Video of the BOOT at WebInTravel - talking search, inspiration and the future of online travel

Channelling The Customer: Bridging The Chasm Between Inspiration & Transaction from WebInTravel on Vimeo.

Siew Hoon and WebInTravel team are posting over here a series of full length videos from the WebInTravel. If you want to see me and a panel talking about search, inspiration, the customer and the future of online travel then press play above or follow this link

WebInTravel: 10 things I overheard from about trends (Tnooz)

Yesterday I posted via Tnooz 10 things I overheard from companies at WebInTravel. Today part 2 of that post is live. It covers ten industry trends and market inteligence pieces I overheard. Post is called "Part Two of Two: The Asian online travel zeitgeist". Topics covered include China, Digital Marketing, Japan, Indonesia, Airlines, mobile, social media and search. Full post here

Introducing the Twelevator Pitch - an elevator pitch in the age of Twitter

I helped out at the WebInTravel Innovation Bootcamp as a start-up mentor. In this I was advising a start up on their 5 min pitch to investors. Four companies pitched, then broke with their mentors for a 1 hour workshop, then pitched again. Three of the four will get to hit the WIT Mainstage. More details here

I won't mention the name of the company that I helped out because their pitch was in real trouble from the beginning. After their initial 5 minute pitch I had no clear idea what their product was. This was not a question of complexity or being too deep in technology. Rather their pitch had so many different angles, commentary and ideas in it that the product could be anything from a dating site, social network, trip planning site, content site, niche online agent, community site and more.

The first job we had as mentors was to get the company to describe their product in a quick and clean format. I set them a challenge. Break for 5 minutes and come back to the mentor group with a tweet like 140 character description of the product - what a laughingly called later on a twelevator pitch. Our reasoning for this is that a start up has to be focused. To be focused you need a simple goal and product aim. If your product/business can't be described in a 140 characters then chances are different parts of the start up team have different ideas as to what the company is working on and will pull the company in different directions.

I knew the start up was in trouble when 15 mins later the team had still not returned with a product description tweet. In those 15 mins they were debating as a group what it is they wanted to do and constructed a long and involved idea. Eventually they did return but with closer to 280 characters of pitch.

We put together a new pitch for the rest of the period but the lack of focus in the start up was telling.

There are a lot of elements that a start-up needs to include in a venture pitch but before you do anything make sure you can describe your product in a short sharp twelevator pitch.

Thanks to splorp for this great photo via flickr

WebInTravel: Come see the BOOT at WebInTravel Singapore Oct 19 -22

It is not too late to book your ticket to join the BOOT and hundreds of others travel professionals at WebInTravel in Singapore (alongside ITB Asia) October 19-22. The full schedule for the event is here. Registration details here.

There is a lot of the BOOT to see at this conference. For BOOT specific sessions, I will be presenting as follows

Presentation Number 1

First up I will present and the pre-conference WITovation Entrepreneur Bootcamp at the LKC School of Business on Oct 18. I am in a session moderated by Tnooz editor Kevin May called

1130am Innovation Exchange: What's hot and what's not, what's working and what's not, and what's coming round the corner. Experts pick out the current tools and technology that are changing the landscape and predict the ones to come. On the panel are

• Andrew McGlinchey, Head of Product Management, Southeast Asia, Google South East Asia
• Brett Henry, Vice-President, Marketing, Abacus International
• Timothy O' Neil-Dunne, CTO, Lute Technologies and blogger
  
• Ross Veitch, Chief Product Officer, Wego

Presentation Number 2

On Oct 19 at Suntec I am on the opening panel with joint moderators conference organiser Yeoh Siew Hoon and Tnooz's Kevin May.

845am Hitting The C-Spot: Cross-Fire: Two teams will compete against each other to come up with the best customer insights that they believe will drive change in travel distribution and marketing.

