Anyone heard of TET.org? They produce standards for travel businesses [US]:

Here they are (details from the TET website)

Code 1: A TET seal holder shall never use deceptive practices and shall be guided by: truth, accuracy, honesty, fairness and integrity in its activities.

• A TET seal holder shall obey all laws and regulations and shall avoid any conduct or activity which would cause unjust harm to others.
• A TET seal holder shall not engage in any act or omission of a dishonest, deceitful or fraudulent nature in the conduct of business activities.
• A TET seal holder shall conduct its/his/her dealings in a civil, courteous and professional manner.

Code 2: A TET seal holder shall exercise truth, honesty, integrity and fair dealings with customers.

• A TET seal holder shall provide complete, accurate and informative materials, agreements, documents, information (print, electronic media, television, radio or otherwise) to its customers and/or to consumers. Informative materials, agreements, documents, information (print, electronic media, television, radio or otherwise) produced and/or utilized by a TET seal holder shall not contain false, misleading or incomplete information.
• When a TET seal holder utilizes marketing materials and agreements with its customers (print, electronic media, television, radio or otherwise), it shall contain sufficient information to enable the customer to make an informed purchasing decision and which are clear and understandable.
• A TET seal holder provide communications and information to its customers in a prompt and timely manner.

Code 3: A TET seal holder’s relationship with its customers.

• A TET seal holder will promptly respond to any customer complaints.
• A TET seal holder will issue agreed upon refunds in a timely manner.
• A TET seal holder will treat every client transaction confidentially and not disclose any information without permission of the customer, unless required by law.
• A TET seal holder agrees to work diligently to fairly resolve any complaint or dispute with a customer. 

I don’t know what to think of these standards. They look pretty sensible to me - but I have never seen a travel website with a TET logo. Anyone know of one?

Let me see if I can do a followup with the TET organisation. What questions do you have about these standards? Do you think that putting a badge on your website helps convince consumers that your site is better managed?

More information from the TET website

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This week I have been reviewing lots of websites.

I actually like doing reviews as when I started my company (2002) I mainly focussed on being a travel website usability consultant. Since then I have gone through phases of being a contract project manager delivering serious significant web projects for leading European travel companies and also reservation system changes (nightmare!) and also, as other people know, more recently being a reservation system supplier (TourCMS)

I like writing reviews (especially the “10 things” theme - where I will say it how it is 100%) but I know you lot out there are not really interested in them (unless you are the company I have reviewed - in which case - I know I get a massive increase in traffic!)

On this topic I should congratulate UK based web development company Zolv - I have always thought their work was pretty good - but within 24 hours of me having a go at the design of travel.co.uk they fixed a couple of the major issues that I highlighted. If you are doing a serious travel website project - ask them to pitch - I have no idea who they are (personally) but they have reacted exactly like I would expect a serious player to react to my constructive comments. Of course, it helps that I was right

As long time readers will know, every month I offer the opportunity for you to tell me who I should write about. This could be a website review or just thoughts about the sector you are in…… so…. here is the opportunity again….  pitch below who I should write about….. trust me - as long as you don’t infer you are super-hero I will be kind….

So - another detailed review. This time let us take a look at a new cruise deal price-comparison / meta-agent site - CruisePricesCompared.com

I say “meta agent” because rather than sending through bookings to suppliers, customers are sent through to agents to complete the transaction. This is similar in style to travel.co.uk that I reviewed 2 days ago - although travel.co.uk is a much neater solution all round.

5 things I like

The founder has built and launched something rather than just talking about it

Well done to Harley Van Stratten. There are many agents who mope around complaining about what the web is doing to their business - but Harley has successfully launched a novel website to defend against what he sees as a growing problem. To quote Harley

Each month the money agents earn from cruise sales is being eroded because competition is pushing prices down. Agents are having to discount to compete and that means they can’t afford to advertise. On cruisepricescompared.com, they can advertise for free, which means they can start increasing their margins because they are not paying distribution costs

I agree that cruise is going to be a competitive sector in the next couple of years. Traditional agents who ran for shelter by specialising in cruise sales (because traditional tour packages had moved online) may find cruise isn’t such an attractive place to be after all. I am sure Harley is aiming to help these agents maintain market share.

Not being run from a yacht or pretending to be a super hero

Yesterday you may remember I reviewed SoCruise - a new cruise social network that is also going after the cruise deals sector (in the UK). SoCruise are now (in)famous for promoting themselves using super heroes and by saying they intend to run their business (now with 5 employees) from 2 yachts in Ibiza. Is that what SoCruise’s 250,000 EUR seed funding was spent on?

The meta-agent model

I like the meta-agent model….. but I have gone on about this too much already this week (in the travel.co.uk review). But its still a positive for the Cruise Prices Compared.com site.

