Innovation Summit: SilverRail - is now (finally) the time for online rail?

Rail is well overdue for online travel innovation. We are into the third decade of online travel yet it is still almost impossible to book online train tickets through the traditional online travel channels of OTAs and meta-search. [ side not - At least in the west it is. In India online rail is a booming sector]

At the PhoCusWright Innovation Summit Aaron Gowell Founder and CEO of SilverRail used the of billions and billions of dollars in annual rail ticket sales to convince the audience of the potential for online rail.

He claimed that rail was a $300bb a year global market and the fastest growing sector in travel. Maps filled the power point slides showing high speed lines being built across Europe and China. Billions and billions in infrastructure spend. There are clear examples of long distance rail beating the airline business. The channel tunnel has stolen 80% of the market share in the Paris to London route. Hundred's of billions in investment and sales of rail tickets yet still 60% of the tickets are booked at the station.

Gowell told us that the only agency channel making progress in selling rail was corporate agencies. But most of those agencies have to transfer the call to separate call centres. As a result of this and complexity Gowell claims that corporate agencies are only able to do 4 bookings per hour vs 20 per hour for flights.

SilverRail also convinced us that they are well placed as a company to take advantage. They have some big name backers who contributed to a $9.5million series A round including Sutter Hill Ventures, Accel Partners, GrandBanks Capital and Brook Ventures. Gowell told me after the presentation that he has about 8 months of money left but is not worried as the potential is so great that he is confident that a new round of raising was not a problem. On revenue SilverRail are taking a transaction clip from the supplier - much like a GDS or switch.

Within 2 minutes of his presentation I was convinced of the potential for online rail. Unfortunately Gowell used nine of his twelve minutes to convince us of the market potential. This was more time than needed and cut short the time available for him to show us the SilverRail Product. What we saw of the product was impressive but I was left feeling like I needed to see more to be certain they would not end up like Wandrian.

On the critics circle (American Idol style panel at the Summit) Jim Hornthal of Triporati put a number of very important challenges/questions to SilverRail which I then had a chance to ask Gallow during an interview after his presentation.

Jim said: I am not sure what we need rail sold through OTA people are comfortable booking through the supplier direct (like the Low Cost Carrier model).

Aaron responded: model has changed dramatically in the last two years. Suppliers now need and are asking for distribution. For example you can now get a train from Germany to the UK. This is not a product that can only be sold on the Deutchebahn website. 2 years ago it was a hard sell to suppliers but now they are looking for us.

Jim said: There is not commission in rail so not attractive to OTAs

Aaron responded: packaging. With so much of the air spend shifting to rail (ie London to Paris route) the OTAs need to add more transport options to facilitate their packaging sales. Make their money out of the hotel.

I am a believer on the timing and potential for online rail. SilverRail put on a great show and have a very impressive list of staff and backers but (as like many at the Summit) I was left wanting to see more of the product and less of the power point.

update - here is what Bootsnall had to say about SilverRail

Innovation Summit: Movitas - I get the problem but not sure they solve it

At the PhoCusWright Innovation Summit Chuck Sacco VP Client Strategy of Movitas very cleanly and clearly described the problem his company was trying to solve - how to move the conversation and interaction between hotel and customer from the room to the whole property. Customers are constantly on the move on property with connected devices yet the main interaction between the property and the customer continues to be phone calls from the room or visits to the front desk.

While the problem was easy to describe, from the twelve minute presentation it was challenging to see how Movitas solved it. As a Bootsnall tweet said " kinda struggling to put what they do into one sentence.."

Sacco described the system as "developing for hotels a guest operating system"– a means for on property communications that connects a hotel and guest when the customer is outside of their room. For example a consumer can check in virtually using the tool and then go on to search local information, on property information, book tours, make reservations and pay their bill.

