Blog homeThis week innovation seems to be the buzzword.
Over in Hollywood, USA there is the PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit - while over here in the UK (where we are getting real work done!) I am looking at an entry form to the annual Innovation award in Travel (for the UK travel industry)
The award criteria are:
The innovations nominated could be technology related or commercial and are eligible for submission in the form of new ideas, products, services, processes or financial and business structures.
Entries are welcome from any travel business operating in, or from, the UK. You can enter your own company or recommend a business partner or associate. Nominees could be technology related or commercial but they need to be successful. The innovation may have solved a problem or met the needs of a customer group, business or business partner. It could be even be something that has been in the marketplace for two to three years and is only now gaining recognition.
The panel of judges will assess the individuals, organisations and companies that have realised high performance through innovation.
This definition of innovation in travel interests me.
There seems to be confusion as to whether we are talking about the act of innovation (coming up with the idea) or the act of converting that idea into a business. The phrase have realised high performance through innovation would suggest that the idea must have been converted into something tangible and successful. To me this makes it a business award, not an innovation one, but never mind.
At the other end of the world, in the US, the innovation summit appears to be less about innovation and more about startups. Yes they have highlighted many new and interesting companies - but are they really innovative? By the time you have 10 companies doing the same thing (like itinerary sharing) you could only call the first few innovative - the others have taken the original idea and produced products with slightly different perspectives. They may well turn out to be successful - but not sure they all deserve the innovative badge.
William Bakker, on his blog, had gone as far as to call a number of the PhoCusWright companies JABS (Just Another Booking System). He would therefore, it would appear, agree with the concept that they are not all innovative.
Sometimes individuals will call a company innovative because they are not aware of what the rest of the sector are doing hence to them it does seem innovative. That is wrong too.
What are we doing with TourCMS? Are we innovative?
This is where I need your help. I held back from entering for the PhoCusWright Innovation summit (to show off TourCMS) because I felt we were not innovative. If I had to use a word to describe what we do I would say we commoditise.
We commoditise tour operator reservation systems just like EasyJet / Ryanair and all the low cost airlines commoditised what was previously expensive air flight…. These new low cost airlines didn’t innovate flight - they just created a business model that would help them sell their flights at a significant discount to traditional airlines.
[For those unfamiliar with TourCMS - we produce a web based reservation system for long tail tour operators. No booking fees, no commission - just Software as a Service (SaaS). We have a growing, global, client base including niche tour operators, destination marketing organisations, travel agents, inbound tour operators, ticketing companies etc. Pretty much everything]
Our commoditisation strategy includes:
- Using Software as a Service as our pricing and technology strategy (multi-tenant single codebase). No capital costs.
- No pre-sales - just sign up for a free trial account online
- Running customer support partially via a web based forum
- Requiring “zero professional services” - most customers go live without having to pay us any project fees
- Customers pay us via credit card (although we do have a few exceptions). 25% of our trading customers are free, as it happens! (for full functionality, not cut down like for competitors!)
- etc.
We have made very many little innovations along the way to delivering our commoditisation strategy. But it is still commoditisation.
Perhaps the act of commoditisation is innovation?
What do you think?
So should I enter the Innovation award for the UK travel industry? Are we innovative enough - or are we - as William Bakker would say - Just Another Booking System.
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Innovative to me means, something that is new, unique and useful.
You underestimate your impact on the travel landscape Alex. We don’t think we are particularly innovative either, but in the travel industry where most of the focus is on flights, hotel, and car, the fact that you have developed something for the long tail is innovative. Why? Because no one else has been able to do it and no one cares about small operators. I’ve learned a few things being at PhoCusWright this week.
1. Local tour and destination suppliers have a direct and very important impact on local economies.
2. Local tour and activity suppliers are too small to be attractive to traditional system companies. Why? Because small customers have no money and tend to be very needy (this is a perception and not reality).
3. Tour operator product is too complicated and requires too much customization to be supported by anything other than an in-house customized solution. (this is perception and not reality)
We wouldn’t be doing what we do if we didn’t feel it was important and I think you probably feel the same way. If it is any comfort for you Alex, this conference cost us our entire year marketing budget (and then some) but it was worth every penny being able to bring some much needed attention to the fact that there is more out there then trip planners, vacation rentals, and flight booking engines.
High five for the little guys!
Cheers,
Stephen
By definition innovation means the creation of something new or some new process. In your case the actual creation of a book system per se is not an innovation as there are plenty of other on the market that, to a greater or lesser extent, do just about the same job.
However, the construction, functionality, flexibility, implementation, ethos, support, market approach, business model etc, all combine to make the product well and truly innovative.
Therefore you absolutely should enter it, and I wouldn’t bet against you winning.
Good luck,
Martin
Perhaps innovation, like beauty, is a label best given to something / someone by a 3rd party.
If you go around the place saying “Don’t I look beautiful” - or “Aren’t I innovative” then the chances are you are not!
I suppose in some ways it is innovative to be discussing a travel industry award in a public place!
I think defining innovation as it applies in business is impossible. I have worked with very succesful innovation agencies and spent large amounts of money (well someone else’s) to develop only a new angle on a customer need and therefore a new positioning for a product. You wouldn’t think that was innovation - but marketing departments see it as one.
Its easy to assume that innovation means new technology, yet I understand that most new web developments tend not to be patent-able (not sure that is a word) because they are mostly a re-hashing of existing approaches.
I agree though there definitely seems to be an emphasis in these awards on the success of the innovation rather than how innovative you are.
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This is an interesting debate. I wonder what the PhocusWright judges views are. They seemed to be very clear however that they wanted to reward companies who had actually created something - rather than simply having the idea and I guess that’s their prerogative. In the end, the companies that can make innovative ideas happen that are genuinely useful to the user will be successful and will therefore get the limelight.
You can create something that is innovative but is completely useless. In the travel industry, I don’t believe these ideas will last long.
Hi Tamara
…. as for PhoCusWright….. I am sure that at the point the judges judged they were impartial - however it was a fairly self selecting group who put themselves forward to be judged in the first place - you had to pay $7500 USD to take part.
I think Stephen considers this worthwhile (as he must have paid up) - I am not sure I do. This probably also played part of my decision not to put ourselves forward for consideration.
Cheers. Alex
It’s a lot of money! But I guess it’s probably good value for the column inches it generates - of course as long as you get to the top five! To guarantee that it looks like you have to have invented a trip planning tool.
The judges for the Innovation Summit were the audience. Each audience member voted against certain criteria such as ‘level of innovation’, ‘impact on marketplace’, etc.
the winning six then weent forward to present in front of almost 1,000 people on the main stage.
a panel of judges then evaluated the finalists on different criteria and an overall winner chosen.
disclosure: i was on the panel of judges for the final six.
Found another travel technology innovation award that is being judged soon….. the second one is for exhibitors at the forthcoming Travel Technology Show (London, Feb 09). I have now entered both….. lets see what happens!