I like the model enough to respect it but it isn’t one I would follow if I were doing a startup. It is too much of a “better candlesticks” approach…. when I am personally interested in electricity (i.e. its an improvement on an old model - rather than anything new)

Sorry - just have 3 things I like today. No refunds available.

5 things I don’t like

Video auto start

The homepage has a video slot in the top right hand corner. This will be available “for rent” to any advertiser. That is fine - I just wish they would turn auto-start off (especially as the homepage is the only page with the search on - so when you navigate around the site - you have to come back to that page often - and the video starts playing every time).

An alternative to turning the auto-start off is to make it start with the volume off on subsequent visits to the page (using a cookie). That is probably the most elegant way of solving the problem.

Colours

The blues and reds are really pretty bright and not very relaxing (as a cruise holiday should be)

But what is worse is that the blue is the same colour as hyperlinked text…. OK - I am not a designer - so I won’t get into the ins and outs of colour choices - but suffice to say - I don’t like the colours.

Pages are too wordy

This website has too many words and not enough bullet points.

Words are a funny thing on websites as they are both informative and are a core part of the user interface. It is far too easy to have too many of them.

One skill that many smaller (and larger) websites don’t tend to bring in to a website project is a dedicated copywriter. Copywriters, although they tend to be expensive, can do amazing things with words. Use them.

[Website projects undertaken by web design agencies are, in my experience, much more likely to use dedicated copywriters. Agencies understand how to create a team of all the talents, especially larger agencies]

Advertising model & not enough “other content”

The only content on this site is the cruise deal content - plus a rather weird page about how cruise is one of the best kept secrets in the travel industry.

This makes me wonder how they are going to make their business model work. Their suggested model is that all traffic is freely given to cruise selling agents…. i.e. an agent can come along, load up some products and receive traffic. No money to be made from agents there then.

But without lots of other pages - there just won’t be sufficient page impressions to make enough advertising income to cover either the operational costs of the site - or marketing the site to consumers.

The B2C marketing will cost a great deal of money. To quote:

Where there are adverts for cruising, we will advertise too

Marketing to agents will also cost money….. 

Obviously I haven’t seen their numbers - but in my experience to make sensible advertising income you really need thousands of pages all pulling their weight.

My advice would be either to move to a PPC model with the agents - or introduce a “nominal” monthly charge to be able to upload as many deals as you like. For an advertiser there is little difference between free and nominal - but people paying a small fee a month will actually care more about what kind of deals they are loading into the system. Quality will go up.

Search

Lets start with the basics

• Use GET not POST - so that the back button still works (and you can get back from a single result to the main results page)
• Vertical spacing - tighten it all up so you can get the data above the fold on a 1024 x 768 screen

I could go on and on about the search. This is the key part of the site - but it isn’t really quite right yet. 

My main concern about the search though is how the situation with multiple agents all loading a deal for the same cruise is going to be handled. Will the deals be grouped by cruise?

This really stems from the problem of not taking PPC advertising from the agents - if they were then deals from the top bidding agent could be shown against that specific cruise (or top two or whatever).

I would be interested to know how they intend to solve this - otherwise with, say, 100 cruise agents all loading offers there will be duplication between cruises…. the user interface will not really stand up to that kind of pressure - and users just won’t use the system as it will be unwieldy.

Final thought about these reviews

I only do these “10 things” reviews for new travel websites that have issued press releases about something or other. If you don’t want your site to go under the musings microscope - don’t send out a press release until you are ready.

Personally, I wouldn’t issue a press release on day #1 of a new website…… leave it a few weeks until you have got some private feedback from various people and managed to incorporate as much as you can into the next iteration. Then you can tell the world about your new site.

Finally, see also the Travolution blog - who are running an open thread where you can post what you think about the site….. CruisePricesCompared open thread

SoCruise is a recently launched social network / UGC site and online booking agent for cruise deals. As a site it is pretty good actually - it has most of the attributes that you would expect a successful site to have (except users or traffic, but lets overlook that for the moment!)

I found out about the site from a press release sent by one of the founders. The release really has me intrigued for all sorts of reasons…. here is an excerpt:

The SoCruise Group of confidential stakeholders includes highly experienced cruise industry personnel that have brought their expertise together. SoCruise will be run completely virtually, this highlights the way that this business venture can be managed just as easily cruising in the Mediterranean as it can from an office block in the UK. Both directors plan to run the business from their private yachts in Ibiza.

Is that real or are they just trying to get me to write about them?

OK - I like the concept of working on a yacht and I support that - but I am not sure how this can help them achieve one of their other goals: “15% of the cruise deals market by Quarter 4 2008″

The other aspect of the press release that intrigues me is the section where they say they would “prefer to remain anonymous but include key industry players”. This is also repeated on their About US page:

So to recap - the two founders want to create a business, run from a yacht (or two yachts), and capture 15% of the competitive cruise deal market (by the end of the year) while at the same time remaining anonymous.

