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?

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If you like jokes like this:

My wife’s gone to the Caribbean

Jamaica?

No, she went of her own accord

 ….. then here is a new home for them….. http://SheWentOfHerOwnAccord.com/

The 2nd line of every joke is essentially a place name…. which enables the jokes to be plotted onto a map:

Location based content is going to be big in the coming years - and if you are a destination marketing site you really ought to be collecting your own interesting and useful data right now. Jokes may not be the ideal content for you….. but you get the idea. 

As soon as services such as Yahoo Fire Eagle become available to all websites you will see an upsurge in location based content / services. The “moving to mobile” mantra (reinforced at every travel industry conference) has become so repetitive it is now boring - however - there is no denying it will be important to the online travel industry.

What content are you collecting now that will not be stale in 2 years time?

The Boot blog has suggested a new industry definition (quoting Phillip Wolf, CEO PhoCusWright)

They have defined a “zero percent site” as a site where zero (or near zero) percent of the site’s content is controlled or produced by the owner. Phillip / Tim suggest that 4 of the top 10 online travel sites (by traffic) are zero percent sites.

This therefore would group meta-search and user generated content sites into one group.

Of course, Google is a zero percent site as well….. not sure if they included that!

How the definition fails
I like the definition but I would prefer it if it was more consumer oriented.

For example, say you are signing up for a profile at a travel social network - when you first join there is no content for you to interact with (because you have no friends). These are the true zero percenters - sites where - on first visit - as a consumer you have nothing to play with.

A different way at looking at zero percenters
Perhaps a different way at looking at defining zero percenters is to define as the sites where zero percent of the company equity is owned by the web design team!

A few years ago you would find a number of leading travel websites were entrepreneur backed - hence there would be equity throughout the business - including the web design / development team. Nowadays leading travel portals are corporate backed hence stock isn’t given / earnt by mid-level employees (which the web team normally are)

I remember being offered 0.5% of the stock for a VC backed (non travel) website I was involved with in 1999 (as web design lead). I am still not sure if that was a good deal or not - but the offer was for a reasonable salary and some stock - and so that certainly got my attention at the time. When talking to web teams at large travel companies (who really are the key to the companies short and medium term success) none of them seem to have any stake in the success of the business. No wonder much of the current innovation is coming from start ups.

While talking about stock…… just what is going on over in the States?
Two VC backed sites have got my attention recently - Nile Guide (a weird name for a travel website - but at least doesn’t have the word trip in) and TravelMuse (named after this blog, obviously!)

Both seem headed for the overcrowded travel guide / travel suggestion sector - but what has piqued my interest is their “about us” pages.

TravelMuse has 16 named individuals (and a board of directors). Of the 16 - from the senior team - only the Director of Product Management has a travel industry background. The others are travellers….. yeah I like eating - but doesn’t make me a great person to run a restaurant. One example of where this lack of experience shows is on their inspiration finder - http://www.travelmuse.com/inspire/ (which actually isn’t a bad tool) - if you search for London - you are defaulted from London, Canada - rather than London, UK. This is the kind of thing travel websites sorted out years ago.

NileGuide has 11 named individuals (and a board of directors). These guys seem to have many more travel industry types…..

For what they are doing they both appear over staffed. I am not convinced that paying for 15 staff is going to make it that easy to make a return on just monetised destination content. There is too much competition. Also, if they are in “start up” mode - the stock will be spread thinly between their VC investors and all the initial employees. Content lead websites can be started with 2-5 experienced people and a community…. not 15.

Most existing travel companies start as product vendors and then, if they have one eye towards the web, look to build a community however Travellerspoint are going the other way. They are a traveller community that takes online bookings.

However, that wouldn’t be much of a story. What is interesting is how they have merged the benefits of having a web based community with online bookings.

Take a look at this conventional short description of a hotel. Note that below the details it mentions that one other community member will be there on the same dates you are:

On the confirmation page you can see details of who the other member is.

