Tnooz: the future of search is multi-destinational and multi-dimensional

Tnooz is one year old. My latest 1000+ word piece is live called "Google Instant is just the beginning in the search revolution in travel"

In this post I discuss the history and future of search and the role Google Instant is playing. I propose a future that has search being based on more than one destination site (multi-destinational) and more than one way to measure authority and trusted content (multi-dimensional).

check out the full post here.

Virgin Blue starts brand review - why not rebrand Ansett?

News out that Virgin Blue CEO John Borghetti has brought on long term collaborator Hans Hulsbosch to help with a brand review for Virgin Blue.

Hulsbosch previously helped Qantas with their brand review though I think the minimal changes of lengthening the Roo tail and slanting the acronym is more of a tweak than a review.

From press reports it looks like nothing is off the table including scrapping the use of the world "Virgin". Given the current DJ product and announced plans for it, I recommend DJ drop the Virgin brand, write a cheque to administrators KordaMentha and re-brand the whole business Ansett.

I am being facetious of course but there is some rational thinking behind this. Below is a table comparing the Ansett of 2001 with the Virgin Blue product of the same year and of 2010

My point is that as Virgin Blue chases more and more of the Qantas business (aiming to increase corporate share from 5% to 20%) it is getting closer and closer to the Ansett business model and further and further away for what made it a success. From the table you can see that the edgy brand and free food are the last pieces differentiating DJ from Ansett. They need to be very careful in this process that DJ do not end up catching just enough of Qantas share to lose what built their brand and suffer the same fate as Ansett.

PS: for those that don't know Ansett was the long term Star Alliance full service competitor of Qantas that went bust in 2001 after (but not caused by) Sept 11. Virgin Blue launched in August 2000

Stories from TRAVELtech: contemplating the parallel inter-verse

I was at TRAVELtech last week wondering if there is a parallel universe on the internet (inter-verse) that I am not part of. In the Internet that I live in the following rules apply:

• Search: Not all my searches start on Google;
• Starting: Portals are not a starting point but might be a destination (ie Yahoo Finance);
• Creating: I am creating more and more content very day – but writing less and less on my blog;
• Reading: Newspaper sites are fading from view in favour of RSS and news aggregators; and
• Accessing: I am accessing the internet all over place – via my computer, my Apple TV, my Xbox, my blackberry and more.

Three presentations at TRAVELtech reminded me that many people online who do not adhere to these rules and therefore exist in a parallel inter-verse:

• Mark Higginson of Neilsen Online reminded me that a third of Internet users do not use social networks. For these users (and there are a lot of them) the Internet is not a place for inspiration or interaction. It is a functional place. A place to consume content, check details and make purchases. A place to do things and find things out, not to engage, share and...well... just hang out;
• Rohan Lund of Yahoo!7 says that Yahoo! is continuing to expand world-wide as a place for people to start on the Internet. That the portal is still as strong and steady starting point on the Internet for hundreds of millions of users; and
• Warren Livingstone (founder of the Fanatics) proved that the secret to community was tents more than tweets. That communities did not need social media that much to grow and foster.
  

The obvious question upon re-discovering the parallel inter-verse is whether or not it is a place in itself or is it just a staging area. Is it a place where newer users start their internet experience – only to soon progress to the "real" Internet or do these users stay in the functional and controlled parallel inter-verse that is about more than outcomes that experience?

The reason why this is important to think about is that if the parallel inter-verse is a permanent place rather than a staging area then online travel companies need to plan for a different future. I keep talking about a future for online travel around moving from transaction engines to recommendation engines. Around helping consumers move from answering closed questions ("how much for a hotel in Melbourne?") to open ones ("where do I go next?"). A future where some combination of the tastegraph and sociograph combine to make online social interaction as (if not more) rewarding than off. If the functionally focused parallel inter-verse is a permanent place then there is more than one future. A long term functional internet means product people spending time on retail efficiency and on site content products rather than recommendations and syndication. It means more off-line marketing and brand based marketing. It will mean more in website design and less in apps, social media and under the hood data work. My guess is the parallel inter-verse is temporary. That functional only internet use will fade away to be replaced by rules like my rules. What do you think? Is there a parallel inter-verse (or I am making stuff up) and do we have to rewrite the future of the online travel business to take account?