Perhaps they are super heroes so can do this easily:

Yes - that must be the answer. I look forward to “super cruise man” doing a video about how to fold a towel elephant.

Why the anonymous requirement?

I know that sometimes people bootstrap businesses while working full time for an employer. I expect that this is the situation here. However most people who are bootstrapping businesses this way either quit once they have got their new site live (just stay employed during the original development phase) or are running more “lifestyle” type businesses for a little extra cash on the side.

That isn’t the situation here….. indeed one of the founders is currently the online marketing / affiliate manager at the leading ferry (& cruise) company in the North Sea, Northern Europe, region.

If you want to find out who….. follow the socruise.com domain name registration and put the name into Linkedin. No point me exposing who he is…. because I think he will need to remain in employment for a few more months…. besides he is a reader of this blog - and I like my readers!

Note to other sites wanting coverage on this blog

Yes - this post proves the point that if you send a completely unbelievable press release to me I am much more likely to write something. It also helps if you liken yourself to a superhero and mention yachts.

Even funnier, Travel Weekly seem to have taken this press release seriously! Don’t Travel Weekly see the funny side of the super hero images? Come on Travel Weekly - this is the travel industry - not the accounting industry.

Time for another detailed review….. lets take a look at travel.co.uk, a new website that “takes travel comparison shopping to a new level”. Its a UK based site selling mainly package holidays (at the moment) but with the intention to move into wider product sectors later.

5 things I like

Choose your booking agent and choose your holiday

This website isn’t just about choosing product - but you can choose who you are going to book with. The website takes no part in the commercial transaction between the customer and the agent.

You should be aware that none of the products and services that appear on the Site are provided by us.  They are provided by third parties over whom we have no control.  You should satisfy yourself that you wish to purchase these products or services before contracting with those third parties.  The third party providers will be supplying products and services on their own standard terms and conditions which can be found on the booking forms for the relevant product or service on the Site.

This makes a change from most online travel agency websites which tend to be about sending customers direct to suppliers. 

Support for the Travel Trust Association (TTA)

Interestingly they are also taking TTA bonded agents. Great news for the smaller travel companies out there.

Shortlist

A quick view of your shortlisted items….. and you can drag and re-order….

And you can compare items in your shortlist side by side:

Only negative on the shortlist is that the cookie seems to be session based - so if you close your browser and revisit the site - the shortlist is gone (Virgin Holidays, for example, maintain an unsaved shortlist even if you close your browser)

Calendar

A nice calendar with price bar chart below:

However I selected the £171 price for the 9th of July…. and a popup comes up. In the modal popup an AJAX call goes and checks availability for that date / price combination.

While it is checking I can see full details of the product (above - and notice in the top right it says checking availability) - but then - without any warning - because the product is unavailable - the page refreshes to a page saying nothing available:

Ummm…. maybe I don’t like this date checking system after all!

They need to make the “unavailable” message appear on the details page - because otherwise I could have started to interact with the page - and be shocked when it fully refreshes to negative message. The user should be left in control of their experience….

The domain name

Yep - travel.co.uk is a pretty nice name.

5 things I don’t like

Spelling of accommodation

One of my pet peeves on travel websites is seeing the word accommodation misspelt. It really winds me up. Unfortunately travel.co.uk have fallen into this trap.

I am sure they will fix this in a jiffy! 

Not clear enough benefits between one agent and another

While I like the concept of being able to select between different booking agents, I can’t see the benefits of one over another clearly enough.

The text describing the agency profile is too wordy - and too generic. Of course everyone is independent, of course everyone has experience - blah blah blah blah blah.

…. and price distinction between booking agents doesn’t help either…..

[Shows detail of Agent 1 vs Agent 2]

Minor point for the designers…. a potential usability issue here…. the page on the site is for selecting a different booking agent - but I read it initially as choose a booking agent - so I overlooked that a default booking agent had already been selected. My fix would be to repeat the defaulted booking agent in the “choose a different booking agent for this holiday” box.

Popup hell

Navigating around the site you end up with all sorts of modal / non-modal popups that contain core functionality and product details. Certainly this isn’t accessible but it may also be a problem for less than expert web users. Yes its funky and new - but tried and tested traditional user interface design works for a reason.

About us page not clear about not being responsible for bookings

The quote I listed above was from the terms & conditions. The T&Cs make it quite clear that travel.co.uk is not part of the transaction between the customer and the booking agent - however other pages don’t.

Yes on the homepage it says “booking direct with the company of your choice, right here on this site” - but this is easily missed….. and could easily be confused with booking with a supplier direct rather than booking with an agent direct.

I have a feeling this is going to cause all sorts of customer service issues down the road - and resulting bad press - unless they clearly define the proposition and explain it better to consumers.

