TTI - Future of Travel Distribution (London) - soundbites

Great conference today in London…. but I am afraid you either should have been there - or you will have to wait for the TTI to publish their own notes and slides etc.

However, I do have the following soundbites that I scribbled down….. (now thinking that yes to be a blogger really perhaps I do need a journalistic background!). Of course these soundbites are what I found interesting - others will have taken away a completely different set of soundbites and experiences!

Spannerworks - Maddy Wood

• Great talk about the future of search. Not quite enough detail “that can be applied” for my liking, but she is hardly going to give away client confidential information is she?
• 2 of their tour operator clients - both very large - one interacts with social media - other decided against it - the one without social media used to have good search engine positioning - but now it has lost out to the one using social media as part of their strategy (due to the increase in backlinks) 

Cheapflights - Hugo Burge, Vice Chairman

• Has an investment in most “travel web2.0″ camps - including Dohop, WAYN, Trustedplaces and Hereorthere via Howzat media and his own projects.
• Keen on Pay Per Click (after all this is what Cheapflights is about)…. but interested in the 70% of people who rely on friends and family to provide believable advice…. (hence creating systems and social networks that facilitate this)

Expedia.com - Murad Hajeebhoy, VP Lodging and Destination services, EMEA 

• Will introduce social network / social features to their website - when they believe they can get to critical mass (sounds to me like classic chicken and egg but who am I to judge)
• Slowly will integrate TripAdvisor to their site - but need to retain that independence that TripAdvisor currently has
• 75% of people when researching travel will look on Expedia at least once during their research phase (which probably explains why Expedia won’t work with TravelSupermarket in the UK, nor with new meta search entrants in the US, although this was not stated today)
• For every 2 bookings a hotel receives from Expedia, the hotel will get one “directly” - based from users searching on Expedia then navigating to the hotel owner’s site.
• These direct bookings have amounted, Murad calculates, to $200 USD Million free advertising value…. (A year?). They are looking to monetise this in the future.
• In the Q&A, one questioner (from one of the large tour operators, but will remain nameless) suggested that the future of Expedia is as a travel technology provider - rather than a distribution partner….. ummmm looks like people will remove more inventory from Expedia going forwards and just leave Expedia with a technology platform that they resell.

OpenJaw - John McQuillan, CEO

• Nice overview of the state of play with technology - a bit of a “backgrounder”
• In response to a question I asked, he said that his system is a commodity (rather than giving competitive advantage to his customers). Not sure I would have said that. (PLEASE  SEE COMMENT BELOW for correction)

Costa Cruises - Daniele Mancini - e-Business Director

• You can only be impressed with their multi language (25 odd), multi localised systems both for B2C and B2T. What a lot of work
• They run at 107% occupancy…. (er something to do with weighting when you upgrade a low cost berth to a high cost one - or something like that) - hence they just care about retaining inventory to those that they want to sell them - which can mean turning off the UK and the US.
• More ships on order
• Second life ship launch….. clever PR ! (Google it)
• They are using second life as a mechanism to do press meetings, agent training etc. They are able to take people to spas etc and show potential clients how the ship is laid out.
• The cost of the second life experiment is less than a full magazine advert… (not sure we believed that)
• Unlike hotels they can move their ships around to service different demand and stay in nice weather (state the obvious!)
• Won’t sell to travellers travelling alone - only to couples and groups - because single travellers don’t have friends to give gifts to. They can get 100% extra sale value through things like special requests and other services on board the boat… (sold through a post booking, pre travel system on their websites - but paid on board)

Amadeus (GDS) - Stephane Durand, Managing Director, Amadeus UK

• 20 years old coming soon!
• Going to introduce a system where an agent can receive a request from a customer, this request can be matched to another agent in “the community” (either within a company or wider) - then a standard response can be made…. i.e. using collaborative working within agents systems
• 18% of all European online reservations go through the Amadeus system
• Absolutely sure that his system IS NOT a commodity…. (unlike John from Open Jaw).
• Wants to be seen as a technology partner not a distribution channel…. (which is opposite to Expedia)
• 2500 man years of research & development per year (mind you I know that this is mainly in the South of France where the weather is lovely - so people probably only work 3/4 of a day - so this figure is probably overstated! They also have long lunches at Sophia Antipolis - I have been there!)

John Donnelly, Travel Entrepreneur

• What an inspiration. True drive and passion about high street retail.
• Founded Holiday Hypermarket (which sold to FirstChoice)
• Ran First Choice retail for a while (a large network of travel agencies in the UK)
• Joined Harvey World Travel as UK Managing Director
• Now creating and investing in many more travel and highstreet ventures having left previous roles
• Forward looking statement - John suggested that the number of high street travel agent shops (UK) will be reduced from a peak of 7000 (now 5000) to 2000 within 5 years. This will also include the big 4 travel companies (now 2 following recent mergers) merging again to 1. He is someone who knows about the forthcoming earthquake in UK highstreet travel retail as he is one of the founders of the large highstreet networks that are in place there today - and knows when all the leases are up. He doesn’t expect them to be renewed where there are duplicates in a town.

Finally, for those that left the conference early - well you should have stayed to the end. Not only did you miss John Donnelly but you also missed a classic joke from Tony Allen, Chairman of the TTI. Trust me, you had to be there for it

Do I pass as a journalist? Perhaps I should stick to blogging…. (actually perhaps I should stick to IT management as that is what I really do!)

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