If I were working at Google….. what would Google Travel look like?

Google have finally let the cat out of the bag….. it is not a matter of IF Google are going to launch further travel functionality – but WHEN – and WHAT will it look like. Read the article on Business Week 

Google moving deeper into travel has always been inevitable (in my mind) – and this was confirmed when I heard that Google (and incidentally Expedia) were bidding for Farecast (then Microsoft got them)…. You don’t bid for a company that large unless you have big plans in the travel vertical sector.

Lets pretend a second that I work for Google and I am pitching ideas to my boss – Rob Torres (MD Travel USA). How would the pitch go? What would I cover? What would I propose?

Strategic considerations

• Has to complement existing keyword based advertising - No desire to risk hurting the relationship with leading travel websites and airlines (who make up some of Google’s largest advertisers)
• Wish to create a “lock out” effect – generating a barrier to entry for new or existing players. Therefore has to either be technologically complex, contractually exclude certain players from taking part with competitors or be consumer driven and grow massive quickly.
• Has to be deliverable within the next 8-12 months – There is a possibility that Microsoft is coming over the horizon…. and besides, now having announced that something is coming soon - we had better launch something that merits this raise in expectations.
• Probably monetised via advertising – as this is where Google is currently strong. Yes we have revenue from services (such as software access) however consumer facing advertising is key
• No desire to sell airline fares or hotel bookings – as this requires too much investment in customer service
• Being an infrastructure play – helping join consumers and travel companies together – which could generate long term lock in and competitive advantage

What about the ideas?

Basically my ideas fall into 4 main areas:

1. Owning the traveller profile
2. Increasing content that can have adverts served against them
3. Meta search
4. A.N. Other

#1 Owning the traveller profile
I suggest that Google create a system where we can “own” the traveller profile. Yes there are sites out there already in this space – Dopplr, WAYN etc – so this demonstrates that consumers have an appetite for this kind of functionality. However, to make this more commercial, these profiles need to join consumer needs with existing Google advertisers – and be more about the individual benefit than about a network of consumers.

Take for example Google Health (which gives you an idea what Google could do in a vertical space). The benefits page says:

Google Health puts you in charge of your health information. It’s safe, secure, and free.

• Organize your health information all in one place
• Gather your medical records from doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies
• Keep your doctors up to date about your health
• Be more informed about important health issues

 Right, lets swap the word health for travel…

Google Travel puts you in charge of your trip information. It’s safe, secure, and free.

• Organize your trip information all in one place
• Gather your travel records from airlines, hotels, and tour operators 
• Keep your agent and suppliers up to date about your latest plans
• Be more informed about important travel information

Sounds good so far. Lets see what else Google Health -> Google Travel has:

Import medical records -> Import travel records
A mechanism where, with partner websites, a traveller can import their itinerary into Google Travel.

“When you link a website to your profile, you may authorize that website to read your Google Health profile or to automatically send and update information in your profile (such as medical records or prescription histories). You decide which permissions to grant when you sign up with each website.” 

Well if we are going to do this medical records and prescription histories - then proposed trips is going to be a doddle.

Pros and cons of managing the traveller record

Pros

• Owning the traveller profile would fit nicely alongside other similar Google tools such as Google Friend Connect and Google Health.
• Infrastructure play – would help join existing advertisers with consumer travellers.
• The information in the profile would help assist with Google searches as we know the kind of travel the consumer is interested in and also details about forthcoming trips. This should help monetise the searches better – and also give more relevant results to the consumer.
• If we don’t own the traveller record – someone else will – and it would be a costly acquisition later – we should build something ourselves before others are all full throttle.

Cons

• Will require working with travel industry partner companies ahead of launch (on the data import system). Will it be possible to keep this out of the press or bloggers like that Musings on Travel ecommerce?
• Will we get further negative PR from having all this information about customers? Will consumers be concerned about the level of information we have about them?

[Side note - Google health maintains a consumer's immunisation record - which is a whole area that travel websites / travel companies haven't really got into. This wouldn't be a big ROI..... but it could be something that would be interesting to demonstrate the benefit of joined up profiles and of interest as a PR exercise]

#2 Increasing content that can have adverts served against them
One of the missed opportunities with the keyword based search system is the “next page”. A user comes to Google, searches for a destination or product, and off they go to a 3rd party website. Maybe they come back – but often the content on that 3rd party website (which could include adverts) is sufficient that they remain there.

While we can’t create specific product pages on Google (because that would complicate our advertiser relationships), we could build specific destination pages.

In order for these destination pages to be fair, we would need to build them as something that looks a bit like:

• Google news (open to all qualified newspapers and magazines – but excludes bloggers)
• Google finance (e.g. GOOG) where we can track information about a specific company to a single page.

They would be a mixture of web pages (links to), adverts, destination information, forthcoming events etc.

Pros and cons of creating more travel focussed pages

Pros

• We will have more tightly focussed content hence will increase the inventory of advertising space that should convert well for our advertisers. This will keep advertisers happy.
• Forms a large container that could make use of Google Maps, Youtube etc integrated into a strong user experience. This would make a nice Google “shop window” to other Google location based services
• Existing major advertisers (airlines and travel companies) won’t feel threatened by the generation of more travel focussed pages.
• Many destination content pages on the web currently are run by SEO groups and contain many affiliate links. This is an opportunity for us to remove these tacky destination pages from the Google index and point users towards our better quality pages.

Cons

• One of the hardest aspects of any travel website is the geography information architecture. How are we going to get this right for all kinds of travel - and at what level of granularity should we go to (country, city, street etc)?
• Is this really “big enough” a concept? Better content – build it they will come – is a strategy that dates from 2000.
• There is a difference in perspective between someone who travels to a destination “as a local” and as a tourist. Designing these pages to handle multiple use cases could become complex.

Probably a good step forwards – and would give us a further 18 months runway to build other services around travel – but not the “end game”. Probably a “just do it” (as long as it doesn’t divert management attention from activities that will have a longer term impact).

#3 – Meta search
Now that Microsoft have Farecast – this is a sector that Google are going to be falling behind on. We (Google) should react.

Rather than recreating Farecast we should enhance the Google Product Search (i.e. turn Froogle into Troogle).

The first step would be to create a simple travel product description standard (!) that would be possible for NON-professional developers to generate. We need to hit the long tail of travel companies.

Pros and cons of meta search

Pros

• By having enhanced product information we can find new and interesting ways to search on it, generating a better consumer (and advertiser) experience
• Having a product feed would help us understand who are product owners and who are product agents – and this would help filter out affiliate sites and potentially some agent sites.

Cons

• In order for this to be successful, we need to get this to be accepted quickly in the marketplace. Acceptance may have to be “forced” through discounted Adwords advertising or other mechanisms.
• A half-hearted meta search would not show Google in a good light. This either has to be a success or not happen at all.

#4 – A.N. Other
I have another idea for Google. However, for various reasons, I will not go into it here. I am keeping it to myself for the moment!

My 4th idea:

• Hits on a weakness that Farecast has
• Sits alongside other Google web services
• Wouldn’t preclude Google from other strategies already outlined in this blog post
• Takes into consideration their desire not to get into airline or hotel product distribution (directly) (because of the customer service issues)
• Doesn’t risk existing airline or hotel advertiser relationships

I hope everyone enjoyed this post…. I am available for consulting (!) (UK)

If you want to be notified next time something is published sign up for email alerts, subscribe to the RSS feed or say hello via Twitter @alexbainbridge. Thank you for reading!