Blog homeWhat promotes products the best in travel?
Video (but we all knew that)
Why then don’t all travel websites have videos?
Because its hard to create (or perceived to be hard) - and definitely hard to keep current (descriptions, backgrounds etc age badly - and then you either have to reedit - or reshoot - both of which are costly).
When is Google going to launch a travel website? (over and above what they already do - which - when you look into it - is actually quite a lot….)
Who knows - but I have written about what I would do if I worked for Google
But today we got one step closer. YouTube have launched “click-to-Buy” (see YouTube announcement). If you see a product featured in a video - and you like the look of it - you can buy it.
Here is an interesting quote from today’s announcement:
This is just the beginning of building a broad, viable eCommerce platform for users and partners on YouTube. Our vision is to help partners across all industries — from music, to film, to print, to TV — offer useful and relevant products to a large, yet targeted audience, and generate additional revenue from their content on YouTube beyond the advertising we serve against their videos
Looking to the future I see something like this
- 20 different tour operators put up a 5 minute video about their tours in Egypt
- A home consumer watches all 20 videos on their television (via YouTube / TV integration) (from the comfort of their sofa)
- When they get to one they like - they click on a button - and “shortlist / bookmark” the tour
- Later, on their PC, they review their shortlist, start price comparison - and then buy (earning Google a cut of the commission)
i.e. this is UGC travel TV (but where the U in UGC are travel companies)
It would work for destination choices too.
If I had a bit of time I would build this on top of YouTube right now…… as it would make perfect “acquisition bait” 
What have Google said about travel on YouTube?
[Source: The infamous Business Week article]
Also spurring Google’s interest is some early success with sponsored travel offerings. Nearly 900,000 people have watched a New Zealand tourism board’s video ad since it was uploaded to YouTube last September. That kind of traffic is bound to draw marketers.
Travel pages, or a full-fledged travel channel, also promise to help Google make more money from YouTube. Rather than try to convince travel marketers to advertise on user-generated videos, they can sell sponsored destination pages on YouTube where travel marketers can post their own videos and influence or control what types of content users upload. Then Google can also sell other forms of advertising, such as search ads, to drive traffic to the site.
Mind you, this pre-dates today’s announcement about building ecommerce into videos. I just wonder whether the travel guys (and girls) at Google chat (over their free coffee) with the music industry Google people. They should be looking how to make this music oriented ecommerce platform work for travel.
Something else worth reading - Google Rallies Embattled Travel Marketers. Google had a meeting with more than 100 travel marketing executives this week (over in USA). That article is a write up. Anyone read this blog who was there? Please write a review in the comments below. Thanks.
And finally, don’t forget, for the second time this year, I am on stage “interviewing” Google travel. (World Travel Market 2008 - seminar details). Time to start thinking about questions! What do you want asked?
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Video is powerful.
I started thinking about how to present something online better after a friend told me he had had trouble selling his car online, with only a couple of photos. He subsequently published 50 photos of every minute detail – features and flaws – increased the price, and sold it immediately.
When I came across a California start up called hotswap.com I got really interested in video!
Typical Michael, you will say, and by now Alex will have checked it out, only in the interest of appropriate censure, I am sure.
The site introduced a supposedly vastly improved mechanism for uploading video clips…for selling used cars. The service was free to individuals and they were hoping to license the system to dealers who would video all of their used cars in America. They have disappeared, bought by someone, I think, for their technology, or for the URL, who knows….
Most of the clips on hotswap were quite dire – except the odd one produced either by their staff or an obvious enthusiast.
The multitude of poorly “produced” user-generated clips on social networking and customer feedback sites confirms that this is not easy.
This is a round-about way of saying that I agree with Alex re the power of video and the complexity of producing a good one.
But it would not hurt to have better quality than youtube - and there are many free and cheap alternatives to buy into.
Luckily there are some good in-between solutions, e.g. slide shows, which can be produced easily and with superb results with tools like http://www.vizzvox.com.
Or one can turn to professionals to produce really good professional grade videos, e.g. http://www.bizview.tv - they tend to specialize on corporate, sales and training videos, but also do other work.
I agree with Michael. I spent several years talking to lots of travel cos in the UK about the power of video and how they should seriously consider using it… (see http://www.digib.co.uk/ for examples) but people still think content on-line should cost peanuts… and Youtube makes people assume it takes 5 minutes to produce a video. Not true. To do it well it takes a lot of time and costs a lot of money. And if you are serious about your brand as a travel company you have to make your video look good - it doesn’t need to be broadcast quality, but it needs to be well shot, with half decent sound and in particular well edited. Bet you that NZ tourism video cost a hatload of money…
So my question is… why would 20 different operators put up video of Egypt - when many of their tours are very similar offerings to those of their competitors? Unless the cost of making video comes down dramatically (and I can’t see how it ever will) then I can’t see many operators creating their own videos. Travel cos aren’t publishers and they aren’t broadcasters and they never will be. They will wait for someone else to do it in the hope they can do some kind of third party deal to use this content too… (Hmm Google perchance?)