There are plenty of opportunities to opt out of this “social booking” system (indeed it is opt in to begin with).

Sam Daams, from Travellerspoint, describes the niche that they are aiming for:

Social bookings is a concept tailored towards independent travellers, much like those who in the past years have posted thousands of requests on our Travel Companions forum to meet up with other travellers heading to the same destination on the same dates. There are actually millions of posts like this around the web where entire sites have arisen just to cater for arranging travel companions before leaving home 

We see conversions increasing based on this functionality

Is this new?
I *think* it is. 

I do remember back in 2002 looking at a corporate self booking tool where, within the context of a large organisation (tens of thousands of employees) you could pick your flight seat and choose to sit next to (or as far away from) someone who works in the same company. Either great for networking or terrible - depending upon how you feel about it.

Conclusion
I think this is a great example of understanding your users and creating innovative functionality that addresses a key pain point. The Travellerspoint forums are full of “meet up” requests and this helps service that need. Not sure it will be found on the Hilton website anytime soon though!

As mentioned last year, I have been looking at ways that I can blog in an environment that is less about me and more about you. As a result of that thinking I have, today, launched a new social network - Small Fish Big Ocean

What is Small Fish Big Ocean?

Small Fish Big Ocean is part blog / part social network. The aim is to bring together mainly small tour operators and niche agents and form a community of those interested in travel ecommerce in those sectors.

Technically, the system used has:

• Blogs
• Forums
• Video / Audio
• Profile pages
• Widgets and other neat tools

What am I going to blog about?

I am going to write 4 posts a month (one a week). Each month I am going to choose a single theme. My blog posts will be more “practical” in nature than the ones on Musings (which are more news or strategy focussed)

• In the first week I will write a blog post introducing the theme - and giving a web based reading list for further study.
• In the second week I will set everyone (who wants to!) a task to complete on their own website (or in their own business). The forums will be there to support people through this process
• In the third week I will write a blog post covering some advanced thoughts on the theme…. hopefully by then everyone will have read their reading lists and done their homework (!)….. so we can talk more knowledgeably about the topic.
• In the forth week the intention is to have a community event about the theme. This could be a live chat or video conference or something. Frankly, I am going to see how this goes. All sorts of issues with this like - who is going to be on it? What timezone? etc…

Of course, you could just join the community and talk about what you like in the forums…. and not worry about what I blog about….

Anything else on SFBO worth knowing about?

One of the forums has been set aside as a “clinic”. For those brave enough to post their travel ecommerce questions publicly, I will be happy to answer (and provide free consultancy advice). Hopefully the real benefit to the clinic will be that other people apart from me will answer!

For those of you who can’t afford my rates (!) it may be an interesting route. I can do website reviews if you ask in the clinic….. or if you just want to “give a bit of PR” to your new travel website or startup ….. you could ask me what I think of it!

What does this mean to this Musings blog that I know people like to read?

It will continue in its current form. Specifically this means:

• I will continue to post as often as I can (4-5 times per week)
• I will write about industry issues facing larger companies specifically travel ecommerce and usability (smaller company issues will be in SFBO)
• It will continue to be my own view on things….
• There may be less “how to” guides…. as these may be placed on my new blog…. it depends on what it is that I am writing about

So - please go and visit our new social network….. Small Fish Big Ocean ….. even better, please sign up for a profile! (its free!)

Woot is a website that has intrigued me for a while.

In essence, they have a single product website - however every day that single product changes. Today it is a rather nice looking mouse… (but I am happy with mine!)

A whole community has sprung up who “pounce” on the site when a new product appears - and then decide whether to purchase or not.

Running this website must be a bit of fun although I imagine that finding a succession of products would, after a while, begin to tire. Besides as a commercial person you would have to spend a great deal of time doing analysis on what products work on what days etc….. (as opposed to the travel industry where people tend to put their products up on sale….. and hope that some of it sells - and it doesn’t matter if it sells on a Sunday or a Tuesday)

One interesting advantage though is that I am sure it would allow you to approach a product supplier and get a great commercial deal.

