71% of NextGen Travelers Search On-line

PhoCusWright, in collaboration with Ypartnership, has just released a new survey titled “The NextGen Traveler” which examines the habits and perculiarities of the high tech traveler.  It is an interesting survey because it shows a corelation between the evolution of online travel technology and the effects that this technology has had on the general consumer.  Although it can be argued that this group most likely represents the early adopter component of the population, it is still valid to argue that if the technology has affected this group, it will most likely affect a larger... Read more »

Forecast for November - A Perfect Storm

The theme for this PhoCusWright 2008 is “The Perfect Storm: Search, Shop, Buy.”  The potential for discussion around this theme is intriguing because I think there is a lot of opportunity to show how online travel is blurring the entire process and how some opportunities are clearly being lost because of a lack of consolidation between these distinct travel purchase steps. In my opinion there are actually four distinct steps in the travel planning process: Dream - This is a visionary step where the traveler dreams about where they might want to go based on their unique travel style and lifestyle... Read more »

PhoCusWright to Showcase Hottest Travel 2.0 & Mobile Innovations

The PhoCusWright Conference, for the first time in its history, will be featuring a special summit dedicated to spotlighting the hottest innovations is mobile and web travel technology. The inaugural Travel Innovation Summit will feature 24 handpicked companies from around the World who want to demo their innovations to some of the most influential leaders in the travel & tourism industry. In their own words: Early-stage, emerging and established companies are invited to apply based purely on their innovative accomplishments, regardless of organizational size, age, sector or location. PhoCusWright’s... Read more »

Connecting with Tom Botts, Partner with Hudson Crossing LLC @ PhoCusWright Orlando 2007

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, BUT what really got me excited was the ability to embed comments directly into the video... 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 »

Tips from the T-List Site & Download Available

I got so caught up in getting the “Tips from the T-List” site launched that I completely forgot to post anything about it. Well, the site is live now! You’ve probably already read about it from one of the other T-List authors. I think most of them have already blogged about it. Regardless, I’m pretty happy with the site and its features, which include: Profiles for all authors including links to all their blogs Links to all author’s RSS feeds so you can subscribe to the one’s you want right on the site. The four most recent posts for each author. A consolidated... Read more »

Google and the Wisdom of Crowds with Tim Armstrong at PhoCusWright Orlando 2007

Did you know that 22% of traffic to travel sites is driven by Google! No wonder Google is interested in this area given the amount of traffic around travel websites and the amount of money spent on advertising through Google’s channels. Mr. Amstrong started by saying that connecting with consumers is an important part of the success of marketing a destination. New Zealand Tourism, for example, has done an excellent job of connecting with consumers. The site contains a variety of assets including videos and photos. By combining a variety of assets, they have encompassed all aspects of the... 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 »

Connecting with Eric Bjorndahl, CEO TravBuddy.com @ PhoCusWright Orlando

I had a chance to talk to Eric Bjorndahl, CEO of TravBuddy.com at the Google Moonlight party at the PhoCusWright Conference in Orlando. Travbuddy.com is a popular user generated travel content site that allows people to review, read reviews, and connect with other people or TravBuddies. The site boasts an Alexa ranking of about 30,000 which, although some SEO experts will argue is not a legitimate indication of popularity, is still a very good indication of how well the site ranks against other sites of similar ilk. In this quick interview, Eric talks about TravBuddy.com and shares some his thoughts... 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 »

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