If I had the money and ambition (!) I’d be out there shooting the heck out of every great destination in the world and creating gorgeous short edited sequences to flog to travel operators to use on their websites… As a content person… for me this is when content really COULD be king… not the sad inbred offspring of SEO campaigns…
Hi Jeremy
(just commented on your blog incidentally - which I hadn’t seen before - but am now subscribed)
I am afraid that many travel videos are too generic to be useful as part of the product sales process (and fall into infotainment - which is interesting - but not super helpful to the end consumer). The real challenges come around product videos (due to how they age badly and therefore can’t be used - due to trading standards product description obligations (at least in the UK))
I come from the “niche” end of the travel business where products vary wildy so 20 tour operator videos would be quite different.
Videos can of course be as simple as a slide show with voiceover…….. not expensive at all. (which is what Michael was saying)
The other aspect of videos is it brings back the “high quality paper stock” design aspects of a brochure - where you can tell a “good company” by how nice their brochure is. (although can be misleading of course). With the web - anyone can set up a great website - so hard to differentiate between leaders and followers. But with video the better companies will be obvious.
Frankly, going around shooting destination content would be pointless. Supplier specific product content is what people want videos of.
One other thing… re your seminar at WTM… canyou answer this one?
http://www.travelblather.com/2008/10/why-doesnt-google-want-journalists-at-its-wtm-seminar.html
Just did (kind of)
Thanks for your comment re WTM… not sure which days I’m there… but may wear a false beard and dark glasses and see if I can sneak in!
RE: slide shows wanted to mention the awesomely cool www.animoto.com I’ve had such fun with that. (eg: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJNX0P7I2ZU)
Agree totally that quality of ALL content (words, pics as well as video) could and should be an indicator of quality of company on-line just as offline… people are finally waking up to the fact that ultimately you need quality content on-line and quality is not cheap, it’s an investment.
I disagree with you re shooting destination content… I think context is important here… I guess it depends on where in the research phase of a trip a customer is… but if it’s early on (’hmm. Wonder if Mexico would be a good place to take the kids now they’re older?’) you need some more generic, beautiful shots in there too - before you get too product specific. And before you have deep enough pockets to pay someone to shoot videos of all 10 of your tours to Mexico a nicely shot, short generic piece would at least whet peoples’ appetites?
Hi Jeremy,
Well I would leave that to the destination marketing companies……… the good ones will give you videos you can put on your site anyway. Then focus your attention on differentiators (i.e. product videos)
Its the “portal” vs “specialist” discussion. Not sure every tour operator wants to become a destination portal….
This is because it can be too big a bite to take, but also because it then makes it harder to have online business relationships with other destination portals for the same place - as they are competitors rather than potential partners
So definately a place for destination videos - but not every travel company should be reinventing that particular wheel - hence why I called it pointless (from the travel company’s perspective)
@ Alex and Jeremy - great points regarding the pros and cons of video content for travel companies.
Back to the question about Google / YouTube’s “Click to Buy” potential in travel, I think it’s an interesting concept, but has less potential than the gradual infusion of pre / post roll video ads (depending on content length) and the current AdSense text placements that run within video.
Google’s strength is clearly monetizing content via advertising. But they’ve had limited success branching into other channels — selling radio ads, Google Checkout, even getting YouTube to be a strong revenue producer relative to it’s purchase price. I think the travel vertical will see a lot more impact from Google’s creative integration of travel partners within their search results and, specifically, Google Maps, and it will be interesting to see how the launch of Click To Buy evolves.
Hi Pete
Ah - pre/post roll ads……. well those are still ads (i.e. not something I want to watch - unless as some kind of “perceived payment” for the other content that I know I will get if I watch the ads)
What I am talking about are commercial presentations where the consumer, becauase they are evaluating product, actually wants to watch. Very different.
In my view Microsoft may do enough in travel to force Google to do something - then we really will see some moves. At the moment Google are putting all the infrastructure in place……. so they can be ready to launch “something” at a moments (few months) notice - in the confidence that it will all hang together. The challenge (for people like me) is to guess what the end moves are based on what infrastructure they have launched - and how they describe their infrastructure in their announcements to see if there are any clues.
Interesting stats from Eyefortravel conf in Munich about video from Sandra Leonhard, director web strategy and business development for Tui. They have over 2000 videos on the Thomson.co.uk website and expect to see 30,000,000 views of video on the site this year… I’ve just blathered some more about this if you’re interested(?):
http://www.travelblather.com/2008/10/using-video-to-sell-travel-online.html