What’s new in online travel?
The PhoCusWright Executive Conference, a yearly gathering of travel and hospitality leaders, once again attracted a who’s who of the online travel world when it met in Orlando last week. CEOs and top executives from Google, Expedia, Travelocity, Cendant, Priceline, AOL, Yahoo, Sidestep, FareChase, Kayak, Sabre, Carlson Wagonlit and many others gathered to network and discuss the state of online travel.
The conference is a unique opportunity to hear these corporate decision makers directly and to ask questions face to face rather than through a battery of public relations professionals. Unlike some of the euphoric conferences at the turn of the millennium or the somber affairs after the dot-com bust, this meeting seemed grown-up — surprisingly mature for a fledgling industry.
What were once gee-whiz, high-tech innovations have evolved over the past half-decade into established travel industry functions. Online reservations, customer-relations management, online ad tracking, dynamic packaging and countless other undertakings are now almost taken for granted.
No longer dazzled by technology, executives are more focused now on integrating this tidal wave of online capability into workable business models. Rather than extolling new code and new interfaces just because they are new, conference goers paid attention to adapting online technologies to the needs of end-users, i.e. travelers.
Executives are still looking at how online travel sites can make transactions easier and faster, but they are no longer looking only at bits and bytes. They are looking at the travelers and asking how the online environment can help them “do travel better.”
For example, the online travel industry has already made it simple for travelers to book tickets, rental cars and hotel rooms. Now major sites want to help travelers decide where to travel and which hotels and cars to reserve. And, of course, they want to influence those decisions.
Which leads us to two words heard often at the conference: content and community.
Unfortunately, technology is still a driving force when online travel providers discuss human decisions. Finding ways to present thoughtful and well-written destination information isn’t high on their priority list even though everyone repeats the mantra “Content is king.” The content most executives are talking about is more hotel descriptions, better maps, flashier pictures and an increased use of videos. It seems that the product and the presentation are still getting in the way of the destination and the travel experience. The medium still trumps the message.
Community was the buzzword when it came to discussions about interfacing with customers. The Web now is inundated with groups of people sharing travel information. This capability has always been available through bulletin boards, but bulletin boards by their nature impose some structure on the discussion. The new community sites allow a more informal exchange of ideas as well as new ways to post information in various categories, making participants’ comments much more accessible and easier to search. Some travel sharing sites operate along the lines of wikipedia.com, allowing participants to comment on what other travelers have said about establishments or destinations — a capability that creates a travel commentary free-for-all.
At the same time, new tools are being designed that allow consumers to collect and share their travel research online. Maps, magazine articles, newspaper columns, photos, bulletin boards, personal commentary and community discussions can all now be saved in a personal space on Yahoo and, soon, other sites.
Yahoo’s tool called My Travel has provided alerts about users’ flights, rentals, destinations and hotels for some time. Its new Trip Planner tool allows travelers to aggregate their own travel guide from various pieces on the Web. Then Yahoo goes a step further by allowing each person to share plans and research with others who are planning similar itineraries.
Soon the collection of information will be mind-boggling. In the past, thorough trip planners had scores of magazines and guidebooks as well as hundreds of newspapers to peruse; now, there will be the itineraries and musings of hundreds of thousands of other travelers to take into account as well. The thought makes my head throb.
This kind of virtually endless, unedited and random information is what the creators of travel Web sites think travelers want. From my point of view, it is reaching the point of information overload. To me it looks like content, community - and chaos. Time will tell.
Once upon a time, marketers were convinced that consumers couldn’t live without fins on their cars, the bigger the better. Something tells me the chaotic availability of travel information and personal opinion is here to stay, but the presentation of well-edited and trustworthy travel wisdom will soon command a premium.