Search, Social and Mobile- pre Eyefortravel thoughts via eHotelier

I am speaking this year at Eyefortravel May 18-19 in Singapore

I have put together some pre-conference predictions for 2011 (based on by full 2011 predictions). They were picked up and published in a post on eHotelier along side predictions from Robert Bailey of Abacus and (Professor) Timothy O'Neil-Dunne of LUTE technologies (and so much more). Check out the full text here.

My predictions are:

• Search changes (again); Search already changed forever in 2010. There is more to come in 2011, especially in the measure of authority. The old measure of inbound links will be enhanced with input from social networks, context and location, expert advice, preference matching and more. Search marketing will have to change to encompass content, social, information syndication and data mining. All suppliers and all OTAs will need to ensure that their SEO experts and agents are on top of this change. In addition to the changes in authority, search will change in how results are displayed;
• Social media will challenge search and retail: the parallel rises of social media, customers asking more complicated (and open) questions online and consumers willingness to discuss and share everything openly and freely will drive through 2011 a change the way the industry attracts and retains customers. The traffic numbers of Facebook, Twitter, foursquare etc are all but unprecedented. But it is not their rise that is the story. The story is the consumer behaviour behind the rise of these products. Pick your metaphor - consumers have opened the kimono, dropped their pants or invited everyone in to their lives. Nothing is sacred. Everything can and will be shared. Marketing channels will need to be adjusted. Communications techniques changed. Customer care models and response times adjusted. Even sales channels will need to be reworked. Get ready for social search, book and buy; and
• Mobile becomes a distinction without meaning: iPhone did for the smart phones what diet coke did for soda. It created a category, lifted other categories with it and made people buy more of everything around it. The consequence is that people are using their phones (and now tablets) while they are on the move and as a replacement for laptops. Mobile no longer means mobile. By that I mean people will sit in meetings, on couches as home, at the desk...anywhere...everywhere...expecting to be connected. Not caring if a device is called a phone, tablet or netbook. Just caring that it gets them the content or experience they want. The result is device platform discussions will move from "which product is this built for" to "is this compatible for all displays". Much like we now say that a site has to be web ready rather than differentiating between its readiness on FireFox, Chrome, Safari, opera and IE. The type of the device and whether or not it is mobile is now irrelevant. Mobile/PC/Tablet will be the different "browsers" of 2011. All code will need to be written in preparation for this.
  

For a reminder of my thoughts on last year's Eyefortravel check out this post.

Cleartrip CEO : 15 months in the black. Targeting hotels, display advertising and Dubai

Cleartrip may be the smallest of the big 3 (ok medium 3) of the online Indian full service OTA business but Founder & Director, Product and Strategy Hrush Bhatt is far from worried. During a coffee break chat at eyefortravel TDS in Singapore last month Hrush told me that he is not taking being number 3 too hard. In fact he is celebrating the size difference. He tells me that although MakeMyTrip may have 1,300 employees to Yatra’s 8-900 and Cleartrip’s 260 Hrush is unworried having reported his 15th month in a row of profitability.

[UPDATE - since publishing this post I have been told that Cleartrip is bigger than Yatra and the clear number two to MakeMyTrip. I don't have numbers to confirm but it clear that the battle has only just started]

Air is still a critical part of the business but like much of the online world he and Cleartrip are targeting hotels for growth. Again like much of the online travel world he is using some creative hiring practices to help Cleartrip get there. Cleartrip have hired the founder of the Travelguru to lead their hotel contracting efforts. Travelguru was bought by Travelocity in August 2009. Current hotel count is 1,400, when it gets to around 1,800 to 2,000 Hrush says that Cleartrip will begin a marketing push.

I was interested to hear that one of the main marketing efforts for Cleartrip was display advertising. After each of Yatra, MakMyTrip and Cleartrip reached a “gentlemen’s agreement” to not bid on each other’s brand terms in search advertising it freed up a lot of marketing spend to invest in display.

