Presentation for Florida Association of CVBs Annual Marketing Conference

Thank you to the Florida Association of CVBs for inviting me down to Gainesville Florida to speak at the FACVBs Annual Marketing Conference. The Conference was a big success and many of the people who were in my afternoon session provided me with positive feedback on the presentation. I really enjoy doing these presentations because I think it helps to take some of the mystery and fear out of these relatively new and sometimes “scary” tools. For those who would like to print out or review the presentations, I have embedded the two presentations below. If you are unable to see them,... Read more »

Chris Anderson’s Free & the Booking Engine

I’ve been a huge fan for Chris Anderson for a long time. It seemed to me that the “Long Tail” completely supported my own motivation behind building Rezgo, a web based booking engine that would put inventory and distribution control into the hands of the individual supplier. Now with his latest article in Wired magazine and his upcoming book, I am again inspired by his words. In his article titled “Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business“, Chris explains that because of the decreasing costs of hardware and bandwidth, it is possible to monetize digital businesses... 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 »

Long Tail Suppliers are starting to have impact on Online Travel

PWC recently stated that suppliers are gaining ground over aggregators in the online travel marketplace. I had discussed this in context to another recent survey that said the same thing, however, what I liked about this article from Travelmole.com was the following quote: “Already there are companies offering a wider range of services unrelated to travel - theatre tickets, restaurant bookings and theme park entry for example. This can result in increased customer loyalty and higher revenues per booking for the online operator.” This quote represents a significant shift in how aggregators... Read more »

Michelle Peluso - CEO of Travelocity - Evolving the user interface

Michelle Peluso, CEO of Travelocity focused her talk on improving the user interface for consumers of travel products. The presentation was the first of an excellent series of presentations by top brand executives. Here is a summary of her presentation and my commentary from the PhoCusWright Conference 2007 in Orlando. Ms. Peluso’s opening comment was that the collective travel user interface needs be bigger and bolder, but that I believe she was referring to the need to provide more overall experience for the end consumer, rather than simply providing an interface to purchase travel products.... Read more »

Activity, Event, and Local Tour Operators… Pay Attention - Part 1

Kevin May at the Travolution Blog posted a great little factoid about business travel. In a nutshell, Johnson & Johnson’s business travel budget was $915 Million of which $643 Million was spent on Long tail products like events, tours, taxis, airport shuttles, and rental cars. On top of that, 64% of business travelers purchased event tickets. This tells me something very important. Firstly, activity and attraction operators play a very important role in the tourism ecosystem. Secondly, in order to better serve the traveling public, sme operators need to consider making their products... Read more »

Truth is Online Gold Dust -President & CEO, Stephen Kaufer

Stephen Kaufer, CEO of Tripadvisor provided an engaging presentation about truth online and the effect that Tripadvisor has had of the travel industry. He discussed how products like TripAdvisor are promoting long tail products by allowing users to rate and comment on all types of accommodations and activities, not just those that are popular or well established. He noted that a tree top adventure in Colorado is now the most popular product on TripAdvisor. Mr. Kaufer went on to discuss that… Honest Brokers = Truth Social Networks = Trust …and that by combining honest brokers with... Read more »

First Ever Major Travel Industry Blogger Workshop @ PhoCusWright

From Left to Right: Ram Badrinathan (not in photo), William Bakker, Jens Thraenhart, Stephen Joyce, Kevin May, and Phil Caines. Photo Credit: Vicky Brock The Blogger Workshop at the PhoCusWright Conference in Orlando was a huge success. Phil and I, miraculously, arrived at the conference a mere forty-five minutes before the workshop was to begin. Phil hurried to make sure the room was prepared while I connected with some of the expert panelists. The workshop began with an introduction of each of the panelists: Jens Thraenhart (Canadian Tourism Commission) William Bakker (Tourism BC) Kevin... Read more »

Bringing Long Tail Content to the Fore

There has been a lot of discussion over the last year about the long tail of travel and the move to market and sell specialized travel products. PhocusWright’s Senior Strategist John Bray, in a presentation at the 2007 IFITT Enter Conference, elaborated on the primary differences between Travel 1.0 and Travel 2.0. Mr. Bray pointed out that travel 1.0 was about “Searching for the Lowest Fare” whereas Travel 2.0 is about “Finding the Perfect Trip”. What does this mean exactly? Well, it means that consumers are researching, asking questions, and looking for alternatives... Read more »

Top 10 Search Engine Marketing Strategies for Travel Marketers

By Scott MacGregor Director of Marketing and Client Services Search Intelligence Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is now a serious marketing consideration for travel marketers with three-fifths of all online travel shoppers reporting that they rely on search engines as their research and planning resource (source: PhoCusWright). Clearly, search engine visibility can be a major determinant for online success. There is a great deal of good information written on the subject of search marketing, however little focuses on some of the more unique characteristics of travel and even less specifically for... Read more »

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