Monday, September 11, 2006

Needitnow is going to do....something

Travelweekly is reporting that AOT "plans to pour more resources into its online brand, Need it Now". There is nothing specific in the article at all to give us an idea as to what this means just generic/bland comments like "allocating additional resources" and "bolster its product
range". What possible commentary can you make to that except - "that's nice but WHO CARES". I am so over PR and market commentary from companies that effectively says

"We really plan to do something to make our business bigger and take advantage of changing market conditions"

Blah blah blah. Tell me something interesting. Tell me you are going to:
  • do a revoluationary deal with a social networking site to combine distribution with reviews
  • improve amenity and activity search on your site to allow for activity as well as destination searching
  • hire a particularly smart person (with their name)
  • add unique indepdent property inventory (homestead, B&B, beach rental) with instant confirmation
  • etc
Something that will make youre competitors blink twice infront of their computer and think - damn why didn't we do that first. You can picture now the panic that must be occuring in Brisbane right now as Wotif managment run around screaming "Holly HELL - Needitnow have threatened to do something....quick...we need to do something straight back at them...."

This is not just an AOT problem but these comments were the straw that unleashed my rant (if you can excuse the mixed metaphor).
Posted by at
Labels:

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

so what your saying is take a market leader in inbound, whom has purchased a majoity share in a business, then try to join all the business with several legacy technologies that arent working as a collective, unlike Travelport, and do something IT savy that requires capital investment and infrastrucure to increase market share like Mr Asif whom has a capitalisation of hundreds of millions of $$$$$ ?

14 September 2006 at 7:35 pm
Tim Hughes said...

My point in this post was that it is no longer good enough for either a company or a media organisation to print a press release that effectively says nothing. As a company if you are going to tell a story to the market then make it interesting - do not just say "we are doing something". More so for the media company - do not sully your paper with pointless press releases.

I like the AOT business and congratulate them on the NSW and QLD holiday deals as well as their inbound and domestic strength. Needitnow has a big hill to climb to challenge RatesToGo, Wotif and Lastminute.com but they have always known that. It is right that they take action to grow their business but it is going to need to be more than spending money on marketing because Wotif and Travelport have more to spend.

15 September 2006 at 9:04 am

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)