

Interestingly, website crashes ordinarily do not lead to travel companies explaining the inner workings of their systems to the outside world.

But Waite continues:

“It seems our database server wasn’t able to cope with the number of visits per second when inserting rows in  to the visit detail table. We’ve now partitioned this functionality across two servers, so we should be ready for at least double the load now.”

So now you all know what to do…

If someone told you that they aggregate things and someone else told you that they curate things, would you know the difference?

In the travel business, these two ways of distributing products and services to travelers are quite different.

The problem is that travelers are generally unaware of the difference and, as a result, don’t understand what they are getting when they look for experiences through a curator or an aggregator.

Let’s first define the terms.  According to Oxford, the term “aggregate” means:

verb /agrigayt/ combine into a whole.

The term “curate” means:

verb select, organize, and look after the items in (a collection or exhibition).

Already you can see that the verbs mean entirely different things.  Aggregation implies combining a variety of objects to create a whole, whereas curation implies selection, organization, and care.

In the travel business, aggregation is very much the combining of distinct sources of product and delivering it as a single unified list of products from which the traveler can choose the best product for their needs.

In the case of airlines and hotels, this would be done using a combination of direct connects and GDS connections. When a traveler searches for a given location and time of year, the system scours through the various sources for the best matches and displays the results.

The system makes no judgments on the quality or appropriateness of the product but rather provides an unbiased (or so it would seem) list of matching results. In the case of the aggregator, the accountability of the product or service delivered is usually left to the supplier who actually provides the service since, in most cases, the aggregator will make it clear that they do not take responsibility for the deliver of the service.

Curation is a very different approach to delivering products to consumers. Although there may be an aggregation component to the curation process, primarly for the purposes of sourcing the products for curation, the curator is then responsible for selecting the products that they feel are the best fit for their customers, organizing them, and maintaining them in the collection.

When a traveler searches for experiences from a curated source, they are relying on the experience and expertise of the curator to ensure quality, viability, and credibility of the source.

In the case of curation, the customer may not even know the source until after the booking is made relying entirely on the reputation of the curator.  It’s a little bit like the old saying “Any friend of Jim, is a friend of mine”.

To the traveler, it may be difficult to know whether a travel site is an aggregator or a curator just by looking at it.  One way, I have found is to look at their tag line or mission statement and see if they fall into either of these criteria:

• The site is most likely an aggregator if it claims to have the largest number of sources (ie. hotels, flights, car, whatever), promotes the number of locations or properties/flights (ie. 50,000+ hotels), and offers customer reviews but does not provide it’s own reviews/editorial.  Many online agencies and metasearch sites like Expedia, Travelocity, and Kayak would fall into this classification.
• The site is most likely a curator if it claims the best selection of products from reputable sources, promotes the quality of the products over the quantity, offers a combination of customer reviews and editorial, and manages & updates the source content directly. Many experiential travel sites like Viator, isango!, Kijubi, Expedia’s Activities/Attractions, TravelDragon, and others would fall into this category.  The reason why most of these sites curate is partly because aggregation of content for experiential product is almost impossible given the lack of standard distribution standards and systems.  Curation does occur in other more traditional segments such as hotels.  The Mr & Mrs Smith site, for example, would be considered a curation site for selected boutique hotels.

In the end, the two methods for distribution offer their own benefits.  Aggregation will most likely offer the most number of choices and require the consumer to filter and sort based on their preferences.

Curation, on the other hand, will provide a fewer number of choices defined by the curator’s preferences and presented as a collection.  Both options are valid and serve consumers in different ways.

How effective the two options are depends a lot on the reputation of the brand and the trust the consumer has with the site.  In the end, both approaches provide consumers with choice and that is never a bad thing.

Pic: Espos.de on Flickr and Shopkitson.

British Airways has quietly started testing a new map-based trip planning system this week giving users the ability to search for destinations based on holiday types.

The World Explorer product sits on a beta URL within BA.com, uses Google Maps for the interface and is the result of work carried out between BA and Adobe for their Flex web system.

