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!

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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.

An area that is currently underserved by travel websites (and startups) is functionality that enables users to share their post travel experiences with fellow travellers, friends, family and “the public” in a simple way.

Yes there are thousands of forums - and many travel websites let users put up photos, trip blogs etc…. but I wonder whether this requires too much investment (of time) by users in order to gain mainstream traction (at least with the existing generation of adult users) - unless the user is already registered and part of that website’s community. I don’t know - and would love some feedback. Perhaps large social networks negate the need for specific functionality as they support this need? Perhaps websites like WAYN fill the void sufficiently?

One new website, recently launched, that aims to fill this gap is tripNtale - Here is an example journey through India with nice music too (click on the slideshow over on the right hand side). The proposition is that a simple to use, single purpose, website for sharing travel memories is what users are looking for.

An alternative to this approach is to use something like slideshare.net - slideshare lets you share powerpoint presentations and add music (or words as audio etc). For example here is a trip that someone has done to Ghana.

When you mix this capability with geotagging (like Youtube now lets you geotag videos) you can make an interesting proposal. I was at the Future of Web Applications (FOWA London) conference the other day and listened to Heather Champ, community manager of Flickr (Yahoo). Their concern when they introduced geotagging was that they were going to get “porn islands” - islands in the Pacific (or wherever) where users would submit photos and geotag to a specific location…. that would become open knowledge within communities that are into that kind of activity. It didn’t happen though, so I have been told. (I don’t go looking for that kind of thing!)

Any other memory sharing tools out there? Any neat ways to monetise these websites?

One theme that is beginning to become more prevalent is “itinerary saving” and “itinerary sharing”.

Overview
Say for example you are going on a trip to New York - you may want to save information about your hotel, the shops you want to visit, the attractions you want to see, the restaurants you want to eat at etc. This itinerary will need to be saved somewhere - and then shared with other members of the trip (family, friends etc) - who will comment on the proposed trip - and maybe even add their own components. At the moment much of this process is undertaken by consumers manually in “freetext” using email etc.

In the new world these itineraries can be placed online - and destination experts (or just people who have travelled there before - or local inhabitants) can comment on the proposed trip - and suggest alterations. Additionally travellers unknown to the initial traveller can take a proposed itinerary and use it as a basis of their own trip to New York.  

In the new world the travel website should be clever enough (and informed enough) to know that when you add a visit to the zoo on a Monday that it is closed on a Monday. Additionally, the proposed itinerary should be able to “price itself” or be manually sent to a travel agent / tour operator for review / pricing.

Feature | Product | Company
When gauging a new website proposal or idea you can categorise into 3 main types….. is this idea “big” enough to support a company? Is it “big” enough to be a product alongside other products within an existing company? Or is it just a feature to add to an existing website?

What we can see is that out of the 15 itinerary saving / itinerary sharing websites below……. some are features, some are products, some are standalone companies. This is unlikely to be sustainable.

Company

Tripology -  Add an itinerary (flight, cruise, hotel, car hire, activities) and have your itinerary sent to upto 3 travel agents for review / pricing. Free for consumer use. Travel agents pay $1 to $10 USD per lead. Not quite an itinerary sharing website (more an itinerary lead generating site) - but worth looking at in the same context as “wisdom of crowds” based tools.

TripWiser - Add, share and review trip itineraries. They also have a FaceBook application which has been getting some good press recently. One to watch…… Very web2.0

TripIt - Primary feature is that it organises your trips by taking your confirmation emails from leading travel websites - and automatically generates an itinerary from them in one central location. No public social features (yet!) - but you can invite friends (via email) to review your trip. Has a nice demo screencast

TripTie - Add, share and review trip itineraries. Includes photos and tagging. Their USP is a browser tool bar (that they have called MarcoPolo) where you can collect trip items as you browse around the web conducting your travel research.

TripHub - Add, share and review trip itineraries. Assists with group travel - as you can put up a proposed trip - and invite your friends to join you. Their acceptance status (yes, no, maybe) is recorded within the site.

home & abroad -  Add, review and share itineraries.