BTW - thanks to Brianam on Flickr for the photo. The context behind the sign (which he says is real) is that Universe St was closed and traffic was being diverted to Rainbow st.

Tnooz: 5 tips for launching a social media strategy

My largest post ever is now live in four parts over at Tnooz. 2,500 words on "5 steps for a travel supplier looking to launch a social media strategy". 5 steps in four parts. Here they are with links to the individual pieces

Step 1 - Decide who you want to talk to and what you want to say

Step 2 - Start monitoring social media. Make it a customer service and marketing priority

Step 3 - Collect data - all of it

Step 4 - Craft product and content plans

Step 5 - Start saying and stick to it

Critical to this analysis is that it is not until Step 5 that full blown social media content creation is recommended.

TRAVELtech 2010: BOOT will be tweeting Tuesday #travtech

TRAVELtech 2010 is on this Tuesday in Sydney (Aug 31). Registration details here. I will be tweeting all day with the hashtag #travtech from 9am.

Speakers I am most looking forward to are

• Orbitz CEO Barney Harford and HotelClub President Jeremy Bellinghausen (but I am biased:) );
• Yahoo!7 CEO Rohan Lund on what their plans are with TotalTravel;
• Traveltainment boss Andy Owen-Jones on whether or not they are coming to Asia; and
• Chris Chambers of Tourism Queensland on a year on from the best job in the world campaign.

Let me know if I will see you there and follow updates from Tuesday via #travtech.

TripAdvisor Sessions: talking tastegraph and sociograph with TripAdvisor Product VP Adam Medros

In part 1 of my interview with TripAdvisor VP of Product Adam Medros we talked through the launch of the TripAdvisor Trip Friends product and the challenges/benefits of living in a Facebook world.

In this part 2 we review the sociograph vs the tastegraph as a means for recommending. Recommendation through the sociograph means drawing advice and responses from those in the same social network as a user. The tastegraph refers to basing recommendations and search results on the preferences of and feedback from people who like the same things as the user regardless of the existence or not of a social connection.

I asked Medros what he thought about these two trends and whether or not he thought the tastegraph was a better recommendation process than the sociograph. Here is what he had to say

Medros of TripAdvisor: When we talk recommendations at TripAdvisor we talk about a hierarchy of advice. The top of the hierarchy is the wisdom of friends and this is what Trip Friends enables. Trip Friends does more than allowing you to ask your friends, it lets you know which friends to ask. At the other end of the hierarchy is what TripAdvisor has been doing for 10 years – wisdom of crowds. [The crowd providing] A broader set of advice and opinions than available from a transaction provider. In the middle there is the tastegraph – we call it “people like me”. Where you can filter down the recommendations and wisdom of friends through “people like you” filters. The tastegraph is better than wisdom of crowd but not as good as wisdom of friends.

There are three approaches to collecting data for recommendation engines. Two don’t work.

1. Give to Get: Asking consumers to do a survey of who they are and use the results of the survey to show recommendations. It doesn't work and no one does it;
2. Black box: Take all of the click steam data – put it into the "black box" and produce an answer for the consumer. Does not work. No matter how much consumers tell you they want recommendations this way, they (the consumers) do not believe the results when they come out. This method is easier for a transaction site that has only transaction data to rely on. But for research site consumers are all over the site for many different reasons. Too noisy to trust the click data; and
3. People Like Me and Finger Printing: Try to finger print a hotel or travel experience by asking people to choose similar experiences. The best version of this is, "If you like this hotel in city X you will like hotel Z in city Y".

