Top 5 Travel & Tourism Technology Trends for 2008

I had the chance to participate in the Enter 2008 Conference held in Innsbruck, Austria last week. “Organised by the International Federation for Information Technology and Travel & Tourism (IFITT), ENTER 2008 offers a unique forum for academics, industry and government to present and debate state-of-the-art research and industry case studies on the application of information and communications technologies to tourism and travel.” There were several trends that emerged as I listened to and engaged in some of the presentations. The trends I identified spanned across all three tracks;... Read more »

Facilitating the Dream with Kango

The travel purchase life-cycle consists of four primary phases: dream, plan, go, and reminisce. For the most part, the big travel websites have been focused on only one phase of the life-cycle: the go phase. Why? Because that’s where the money is. But, what we have begun to see is a shift in how consumers purchase travel online and, as a result, we are seeing a new breed of site develop around the other three, no less important I might add, phases of the travel purchase life-cycle. Kango is one such site. Spearheaded by Yen Lee, former General Manager of Yahoo’s Travel Division,... Read more »

The Value of Travel Agents - Unique Products & Value Add Services

An interesting article was posted by Travelmole.com today that strongly support my view that travel agents need to differentiate themselves by focusing on a niche and providing value added services. The article titled “Travel agents seek supplier support” states that: “A staggering 94% of agents who were concerned with supplier relationships and 79% of travel agents concerned with profit margins said they already had or were planning to expand their product offerings in order to mitigate those concerns. Many were including medical, green, cultural and events tourism packages... Read more »

The Value of Travel Agents - Customer Service

I recently posted the summary of the presentation by Steve Barnhart, CEO of Orbitz. One the key points presented by Mr. Barnhart is that technologies are very good at aggregating and distributing travel product and controlling costs while increasing profitability, but they are not very good at improving the customer experience. He then went on to say that we, as an industry, should be focusing our efforts on using technologies to improve customer service. I emphatically agree with this point of view and yet I ask the question, why bother? Can technology really be used as a good substitute... Read more »

Connecting with Tom Botts, Partner with Hudson Crossing LLC @ PhoCusWright Orlando 2007

This post actually serves two purposes: Firstly this is a great little interview with Tom Botts from Hudson Crossing LLC. Tom moderated the Blogger Workshop at PhoCusWright Orlando 2007 and seemed to really enjoy himself. Thanks Tom! Secondly, my wife forwarded me a video that was hosted using a video sharing platform called Viddler. I hadn’t heard of Viddler before but, based on its Alexa ranking of 18,487 it must be a fairly popular platform. For the most part, it is not dissimilar to YouTube, BUT what really got me excited was the ability to embed comments directly into the video... Read more »

New Look for TourismInternetMarketing.com

Congratulations to my friend and fellow T-List blogger, Jens Thraenhart on the re-launch of his TourismInternetMarketing.com blog. He worked with fellow hospitality blogger Chris Clarke to put together a Wordpress blog that is extremely well designed. I know that Jens was having a lot of issues with the performance of the previous version of the Tourism Internet Marketing blog so this new version is a welcome upgrade. Great job and I look forward to reading more great posts in 2008! http://www.tourisminternetmarketing.com Sphere: Related Content Read More →

Steve Barnhart, CEO President Orbitz: Economics of the Long Tail

As a technologist primarily interested in the effects of systems on the trailing end of the long tail, I found Mr. Barnhart’s presentation at PhoCusWright Orlando 2007, one of the more relevant. Although Orbitz is a huge player in the in the travel distribution game, it is relatively small compared to the other big two, Expedia and Travelocity. The following is a summary of Mr. Barnhart’s presentation and a some points that I feel are of particular interest to SME operators. First of all, there are three big trends happening with travel product creation and distribution on the Internet: There... Read more »

The 5 Must Do Travel Marketing Investments for 2008 - No.2

Investment #2 - Sharing your expertise So what does your expertise have to do with marketing or technology? Well, your expertise is powerful marketing content and there are many technologies that can help you share your expertise with your current and future clients. Here are my five favorite technologies for sharing: 1. Blogger: You can probably tell that I am a huge fan of blogs. As far as I am concerned, they are the best way to share your knowledge and build trust with your audience. What is great about them is that they are simple to use, extremely search engine friendly, and most platforms... Read more »

The 5 Must Do Travel Marketing Investments for 2008 - No.1

Investment #1: Your Website This is an absolutely crucial investment and now is the best time to bring your website up to speed. If you don’t have a website now, then plan to launch your website this year. Why the urgency? If you are a Canadian tour operator then the urgency is that there are only two years left before the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, and if you miss this opportunity because of something as simple as not having an informative and well designed website, then you are missing an opportunity of a lifetime. There will be millions of visitors to Canada and specifically British... Read more »

UNWTO & Microsoft to Keynote at Enter 2008 in Innsbruck

2008 looks like it is going to be a very exciting year for travel & tourism technology. I’m really happy to be able to go to Innsbruck this month to represent the fledgling North American Chapter of IFITT. Jens Thraenhart from TourismInternetMarketing.com, who is also on the Board of Directors of IFITT North America will be coming to Innsbruck as well. The theme of this year’s conference is “eTourism:The View from the Future”. The keynote speakers are Geoffrey Lipman from the UNWTO and Eric Basha, Industry Managing Director with Microsoft. I had the opportunity... Read more »

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