Blog homeI know I already posted about the forthcoming TTI conference in London - 19th June - entitled “SMEs gaining the advantage” - which will be about smaller travel companies competing online with larger ones.
However now I have read my morning post (physical of course!) and found a newsletter from the TTI, the conference organisers. I almost fell of my chair when I read it.
Inside there is a very nice article written by Ed Spiers, Anite (probably the leading travel technology provider for the very large tour operators in the UK). The article is titled “the haves and the have nots” - which presumably is a precursor for Ed’s presentation at the TTI conference I just mentioned (where he will be speaking and I will be attending).
A couple of points are well made:
Within the next couple of years, the large, mainstream, UK tour operators will have upgraded their systems in place delivering slick, fast, online booking systems selling holidays with better prices and margins, with better booking conversion.
Yes - and I have been involved with a number of projects in the last 12 months (part of our consulting / contracting work that we do - not the TourCMS side) working for these mainstream tour operators - project managing these implementations. Some are using Anite technology but I am NDA’d to the hilt - so don’t get me going down this route.
It is the next statement I am interested in:
This will put SME tour operators in the unenviable position of operating in an increasingly competitive marketplace with online distribution systems that will seem, by comparison, to be slow, difficult to use, and unresponsive to consumers requirements. The technology differentiator will have kicked in, and the commercial viability of these SME tour operators will be at considerable risk.
(My emphasis). But it then continues:
The next generation of technology to support core selling and distribution systems may well be beyond the operational capability of many SME tour operators.
Blimey, that was quite strong. Is he finished? Nope
The challenge for SME tour operators is how can they understand what’s needed to compete….
So there you have it. If you are a small tour operator - according to Anite you won’t understand what is needed and even if you did understand it you wouldn’t be operationally capable of doing anything about it - and even if you could do something about it, commercially you are not viable anyway. Nice. Game over perhaps?
Thankfully no - Ed then goes on to say:
My personal view is that a new breed of outsourced solutions will evolve, running not just the base technology infrastructure, but an ASP service managing applications such as product loading, content management, merchandising, web analytics and campaign marketing.
(ASP means hosted - or not managed directly by the tour operator - and stands for Application Service Provider).
Ah - I don’t suppose he means TourCMS does he?
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