Almost all of these approaches have a scale component. The wisdom of friends needs the scale of a billion pins from the Cities I've Visited app. People like me need scale to aggregate up the different finger print characteristics.

My Take

I see the value in having access to friends to complement the crowd content on TripAdvisor. This is also a very good implementation by TripAdvisor. That said I feel that the path to recommendations is through the tastegraph/people like me approach more than the sociograph. I have lots of friends, close friends, that have very different interests to me and whose recommendations I won't take.

The first time I used Trip Friends it took a few clicks more than I expected to get logged in and up and running. Once in, I found the product easy to use and easy to integrate into a search. But looking down the list of friends connected for the destination I was interested in (Hong Kong) I was not convinced that any of them knew any more than I did. The one friend I do have that lives and grew up in Hong Kong did not have that in her profile so was missed.

I think the "like button" is going to rule the world one day. By that I mean that tools and products to allow content consumers (online or off) to positively or negatively vote for an item or content (including Facebook, Digg, StumbledUpon and more) will drive the future of content and transactional consumption. But I think this is more likely to happen in a "people like me" or tastegraph environment than an environment driven by "what do my friends think".

Now to you - tastegraph or sociograph - which one will rule?

Seat Review - Virgin Atlantic Premium Economy

After my BA Premium Economy experience I said that it was appropriate that Premium Economy was linked to the worded economy because the product is s step up from economy but is not a half way point of the Business class Product. Virgin Atlantic’s Premium Economy is a good looking product from a far but there are too many niggling problems and annoyances that take off the good looking shine and drive

the BOOT to rate Virgin Atlantic Premium Economy as 2.5 stars out of 6 or "Bad Seat". I don’t think Premium Economy is worth the extra money. Here is the detailed review (Details and scoring system for airline seat reviews)

Getting on Board	Score 0.5
Premium Economy does not get me lounge access in Sydney. Which would be a loss for the regular traveller but my top status on QFF gives me access to the Qantas Business Class Lounge even when not on a oneworld carrier. That said, the Air NZ lounge used by VS in Sydney is a handicap, not a bonus for VS, when compared to the great Hong Kong clubhouse and the outstanding Heathrow Clubhouse. The location of VS Premium Economy seats on the plane is an early bonus. It is just to the right of the door facilitating speedy on and off boarding. Drinks are offered but I boarded too late to get one.
The Seat	Score 0
The seat looks really good. Wide, cushioned and draped in purple hues of leather. But there are also some uncomfortable niggles. The legroom in front was blocked by something. Forced by feet into uncomfortable angles unless I sat bolt upright. The headphone plug is at my thigh height and when plugged in jabs the headphone plug connector into my thigh. Constantly jabbed and annoyed me unless I shifted into an odd position. Final niggles was the seat pocket. It is large and loose but is at my knee height. Means putting anything in it blocked by knees – pushing me into the headphone plug. As a result I had to keep everything on the floor – further cramping my leg room.
The Service	Score 0.5
The staff were very polite and pleasant. They were attentive when called upon but not to be found regularly moving up and down the aisle pro-actively looking to help out.
The Food	Score 0
I have to remind myself that I am in premium economy and not Business Class – so that I judge the food appropriately. And that I started the trip with an incredible melted French cheese fondue like experience in the Qantas Business Class lounge. This does not give VS a fair starting point of comparison. The food disappointed. I had a beef stew which required all of the salt and pepper I could find to compensate for the lack of flavour. . The salad was bitter and the desert rubbery. The fresh roles were hot and fluffy but the wine was cask like in acidity. The snack at the end was insufficient and I left the plane hungry for more in terms of quantity and quality..
The Entertainment	Score 0.5
A great selection of movies and TV shows. It is very entertaining to find British TV shows available – a change from the more common US and Asian ones that I am used to on other airlines. But again the niggles hurt the rating. The minor niggle is that it takes too long to start. It makes not sense that VS continues to wait until cruising altitude before turning the system on. Even then it forces the watcher to sit through a welcome video. The video is bizarre as it take 4 or 5 minutes of linear content that cannot be skipped to tell you how exciting it is that the entertainment system is full interactive and on demand. But the major niggle is the screen. It is a fair size for the seat it is too reflective in light. During meal services it was almost mirror like – impossible to watch. I saw more of my face watching Iron Man 2 than Robert Downey Jr. It dark scenes the picture was effectively black.
The BOOT factor	Score 1.0
Business Class is sold as being about the seat. Another fear in moving from Business Class to Premium Economy is the luggage allowances. Key to getting off the plane and on your way home/to the hotel as fast as possible is the ability to take all of your luggage on board. Technically VS Premium economy comes with a one piece limit on board. The check-in staff let me take on three pieces weighing 20kg. I am grateful for that.
Final Score	2.5 – Bad Seat