From the 12 minute presentation at the Summit it was hard to see how good a job Movitas is doing at meeting challenge as the presentation was delivered very quickly - too quickly. Lots of screen shots streamed a lightening speed. I would have preferred to have seen one or two examples of the product displayed slowly rather than the half a dozen or more screen shots and moving images flashing left, right, up and down. I am also not convinced that a hotel can persuade busy mobile road warrior customers to come to the hotel's own mobile platform when apps from Google, TripAdvisor, Orbitz, Kayak and more provide the vast majority of the functionality that Movitas was describing without the need for a new download or functionality learning curve.

The hotel guest is on the move and is connected - no doubt about it. They are hungry for information and content - absolutely. But they already have lots of apps and tools downloaded. I am not convinced that Movitas will be able to persuade hoteliers to persuade customers to add one more.

Update - here is what Bootsnall had to say about Movitas

Innovation Summit: TrustYou v Revinate - aiming to cut through Too Much Information for hoteliers

A running theme here at the BOOT has been the challenge the online travel industry faces from "too much information". A sub-section of this challenge is hoteliers trying to understand, track and respond to reviews and user generate content.

At the PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit we had back to back presentations from companies trying to help hoteliers with this problem.

Benjamin Jost - co-founder and managing Director of TrustYou presented a semantic search and sorting engine. A means for categorising and sorting through unstructured user generated reviews. This can be used to improve customer search and to allow hoteliers to understand and search the nearly limitless amount of data. His presentation focused on the "magic box" that made structured the mass blobs of text that make up the typical review. Results were technical but impressive how accurately the technology characterised and summarised positive and negative comments.

Kyle Duffy, VP of Global Accounts for Revinate showed a tool for allowing chains and properties to monitor all forms of social media for commentary on the property, area and competitors. Allows hotels to generate a social media score card and compare that to their direct competitor set.

Both are trying to solve a similar problem - helping hotels to sort through the mass or unstructured information that are on review and social media sites.

Both companies are young but doing well. Revinate is claiming it is already profitable. TrustYou say that have been in business for just 1 year but already have 1,000 customers and $1mm in revenue.

TrustYou focused their presentation on the "magic" behind the technology. Showing us the results from their machine. Revinate focused on the tools they provided to their hotelier customers to sort, manage and respond.

Revinate's presentation lacked the crisp clarity of the TrustYou and it was harder in the Revinate presentation to see how powerful the tech was in the background. That said, in focusing their pitch on the end tool for hoteliers Revinate provided a stronger business platform and model than TrustYou.

TrustYou had the better "geek factor" but Revinate looked more business ready. As a tweet from Hudson Crossing said maybe Revinate and TrustYou should get together.

PhoCusWright starts tomorrow - tweeting #phocuswright

PhoCusWright starts tomorrow. I will be tweeting via @hughestim and #phocuswright

Google Preview - another day another change in Google search

We are all talking about Google Places as a revolution in search (Tnooz story here). See the above shot where my search results for "Time In Madrid" shows a variety of links with a preview magnifying glass icon next to each link. Hover over a link and a preview appears on the right.

Where Google Places is clearly designed to drive more paid search activity, the Google preview functionality looks better suited to questions/searches that are not highly monetised (like a what time is it question.

The bigger story here is that Google is showing a new and heightened level of change, testing and innovation in their product.

See my Tnooz post after the launch of Google Instant for more

The Australian newspaper on Wotif, Webjet and other AU online success stories

Interesting read this week from James Dunn in the Australia called "Rising from the Ashes". Ten years on from the Dotcom boom he discusses some of Australia's high profile online success stories such as Wotif, Webjet, Seek (jobs site), Realestate.com.au and Carsales.

One of my favourite parts is where he points out that the combined market cap of Seek, Releastate.com.au and Carsales is more than Fairfax (one of Australia's largest media companies and one that suffered the most in losing classifieds business to the online companies).

The article is also worth a read for some of the commentary on Wotif and Webjet including this section

A lot of market share is advertising-driven, it's all about exposure: if you start to see a lot of marketing spend from competitors like Zuji, it could [affect] both Webjet and Wotif. Hotels.com is another new entrant . . . It's a sign that the high margins that Wotif and Webjet have been used to experiencing, there are now other people after their lunch."