This is not the only way that the Indian market has a different twist to emerging online travel markets. While India maybe smaller than the more mature Asian online travel markets Japan and Australia the target population have been online since 1996. That means by the time online travel started to take off in India in 2006, the population had already been online for ten years, allowing for speedy growth and rapid adoption. PhoCusWright reported this week that the 2009 Indian online travel market was US$3.4 billion (Indian Online Travel Intermediary Review).

On functionality, Cleartrip have taken a Kayak look and feel approach to travel (as opposed to the more traditional OTA look of MakeMyTrip). This is deliberate according to Hursh. They are looking to new approaches to travel search, targeting the image lite Google like approach of text boxes.

Hrush is also looking to expansion beyond India. Cleartrip.ae is now live and targeting consumers in Dubai. Not a traditional place of expansion for an Asian online travel company but in Hrush's view Cleartrip already have some awareness and it is a small enough market for Cleartrip to test expansion

Want to read more on Cleartrip? I was not the only one to catch up with Hrush in Singapore. Check out Siew Hoon's piece called "Cleartrip out to make the world smaller".

Overhead at Eyefortravel TDS – social media stole my conference

The word social media appeared nowhere in the title for Eyefortravel’s Trave Distribution Summit Asia (they have other conferences that do) but it was the number one topic from presenters on April 29 in Singapore.

In my keynote, I spoke about the rise of transactional questions on Facebook and Twitter. I highlighted a number of examples of consumers using twitter and Facebook to ask questions that are begging for advertisers to provide answers. Opening up social search as a real competitor for Google. Sharat Dhall of Tripadvisor spoke of the never ending flood of user reviews/photos and hotelier responses. Particularly of interest in his presentation was the launch of TripWow and how Tripadvisor is expanding their insatiable lust for content from text to photos. Joe Nguyen of comScore showed the numbers with a left to right sharp incline for Facebook travel stats. Starwood spoke of having 1 million mentions in social media in 2 weeks (though many of us weren’t sure the numbers were right). Brett Henry of Abacus called Foursquare and Gowalla as the future must watch emerging businesses. Morris Sim of Circos Brand Karma told a story of a 4000% ROI on a social media marketing campaign (though admitted that scaling it was extraordinarily hard). Aloke Bajpai of ixiGo spoke of the future of apps and mobile as social devices – as soon as someone launches a more advanced mechanism for app search and discover. Even speakers that started by expressing concern that the conference had become dominated by social media talk ended up talking non stop about the user forums on their site.

It turned me to thinking about whether or not it was fair to hijack the conference and talk so much on this one area of consumer interaction and marketing. On one level it is understandable given that social networking sites are generating the most traffic, buzz, funding and consumer attention. But (as I said in my keynote) we cannot allow ourselves to get caught up in excitement and forget that the number one online battle ground for transactions is still on Google/Yahoo/Baidu/Naver etc. We must get engaged in social networking and content but cannot take our eye, money and talent off the traditional search battleground. My tip for social media was to focus on data, content and customer monitoring first them look to transactions in social media in a year or two (or three). For more on my thoughts see my post ad:tech thoughts here.

Some of the hoteliers in attendance may have felt disappointed that they did not hear more about how to rank on Google, spend on banners effectively, sign up with OTAs, manage content and improve SEO performance. This is was not a conference for talking about what to do now in the places that generate traffic and business. This was a conference for thinking about what was next – where we talked about how to engage with an audience that wants to talk to you and be with you online.

Attendance was solid in terms of numbers with a majority hoteliers, then online agents then technology and service providers. I have been noticing more and more that airlines have all but stopped turning up to online specific conference, limiting themselves to airline specific ones. On the format, eyefortravel are pulling good quality speakers but it is time to do away with the 3x15+QA format. That is the format where each session has three speakers giving a 15 minute presentation each followed by panel Q&A. Conferences like this need less power point and more QA and interview formats. Moving the format away from collective presentations to interview and panels will reduce the sales pitching that continues to creep (and sometimes storm) in and increase the speed at which the conversation gets to the interesting analysis.

Finally snaps to Don Birch who was a great chair. Insightful questions and summaries.

