Travel & Tourism Technology Trends

The Online Revealed Conference (ORC) Educational Exchange in Vancouver was a big success. I was quite honoured to be invited to present as the keynote speaker for the session and I’m happy to report that the session went extremely well. My presentation was “Once Upon a Blog: Marketing Travel by Telling Stories”. It was a new presentation for me and I was a little bit concerned that the subject matter might not resonate with the audience. Fortunately for me, the combination of strong visuals and Read more [...]

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Ranjan Singh, CEO and Co-Founder of Isango! Mr. Singh joined online travel with Expedia and then become Managing Director for EBookers. What he found is that companies like Expedia and other OTAs are focused on the logistics of travel versus the destination products or the reasons why people go on trips. A recent survey stated that 66% of search is for things to do and attractions. For end consumers, there are many choices for booking the logistical pieces of travel but there are very few choices Read more [...]

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Gerry Samuels, Founder & Executive Director, Mobile Travel Technologies Ltd. Who are MTT’s customers? Hotels, airlines, and intermediaries. Their core technology enables certain aspects of the customer’s mobile services. The technology can do things like deliver travel information, select seats, and even have boarding passes sent to the phone. The technology connects on the back-end with the customer systems and cherry pick the information that needs to be delivered and modifies or smart Read more [...]

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After I wrote the review about Kango.com I emailed Yen Lee and asked him some specific questions about getting product into Kango.com. Yen was gracious enough to answer my questions himself and provided some useful insight into how the sight may grow over time. Here are the questions and Yen’s answers: T4: How do SME suppliers add their product to Kango or perhaps the better question is how does Kango identify and add supplier product? YL: Two different answers to a critical initiative for us: SME Read more [...]

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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, Read more [...]

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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 Read more [...]

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I met Dave and the rest of the Yapta.com crew at the PhoCusWright Conference 2007 in Orlando. On the second night of the conference I had dinner with Dave, CEO Tom Romary, Jeff Pecor (Communications Director), and Mike Gurrette (Director with Alaska Airlines). The conversation was excellent and I got a chance to find out more about the company and the challenges of being a tech company in the NorthWest vs. Silicon Valley. In this interview, Dave gives us a better idea of what Yapta.com does and how Read more [...]

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Here is a quick montage of the Google after party at the PhoCusWright Conference 2007 in Orlando. In the montage are Eric Bjorndahl from Travbuddy.com and Martin Schobert from the Austrian National Tourism Office. By the way, Google knows how to throw an awesome party. Check out the glowing Google cups! I wish I had the foresight to keep one as a momento.

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I had a chance to catch up with Kevin May, editor of the populat http://travolution.blogspot.com blog. I asked him what he thought of the Tips from the T-List book, the blogger workshop, and the conference as a whole. He had some great points. By the way, big thanks to Kevin for contributing to the book and for including the book as a download for the Travolution conference. Read more [...]

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A recent survey by the Kelsey Group recently announced that consumers are willing to pay at least 20% more for products and services receiving a 5 star (or excellent) rating versus those receiving a 4 star (or good) rating. The study also indicated that about 24% of the Internet users that were surveyed use online ratings during the research and buying process. More than three quarters reported that the online reviews played a significant role in their decision to use a product or service, with Read more [...]

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