While we are talking about the About us page - its about five times too long. No one will read what is probably one of the most important pages on the site. [People coming via online marketing will select a product, and just prior to the purchase decision, read the about us page in order to find out more about the company, and then go back to their product and book - if they were not upset by anything they read]

Help is unhelpful

The help is stuck in a tiny popup. What makes it worse is that you have a tiny scroll bar to move the help information up and down….. and the web designers have made the popup size locked (resizable=0) so even if I wanted to make the popup larger I can’t.

Frankly the help popup is pretty rubbish.

Summary

I am being tough on this site because it has been put together by one of the leading travel technology companies - and a leading travel website design team. They should (and could) be doing much better than this.

Maybe in 3 months the site will be great - but at the moment there is still a great deal of sandpapering to do - and a few redesigns required as well. No awards for this one yet. Luckily the awards season - and UK peak sales period for package holidays (January / February / March) - is still some way away!

Another new travel inspiration site launched last week - Trazzler.com.

Seems to be focussing on small events and activities that are within a short travel distance and therefore ideal for a weekend away…..  I actually enjoyed clicking around for a few minutes - ticking off places that I have been to. As a result, I now have a travel personality….

Yep - apparently I will go anywhere for Agatha Christie and Fawlty Towers…… ummm…. more work required on the algorithm I think!

I enjoyed clicking around but I am not sure there is enough there yet to “grab me” and get me coming back for more (more content in the USA though, which is to be expected as this is where the company is based).

However it is still early days….. and its very much in beta-mode. Monetisation looks to be via Kayak flights & hotels. Unusually it also seems to be devoid of user feedback - with what looks like expert written tour reviews rather than UG content.

They also need to work on their geography a little…. one of their tours has Brazil in North America whilst Shetland has been placed in England….

As one of my customers is the Visit Scotland (Shetland) tourist board I just mentioned this to them and they are not amused!

A nice site entering an overcrowded sector but it doesn’t really cover what I happen to get upto at weekends….. Last weekend I took part in a sporting event, beating Lewis Hamilton who was also taking part. I also received a kiss from a double Olympic gold medallist at the prize giving when picking up a prize….. anyone guess the sport?

In this time of credit crunch and fuel surcharges many travel companies are looking again at IT / web projects and wondering whether they are really going to give the return as projected in their business cases.

Rather than cancel or postpone a project here is an idea how to bring down your technology supplier costs. You need to understand the principle of a risk premium.

The temptation when asking a technology supplier to provide a quote for a project is to start too early to talk about price. The goal should be to hold off discussion about price until the latest possible moment.

This ensures that your technology supplier:

• Has the most detailed understanding of what the proposed project will require (in terms of their own time and IT resources)
• Will be wondering whether the project really will convert - so may be prepared to negotiate - especially if they have been holding back people to work on your project - so may struggle to allocate these people to alternative client projects at the last minute should your project not progress.

If you head for a discussion about price too early, the supplier will have to take more of the risk of not fully understanding the nature and scope of the project - hence will inflate their proposed price to take this into account. This is a risk premium - a premium that the supplier will charge you based on them taking more of the risk.

What I would do is have a senior member of your project team permitted to talk about price - but make them unavailable for a couple of weeks (for example by going on holiday) - while other team members get on and talk about the detail of the project…….

[Of course this works better on fixed cost estimates than on Time & Materials estimates - but the principle still applies to both styles of project]

Please send 5% of all savings made by this device to me!

Hot on the heels of my post questioning whether there is a valid reason for a user generated review website to be receiving complimentary hotel stays here is another dodgy practice that ought to get some coverage.

Should travel agents create fake customer email addresses in order to check what suppliers are sending?

A comment left on TravelMole (no reg on this link) got me thinking about this one. A commenter suggested that agents create unique email addresses (using free email services such as Gmail) and use these agency managed addresses as the customer’s own email address. The suggested advantages are:

• Return communications can be monitored and censored by the agent
• Agents can catch any specials that are fed directly to clients (from suppliers trying to cut agents out of the transaction chain)

The commenter warns that you need to monitor all these email addresses regularly so that messages that are really meant for customers are not delayed too much.

There is a word for this on the web - spoofing. It is a form of fraud. (I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice etc!)

Do travel agents do this often? Is it acceptable? What distinguishes this from identity theft?

I have just read an interview with Steve Kaufer of TripAdvisor in New Media Age.

While you need to be registered to read the full article, luckily the paragraph I am interested in is part of the free section on the NMA website

Steve Kaufer is still a passionate user of the site he founded. On his last trip to London he stayed at the five-star Landmark Hotel in Marylebone and, although it was complimentary, he still took “a peek” at the reviews on the site. “Like millions of folks out there, I won’t stay anywhere without checking out the site”

The question is - should a website trusted by consumers to be an independent voice for product reviews be taking complimentary stays from hotels? Or indeed should any review site take complimentary products?

