It’s not altogether surprising to see more experience based travel sites popping up. Unlike the “all-in-one” travel sites, this segment still has a tremendous amount of room for growth. Enter on the scene, Kijubi.com, the experience marketplace. It took me a moment to realize that the name, as twodotohish as it is, is actually pronounced [...]
During the OpenTravel Alliance half day session at Eye for Travel’s Distribution Summit in Chicago, we had an opportunity to discuss new and emerging distribution channels including, believe it or not, destination marketers. Although many of the comments were not particularly supportive of this model, I think there is a huge opportunity for destinations to [...]
In 1999 I had an opportunity to work with a variety of best of breed e-commerce products for a large retailer in the U.S. midwest. One of the products I worked with was NetPerceptions. The software was developed out of a research program at the University of Minnesota in 1992 and is based on the [...]
Packaged goods in traditional retail have a very different meaning to packaged goods in the travel space. In retail, a packaged product is a product that is sold in a “package”, ie. a box or a blister pack (literally packaged). In travel, a packaged product is one that is a combination of two separate products [...]
Joe Buhler sent me a link to a New York Times article titled “Worst Part of a Trip May be Booking It“. The article describes how frustrating the on-line booking experience can be for many consumers and how far behind the travel industry seems to be in comparison to other e-commerce sectors. We continued the [...]
Before you can run, you must first learn to walk. You’ve all heard this many times in your lifetime. Although the saying is overused, it is used because it is true. Although the saying can be applied to travel product distribution, in many cases the players are not even crawling yet. The challenge with any [...]
Google released their latest labs project called “City Tours” last week. I was quick to jump on the bandwagon and take a look, but I resisted from posting right away because I wanted to think a little more deeply about the implications of the application. Let’s not forget that Google is a powerhouse and, if [...]
One of the biggest challenges for any on-line business, especially on-line travel businesses is building trust with the on-line consumer. In my Tourism week post titled “Building On-line Credibility” I discussed ways that businesses can build their credibility on-line. In this post, I am going to share with you my five favorite tools for building [...]
For many in travel, distribution would be considered the lifeblood of the industry. The triumverate of travel, or the BIG THREE of distribution, would tend to agree. These companies, born from the days when the only products you could distribute were airline tickets, have now expanded into other products like hotel rooms, cruise, and car [...]
One of my favorite things about speaking at conferences and seminars around the World is what I learn while I’m there. I often find that I learn just as much being at these confernences as the attendees learn from me. One such experience was at the Creative Lapland Seminar in Rovaniemi, Finland. The theme of [...]
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