Product

RoughGuides - InTouchOnline - Are we allowed to talk about software anymore? Build your itinerary on your laptop - and take your laptop with you. Not curently for sale - but interesting concept (now out of date)

TourGuideMike -  For $20 USD you can buy access to a web based planning tool for Walt Disney World (Florida). This is a sensible product from Mike Hewell - who also runs private tours via a separate website. What Mike has done is make his destination experience as a tour guide available to many consumers…. and the functionality of the itinerary system will be tuned fully around the needs of planning a trip to Walt Disney World. This therefore will be much better functionality than a generic system devised for any kind of trip. There is no sharing involved - this is a personal trip planner. Worth a look - but I wish his website was less like those websites you get trying to sell you ebooks - as it just feels too “spammy”. (not something us Brits like on a website)

Feature 

Orlando - The convention and visitors bureau / tourist board website for Orlando, Florida. Click on “my trip planner” at the top of the page. This is a flex based application for adding events, experiences, hotels and attractions to a trip itinerary. No social features. Very “beta” (has a few browser bugs) - but this shows that destination websites will soon be adding this kind of feature very soon.

TravelGator - A trip planning website with built in itinerary creation, review and sharing. They have a video that shows how it works. Much more besides their itinerary system such as blogs - and a really neat little “slider” tool (on their homepage) for finding attractions

Iloho -  A travel planning website with reviews, photos and travel news. The itinerary system enables you to, in fairly straightforward freetext, upload an itinerary (and have your route put on a Google map). Users can vote, Digg style, for your itinerary.

UnearthTravel - Very nice itinerary map and mechanism, via the map, to add new places to an itinerary. More about places than experiences. Not quite finished but worth a look.

Yahoo Travel trip planner - Add, share and review trip itineraries. One of the first “large user” websites taking first steps with itinerary planning tools. Its a pretty average proposition - but cleanly designed and is a mainstream proposition (rather than for web wizards)

YellowstonePark - Am I allowed to keep saying that this is one of my favourite destination travel websites? They have a trip builder / trip itinerary tool as well. Not sure that it is fully “social” - but it shows that many more destination websites in the future will carry destination specific trip building tools.

Limereef - Add your itineraries. If small travel websites are adding itinerary tools - you should be too.

The long term for this functionality
I do not believe that this functionality can support companies as a standalone entity - not in B2C. At the very most it could be a product, as in the TourGuideMike.com example (where a product actually makes sense). In the medium term more and more suppliers will be looking to add similar functionality to their own websites. This functionality will become common and the differentiation will be in how a supplier’s knowledge is integrated into the tool (such as the zoo being closed on a Monday that I mentioned earlier). (This is why the generic trip building systems will suffer - because they don’t have that knowledge)

The opportunity for those who have created companies in this space - but who are going after the B2C market - is that they should consider rearchitecting their systems and move towards offering “unbranded” white label solutions to supplier websites (like tour operators and destination marketing websites)….. I expect the takeup would be massive. However it is more fun looking for consumer gold than selling tools to the trade….. so I doubt they will do this.

Tripology have a revenue model that could make sense though as a standalone entity - although they need to extend their “love” to tour operators as well as travel agents. They are also not going the “wisdom of crowds” route - but are working on expert review instead.

Finally
I am sure there are more out there that I have missed. Please add yours below:

Firstly lets define “travel porn”. This could be fun.

Can you remember back in the history of the travel industry (!) where you used to get wonderful brochures that you picked up from high street travel agents? They would have a lovely, crisp, feel - with high quality paper stock - brilliant photos - and a smell of paper pulp.

You could sit at home and flip though the pages - generating a frenzy of excitement - before trudging off to the travel agent to book your annual holiday. Recently, when bookings went online (or some did), I know that people still went back to travel agents to pick up brochures for products they had already booked - just because the brochure is such an exciting product to own and feel.

Before you wonder why this is called “porn”…. well I am not making this up…. I have heard it referred to as porn within large travel companies (not often, but enough to know its a standard term). Also I have found a blog that refers to the same principle…. its not just me OK !? This isn’t how my mind works.

Remember - holidays are about escaping the day to day….. and this experience has to start at the research phase…. but researching and booking is just too clinical when completed online…. we need to introduce some fun somewhere. Take people out of their office cubicles and to some far off lands. We need to stop websites looking like Microsoft Excel (with tables and data) and more like a nice Microsoft Powerpoint presentation with graceful transitions…. (or Keynote for you Mac fans)

How would this work online? At some stage in the future web won’t be something we access via a PC but it will be experienced more tangibly. This could be quite a few years off but Starwood Hotels are already playing with it using Microsoft Surface. (read report from M-Travel or view a video from Popular Mechanics).

One ecommerce website that is already using interesting means to navigate product is Etsy - for example look at the colour navigation system - or the Time Machine etc. We need more of this and less “put your dates here and select a destination from a dropdown”.

Finally, when researching this article (!) I searched on the web for some interesting travel porn examples or images I could use. Very intersting it was too. Eye opening. Not something to do from work. Unfortunately I couldn’t find anything I could publish here.