Details and scoring system for airline seat reviews

thanks to maynard on flickr for the photo

TripAdvisor Sessions: Talking to TripAdvisor VP Adam Medros about Trip Friends and living in a Facebook world

It has taken me a while to type it up but I wanted to share with you my interview with TripAdvisor Product Vice President Adam Medros on their (now not so new) Trip Friends feature that allows review and destination surfing on TripAdvisor to be combined with Facebook social search features.

If you have not come across the Trip Friends product yet, it allows you to connect your TripAdvisor search to your Facebook network. Practical results are an ability to see who in your network may live, have visited or have knowledge about a destination. This data comes from Facebook friend's profiles and Cities I've Visited "pins". Targeted questions can be asked and answered combining the mass crowd input of Tripadvisor's UGC information and the sociograph responses of a user's Facebook friends (for more on the product see the Tnooz review).

The BOOT is full of stories from me about the evolution of online travel from a transactional activity to a recommendation and inspiration service. You will have seen my interviews with various inspiration and discovery start-up CEOs (Triporati, Joobili, Tripbase, LikeCube) as well as my general posts on the Travel Discovery & Inspiration sector. In part 1 of my discussion with Medros of Expedia's TripAdvisor we discussed discovery, inspiration, product development, lead generation and having to live in a world ruled by Facebook (part 2 here). Here are the details of the discussion

BOOT: How long did it take to build the feature?

Medros of TripAdvisor: TripAdvisor does weekly releases covering 10 or 12 different projects at any one time. We have a building and launching mentality. It helps that we are a content company, not not transactional based as transactional sites need to be much slower and more careful in their launches. This feature took 5 months of work. Some was working through the detail of how it would work – some rewriting code as Facebook changed their feed. 2 weeks before launch we had to rewrite the private messaging functionally because of changes on the Facebook side.

BOOT: What are the future plans for the feature?

Medros of TripAdvisor:There are a couple directions we want to take the product

1. Big Picture – pushing on working more closely with partners in the industry to talk to travellers and users that helps plan a better trip to add advice from experts to advice from Facebook friends;
   
2. Mobile - We re-launched our mobile site in Dec 2009. Want to add this feature to that platform. Currently getting more than 2 million users a month on mobile; and
   
3. Network effect – expanding the buckets of things consumers can share with each other.

BOOT: What is like being tied to Facebook? Must be hard and challenging to give up so much control to them?

Medros of TripAdvisor: Without a doubt (a challenge to be tied to the Facebook experience). The benefits are clear but also a number of dependencies we have to manage:

1. General dependency: What would we do if Facebook build their own travel Q&A product? We can't worry about it as we can't stop something like that happening and it would go against public claims by Facebook to be independent;
2. API dependencies: Facebook have a tendency to change features and the API often. For example app notification went away and was never replaced; and
   
3. Downtime dependency: What happens if the Facebook API has downtime? Figuring out how to message to users when there is latency coming from not you.

Despite this we need Facebook. We tried to build a version of Trip Friends on our own a few years ago – did not take off because consumers did not want to maintain another social network.

BOOT: Do you think Facebook is or will become a place for consumers to do transactions?