The arguments for

• Lets be real about this - these sites aren’t independent really - that is just an illusion. What they are is a commercial publishing business that happens to take content generated by users….. giving an illusion of independence. Therefore as these are just businesses, we should let them get on and do business however they wish.
• The independence comes from the volume of consumer reviews and therefore whatever kickbacks the management team are taking will have no direct bearing on the review process.

The arguments against

• If you set up as an independent review website you should be “whiter than white” - meaning you should stay clear from taking complimentary products / kick backs / bribes from hotels and other providers featured in your publication.
• Regardless of whether the stay actually has any impact on your featuring of their product in your review website, for sure, the product provider will believe it has some impact - because otherwise they wouldn’t have given it for free in the first place.
• This isn’t the same as an expert lead review where the expert is getting a free stay (in order to review the product). There is no real reason why a user generated website manager needs to visit a place in order to write a review - as the site is not based on expert written reviews.

My questions to TripAdvisor

• Was this complimentary stay offered - or was it asked for? 
• What message was TripAdvisor trying to give when mentioning this to a journalist? PR doesn’t tend to happen by accident.

I think TripAdvisor have shot themselves in the foot on this.

What do you think? Should a UGC review website like TripAdvisor take free products from suppliers / advertisers who are reviewed on your site? If you are a review website, do you have a policy on this?

TravelMole reports on an interesting discussion about why IT lead travel companies are to blame for the current low margin situation within the UK travel industry. 

Read the full article on TravelMole (this link doesn’t require registration)

Some great quotes in the article….. including this one:

A2Btransfers.com chief executive Renaldo Scheepers predicted the survivors would be those with IT expertise, rather than knowledge of the travel industry.

“The IT people are the ones who will be successful; they don’t know anything about holidays but they know how to drive sales online,” he said. 

When a general conversation turns to “surviving” you know that the industry is in “game changing” mode. At some stage OTAs will begin to realise that they are not just changing the game for conventional travel agents - but that meta-search companies are trying to nudge OTAs out of business too….

As I have repeatedly said….. nice either to be Google (who own the consumer), a supplier (who owns the product) or a reservation system provider (the end point for a booking, on behalf of a supplier) - nothing else is safe.

Interesting story going on as reported by The Register

Budget airline easyJet has warned Expedia.co.uk to stop selling its flights via its website or face the possibility of legal action.

• Expedia sells easyJet flights without a distribution agreement (stated an easyJet spokesman)
• Customer has a problem with a flight
• Expedia forget to tell customer that flight not actually booked (or perhaps they do, but only in small print)

Neil contacted Expedia to find out why it had cocked up his order. He told us via email: “They admitted that there is an ongoing problem with their system talking to easyJet, and they confirmed that my flight had indeed NOT been booked!” he said. “When asked when they were going to tell me, their response was, ‘Well it says on your itinerary that it’s not been confirmed’.”

A statistic for future reference:

Of the 0.5 per cent of customers who contact Expedia each year regarding their booking, 97 per cent of enquiries are resolved within 28 days

Best hop over to the Register and read the article and comments…..  

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/25/easyjet_warns_expedia/

Every time I see a press release from a major web analysis firm I tend to have an attack of boredom mode. Really, I don’t want to read about statistics. I am sure someone does - but just not me. I would prefer to spend 5 minutes looking at Photoshop Disasters than read more press released industry statistics.

So….. er….. here is a post about statistics and trends…….

Prompted by Darren from Travelvine I have been taking a look at the new Google Trends tool.

In particular, Google Trends now lets you search for specific websites (not just keywords). I thought I would take a look at WAYN.com - [Link to WAYN.com on Google Trends]. I was amazed to see how important India has become to WAYN 

Just to confirm…… here are WAYN.com’s stats from Alexa

40% does seem like a large proportion.

On the subject of advertising monetised travel websites sourcing a high proportion of their traffic from India, Netizen Digital MD Lewis Lenssen had this to say the other day [Source: Travolution web 2.0 round table May 08]

For instance display advertising on the web, most people who buy it don’t understand, necessarily, where the traffic that the sites that they are buying advertising on comes from… and I can tell you that a lot of the time websites buy the traffic according to the advertising that they have sold…..

Therefore whilst the advertiser thinks they have got a site that has loads and loads of people that are exactly their demographic, that are exactly interested in their product, and they decide to put their banner there - but when they buy 20 million impressions - the website owner goes “goodness me” we never get that many people - I had better run a quick PPC campaign in India where I can get 1 pence a click. I know that on average these visitors will probably mistakenly click somewhere at some point so I will probably get 2 impressions - 4 banners on a page - so that is probably 8 impressions for every click - and that makes commercial sense to me - and the advertiser is slightly surprised when they don’t get that very good a return on it

No idea which website he is talking about but as he was talking in a session about advertising on travel social networks….. ummmmm. He can clear up the ambiguity by leaving a comment below if he wishes!

