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….

If you want to be notified next time something is published sign up for email alerts or subscribe to the RSS feed. Thank you for reading!

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.

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?

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!

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!

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.

Sometimes, when launching a new travel agency, it is helpful to receive some positive PR. If you can help support people in need at the same time then this is a double benefit.

EasyCruises.com.au , a Sydney based cruise specialist, have created a micro site - CrusingForAGoodCause.com.au. The principle behind the site is that it highlights a no-reserve auction taking place on eBay Australia for a 10 night cruise on a Royal Caribbean trip in December this year. All proceeds will be donated to the Red Cross Sichuan earthquake appeal.

I always like seeing existing web based tools being applied sensibly - and the cruise looks nice as well. Frankly, after the week I am having, I wouldn’t mind going on the cruise myself!

Auctions have been problematic for online distribution in travel. Firstly it ties up availability for the period of the auction. Once you have committed inventory to an auction you could find it difficult to sell via another channel, especially if your inventory is limited. Secondly, as travel products are so diverse, while in principle a type of product is what a customer wants - actually finding enough customers who want a specific travel product and rate combination on a specific travel date can be tricky - hence market rates are never really attained through auctions due to insufficient demand.

Auctions that are “one offs” or are based on charity events don’t have these concerns.

I probably ought to disclose that EasyCruises are a customer. They use TourCMS (the reservation system my company runs). Actually I am quite excited by that. Cruise products are notoriously complex travel products however, with a bit of tweaking, EasyCruises have made good use of our functionality. You can see the integration - and book the above trip - on the EasyCruises website.

I don’t ask for much from the readers of this blog (you):

• I don’t inflict advertising on you
• The RSS feed has the full post in
• No subscription required

My content goals are:

• Analysis over news
• A press release free zone
• A single daily post
• Not to replicate the trade press - but to add to it - and provide a practitioners perspective.
• Say it how I see it…. sometimes this gets me into trouble - but that is how it is
• To engage with the trade press where I can….. although I tend to focus on Travolution because they are writing about subjects worth engaging with (in my narrow interest area) - and also because they make the effort to engage with non-traditional media types like me.
• Make the blog something I would want to read (if I wasn’t writing it!)…. I know that many people in ecommerce teams at travel companies don’t read the travel trade press….. so the goal is you can read this instead!
• Global, but with a UK / European perspective

However, 1 year from launch, this is becoming difficult to keep up. Quality content cannot be rushed - it has to be considered and well written - otherwise there isn’t much point publishing.

You can help me four ways:

1. Tell me what you want me to write about
2. Please comment more often!
3. Am I pitching the content at the right level?
4. Please ask your colleagues to subscribe (either via email - or the RSS feed directly)

Tell me what you want me to write about

Do you prefer my web design & usability reviews, my strategic posts, my thoughts on other companies’ projects or do you like me jumping around all the time?

Or…. when you see something happening in your region and you think it would make a great topic deserving of wider attention - please do send the idea to me and the chances are I will write about it.

Please comment more often

Is anyone out there? If I don’t hear from you - I may assume not!

Sometimes I can slave over a new post for a couple of hours, publish it, and then get no comments. Ummm….. depressing - even though the post is a good one. Mind you, everyone considers their own children are beautiful…..

Am I pitching the content at the right level?

For example, recently I have had feedback that I use terms that not everyone understands…. should I try to be more inclusive with my posts - or should this blog address those with greater web / travel industry experience.

Don’t forget, we have already launched Small Fish Big Ocean for small tour operators and niche agents - hence Musings remains targeted at larger travel companies and the industry in general.

Please ask your colleagues to subscribe

There are two main ways - either via RSS - or if you visit this site - you can subscribe via email. About 20% of the subscribers are via email….. so it works!

Conclusion

Yes I am asking you for a favour - unless you are in the USA - in which case I am asking for a favor.

Somehow I need to convince myself that having a blog written daily is potentially worthwhile. Otherwise I may go back into my shell and publish much less often. That would be a pity as I quite enjoy the mental exercise of writing blog posts - and my “real world” presentations and strategy papers are much better as a result of all this experience.

So go on….. tell me this blog sucks and I should just shut up. Hopefully though you will say nice things, send me some great stories to cover and get all your colleagues to subscribe.