Medros of TripAdvisor: Facebook (the platform) is ready but users do not think that way just yet. Have yet to see any real interest in transacting on Facebook other than within games. Good innovators dilemma. Is like the early days of Google. Both Facebook and Google are going to get closer and closer to the lead generation side of marketing through delivering people to sites that can transact.

BOOT: Any thoughts on letting hotels participate - to get involved like they can in responding to reviews?

Medros of TripAdvisor: Starting to think about that. TripAdvisor serves two sides of the trip equation. The user side of recommending and the industry side as well. Hoteliers should be able to contribute to trip planning experience. As long as users know the bias of the advice. There is room for us to take this functionality and add advice from experts as well as friends.

In part 2 I talk to Medros about the differences between the sociograph and the tastegraph.

What are your early impressions?

EveryYou: Wharton on Mobile Networks and E-Commerce getting personal

Madame BOOT is a long time consumer of the Knowledge@Wharton series. She has pointed me to this short but interesting post titled "In the Age of Mobile Networks, E-Commerce Gets Personal". The piece talks to how mobile networks will be an enabler or micro targeting. How the next generation of services such as 4square will be key to retailers be able to target consumers with individuated deals and "transform how people shop". Is the BOOT's recommended read of the week.

For more background on this - my concept of EveryYou can be quickly described as "micro-targeting at scale". The detailed definition is

“The development of a specific and targeted recommendation of one based on the unique combination of desires, needs and interests of each individual at any moment in time”

This theory I am working on says that we have reached a state of computational power, data collection levels and social trend in favour of interaction and information sharing that retailers will be able to target offers not only at individuals but at the different versions of each individal that appears at a particular point in time.

Hatton of Google on Mobile and ITA

Claire Hatton - Google's Industry lead for Travel, Local and Government in AU/NZ - spoke last week at the Asia Pacific Aviation Outlook Summit. In the speech she had a lot to say about mobile and a little to say about the ITA deal.

On the mobile web Hatton's advice was clear - if you do not have a mobile strategy including an app, then get one. She said (and confirmed via twitter) that "mobile searches on some search terms are higher than on PC for Google in Japan and Indonesia.". In some critical Asian markets half of the internet connections are via mobile. She conceded that iPhone was the largest platform but reminded the audience not to forget about Android. Google are claiming that they are "activating 160k android devices a day".

This has translated into consumers engaging in simultaneous consumption of media. True multi-media. Hatton quoted a Nielsen stat that 49% of Australians are online at the same time as they are watching television.

On the ITA deal she was more circumspect. In her defence, the ink is barely dry on the contract. While she would not say what Google intends to do with the product, she was very clear on Google's rationale for making the acquisition.

"because we believe the flight search experience is not good enough"

Understandably she would not be drawn on what the product would look like but did say that it would improve that qualified nature of click throughs to supplier and intermediary sites. Indicating that the likely pressure will be more on other meta search companies rather than OTAs.

As a side note. Later that day an industry insider told me that Google would not be able to bring the ITA functionality to Asia any time soon. They told me that that ITA product does not have the net fare connectivity to be competitive in air search in Asia.

BOOT in Hong Kong on Virgin Atlantic (Aug 2-6)

I am on the road next week in Hong Kong. Flying Virgin Altantic. Am on a very useful ticket with the day flight sector in premium economy and night return in Upper Class. New seat review coming soon. Let me know if there are any readers in Hong Kong interested in meeting up.