Talking about funny stats…… I took a look at Travolution’s page. Apparently Travolution website visitors are twice as likely to read my blog than to read TravelMole…. cool!

The only trend I am interested in is from my own business…… which I will not try to bore everyone with. I had a complaint that only showing 12 months of statistics meant we could be obfuscating actual growth with seasonal sales….. we have now relented and our live stats now shows 24 months….

The chart now looks like this:

Hopefully that also explains why I am struggling to write this blog daily at the moment!

A couple of recent announcements in UK travel technology share a similar thread:

• Comtec - “Powell said the company, as a result of the MBO and investment, plans to treble in size within three years” [See announcement]
• Traveltek - “Traveltek is aiming to quadruple the size of its business this year, from £150million in customers’ transactions in 2007 to more than £600million in 2008.” [See announcement]

Which makes you wonder - where is this growth coming from? Which companies do Comtec or Traveltek consider are going to lose business!?

I am still waiting for the much anticipated UK travel technology provider shake up….  too many companies chasing too few enterprise clients.

In particular three kinds of travel technology companies are at risk:

• travel technology companies heavily reliant on income from high street travel agent systems
• those where operational or fixed costs are covered by developments or projects undertaken by clients (which may be cancelled or postponed if consumer demand or exchange rate fluctuation causes the business case for a development to become unrealistic)
• those selling to companies undergoing mergers because mergers / acquisitions often end up with internal reservation system rationalisation 

Umm….. we are doing all right (Jack)….. although we tend to be getting more and more complex projects as potential clients evaluate us vs more expensive systems - and then find we can do it just as well.

I promised last week that I was going to write up some ideas for location based services for travel supplier websites. By supplier I mean “product owners” or agents of product owners. i.e. these are ideas that could be implemented by travel companies - rather than new location / mobile based startups.

These ideas are based on the principle that you know where the web user is while accessing your website or service. While this may be “out of reach” of many travel websites currently - this is functionality that is coming to everyone in the next few years so time to start thinking about it.

The big question is - with this new ability to know where a user is - what kind of ideas will it support?

First a few general points:

• A location based service doesn’t have to be a mobile service - you could create a great piece of functionality that understands a person’s location and responds to it without the necessity for the service to be a mobile one.
• Having a general understanding where someone can be useful - its not just about knowing exactly where someone is. Just knowing the country can be a good start!

 Sales

• Understand which airport is most local to a user - hence push offers and promote products that tie in with what is likely to be of interest to the customer. Zero novelty factor - most large travel companies are mapping this currently within their CRM systems….. but always good to cover the basics!
• Where is my nearest agent? Unlike many I don’t believe its quite the end for the travel agent yet. However, agents need to turn into product evangelists rather than ticket clerks. Just last week I was in an agents office and they had converted their downstairs into a “presentation room” with massive plasma screen. Their plan is to hold interesting evenings covering different topics. If I were a tour operator working with agents a user could be pushed towards their nearest agent holding a product presentation evening……

Operational and in resort

• Where is my nearest rep? - many customers will be taking mobile devices with them on their trips. Imagine providing them with a tool with a big red “panic” button - to either tell them where their nearest rep is - or automatically put them in touch with their nearest. Customer can get an ETA for the rep to arrive. In reverse, rep can see, on a map on their mobile device, where the customer was when they pressed the panic button.
• Transfer bus coming - if you are going on a tour and you need to catch a “transfer” bus…. wouldn’t it be great to actually know where the bus is. Often the last few hours of a holiday (fly and flop) are sat waiting in bar…. or on a dusty road….. for the transfer back to the airport. I am sure that mobile devices can help improve this part of the holiday experience - the customer can see where the bus is…. the reps can see that everyone is waiting (even if the rep isn’t actually at that location).
• The shopper - say you are on holiday and you want to buy a rug or stuffed camel…… you could navigate to your travel portal and find out where you can get your best deals (perhaps also with coupon codes). Often people, in specific destinations, come back with similar mementos of their trip…. so you are not having to create an entire ecommerce system for thousands of products (like you would if were a conventional mobile retailer) - just pick the ones that are absolutely top picks for the destination….. actually not too mad an idea for a new startup……… ummm - anyone got any VC?
• Whats on today? Events, weather, etc…..  

Operational - the rep’s perspective

• Big brother is watching you - howabout in the local rep’s office having a big plasma screen showing the location of all your customers at this point in time (not just where they are staying, but where they are).

Just touching the surface here…… lots more to come in the next few years!

As I mentioned before, I am not that excited by any of the new meta-search travel websites that are out there. The reason for this is that they tend to just have data from the top hotel distribution companies, a few car hire operators and the top airlines. They are also interested in making money from meta-search - which - although a sensible idea for a business (!) - results in a less than perfect meta-search solution.