Hopkins says Wotif is a different business model from the other four web-based stocks, in that what goes online is distressed inventory and short-term bookings. "Wotif is suffering from, one, a quite strong rebound in hotel accommodations, which means the hotels aren't putting as much inventory on Wotif; and, two, it is not strong on the international side of things, so the strong Australian dollar, with a lot of people going offshore for holidays, has hurt them quite a bit.
"The short-term earnings outlook is pretty flat, but in the long term we think Wotif is still a strong business; it's still very dominant in its sector."

Rising from the ashes is the BOOT recommended read of the week.

PS - congrats to the Australian for spelling Webjet correctly :)

Agoda 2010 turnover ~$500mm. Combined Booking and Agoda doing $780mm per year

Back in March I shared with you a report from Citigroup which (at the time) gave us the only real insight into the turnover of Priceline's Agoda. That report estimated the 2009 gross bookings for Agoda to have been US$244mm. Citi projected that 2010 gross bookings would be US$433mm

Previous efforts to trawl for comments or numbers about Agoda in earnings release transcripts resulted in very little (see here and here).

At the Q3 earnings release (see seeking:alpha transcript here) Priceline CEO Jeff Boyd had a lot more to say about the performance of Agoda. He told the meeting the the combined turnover of Booking.com and Agoda in AsiaPacifc was ~U$780m for the 12 months to 30 September. His exact quote was

I want to provide on a one-time basis some data on our progress in new markets to help size their contribution to our international results. Booking.com and Agoda have made excellent progress in building the Group’s business in the Asia Pacific region. The combined business of Agoda plus Booking.com’s business for APAC destinations was approximately $780 million for the 12 months ended September 30, and the third quarter gross rate for that business was just shy of a 150%.

Note - that is the combined turnover, not Agoda on it's own. He went on to say that

Agoda continues to build its business in the Asian region and again reported triple digit year-over-year growth in gross bookings, contributing to the overall international and merchant growth we are reporting. The business has performed well following civil unrest in Thailand and is well positioned for its seasonally important fourth quarter

Also note that in the Q&A section CFO Dan Finnegan stated that there was not real difference in the numbers/turnover from a point of sale or destination basis he said

the point-of-sales businesses [for APAC] is a comparable size and growing in impressive rates. And when you think about the Asian business to the extent that includes business for Agoda, that’s it’s whole business which is point-of-sale Agoda business. Most of that is Asian but it’s the whole business.

If we match the three data points of Citi's estimate for 2009 results, Boyd on the combined Agoda and Booking number and Boyd on Agoda's growth rates then it looks like Agoda is on track for closer to a $500mm 2010 turnover level rather than the Citi estimated $433.

In a separate note we also read that Agoda CEO Michael Kenny was leaving the business to be replaced by Robert Rosenstein (the current COO). I presume (though don't know for sure) that his departure is connected to the fact that November marks the third anniversary of the purchase of Agoda by Priceline and therefore the end of the earn out period.

With the earn out over we can likely expect to see much greater levels of integration between Booking and Agoda (first pieces seen here in January).

Like to know more? Check out the full earnings transcript on seeking:alpaha or Dennis Schaal's recent post at Tnooz

Dell Hell 2 - the BOOT writes 5,500 words on (barely) surviving 43 days of Dell Hell

Over at the Customer Underground I have posted my longest story ever on a 43 day mistake I made in buying a Dell Computer. If you would like a break from reading up on the online travel industry and would like to engage in a little bit of Techno-Schadenfreude then check out Dell Hell 2.

Full post here.

Thanks to Tonie for the photo from Flickr

Dave Cunningham of OurExplorer on sale to Viator

Recently we read through Tnooz and TechCrunch that destination activity specialist Viator had bought human tour guide search and booking engine OurExplorer (press release here). Once the deal has closed, Viator will own the main assests of OurExplorer. An emerging start up brand and a rating system, search engine and booking functionality for 2,400 individual guides.

I had a chance last week to talk with OurExplorer founder and CEO Dave Cunningham about the sale process and what he learned as the boss of an online travel start-up. [for more background on the company see my 2008 interview with Dave]

BOOT: How was the sales process?