Follow #APAOS for updates from Asia Pacific Aviation Outlook Summit. BOOT on stage at 2.35pm

I will be speaking and tweeting today (Thursday) from the Australia Pacific Aviation Outlook Summit 2010 at the Four Seasons hotel in Sydney (Travel Technology & Distribution day). I am on stage at 235 pm on The role of airlines and distributors in the “inspiration funnel” and will be back at 440pm on a panel for Leveraging social media to create customer interaction and brand awareness

If you want tweet coverage of the conference then track the hashtag #APAOS. I also recommend following @winglets747 and @sam_lindner for their coverage

Liz Savage (EGM Commercial) of Virgin Blue on the difference between Euro and AU Air markets

For part of today I was at the Australia Pacific Aviation Outlook Summit 2010. Highlight speaker of the seasons I listened to was Liz Savage the (relatively) new Chief Commercial Officer (now Executive General Manager Commercial) of Virgin Blue. Ninemsn is carrying the traditional news part of her speech around DJ's determination to carve a space in between the hard core low cost of Tiger yet steal premium customer share from Qantas. She announced a desire to double DJ's share of the corporate sector from 10% to 20%.

Savage's background (linkedin profile here) was with easyjet and Monarch. She took some time in her speech to share three key differences between the Low Cost/New World Carrier market in Europe and Australia. They are:

1. Number of competitors and low cost carriers: Compared to her time in Europe, Savage was intrigued to discover how concentrated market share was in Australia. This lack of competition was particularly acute for Savage when it came to LCCs. Europe is filled with point to point low cost carriers. Savage mentioned that her previous employer - Monarch - was a medium sized carrier (some 30 aircraft and 100 routes) but was also a profitable airline and of size enough to compete. In Australia, no matter how you measure the market, there a very limited number of competitors - on an absolute scale and relative to Europe;
   
2. Number of secondary airports: Savage reminded us that the success of Ryanair was in no small part due to the use of secondary airports. In Australia there are virtually no secondary airports, forcing low cost and new world carriers to sit with the same airport cost base as the full service/premium carrier(s); and
   
3. Need for an international network: European LCCs can survive and prosper on the back of point to point short haul. But given Australia's distance and market, a carrier must says Savage have an international network (either directly or a virtual one via alliances).

Great to get a new view on the Australian market. Any other major differences between the Euro and Australian air markets?

The BOOT at Asia Pacific Aviation Outlook Summit 27-30 July - Sydney

I will be speaking this week at the Australia Pacific Aviation Outlook Summit 2010 at the Four Seasons hotel in Sydney. The conference runs July 27-30. Day three of the conference (July 29) is the "Travel Technology & Distribution day".

Also speaking on the Tech and Distribution day are:

• Richard Noon (CEO Webjet);
• Claire Hatton (Head of Travel, Government and Local for Google);
• Steve Sherlock (MD Oodles);
• Shashank Nigam (SimplyFlying) and
  
• Martin Symes (CEO Wego)

I am in two sessions

Solo at 235 pm on

The role of airlines and distributors in the “inspiration funnel”

* What are the four phases of online travel?
* How consumers get from an idea to going away and making a booking
* The role of airlines, tourism authorities and OTAs in the inspiration funnel

and on a panel at 440 on

Leveraging social media to create customer interaction and brand awareness

* Making better use of existing channels vs investing resources in newer distribution avenues
* How well do suppliers understand the value proposition of social media?
* Brand management through social media
* Integrating User Generated Content into the booking path

Hat tip in advance to Martin Collings of the Shearwater blog who first introduced me to the role of airlines in the bow tie/inspiration funnel.

With hotel rooms from $999,999 thank goodness breakfast is included

Screenshot of web version of Booking.com newsletter. Says "Don’t miss out – Top destination vacations from 999999". Thank goodness you get breakfast included at that price.

Tnooz: Consolidation and M&A activity in Asia

Post live a Tnooz titled "Keep an eye on Asia for next wave of major online travel consolidation". In it I discuss how the three powerhouses of Asia - Rakuten, Wotif and Ctrip - have spent the last three years acquiring companies in Asia, Europe and America as they try to develop growth outside their respective home markets of Japan, Australia and China. I end with a prediction that

"there is more [M&A activity] to come; that we should expect to see more deals by these companies in the next three years. I would also not be surprised to see one of these companies make a major play through a big ticket acquisition in either Europe or America."