Just to be clear - I define meta-search differently to price-comparison. Most price-comparison sites are also meta-search sites - but not all meta-search sites have price comparison functionality (Google is an example of the latter)

My objectives for a perfect meta-search

• A distributed technology based on data standards (no single point of failure or control)
• No single commercial entity responsible for its management
• Anyone with travel products should be able to join in - either as a product provider - or as a meta-search consumer

What is my big idea?

The principle would be that all travel websites (providers & suppliers) would have, in a standard location on their website, a data file that describes their products, prices, availability and other commercial data. This data standard could be based on the Open Travel standards - however frankly their standards are just too bulky and complex for a less skilled developer to generate. They are great for highly paid developers found in the leading travel companies - but not those affordable by smaller companies. The standards need to be as clear as the RSS XML standard.

What you could now have is e.g. 10,000 product description & availability files dispersed around the web.

(It is possible to simplify the data standards if they only need to contain sufficient information for marketing purposes - the problem with the Open Travel standards is that they contain sufficient information for a sale to take place - which is why the data burden becomes too heavy)

How would a meta-search work

A meta search company is unlikely to want to work with every travel provider - they could choose a subset of the 10,000. They would import that data and create whatever search they want with it (meta-search, price comparison, inspiration based search etc). Another meta-search company would choose a different subset and so on (A ski meta-search would take ski products etc)

Consumer desktop tools could be created where a consumer could say “I am going to Egypt” - and they would, for a couple of months, pull in the Egyptian data feeds.

Think RSS / web feeds - you have an entire industry of aggregators and software providers. This is what the travel industry needs. It would make best use of the what the web can offer us….

This is the semantic web for travel.

Benefits

• Make the playing field more open for smaller travel companies
• Would deliver technical stability to the online travel industry and ensure that no single large travel company could take full control of the web (which is the status quo larger companies want to maintain)
• Provides a platform for other ideas that no one has even thought of yet

This idea is a chicken and egg problem. Step 1 would be to convince Open Travel that they need to produce data standards that developers like me can actually develop against and that focus on marketing rather than sales…..

Yesterday in London 3 Google executives took to the stage at ABTA HQ and in front of an assembled crowd of travel industry people (and a few online marketing agencies!) they outlined their roles and took questions and answers.

On the Travolution blog I have written about CPC inflation, the UK trademark discussion and a little bit about “Troogle” (or what Google could do in the travel sector). See Travolution blog post

Personally I thought it was a very interesting morning and a big thanks should go to Google for agreeing to it.

What stood out for me was the denial that Google were going to do anything to significantly enhance travel functionality on the Google site. Daniel Robb’s words were:

Nothing I have seen or heard about that is either planned for meta search or selling as an agent

I am not sure this denial helps us for three reasons:

• As reported in the Seattle Post Intelligencer (not my local paper) - Google were bidding against Expedia and Microsoft for Farecast (before Microsoft won) - hence it seems that Google do want to get into enhanced travel content / functionality game - they just don’t want to tell us about it quite yet.
• The UK Google travel team are not, by Google UK’s own admission, always in the loop regarding developments to the core Google travel products. They are more of an advertising sales team than anything else. Hence it is possible that Google are planning something but Daniel Robb doesn’t know about it. Personally I wouldn’t like to work for an organisation where I am not kept in the loop about stuff that impacts me and I am responsible for.
• Google are already in meta-search - just they happen to use keyword search to do it. What Google are not in is price comparison….. but price comparison != meta search.

Who is safe in the brave new world?
One of the points I made yesterday was about how only those companies at either end of the spectrum are safe (or perhaps are the safest). [Referring to B2C or B2B2C travel - not business travel or group travel]

The consumer end of the spectrum
In travel - at one end you have the consumer. Consumer behaviour for online travel generally starts with a visit to Google. A consumer traveller will, via Google, visit 7 travel websites prior to transaction for OTAs while the number is only 3 sites visited prior to transaction for tour operator type travel products. (Source: Google’s own figures announced yesterday from research undertaken by Comscore).

Google’s number one aim has to be to keep this status quo.  

The last thing they want is for what I call the “Amazon.com ification” of the travel industry. For example take book sales - you tend to go to Amazon and then start searching. Even if it is an out of print book you start on Amazon because they have those details too. You may end up buying from somewhere else, but the book reviews drive you to Amazon initially.

Although there are plenty of travel specific sites that are aiming to be the site from where you start searching the opportunity is there for one of the big generic web players (like Microsoft / Yahoo / Google) to take this role in the B2C travel industry. Microsoft have an opportunity (now having purchased Farecast) - but will they be able to take on Google? That will certainly be their aim.

The reservation end of the spectrum
The other “safe” companies are the reservation system providers. Bookings end up in reservation systems regardless of how they got there. Of course, there will be fewer reservation system providers in the future because there could be fewer travel companies…… but that is a different article!

