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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Tnooz
Recent Comments