Similar to the Amadeus Affinity Shopper project created in late-2009 and since adopted by Lufthansa, World Explorer allows users to discover routes on the BA network based on whether the destination is recommended for different holidays, including romantic, beach, culture, nightlife, food and family.

Users can select a single or combination of types and results are shown on the map. Routes can also be toggled by length of flying time and number of stopovers.

As well as showing where flight connections are required, BA’s codeshare and OneWorld routes are also included in the system.

Once a destination is selected, a pop-up content box appears with more information including a brief overview of things to do, events and suggested other cities.

Live fare prices are also included in the information with a link back to the BA booking engine to secure flights.

The system is still in its early stages and more content will be added to the destination pages over time. Photography used in the project was gathered from BA staff through a competition running on the company’s intranet.

After 12 months in the making VisitBritain has finally unleashed a new website for domestic and overseas tourists today.

A radical redesign, headed by digital agency SapientNitro, is at the centre of the overhaul with huge amount of space given over to maps and images.

VisitBritain says 95% of the photography will come from images taken from photo-sharing website Flickr. It is also encouraging visitors to upload their own pictures to Flickr.

The photography sections are linked to the maps so users can switch between the two channels when searching for destination and activity ideas.

The site supports 23 different languages around the world and is segmented around a number of key channels for the user: destination content and maps; things to do; events; accommodation; transport; and tips.

The accommodation element of the site features a new search system for hotels and other accommodation providers in the UK, with links to online aggregators such as LateRooms, Active Hotels and Superbreak.

This element of the site is, however, one of the most controversial parts of the overall VisitBritain digital strategy, with many in the industry split of over how close a state-backed organisation should be to commercial product suppliers.

VisitBritain says the new site will spearhead its efforts to draw visitors to the UK ahead of and during the 2012 Olympic Games, taking place in London.

The site has also used maps from both Bing and Google.

Worrying research released today showing that younger web users are increasingly impatient over the speed in which travel sites take to fully load.

The research from web performance giant Akamai, produced in conjunction with PhoCusWright, may have an ulterior motive but the findings are certainly enough to send a slight shiver down the spine of webmasters across the travel sector.

Akamai says the study of nearly 2,800 US travel buyers in the US found that 57% swill wait three seconds before abandoning a site if it has failed to load properly.

But younger users – the coveted Generation-Y, aged between 18 and 24 – have even less patience, with 65% quickly moving to another site in two seconds or less.

A third of those questioned in January 2010 would not bother returning to a website if they had experienced performance difficulties on a previous occasion, the survey says.

Multi-tasking appears to prominent across the age groups. The study found that almost 60% will quickly open another browser window while waiting for sites to load, increasing their chances of finding another option elsewhere.

PhoCusWright research director Carroll Rheem says: “Online travel is a fiercely competitive marketplace with many powerful brands all vying for the same consumer.

“Think about how irritating it is to stand in a line at a physical store – people hate to wait.  When they are online, they don’t have to wait because there is another travel site just a few keystrokes away.”

British Airways has maintained its position as the easiest to use airline website in the UK but low cost carriers have dramatically improved in the past 12 months.

The annual survey by user experience agency Webcredible sees the troubled airline stay at the number one spot with Virgin Atlantic giving away second place this year to EasyJet.

Ryanair has also jumped to eighth position in 2010 after languishing in bottom place in 2009.

Overall the airline sector has improved usability over the past year, according to the study, with the top 20 websites seeing an average score of 64%, up from 55% in 2009.

Webcredible says:

“Despite these overall improvements, 11 websites scored percentages  in the 60’s and four websites scored between 40-50 per cent, demonstrating that many companies are still not doing enough to maximise their share of the potential revenue in this highly contested marketplace.

“The report highlighted that key guidelines that still need improving include supporting comparison shoppers, making pages ‘share friendly’, providing airport information, displaying clear progress bars and providing contact numbers during the booking process.”

The study also included a number of online travel agency websites, such as Opodo, Lastminute.com and Netflights.com.

