TTI blog - go over there and get involved

In the UK we have an industry organisation called the Travel Technology Initiative.

I really enjoy their travel technology / travel website / travel distribution seminars and conferences that take place in London every 3 to 4 months or so. Being a company of limited means we can’t afford (time wise) to go to every travel conference that exists (doing is preferable than talking about doing)

Anyway, the TTI had an executive forum in December 07. Sadly I missed it because we did a code release the same day…..

They have now created a new blog to facilitate discussion on 10 core subjects that were rasied last December (with my comments on each topic below)

• APIS - When? What? How? APIS is advanced passenger information - and isn’t just a concern for airlines - but now for agencies and tour operators
• Is it worth having an internet booking engine? Probably not if you are tailor made tour specialist!
• Are online travel agencies going to become search engines that push transactions direct to suppliers? Yes - but there will be fewer of them
• Social media - threat or benefit? - social search could be interesting, social media not sure about
• Who needs travel agents anymore and are people better at selling travel? Well there are rather a lot of travel technology providers who need agents still….. as that is where they get their income from
• What will Google do to the travel industry? Provide lots of free traffic - and some paid for traffic. Long term, who knows. 
• Industry initiative for online brochure distribution - this is “better candlesticks”. Who needs a better candlestick when you have electricity?
• Does affiliate marketing generate worthwhile consumer leads? I have always said that ABTA will soon stand for Association of British Travel Affiliates….. (Recently ABTA stopped calling themselves after travel agents and are now ABTA - The Travel Association - so half way there)
• How do we get easy (and cheap) XML access to supplier inventory? Easy, cheap and travel technology do not go hand in hand!
• The challenges associated with dynamic packaging and how will call centre and online technology merge? Is this need business driven, consumer driven or technology provider driven?

I am not entirely sure that the blog format works when you want to discuss 10 subjects over the longer term. Maybe a forum where raising a sub-topic requires moderation would have been more appropriate.

However the principle is that you hop over to their blog and post a comment about any of these 10 topics.

TTI blog

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