Team 1 is

• Ram Badrinathan, General Manager-Asia Pacific & Vice President, Learning Solutions, PhoCusWright Inc.
• Morris Sim, CEO & Co-Founder, Circos Brand Karma
• Robbie Cooke, Managing Director & Group CEO, Wotif Group

Team 2 is

• The BOOT
  
• Timothy O'Neil-Dunne, CTO, Lute Technologies & Blogger, Professor Sabena
• Brett Henry, Vice President, Marketing, Abacus International

Presentation Number 3

Later on the 19th I am leading a panel.

3pm Channelling The Customer: Bridging The Chasm Between Inspiration & Transaction

Three part session.

For the opening 10 minutes I will present on new opportunities in search, inspiration and consumer engagement. Carl Griffith of Cloud View will follow with 5 minutes on "What the Consumer Wants". Then we have 35 minutes of Q&A with some of the best in online travel and search

• Martin Symes, CEO, Wego
• Sajith Sivanandan, Head of Travel, Retail & Automotive, Google South East Asia
• Olivier Dombey, Chief Information Officer, Hoteltravel.com
• Wee Hee Ling, CEO, Commonwealth Tourism Holdings
• Hrush Bhatt, Founder & Director, Cleartrip/Small World
• Josh Steinitz, CEO, NileGuide
• Mark Inkster, Managing Director, Search Alliance, Microsoft

Here is a hint of some of the questions I will put to the panel

• Can tradditional search adjust to responding to open ended questions?
• Sociograph vs Tastegraph - what role will they play in any search evolution/revolution. Which one will win? Or Both? How?
• Yen Lee of review meta-search site Uptake wrote a post "meta-search is done!long live meta-search" . In it he argued that traditional priced based meta-search was in real trouble because the business model of arbitrage between buying traffic off Google at one price and selling that same traffic to suppliers/OTAs at another price was not sustainable. What do you think? Has the cost of paid search irrevocably changed meta-search?
• Paid search on head terms is so expensive that it is arguable that search is not longer a direct response media but a brand building form of media. Is that true or is there still direct response money to be made in search?
• You are a hotel in a major Asian city (Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sydney, Bangkok). You are in a great location, have good reviews on social sites, are competitively priced and have great website. But when someone types in "hotels in [city]" into Google you are on page 4. Not surprising given that there are 500,000+ results on Google for that search term. What do you do as this hotel to get anywhere near page 1? Or do you give up on page 1 dreams and turn online marketing activity to somewhere else?

And more....

Presentation Number 4

On Oct 22 at Suntec I will be joining one of the WIT Ideas Lab sessions.

09.45 Social Media, Search, Mobile & Stuff: insights about Social Media, Search & other stuff that the Web is made up of.

• The BOOT
  
• Morris Sim, CEO & Co-Founder, Circos Brand Karma
• Brett Henry, Vice-President, Marketing and Vice-President, India, Abacus International

Four sessions, more live BOOT than ever before.

WITovation at WebInTravel 2010 Singapore October 18

I will be attending the WebInTravel conference in Singapore October 19-22 alongside the ITB Asia event. One of the sub-events at WebInTravel is the WITovation Entrepreneur's Bootcamp.

Is a great place for start-ups to meet with online travel executives, practices their pitches and network with other start-ups. Three finalists from the Bootcamp will get to pitch during the main conference.

If you a start-up interested in participating then check out the registration and entry details here.

Mentors during the day will include

• Me
• Andrew McGlinchey, Head of Products, Southeast Asia, Google;
  
• Brett Henry, Vice President Marketing, Abacus International;
  
• Hrush Bhatt, Founder, Cleartrip, India;
  
• Loh Lik Peng, hotelier and restaurateur, Singapore;
  
• Martin Symes, CEO, Wego (pictured);
  
• Morris Sim, Co-Founder and CEO, Circos Brand Karma;
  
• Timothy O’Neil-Dunne, CTO, Lute;
  
• William Bao Bean, Partner, Softbank China & India Holdings; and
  
• Wu Hai Founder & CEO, Orange Hotel Group

More details here