So can you do a woot for leisure travel?
The difference between desire based, low price, electronics where many people could want to buy that day vs travel may be too great for it to work in the travel industry.

However maybe this isn’t too different to TV travel shops….. you basically present a product, tell people the price and hope enough turn around and buy it.

If I were going to do this online maybe something like this would work:

• Offer goes up in the morning - Should have lots of product information - photos, videos etc
• At lunch time (aimed at office workers who eat at their desks) - you put up an interactive question & answer session….. probably between the people selling the product and some kind of facilitator
• At early evening - you have an interactive, and public, ”community chat” with anyone out there who is interested in buying the product…. the advantage here is that one or two people may be asking the questions…. but many others will be lurking and “listening in” - so will benefit from the answers….. (Another advantage of doing this on a single product - or perhaps a single destination - is that you can have your destination expert on the web that evening)
• Take online bookings that evening! (or subsequently, now that interest has been raised and the key questions answered)
• Repeat the next day for a different product (or destination)

Would this work?

I got some feedback today that my posts should be more intelligent. Wot? Don’t people like my youtube videos?

Right - so don your bow tie and prepare to read an intelligent post.

A couple of weeks ago I reviewed 15 travel itinerary saving / sharing websites - which was quite well received (and probably intelligent enough to meet the intelligence criteria that you guys are setting for me!).

One of the challenges that I wrote about was the issue of how to monetise these tools and websites. Monetisation for travel websites is normally based around three key components:

• Selling travel, transport or accommodation products (the traditional approach from existing travel companies)
• Selling advertising to those who sell travel, transport or accommodation products
• Hoping someone comes along and buys your company before you have to worry about making actual money (this is normally when your data has value to someone else) (rather a lot of sites are taking this approach!)

The forth option is “selling something else”.

I recently found an interesting travel itinerary site that has been monetised nicely that fall into this 4th category. (Although of course I don’t have any sales data to share)

FlightMemory.com / flugstatistik.de- they have a mechanism where a user enters their previous flight history into the website. You then can pay (Between USD 29 and USD 139) to have a poster of your previous trips printed out for you on a nice map. Information on the poster

Above is an example poster, I think.

This isn’t much of a review, more a “go and take a look at this”.

WanderWiki is the site I want to write a couple of comments about today. Created by Imaginative Traveller, a UK based adventure travel tour operator, Wander Wiki lets staff and customers browse their repository for all information relating to their tours and the countries they visit. (Customer editing currently disabled though as they build up their content)

Donationware
The system is based on the “donationware” MediaWiki software, the software originally written to power Wikipedia. Hence there is a familiar look and feel to the website. By donationware this means that you can choose not to pay for the software - however as Wikimedia are currently on a fundraising drive (with 17,000 people having donated) - I would hope that any businesses using software for commercial purposes (which this is) would donate a tidy sum. (like 500 USD at least). (That reminds me - I haven’t donated a penny for the wordpress software used on this blog - perhaps I should).

Why wikis are great!
The advantage to this kind of software is that you can see where changes have been made to the text - by looking into the page history. For example, take a look at this change

You can see the date cut off for acceptable US dollar notes has been changed from 1999 to 2001. Interesting.

Opinion
I know everyone loves it when I make critical comments about websites within my website reviews - but frankly I don’t have anything bad to say about Wander Wiki - it is a really nice job. Competitors should watch out because this site may give Imaginative Traveller a bit of an advantage going forwards.

Visually of course it isn’t up to much - but then again - it is the familiar look and feel from Wikipedia - hence this visual design carries a certain amount of credibility. I would leave it as it is and focus on the content - which is what this is all about.

Would I have advised to create a website like this?
No. I don’t think so.

I am familiar with the business objectives behind these kinds of projects - they normally boil down to “demonstrate our expertise of the countries we are visiting to potential customers”. This wiki certainly does that. However what has happened is that this expertise is now open to all competitors as well - hence the competitive advantage of website like this is blunted.