Eyefortravel TDS: follow tweets at #tdsasia

Will be at Eyefortravel TDS Thursday April 29. Keynote presentation in the morning on Future Trends and Technology in Travel. Then tweeting at #tdsasia. Follow me via @timothychughes or search #tdsasia.

BOOT at eyefortravel TDS Singapore April 28-29

Assuming Eyjafjallajoekul calms down enough to let people get to and from Singapore then the BOOT will join scores of others next week at the Eyefortravel Travel Distribution Summit Asia at the Marina Mandarin in Singapore April 28-29.

I am part of the day 2 keynote (April 29) called "Future Trends and Technology in Travel – Planting the Seeds for Profit". Will be on stage with

• Sajith Sivanandan - Head of Travel, Retail and Automotive Google South East Asia. Sanjith's pre-conference interview is here.
• Mark Inkster, General Manager, Microsoft Online Services Asia. Morris' pre-conference interview is here
  
• Morris Sim, Co Founder, Circos Brand Karma

The official blurb for the session is

The progression of technology and innovation in the travel industry continues at a quickening pace and Asian countries are closing the gap on their western counterparts. The dizzying pace has the power to undermine existing revenue models or create exciting and highly lucrative new opportunities for those in the know. Learn from the best to save you time and make you money.

More on the schedule here. Not too late to register here.

Part one of my pre-conference interview is here. Part two is here.

Let me know if you are going to be there on the 29th and would like to organise time to meet me

BOOT eyefortravel interview: search, mobile, social networking, innovation, Asia and more part 2

Part 2 of pre-conference interview with with Ritesh Guptaof eyefortravel in the lead up to the TDS conference in Singapore April 28 & 29. Part 1 here.

Question - Can you provide an insight into how does search differ for mobile phones vis-a-vis PC? What according to you are the striking differences?

BOOT - The easy answer is location. A phone knows so much more about your current location than a PC. This gives mobile a huge advantage over PC search in servicing an immediate requirement. But there are challenges here too. A mobile can assume too much about a location. Just because I am travelling in Tokyo does not mean that I want the answer to the question to be in Japanese. The other challenge for mobile is that the platforms are still not uniform in display. Thankfully we are down to a much smaller list of mobile browsers/operating systems that previously but still there are differences between iphone, windows mobile, blackberry, palm and symbian which call challenges in display. This is where apps come in as content providers are trying to get around the browser and device compatibility by using apps to control display and information management to consumers.

Question - The progression of technology and innovation in the travel industry continues at a quickening pace and Asian countries are closing the gap on their western counterparts. What according to have been the major developments in this context in Asia?

BOOT - Innovation is always driven by local requirements and demand patterns. Therefore there are examples across Asia of markets driving product development well ahead of the US or Europe. India leads the world in online bus ticket sales and low cost carrier and traditional carrier display integration. Japan leads the world in online hotel bookings via mobile phones. China leads the world in call centre same day hotel bookings. The mistake many make in planning for innovation is to look to the technology first rather than the business need. As I discussed in this post the secret to innovation is as much about timing, social readiness and execution as it is about a great technology idea. Therefore the major development in Asia that is driving innovation is not a technology one it is a attitudinal shift and market maturity. A display of confidence within the Asian travel industry that dedicated market specific solutions can be put together to target customer needs rather than simply copying what the global OTAs are doing in Europe and America.

Question - What are you most looking forward to at TDS Asia? Who are you most looking forward to meeting at the event?

BOOT - Conferences are always about people watching and meeting. That is what I am looking forward to. The best person you meet at a good conference is the person you weren't expecting to meet. Someone you did not know that you needed to know - if you know what I mean :).

BOOT eyefortravel interview: search, mobile, social networking, innovation, Asia and more part 1

I have just completed an email interview with Ritesh Guptaof eyefortravel in the lead up to the TDS conference in Singapore April 28 & 29. Here is part 1 of our exchange (part 2 here).

Question - Do you think predicting user preferences is the biggest unsolved problem in online travel? How do you assess the integration of social search into online travel?

