Blog homeIt is quite ridiculous that this week we had two conferences in London - on the same day - on the same topic.
Firstly we had the Travel Technology Initiative’s spring conference - subject “Travel in a Web 2.0 World”. Also we had Travolution’s conference “Managing convergance - is your travel business positioned for the online and digital future”. Kevin May (Editor) from Travolution had no regrets - saying that they had planned their date well in advance. I am sure that the TTI did as well. Anyway, I went to the TTI one. Sorry Kevin. The TTI are an organisation that deserve support - as they facilitate standards such as the TOPAS standard (package holiday availailability information sent to website and travel agency systems). Besides, they were cheaper.
I guess that conferences like to focus on the future rather than the present - however it is the present that we are living in. At the TTI conference I heard that we could be looking at brain memory transfers - enabling people to believe they have experienced a trip - even though they haven’t. Ummm.
One amusing part of this dual clash was WAYN (Where Are You Now) - a social network created for individuals to record past trips - and meet people on new trips (now with 8 million subscribers). At the TTI conference we had Jerome Touze (co-founder WAYN), while at the Travolution conference we had Peter Ward (co-founder WAYN). Looks like they organised their diaries - but didn’t organise their presentations!
Jerome suggested that having a business model based around subscriptions (i.e. a set figure per month, paid by the site subscriber) was good - and mitigated risk against a downturn on advertising income. According to the Travolution blog, Peter Ward (at the other conference) said that they were doing away with the subscription model. Get it together guys.
TravelMole.com (a travel industry news oracle) - took an alternative view - and seemed to suggest that Jerome had said that travel agents should be warned about linking with social networking sites (because they may not be around in the long term). What a lot of nonsense. I think that social networks should concern themselves that travel agents may not be around in the long term. That seems far more likely.
Alex
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surely a publication that suggests such nonsense can’t be an ‘oracle’.
We have no regrets about hosting our conference last week on the same day as the TTI event (Tuesday 24 April).
Indeed one cannot imagine us and Paul Richer playing a game of who-blinks-first to determine which conference should go ahead.
We have received some excellent feedback from delegates and speakers from the Summit and the Awards, which followed the conference.
[Such a shame TourCMS didn’t enter for one of the awards, by the way]
While Paul’s events are highly regarded and have been in existence for a few years, we have tried and succeeded in doing things differently at all our conferences, mirroring the attitude we have to publishing.
No UK travel conference has created a VideoBlog for delegates and - amazingly - none of the travel trade publications have blogged live from any events.
In short: Alex, you went to the wrong conference.
Indeed, I wonder if Philip K Dick knew he was predicting “Travel 5.0″ at the time (We Can Remember It For You Wholesale / Total Recall).
Travel seems a perfect space for social networking - who doesn’t like to come back from holiday and share their stories and photos with their friends. Hopefully travellers are experiencing the same benefits computer / technology shoppers have with regard to getting better value / added value on their purchases through on line discussions. It would be interesting to see how the subscription model is viewed by the non paying users (who one would imagine will contribute most of the foot fall on the site).
Kevin,
Yeah - I don’t think either conference was going to move once the dates were finalised. The TTI conference was well attended though - so perhaps the audiences were mutually exclusive.
I think I went to the right conference - as I got first hand the TTI conference - and yours was well covered online
Alex
“I think that social networks should concern themselves that travel agents may not be around in the long term. That seems far more likely”
More doom and gloom about Travel Agents, I think I have been told that there is no long term viability to my career every year for the last decade and a half but hey here we are still going strong… Social networking opens as many opportunities as it closes, the only issue is who can see them!
Hi Jeremy
Thanks for your comment! Not all travel agents are doomed! I have written my thoughts now at
http://www.tourcms.com/blog/2007/05/16/are-travel-agents-doomed/
Thanks. Alex