Full post here

TripAdvisor - what did they buy and when

Here at BOOT central we are trying to keep track of the acquisitions and subsidiaries of Expedia’s Tripadvisor. In earlier posts on this we tracked simply by way of a list of acquisitions in reverse date order. With what looks like two deals a year to monitor I have decided to expand the list with some more details. Here is an extensive list of all of the acquisitions made by Tripadvisor since joining the Expedia family.

Company	Sector	Date of Acquisition	Description
HolidayLettings	Holiday rentals	24-Jun-10	UK based holiday rental company (is not HolidayRentals owned by HomeAway)
Kuxun	Meta-search	30-Oct-09	China based meta-search. Kuxun means Cool Information or Smart Information
Flipkey	Holiday rentals	July 15 2009	Boston based holiday rental company
OneTime.com	Deal Search	1-Jul-08	At time of acquisition claimed 5 mm uniques and 30mm page views. One estimate puts deal at $85mm. Onetime do not like being called a metasearch company
Virtual Tourist	Social network	(same deal / company)
Airfarewatchdog.com	Deal Search	2-Apr-08	Site that monitors airline deals especially in low cost carrier sector
HolidayWatchdog	Review Site	1-Feb-08	Hotel and holiday reviews with some deal searching – UK based. Travolution rumour that price GBP9-10mm
Cruisecritic.com	Review Site	25-May-07	Cruse ship reviews and deal search
IndependentTraveller.com	Destination Content	(same deal / company)	Destinations content and information. Includes brand Family Vacation Critic
smartertravel.com	Destination Content	9-May-07	Destinations content and information
Travel-Library.com	Destination Content	(one deal buying Smarter Travel Media)	Also includes brand Frequent Flyer.com
bookingbuddy.com	Meta-search		Booking search
TravelPod.com	Blog Platform Social Network		Platform for travel reviews and blogs as well as networking
SeatGuru.com	Review Site		Reviews individual seats on aircraft to help with picking seat assignments
Everytrail.com	Trip planning	3-Feb-11	Trip planning service focused on mobile platforms

Have I missed any? Official Expedia Inc listing is here. Yes – Expedia owns Tripadvisor (you wont believe how much traffic I get for the question “who owns Tripadvisor”).

Business Traveller Tip: Seven Tips for Travelling in China

Have just returned from a 13 day business trip covering greater China (China itself, Hong Kong and Taiwan). For the latest in my series of business traveller tips I present to you “seven tips for business travelling in China”:

1. Present your business card properly: The western way to hand over a card is with the card in the left hand and shake with the right. The polite Chinese way to hand over a card is with the card presented name forward held by the thumb and forefinger of both the right and left hands. By holding the card in two hands you present the card in a courteous way and give the receiver a clear chance to review and confirm your name and title. You should similarly receive presented cards by accepting the card with two hands;
2. Don’t discount the local 5 star properties: China is full of western five star hotels from Starwood, Accor, IHG etc. The temptation when on the company dollar is to stay at one of these safe (and beautiful) properties. However there are also some excellent local 5 star properties and chains. On this trip I stayed at the Taipei Park hotel in Tapei and the Taiwanese owned Les Suites Orient in Shanghai. Both fantastic properties. I also visited scores of local properties and came a cross a number of gems. Research the local 5s before picking a place to stay;
   
3. Lean a few words of Mandarin. Get an app or download a podcast (try the one minute Mandarin series) and learn a few phrases like hello, thank you and my name is… Easy to do and easy to impress with;
   
4. Leave room in your bag for shopping. The shopping is incredible – especially the range and price for toys for children and the cost of tailored shirts. Keep some space in your bag because you will be tempted to buy something. If a regular traveller then forge a relationship with a tailor (I recommend Jantzen. If you go there tell them I sent you);
5. If you leave the hotel, get “the card”: The concierge will have a card with the name of the hotel and directions designed for taxi drivers. Take it with you whenever you leave the hotel;
6. You will need a VPN to be social: General Chinese mainland internet connectivity blocks Twitter, Facebook, Blogger and other social networking and UGC sites. Not all the time but most of the time. Connecting to the Internet through your corporate VPN will probably get you around the Great Wall filter and allow you to be as online social as you like; and
   