BOOT - I am a strong believer that all companies in online travel should be focusing on understanding users and working on predictive and recommendation engines. But it is a mistake to come at this from just a user preference angle. The trap that companies are falling into is thinking that consumers are still asking "closed" questions. Questions that can be answered with an easy or direct response. Questions like "how much for a flight to new york?, "which hotel should I stay in in Rome?". These are the questions consumers asked for the first 15 years of online travel. Now consumers are also asking open ended questions like "where should I go next?, "what is a good place to go this weekend?". Questions that require a more detailed answer and therefore a very detailed understanding of not only the preferences of the user but also the relationship between those preferences and the destinations available and the different versions of the individual that is searching (my concept of EveryYou). Social networking's role in this is the role that word of mouth has always played in marketing and travel purchases. A force that can be instrumental in a consumer's purchase decision which can be influenced, prodded, supported but never controlled. The difference between Social Networking marketing and word of mouth marketing is just speed. Social network is word of mouth at the speed of light.

Question - Today Google's algorithms are still quite a bit of a black box for professional search marketers. The semantic web should make it more efficient to create and manage online campaigns, because there will be less left to algorithmic interpretation. How do you assess this viewpoint?

BOOT - Google has won search - game over. There are countries were they are weaker (Japan, Korea, China for example) and products where they are weaker (local search and business listings for example) but let's not kid ourselves about who has won search. That said, "old search" is about providing a single destination as an answer to a question. Regardless of the search term, Google only presents a list of single answer destinations. If an answer to the search request is found through information from a combination of different websites then Google (or any search site for that matter) do not have the answer. The other constraint on Google and old search is the limited scope for incorporating and merging the latest up to date with results with older more trusted results. Google has been experimenting with incorporating real time search in their results (example here) but they have not yet figured out how to establish authority in real time search or change the display to be more than an never ending stream of updated information. The Semantic web should be part of the solution here but I still feel we are a while away from implementation because we have not figured out new rules for authority and new methods for display. Maybe Google have but there are just not saying yet!

Question - Google, which last year had introduced a new experiment on Google Labs called Google Social Search, has added a social element to Google Images. With Social Search, Google finds relevant public content from your friends and contacts and highlights it for you at the bottom of your search results. What is going to be the next big thing or trend in social search engine marketing?

BOOT - If you agree with my comments about that marketing of social networking is just like marketing through word of mouth but at the speed of light then the next big things in social network marketing are finding ways to adjust word of mouth marketing to a faster/instantaneous medium. The basics of word of mouth market are trust, interest and relevance. For a consumer to be prepared to share a product, idea, story, service etc with a friend they have to trust the source, be interested in the item/thing and think that it is relevant to others in their circle. Social network marketers need to have these three human elements at the centre of each campaign. The mistake that I see so often is jumping to a technological solution to marketing on social networking rather than the human elements. We can see this in the constant screw ups at Facebook with privacy as they launch new privacy crushing rules and products to give marketers access to customer data. My advice is to turn to the technology second and the human elements first. Establish trust then make something relevant and interesting. If you do, consumers will follow. The final thing to remember as a marketer in social networks - and the 21st century for that matter - is to accept that you have limited control over what your customers will say about your brand. The response to that lack of control is communication and discussion (ie engagement) not defamation, litigation and IP laws (ie stupidity).

Question - This year, we have already seen a couple of significant moves from Apple and Google towards mobile advertising. How do you foresee the impact on search and social media via mobile phones on the travel industry?

BOOT- Up until recently I have been a mobile denier. Mainly because every year since 2000 has been THE year that mobile would take over PC as the place for online action. Google's purchase of AdMob is the turning point. Not because when Google does something it means we have to take a trend seriously but because it means we know have non-transactional revenue streams for mobile activity. The problem for mobile has been that people stop at the credit card entry point. For a variety of reasons people that are completely comfortable putting their cc number into a PC or giving it to a bartender covered in tats and piercing in the off-line world have hesitated when asked to give it to a mobile phone. With Google betting on mobile advertising we have a biz model outline. A means for content and transactional companies to make money in mobile. That is the step that has been needed - more that the continued roll out of smart phone technology and more than the expansion of social networks.

more in part 2

BOOT presenting at Eyefortavel Asia April 29

I will be at Eyefortravel Travel Distribution Summit Asia on April 29 in Singapore (conference runs through April 28 as well). Conference details here.

