Facilitating the Dream with Kango - Follow-up

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 suppliers will be able to add their product to Kango in the future through a self-submittal.... Read more »

Facilitating the Dream with Kango

The travel purchase life-cycle consists of four primary phases: dream, plan, go, and reminisce. For the most part, the big travel websites have been focused on only one phase of the life-cycle: the go phase. Why? Because that’s where the money is. But, what we have begun to see is a shift in how consumers purchase travel online and, as a result, we are seeing a new breed of site develop around the other three, no less important I might add, phases of the travel purchase life-cycle. Kango is one such site. Spearheaded by Yen Lee, former General Manager of Yahoo’s Travel Division,... Read more »

Expert vs. Amateur Reviews

I’ve been following an ongoing discussion on the WIWIH forums about the effect that expert reviews and amateur reviews have on the reputation of a hotel. I find this discussion particularly interesting because it is directly related to the increasing use of user generated content by travelers in the decision making process. Trip Advisor, among others, have been using amateur user ratings for some time as a way of rating properties in an unbiased manner. The challenge they face now is that property owners have realized that they too can produce their own user generated content in order... Read more »