In between….. join the dots
Between the IT systems that own the consumer (Google at the moment) and the reservation system providers is a whole mass of systems all joined with spaghetti. You have

• Big online travel agents (OTAs)
• Meta search / price comparison sites
• Highstreet agents
• Traditional agents
• Traditional tour operators
• Travel inspiration / community / travel guide websites
• etc

These guys are all competing in the middle ground - not really impacting either the Google / Microsoft battle nor the competition between reservation system providers. Us guys on the ends can keep watching while destruction in the middle continues in an “Alien vs Predator” way.

The problem for being in the middle ground is that it is an uncomfortable place to be….. if you start taking too large a slice of the pie…. then the suppliers find a way to work around you…. if you think Expedia is taking too much commission - just go direct…… hence if you are in the middle - even if you have a position of strength - you can’t make use of it that much because the competition is too fierce.

Reinventing the travel industry
What is happening is that both ends of the spectrum are moving towards the middle.

Microsoft is coming towards the middle with their own vertical search engine….. reservation system providers like Comtec are moving towards the middle with Travel.co.uk  [now no longer part of Comtec].

From the consumers end I want to see Google do a good travel vertical search engine. As an industry we need a specialist metasearch that doesn’t just have the top airlines, hotel chains and car hire companies. I want to see small tour operators and activity organisers in the mix as well. Google could deliver this.

From the reservation system suppliers perspective we need to start moving towards the centre ground. Take the humble hotel PMS (property management system). This system knows whether you read the Times or the Telegraph or whether you prefer coffee or tea. This information (and other such data) would help at start of the hotel selection process.

So there you are Google - if you want to help the consumer and disrupt the travel industry…. this shows you how. However, I expect you are now too addicted to travel industry advertising revenues hence will wish to maintain the status quo….. This leaves you wide open to Microsoft (who don’t have travel related advertising revenues to protect)…… which probably spells a long term problem for Google. Of course, this does somewhat rely on Microsoft being able to convert the opportunity they have….. they don’t have it in the bag yet.

Tomorrow I will be in London for the Google travel conference (where I will be on the expert panel).

3 Google executives are going to outline what they do and then the audience, plus 3 experts, will get an opportunity to ask questions.

My previous (significant) posts about Google:

• Would your business cope if Google stopped sending you (free) traffic? - an overview of what Google has achieved in online travel so far and how important they have become
• If I were working at Google….. what would Google Travel look like? (and no, as some people suggested, I wasn’t looking for a job!)

Will we get announcements from Google? I don’t think so. Will we get a statement about the trademark issue? Probably….

Anyway, up in London tonight…… and going to see the Joseph musical featuring Lee Mead.

If you have any questions that you want putting to Google - please place them in the comments below.

It is only when you try to do something that you realise quite how hard it is. The other day I set myself a challenge to come up with some ideas for location / mobile based travel services. My goal was to understand what could coming over the horizon in the next few years.

It is surprisingly hard.

I have been working with the web for a long time (first website in 1994 when you hand wrote HTML in Windows Notepad) - and this maybe the cause of the problem. My mindset is now fully web based - I can come up with web ideas “just like that” - but this whole mobile game is going to be tougher.

Why will it be harder?
Firstly mobile and location based services are going to be pushing up against the inevitable skills shortage in travel technology and the new media sector in general. Like today, the big companies, before spending millions on a project, want a project leader who has at least 5 years experience in the travel domain. These people are just not going to exist in mobile services at the quantity that will be required by the travel industry.

Even finding someone with over 5 years experience in travel websites / travel technology is difficult - and once you find the right person - expensive. Mobile experience will be even more valuable and hard to find.

Is commoditisation of mobile services the answer?
I am sure that companies are going to crop up that will aim to address this issue. This maybe through the production of commoditised software and tools. These tools could be rebranded in a travel companies name - and presented - as their own - to their customers. Call it private labelling if you wish.

I am not convinced that this is going to be a popular route. Regardless of company size all business owners want to differentiate their service. Just look at travel websites - yes many share the same style - and share the same back end technology - but as a result of web design / HTML layer changes - they are able to differentiate significantly from their competitors.

I am not sure that with mobile that this superficial top layer differentiation will be as easy - the underlying technology / functionality will be more exposed to the end customer than with websites - hence if another company has the same service from a technology supplier - there is little differentiation.

So if commoditisation won’t be popular and bespoke will be too expensive - what will happen?
This move to mobile / location based services may be the next tipping point for travel on the web. One aspect that I am looking out for signs of is the “Amazon.comification” of the travel industry - where just one leading website becomes dominant - rather than supplier websites each being their own island.

Imagine if a big travel company really buys into the mobile idea….. and starts innovating wildly. This move to mobile may just be enough to create enough momentum to lock out competitors (in the B2C space) because once consumers adopt a service it may take them a while to look for an alternative.

Think for a second - what would happen if Google was that one company?

I will publish my location based services ideas in a future post…. this one is long enough already!