The sessions will be the day 2 Keynote called

"Future Trends and Technology in Travel – Planting the Seeds for Profit."

I will be on a panel with

• Rob Torres - Vertical Director Travel Worldwide Google
• Mark Inkster, General Manager, Microsoft Online Services Asia
• Morris Sim, Co Founder, Circos Brand Karma

The panel blurb is

The progression of technology and innovation in the travel industry continues at a frenetic speed and Asian countries are rapidly closing the gap on their western counterparts. This dizzying pace of change has the power to either undermine existing revenue models or create exciting and highly lucrative new opportunities for those in the know.

• Prepare your travel business for the future. Cut through the hype and identify the technologies that will add real value and reap the largest rewards.
• What will be “the next big thing”? Know where (and where not!) to invest to ensure ROI is real, abundant and measurable
• The way your customer interacts with the web is changing. How can you continue to reach and influence travelers in a dynamic, user led online environment?
• Travel 3.0?...How will developments in the semantic web enable more complex and sophisticated trip planning for online travelers?

701 not out

This last 100 posts has flown by. It is time for my regular "not out series" where I recap the last 100 posts and remind you of the themes that have been dominating the blog. I started almost three years ago with 101 not out and continued with 201, 301, 401, 501. and 601 not out.

I spent a lot of the last 100 posts attending and covering the big online travel conferences of Oceania, Asia and the US. A couple of highlights:

From TRAVELtech in Sydney

• Richard Noon of Webjet estimating the Australian turnover of Expedia, Zuji and Travel.com.au; and
  
• WorldNomads the inspiring Footprints charity program with the fantastic marketing and conversion benefits.

From Eyefortravel in Sydney

• Me talking about helping consumers navigate too much information;

From WebInTravel in Singapore

• Alfred Chang of Ctrip sharing his views of the market share "online" in China;
• Ram of PhoCusWright hosting an interesting round table on India with heads from Makemytrip and Yatra; and
  
• Phillip Wolf and Ram Badrinathan of PhoCusWright and me talking about online travel, Google, UGC, the Economy and (of course) Asia.
  

From PhoCusWright in LA

• I tried to sort out all of the trip planning sites and mobile applications;
• We heard interesting stories from the bosses of Expedia, Priceline and Kayak; and
• We came across the interesting way in which an offline publisher in Germany (MairDumont) is supporting and online trip planner (TripWolf).
  

While I was busy at Gabfests the world went into an economic death spiral:

• XL went bust, Alitalia too (kind of); But
  
• Uptake, HomeAway, and TripWolf managed to raise some money, bucking the trend.
  

I touched on some (in my view) interesting themes including

• Whether or not BA did a good or bad job point all of their Highlife content online;
• Whether or not Google has too much influence over how we design our websites and content strategies; and
• Whether or not you should use paid search as a place for a he said, she said bitch fight.
  

And in BOOT news

• We watched live on the Internet as a family member escaped from the horrors of the attacks on Mumbai
  
• We hit 1,000 subscribers;
• You heard me talk to Addison Schonland;
  
• I saw a man die at Hong Kong airport;
  
• We joined the Recombobulation Revolution!!!
  

I'm having a blast writing, I hope you are enjoying the reading.

PS - in case you happen to be counting this is actually post 703

BOOT Presentation at Eyefortravel Asia Pacific (with audio)

Back in July I was the Chair at the Eyefortravel Asia Pacific Sales and Marketing in Travel conference. I also gave a presentation.

Here is the audio file if you would like to listen

Here are the slides if you want to see them

If you not bored of hearing me speak there is also yesterday's 10 minute podcast interview with Addison Schonland.