Each website was evaluated against 20 best practice guidelines and assigned a score of 0-5 for each guideline, with 5 being the maximum.  With 20 guidelines in total, websites were assigned a total Web Usability Index rating out of 100.

The overall ranking for each website:

1. British Airways – 78% (2009 71%)
2. EasyJet – 77% (50%)
3. Virgin Atlantic – 75% (70%)
4. TravelRepublic – 73% (-)
5. BMI – 70% (65%)
6. Expedia – 68% (70%)
7. Travelocity – 68% (70%)
8. Ryanair – 66% (41%)
9. Ebookers – 65% (56%)
10. Opodo – 64% (62%)
11. Travelbag – 63% (54%)
12. FlyBe – 63% (53%)
13. Monarch – 63% (47%)
14. NetFlights – 62% (56%)
15. Lastminute.com – 62% (59%)
16. Jet2.com – 60% (49%)
17. STA Travel – 56% (58%)
18. First Choice – 56% (50%
19. ThomsonFly – 52% (51%)
20. Thomas Cook – 47% (47%)

NB: The full report can be downloaded from the Webcredible website.

Step back and wait for the furore -- Google has just released its new search page layout.

Search results will now be automatically displayed alongside filters such News, Blogs, Images and others in a dropdown menu, such as Shopping.

As each filter is selected -- similar to the previous method at the top of the page but in a far more intuitive way -- the page will change to drill down automatically to reveal more relevant results.

It’s just like Bing, some will no doubt argue.

One important issue here for the travel sector is that with the filters in a much more convenient place the user will be drawn to use them, thus opening up the Shopping options which now feature hotel prices, for example, drawn from AdSense partners.

Google sites around the world will see the new design over the course of the next 24 hours.

Here is a video from Google to explain the redesign and filters:

If – as many argue – travellers are changing the way they search for products from text to visual then this idea from Explorra could be one to follow.

The UK-based startup, which is built on the idea of compiling travel guides for users based on user preferences and recommendations from other travellers, has inked a deal with VisualDNA to provide a completely image-based search engine for users to discover fitting destinations.

The idea of using images to narrow a user’s preferences is not new (Hotels.com and Lastminute.com have also used VisualDNA technology for accommodation search), but to have it as a prominent feature of a new site and with dynamic learning capability (a later version will include real-time recommendations) perhaps means such functionality is becoming the norm.

The user is asked a series of questions and are given a collection of images to select a preference, including:

• What makes a happy holiday?
• What’s your favourite landscape?
• Favourite food/hotel?
• Who you are travelling with?

Once the questionnaire is complete, VisualDNA serves results from the Explorra system based on the preferences.

In addition, Explorra has developed a widget so that users can insert the result on their blogs.

A survey which may surprise many at the sharp end of usability and web design has found travel sites ranking behind only news and media sites for overall usability by consumers.

The poll by usability agency Webcredible of 1,000 consumers (around 40% US, 40% UK, 20% RotW) revealed just 9% found travel sites difficult to use, 2% behind news and media sites.

Languishing in last place were government and local authority websites with 34% of respondents slamming the sector’s range of websites for ease-of-use.

The results will be a pleasant and perhaps unexpected fillip for travel sites although many experts agree that usability and user experience on online travel brands has improved massively in recent years.

Webcredible director Trenton Moss says:

“Website user experience has become a big deal in most sectors and users are increasingly frustrated if they find a website difficult to use and will tend to drop off commercial sites for this reason.

“Some sectors are clearly performing better than others when it comes to website usability, but as competition and demand for online functionality increases, it’s crucial that websites in all sectors invest in providing their users with the best user experience possible.”

The sectors in the survey included:

• News/media – 7%
• Travel – 9%
• Utilities – 12%
• Retail/ecommerce – 13%
• Financial services – 16%
• Government – 34%

Experts say the travel and news-media sites are winning the usability battle because consumers are able to quickly move to another provider if they dislike the experience on a website, unlike government services where typically there is only one source of information or service.

The poll was conducted between September and December 2009.