Are Carbon Offsets the New Snake Oil? - Planning for a Greener 2008

So the response to my original post has been pretty good. I managed to stir up some emotions relating carbon offsets to snake oil, but that was after all my point. I didn’t really want to sensationalize it too much, but I did want to make the point that, right now, it is buyer beware. Scott, from Search Intelligence, Peter from Sustainable Travel, and Ian from Philathropic Travel all brought up really good points about the industry so I thought I would shift focus away from the potential problems with the market and focus on what you, as an organization or a consumer should look for in... Read more »

Are Carbon Offsets the New Snake Oil?

** Note: I updated the post based on feedback I received from Peter at STI. Thanks to Peter for helping to clarify some of the inaccuracies. Additions are noted in green. I was contacted recently by a client who wanted to integrate a carbon offsetting program into the checkout process of their travel booking engine. They had been recommended to partner with a company (who shall remain nameless) who sells Carbon Offsets. Upon further investigation, I learned some very important information about Carbon Offset schemes. In response to the request from my client, I contacted Peter Krahenbuhl,... 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 »

MLM Travel Business vs. Affilliate Sites

Alex Bainbrigde over at Travel UCD wrote about a company called Your Travel Business (YTB.com). I had heard about this MLM travel business a few years ago when it first started and I paid it very little heed. I am quite surprised that it has managed to last this long. To my surprise it is now publicly traded and boasts over $226 Million in sales in 2006. I have to admit however, that my perspective is ofcourse that of a technologist and not that of a laymen, so my review is strictly from a technologist’s point of view. I reviewed the online booking system and I was quite surprised at... Read more »

Suppliers Winning the Battle for Online Travel

An interesting article on Travel Industry Wire about hotel and airline suppliers who are bypassing intermediaries by selling directly to consumers. For some reason, this seems to a hot topic today even though this has been around for many many years. During the first Internet bubble, when OTAs first started to appear, airlines were cutting commissions all over the place in the arrogant belief that consumers would flock to their online booking sites. The result was disastrous, especially in Canada, where traditional travel agents started unofficially boycotting airlines who were actively cutting... Read more »

Managed Content is dead, long live UGC

I’ve been commenting a lot recently about the impact that user generated content is having on travel and tourism online. Now it would seem that others are also recognizing that ugc is quickly becoming the content of choice for most savvy travelers. In a recent post, Jens Thraenhart, commented that DMOs and other tourism agencies also had to start looking at ugc seriously if they want to continue effectively marketing to a growing online audience. In my previous post titled “Keeping Travel Agents Relevant“, I discuss how travel agents can increase their value to clients by providing... Read more »

More on AdCenter and Long Tail Advertising

Further to my comments about Adcenter, relying on MSN and Live profile information for the purposes of targeting advertising seems unreliable to me. Perhaps Microsoft is hoping that the majority of users who sign up for online systems like MSN, Hotmail, and Live will enter their true profile information when signing up. If the majority of users knew that their profile information was being used to target advertising to them more effectively I doubt that the average user would be inclined to enter true profile information. Besides email service, which you can get through Gmail or a number of... Read more »

Travel/Tourism & Web 2.0

I finally found a site that mentions both travel and web 2.0 in the same article: “In the world of travel, disparate data from direct sources, travel agents and intermediaries made it nearly impossible to find the best price or options for an itinerary. Sites like Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz transformed that forever (and sites like Kayak are creating even more efficiency).” Found on http://www.seomoz.org/web2.0/zeitgeist Although I understand the context of the statement, the writer, Rand Fishkin, misses one important point when it is applied to these sites. In all... Read more »