New competitors could come into these countries, pick up the appropriate information, and start offering tours. Existing competitors could use this information to fact check their own dossiers.

There is functionality that can be devised that demonstrates expertise in a country (or activity) but doesn’t require you to expose that knowledge to the public (but rather to those making enquiries, or customers etc). I wonder what alternatives Imaginative Traveller considered.

Anyway, this site is live now - so they may as well continue with it. Actually the benefits of knowledge exposure probably outweigh the disadvantages. Not everyone can have a site like this hence this will become a nice differentiator. Interesting to watch.

What, really nothing critical to say?
Yeah - I know you didn’t believe me when I said I had nothing critical to write

I will leave you with a nice photo from the tour leader page

A nice photo and nothing wrong with that. However, it is a rather odd juxtaposition - as right next to the photo is a line of text that says:

We find that local tour leaders, having been born in the country where they are working, can add unique insights into the local culture. Employing local tour leaders forms a core part of our Responsible Travel policy.

Ummmm….. I think I would have chosen a different guide to highlight!

I was having a discussion yesterday about a website redesign project that I am currently involved with. It is probably a situation that many people are familiar with.

The question arose regarding how the website should be visually designed. There was a desire to be at the forefront of travel web design - but it was a struggle to understand exactly what that was. Does this mean that the website should be in Flash or Flex, or some other rich interface design? (it won’t be - and for most websites this is still a few years off)

So - what then is “modern web design” within travel ecommerce?

Introducing undesign
There has been some chatter about the concept of “undesign”. I struggled to find a definition of it that I could publish so I am going to come up with my own:

I now define undesign as a web design that has the following characteristics:

• Copy / text is the user interface - The words, the size of text, the length of the sentence, the paragraph breaks - all of this forms the user interface (rather than creating containers with graphics - and placing text / copy inside those containers)
• Links are text based - not images
• There are no gratuitous user interface elements - I define gratuitous as those that either don’t provide information (for example stars on a star rating) nor assist with usability (for example lines between sections - acting as dividers).  
• Usability is prioritised over visual branding - the design is engineered to be used - not admired like a piece of static art.

So what you end up with is a mainly text website. It sounds dull but it isn’t.

Some examples of undesign

• 37signals - Homepage and corporate website. Very clearly the text copy is the user interface
• Google - search and search results
• Amazon - product page - there are very few visual elements on the page except for product images. Apart from that it is mainly text. Some graphics are used to divide sections - but these are kept to a minimum.
• ClearTrip- A travel website example. ClearTrip offer flight bookings for flights within India. The hint towards their design mindset comes from their name!

The cleartrip homepage. See how there is very little imagery….. this is travel undesign. Go and take a look at one of their flight results pages as well. Very clean. (While you are there - go one step further - the accordian checkout is interesting)

Thoughts

So - keep an eye on “undesign”. The problem for its acceptance will be marketing teams who really want a fully branded experience. It will take a leap of faith for a marketing director to say - ok - I am happy to go the undesign route. I expect that undesign will start in the transport sector - trains, flights etc - and then, as it becomes more accepted, move into wider usage.

If you care about your users then you should be considering undesign.

Normally I tend to review larger travel websites as I know they have a solid web design approach and have budgets that enable them, if they applied appropriate skill, to create a great piece of functionality or website. I also tend to review when a company has stated objectives publicly - and then I can muse on whether those objectives have been met. 

Today I am going to review InsideCruise (http://www.insidecruise.co.uk/). They are a recently launched UK based travel community for those interested in cruise ship holidays. They are not a large company but as they have attracted some main travel industry press recently - I thought I would give them a quick review.

If you go to conferences “everyone” is talking about social networks and communities - and it appears this is the next big thing. Carla Prosser, from the company behind the new site, said as quoted by TravelMole (registration required) that:

We have embraced the community phenomena

More like jumping on the bandwagon - but hey we have a community for our product as well….. so I can hardly talk about bandwagons!