Cunningham: It took about fourteen weeks to complete. Six weeks of work in the background then eight weeks of due diligence to confirm the value and the legals.

BOOT: 14 weeks to do a deal – that’s quite quick?

Cunningham: It felt very long. For a small team due diligence is a lot of work. It is a massive risk as a start-up to engage in a sale process. The company we lost 10-15 weeks of growth in the process.

BOOT: What did you learn from the sale process that would benefit other start-ups?

Cunningham: Three steps to us building out OurExplorer

1. Build the platform an website
2. Establish the supplier base (guides); and
3. Build demand

Of these - do not underestimate how hard the work is to build out a supplier base. Need dedicated sales people – start-ups constantly underestimate how hard to get a quality supplier database. Only once you have a decent supplier base can you drive traffic – which is difficult enough.

I wish I’d had more paper evidence of supplier’s commitment. Both in terms of contracts and exclusivity. OurExplorer would have been worth a lot more with paperwork on supplier.

BOOT : Did you user a broker or advisor? If so, do you have any advice in using an advisor?

Dave: Yes. If getting biz broker to help – insist that they take less up front and more on the back end. This made it easier for us to see who had the contacts in the industry. We negotiated to double exit fees and reduce upfront. Any company that said yes to the deal provided us with confidence of the value of their network.

Too many start ups have the same number of companies on their power point deck as the exit. In Australia everyone has Fairfax [large AU media company] or News [News Ltd, the AU arm of News Corp] on their slides as a buyer. Need to have a profitability strategy in your plan. Cannot be reliant on a sale exit – especially in Australia where there are limited buyers.

BOOT: What are the integration plans with Viator?

Dave: Viator have confirmed that they will keep the brand. Viator had two options

1. integrate product – select the top 1000 or so guides (out of 2,400) and add them into the Viator product set; or
2. keep the OurExplorer brand and dedicate effort to grow the business and brand

Viator are doing both. Integrating and keeping brand alive. Viator have around 5,000 products. By adding 2,400 guides to the product list this is a big add.

BOOT: What’s next for you?

Cunningham: One job left. I am going to the World Tour Guide Association conference in January for a good quality hand over. Then done. Then looking to buy into another start up. To help them drive sales and marketing.

My Take

OurExplorer are the definition of the long tail in travel (I mean that in a good way). They are the first (that I know of) to provide searching, rating and booking of individual guides. I think it makes a good addition to Viator.

For my 2008 interview with Dave see this post

Thanks to Håkan Dahlström via Flickr for the photo

BOOT offered free flight. Should I take it?

Dear Readers. Your BOOT correspondent has been invited to an Asian capital to attend a marketing launch/PR event for an airline. The invite comes with an airline ticket and a hotel room. While on the trip I can also do a bit of business - easily justifying the time out of the office. So - should I take it? Should the BOOT be taking free trips from Airlines? There was a big discussion on this point over at Tnooz in May when BA was offering trips to Bloggers.

Seat Review - Qantas Premium Economy (round 2)

After my recent Tokyo to Sydney flight on Qantas Premium Economy I am now able to provide my judgement / kiss of death for the best premium economy seat flying Australia to Europe via Asia. Qantas is the clearly better product and leads similar offerings from Virgin Atlantic and British Airways. The question is not - does Qantas have the best Premium Economy is the sky (it does). The question - is it worth twice the cost of Economy. Answer - depends on who's paying. The BOOT rating for Qantas International Premium Economy is 4.5 stars out of 6 or "Great Seat". Here is the detailed review

