Blog homeJust spent all yesterday at World Travel Market 2008. Very busy
First day spent wandering around the place and having various meetings - successful ones - so that means more business - which is great. No downturn for us, touch wood.
Saw some things I was a bit unsure about - like a company offering travel website design services - where - on their stand - they had a screenshot of a website for an airline that they work for. Problem was, I know that they didn’t design that particular page - as I project managed that project and it was another agency in a different country who designed it…… oh dear.
Second largest FAIL was Aldi (a low cost supermarket chain) announcing their move into the travel sector. The news about the launch was press embargoed until Monday evening….. however, their press release has been happily sitting in public on the World Travel Market press releases section since October 28th. They also have a stand in the name of - wait for it - Aldi travel…. The embargo was a bit pointless then eh!?
In the evening took part if the first “travel blogging bar camp” thingy. 80 people or so turned up to hear various people (including myself) speak. Good fun I think….. [Darren has written up the BlogCamp on his blog]
Interested to hear about STA travel buzz - who aggregate any discussion that relates to STA travel but without adding any commentary to what is being discussed - i.e. no helping with customer issues etc. The key comment that focussed my attention was that they are “not” the customer service team. I am still a fan of the customer service team “owning” responsibility for an ecommerce website (rather than the marketing or IT teams)….. which I guess is the reverse of the STA strategy.
I am not sure the point about how, as an aggregator, you can control the message through controlling the environment was understood by everyone. If you have a few “negative articles” out there - as the aggregator - you can ensure that the 5 hours someone wants to spend investigating and interacting with your brand are spent in your environment - under your direction. Of course the negative stuff will still be out there (and can be found through different means) but if you can fill up all the time that any sane individual would want to spend with your brand with positive stuff - they will never get around to looking for negative things. This is the web version of filibustering.
Back to WTM for all of Thursday….. where, yes, will be chatting to Google at 11am. [Seminar details]
I am going to be quite pleased when WTM is over!
Note to all those complaining about the train not running from central London direct to Excel….. jump on the Thames Clipper (ferry)… I can get one from Waterloo train station through to Canary Wharf - where they have a coach / bus to Excel. 30 minutes - easy. No need for any trains at all.
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Well done kicking it off last night at the Blog camp - you spoke well, it was a fun evening.
Re your comments about STA TravelBuzz, my ‘esprit de l’escalier’ last night, as it were (yer wot?!) was that the whole point of STA funding this initiative is about reinforcing a brand that you can trust - and associating their brand with open, honest, independent, democratic discussion and comment etc. They are confident enough of their own ‘feel-good’ brand that opening up in this way will do them no harm (unlike another well known travel company who commented on their own UGC experiment last night that went very wrong) - in fact quite the contrary. There are only a few brands that have managed to earn this, the old Virgin, Lonely Planet, Innocent etc. So acting as customer service is an entirely different proposition - what Molly & co are doing is aggregating brand-reinforcing comment and discussion. If anything needs dealing with by customer services, the place to do it without corrupting the non-corporate independent commentary is somewhere else. Plus of course to stimulate open debate you don’t want the feeling that customer services are lurking round the corner. Notice the strapline - honest independent experiences from fellow STA travellers, so by implication STA is ‘one of us’, honest and independent…
Thanks for the entertaining update Alex! I was supposed to be down at WTM, but have found myself too caught up in things to get away, such is life (or work). And yet, though I am up at 6am and still at it at 12pm, still I have yet to get to grips with TourCMS!
But I will - I have managed to do a couple of new things without help and have suitably impressed myself…
Have fun tomorrow and keep us updated!
(Oh, I went to a very interesting blogging event last night organised by Manchester Social Media Cafe - the topic was ‘Is blogging dead’? It was a resounding verdict of ‘no, it’s only just started’!
Is Blogging dead?
)
Hi Alex,
Didn’t manage to say high at the travel blog camp. I’m not sure I had the same interpretation of
STA Travel Buzz as you. I don’t think it is about controlling the environment or filibustering at all. I see it simply as a a service to their potential customers, by bringing together all the relevant ’social’ commentary into one place they save their consumers having to trawl the web for it. The debate about how involved they should get in individual conversations seemed to get very polarised. In my opinion, they were taking a slightly over-cautious approach - but I can see a strong rationale for that. The dangers of the social community turning on a big brand are well documented, and it can easily take a relatively innocuous comment to trigger it. Having been exposed to the social media strategy of several large brands, I would say STA are definitely well ahead of the curve - congratulations to them.
I do think you are on the right track about allowing customer service team to own responsibility for a web site. Probably easier said than done, but certainly sites such as getsatisfaction certainly help. If you’re interested I put a full write-up of the evening on my blog and would love to hear your thoughts on it.
Yeah - just for clarification - the aggregation / fillibustering point is my one - not STA’s ! Its how I would justify it if I had to pitch it to a senior non-web business person
Of course, it is a bit “anti social media” in concept - but remember that we are trying to run businesses - not invent whole new social interaction models!
The online travel industry are “early adopters” not inventors of social media.
@james - Thank goodness for Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L’esprit_de_l’escalier
Hi Alex
I didn’t introduce myself on the night - but wanted to say that you spoke very well. I didn’t know about ‘musings’ but you are now firmly on my reader.
Re STA, I think she got a very hard time of it and I like what they have done. I don’t actually agree that customer services shouldn’t comment when a complaint comes out - I personally would want to get involved as the company and put things right for the customer but that’s just my opinion and I’m glad they are doing something different and innovative in online travel. What I didn’t like was one of her opening comments about how she didn’t believe that corporate blogs had a place because they had nothing to say except their own marketing spiel - I disagree strongly - but then again, I would!
Hi Alex, nice to meet you on the night. Sorry I didn’t get a chance to chat again afterwards but congrats on your presentation.
Ah yes, STA Travel Buzz… that one got me going in a different way. Have just posted a comment on Roaming Tales but perhaps here is the better home (http://www.roamingtales.com/2008/11/12/travel-blog-camp-in-london/)
For a quick upsum, my opinion as a user is that I like it that STA is keeping a corporate nose out of that particular environment - though just to add that in a conversation afterwards Molly seemed to be saying that if it was a big issue with STA at fault, then there would be some contact with that person to resolve it.
What I didn’t like was the shouting down and interrupting of her replies by a particular table near me - it got a bit close to bullying for my liking. It reminded me of aggro commenters who think their’s is the only valid opinion. Unlike comments, Molly was unable to get a word in to, ahem, mollify the detractors.
STA aren’t wrong in what they’re doing after all, just experimenting with the culture of the web. If it was working out to be detrimental then I’m sure they’d change tack fast.
Good to see you and thanks for the boat tip for next year!
@ Tamara - this is a corporate blog! Just so happens we do travel ecommerce stuff “in the real world” as well as a blog
@ Fiona - I support STA. If I were putting a toe in the water they have done exactly what I would have suggested. However I think people need to stop trying to make it sound like they have done it for some form of “idealism” - when my explanation (in the post above these comments) is a more commercial “hard headed” view. In the end they are running a business - so I was just trying to understand what business return they may get from their approach.
I see what you mean Alex - maybe it has something to do with the subtleties of branding as James D-F suggests in post one. I’m no marketeer so it would be interesting to ask Molly how STA’s approach is translating into sales conversion.