Blog homeI have just finished reading the book The Long Tail by Chris Anderson (editor of Wired magazine).
See Wikipedia definition of Long Tail
In the book the premise is that a few “hits” (like popular books or hit music) have many sales – but that there are thousands of other books and music songs that are less popular – that individually don’t have many sales – but collectively sell more than the hits.
i.e. the 50th most popular book on Amazon may sell 100 books per day. The 1000th most popular book may only sell 3. However because there are a 300,000 books selling 2 or 3 per day, this is more sales than the top 100 books who sell 1000 a day each.
This effect is now becoming evident in travel – in particular with smaller tour operators. Previously you had a few large tour operators – all were selling “hits” (i.e. popular resorts and popular hotels within those resorts) because, with a limited space in a brochure, only those tours that were guaranteed to sell a certain number could be printed. Additionally, distribution was controlled through travel agencies. For each product listed there was a “marginal cost” – i.e. increased brochure printing costs, travel agency product training and familiarisation trips etc. This cost pressure kept the number of products offered by tour operators low.
The Internet has changed all of this. Previously if you were going to set up a 2 tour leader hiking company in the Spanish Pyrenees you would need to think very carefully how you were to get people to find out about your product – and to contact you – and to book. Now, via the power of the Internet, you can set up and market directly.
The long tail has revolutionised the book industry, the music industry and now is impacting the travel industry. The press seem to make out that its all about existing tour operators selling direct – but the real impact will be, over time, niche tour operators will be able to generate sufficient sales to be able to run stable, profitable, businesses – without having to be part of larger groups.
Rather than changing how the industry undertakes marketing & distribution, this will impact the entire makeup of the tour operator business itself. One impact will be that I think you will see many more 2-10 person tour operator companies in 5 years time – who collectively will be selling more products than the few large tour operators.
Alex
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Alex, I think this is a very interesting area. I wrote an article last year raising a question mark over the longevity of the long tail. My thought being that as the long tail of PPC becomes more and more crowded as various tools make it very easy to bid for hundreds of thousands of terms. The effect would be an upward movement in the cost per click.
However, you are addressing the long tail from a wider perspective, and suggest that it will bring greater equality for niche operators. Do you think this can stand the test of time? Once larger operators have carved up the head of the tail, will they head down the curve? If so this would bring great pressure to bare on niche operators who have prospered from the long tail.
[...] Is there a market that will not be affected by the long tail? Chris Anderson does not seem to think so in his book, and the long tail of travel blog agrees with this notion. I am trying to think of one now. [...]