7. Be adventurous with food: The Chinese food of China is different to the Chinese food of western Chinese restaurants. There is a greater range of food and regional variation. Be adventurous. Try different things – you will be surprised. This trip I tried and enjoyed baked fish head (two regional versions), chilled jelly fish, glutinous rice stuffed dates, fried oyster omelette, sweet cabbage soup and braised sea cucumber (think long jelly fish). As well as enjoying the less adventurous but delicious roast duck (three different regional variations) and stir fired eggplant (again three variations). I enjoyed all of it except the sea cucumber. But am glad I tried it (see the photo above of me eating). If you are interested in how much Chinese food has changed in getting to the West check out the site the Fortune Cookie Chronicles

Do you have any other tips for making the most out of of a biz trip to China?

Google and ITA: deal confirmed, BOOT was right, read what the pundits think

While I was minding my business on a work trip in Taiwan, teams of Google lawyers were dotting i's, crossing t's, cutting cheques and making rich people of out of the founders of flight search software company ITA. Overnight Tnooz carried the story that the deal was done for $700mm. This makes it Google's fourth largest acquisition (behind Admob, Youtube and DoubleClick). At risks of self indulgence, the BOOT first broke the rumour that Google was planning a push into travel meta-search.

With the deal done it is time for the pundits to pontificate analyse. Kevin May at Tnooz central has quickly collected the thoughts and analysis of five (and counting) Tnooz nodes/pundits including me. You can catch all of our thoughts and feelings on this deal over here.

Here is what I had to say at Tnooz

In my view the Google/ITA deal is a response to two challenges Google is facing in search generally and travel search in particular

1. Search is no longer the number one activity online. Social networking is. Part of this is the rise of networking but part of it is that search continues to operate in an environment where one site has the answer. Where you type in a search term and Google points you to the one site with the answer. Search queries are becoming more complex and more open ended. The answer to an open ended search query is unlikely to be found on one site. Google knows this is especially true for travel. It knows that it risks losing travel open ended travel search queries to social networks and meta-search. China is a great example of this trend with social networking planning a greater and greater role in travel search and discovery activity. Google knows they need a means for showing multi-site answers to search queries; and
2. Meta-search is building loyalty. In the early days of meta-search, the business model was almost pure traffic arbitrage (I discussed this back in 2007). Meta companies bought traffic off Google for one price and sold it to suppliers and OTAs for another. Meta-search profitability was determined by their ability to buy clicks from Google cheaper than they could be sold back to OTAs and suppliers. But in the last year or so meta-search has started to built loyalty and alternative marketing channels. To generate direct brand traffic and affiliate partner referrals in particular. I have heard reports from a number of meta's of dramatic increases in customer loyalty and direct traffic. Kayak themselves spoke of this phenomenon to me as early as 2008 just after the sidestep deal. To combat meta's growing loyalty Google clearly felt the pressure to bring pricing and the details of offers one step closer in search results

While the deal may help Google solve these two challenges - in presents Google with two new challenges

1. Competing with customers: Meta and other travel search companies spend a lot of money with Google. So too the suppliers and OTAs. There will be a fear and concern here from all of these Google cheque writers the Google might be planning to go direct and cut out more and more of the intermediary market; and
2. Execution and retention: Travel search technology is very very complicated. This is proved by Google's decision to buy rather than build. But each time a company makes a buy vs build decision they open themselves to the challenge of retention and execution within the acquired company. Once you have made very rich people at the core of the asset that you have bought - you need to work very hard to either keep them engaged or train up your old organisation to know everything there is to know about the new one.

More analysis and commentary over at Tnooz.

[reminder my views are mine alone and not the views of Orbitz or HotelClub]