Travel & Tourism Technology Trends

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, Kango’s development team is stacked with some very impressive minds and it is quite obvious that a lot of thought has gone into the creation of the technology that is the foundation of the system. Kango is in private Beta, but I was invited by Yen to review the site and provide my feedback as a beta tester.

Fig.1 The initial search form is very simple to use.

So what is Kango? Well, based on “About Us” information, Kango uses a sophisticated indexing system to harvest and organize content from across the web and then displays the results based on your travel preferences. For example, I want to go to California with my wife and kids but I’d like to do a little more then just go to Disneyland. The first thing I do is complete the search form which asks whether I am looking for a place to stay or something to do, whether the trip is a family vacation or a romantic getaway, and what types of places I’d like to see. Once submitted, the search returns a variety of results that match my request. Pretty straight-forward.

Fig.2 The results are presented in a logical manner and combined with a map for easy reference.

From a user standpoint, the site does an AMAZING job of making the process extremely simple. Given the fact that most of the sites from which Kango derives its data do not provide APIs or connectors in order to easily access the data in a structured way, it is presumed that Kango fetches the data, analyzes it for relevancy, and then stores it in a meaningful way for display to the user. This is by no means a simple task, hence the brain power required to put it all together and, more importantly, make it look simple.

Fig. 3 The Thing to do detail page is nicely laid out
and contains data aggregated from sites all over the Internet.

Pros: The site is very consumer friendly and has a broad appeal. The dream phase of the travel purchase life-cycle is supported primarily by DMO websites, destination guides, and other dispirate content so Kango seems like a natural fit and makes dreaming easy and fun. The combination of content, photos, and reviews provides a compelling experience that is rich and compelling.

Cons: As I navigated through the site finding all the great places that I wanted to visit on my dream trip I quickly realized that there is no way to save the searches that I have made or any way to add “Things to do” or lodging options to an itinerary. This seems to me to be a huge opportunity for Kango to combine the dream and the plan phases of the travel purchase life-cycle. I think that providing both elements would not takeaway from the search consolidation component of the site and would add considerably more stickiness to the site.

Kango has a winning combination of a great idea, superb execution, brains, and funding. Congratulations to Yen and his team on a truly innovative application.