Will users trust the website?
A real key point for any community website is whether users will feel safe and trust the environment that has been created for them.

In an interview with Travel Weekly, Carla Prosser stated:

The website is going to consist of user-generated content, so it can only be unbiased

Therefore we know that Inside Cruise have the right mindset. However they appear to have implemented something that seems to me to break this trust.

Lets look at the “Top 10 web offers page” (see page). Above the offers list is a statement that says “We have hand-picked these cruise offers from selected UK cruise agents to bring you the best deals on the net each week”.

Right - that sounds OK. But hang on a second - what does the advertising page say?

So - lets get this straight - the users are being told that the list is hand picked by Inside Cruise. However advertisers can actually pay for this position if they wish. That can’t be right? Which is it?

Advertising operations for the top 10 list
Not only is the top 10 list misleading users, but there is a real problem with how this advertising is going to be handled operationally. Consider the following situations:

• There are only a couple of advertisers. If I was an advertiser I would start advertising at position 10. Will Inside Cruise then leave me at 10 (vs 9 “free” slots) or will they put me at number 1 (because I am the top paying advertiser?). They would want me to have a successful first advert otherwise I may not come back.
• What happens if two companies want slot 5? I assume the incumbent advertiser stays there if there is one - but what if they are both new? Who will take the slot? Will Inside Cruise give me slot 6 for less money (leaving money on the table - unlikely) or promote me to slot 4 as an “upgrade” for the price of slot 5 - but without telling the first advertiser.
• The market doesn’t set the price (it is a yes / no decision on 10 price points) - instead the pricing is set by the website. I hope they have set the correct pricing based on projected visitor volume. It could be embarrassing if these rates have to go down because of lack of visitors.

It appears to me that there is going to be an awful lot of email and phone communication between Inside Cruise and advertisers to sort all of this out. Operationally it will be inefficient and has all sorts of chances of upsetting advertisers….. (let alone misleading users!). I would have gone the Pay Per Click auction model - and created some kind of “market” - so as visitor volume increases - prices go up - and prices find their natural level. It could also be developed to be “self managed”.

Kick starting a user generated site
Starting a website like this is a real “chicken and egg”. You want to have lots of reviews, videos etc before you drive traffic to the website - but how do you get those reviews in the first place?

Inside Cruise have chosen to reward users for submitting videos, photos and reviews. £5 for a review and £10 for either a video or an image.

Does this then make people inappropriately incentivised to create reviews? Does this make them unbiased? As people are chasing the money - not thinking about content? Wisely Inside Cruise have limited this to a maximum of £15 per user that submits…. but this may just lead to a problem with users creating multiple profiles.

I would have gone the competition route ….. like top prize for a video - maybe by cruise line or destination - so you get a nice spread of videos covering all cruise lines and destinations - which is what they want really. It may have also grabbed some PR attention as well.

They also need to be clear who owns the rights to these reviews and images etc. Will the rights transfer to Inside Cruise? Can they use them for other purposes? (such as licensing them to other websites?). This is not clear within the Terms & Conditions.

What is their web developer thinking of?
Just for the icing on the cake - Inside Cruise have left a trail of web development tales of woe all over the web.

• They have left their test website up: http://dev.insidecruise.co.uk/ - actually coming up number 2 in Google for the term “insidecruise”. It is still up, in all its glory, with a copy of the functionality and data as it was about 4 weeks ago
• There is a nice section of their core code left lying on the CakePHP website - see the code ….. er…. yeah - this code includes the database username and password guys. They may want to remove it or at least change their passwords if they haven’t already.

Oh dear.

Summary
Interesting niche. Poorly executed. Needs a relaunch or rapid evolution.

There is definitely an opportunity here for Inside Cruise. They are pretty close to getting it right. If no competitors of significant size turn up in the next 12 months they may be OK. However with companies like Saga and their SagaZone social network launching recently (users of which will be core cruise target market) - unless Inside Cruise get a bit more Internet savvy, I am not sure they will make it to fulfil the potential that they have.