Getting on Board	Score 1.0
Qantas has an advantage over other carriers in all instances of boarding as my top tier Platinum status grants me access to their first class lounges regardless of the class I am flying. Something that I miss on VS (though gain on BA). This advantage was particularly acute in Tokyo as I knew to head for the JAL first class Sokura lounge rather than take the monorail to the less impressive and more crowded Qantas Tokyo Business Class lounge. A general tip for you when flying Qantas in Tokyo is take advantage of the JAL lounge and avoid the Qantas one (ditto for CX lounge in HK). Getting on Board itself was a mixed experience. The dual queue set up (one for premium passengers and one for economy) fell apart resulting a huge crowd of pushers and shovers. Once on board the Premium Economy seats are very nicely located just to the left of the middle door. This speeds the boarding process (and the exit process- see BOOT Factor)
The Seat	Score 1.0
Qantas clearly have the largest of the Premium Economy seats. Equally it is clear that have spent a lot of time looking at and avoiding the mistakes make by British Airways and Virgin Atlantic. The entertainment control handset is placed on the lower left of the seat next to the foot rest and a long way away from your legs. Means that there is no chance of accidently bumping and pausing or exiting a movie (a curse that BA suffers from). The area under the seat in front is free from obstruction providing more room to stretch out (both BA and VS had blockages). The pitch is deeper meaning that the seat pocket in front does not jam into your knees (a VS problem). The pillow is a decent size providing for more comfort when trying to doze/sleep (the BA pillow is too small). In addition there are other touches that were appreciated. The blankets used are the Qantas Business Class blankets - with a recent improvement. The early version of this blanket could be quite scratchy or itchy. Like an un-softened woollen jumper. The new version has a sheet lining on one side to increase comfort. The only downside is the footrest. For a guy of my height (185cm) it is useless. In only comes out a little way. Fully extended it does not even touch my calves. Might as well not be there.
The Service	Score 0.5
Qantas service is unfortunately hit or miss depending on the mood of the crew. On this flight service was fine and attentive. Nothing to complain about, nothing to sing about.
The Food	Score 0.5
An unfortunate gap in my review. In accordance with my tips for flying economy - which you can extend to flying Premium Economy - I ate my meals on the ground. A very enjoyable meal in the JAL lounge. I did not eat in the air. That said, I will give them a score of 0.5 because there is no way the QF food could be as bland as BA.
The Entertainment	Score 1.0
I am long term critic of the QF entertainment system. Thankfully from the peak of those criticisms in 2008, they have made improvements. As against their competition in this class (BA and VS) are providing noise cancellation headsets (whereas BA and VS don't). This makes a big difference in the enjoyment of the movie and in the general noise in the cabin. As per the seat comments above, the location of the controls is another plus. A further step up against VS is that QF has placed the headphone jack in an out of the way location. The VS jack jammed into my left thigh causing discomfort. The selection is good - and finally you are able to start movies before take off. Only downside is (like VS) the screen is too reflecting - especially during the well lit meal times. Makes watching a movie with lots of dark or night time scenes (such as Predators) very difficult.
The BOOT factor	Score 0.5
I like the proximity of the seat to the exit. I am a sprinter when it comes to getting of a long-haul flight. Especially at an airport like Sydney where dozens of large long haul aircraft land the second curfew is lifted (6am) there are huge advantages in getting off the plane, through immigration and into a taxi as soon as possible. The first step in that sprint is getting of the plane. The Premium Economy is in a great spot for getting off the plane fast. I also like the size of the cabin. On the plane I flew the Premium Economy seating area was just two rows of 2 x4x2. Means each seat is only one step from the aisle and there are only 16 people in the cabin. Very quiet, very relaxed, even with children.
Final Score	4.5 – Great Seat

Details and scoring system for airline seat reviews

Note this is the second review of Qantas Premium Economy on the BOOT – but my first. My wife did the first one.

Packing for PhoCusWright, organising meetings and reading up on Innovators

Two weeks to go until the PhoCusWright Conference in Arizona. This year's theme is "Chaos Calls - Navigating the New". Promo video here. The BOOT will be there from Sunday night, tweeting, blogging, networking and working away. Follow me via @hughestim or track #phocuswright.

First up at the conference is the Travel Innovation Summit. The full list of companies presenting is here. A couple have already caught my eye including:

• SilverRail - rail is long overdue for online innovation and Cameron Jones has recently joined them as their VP Commercial;
• Everbread - I have seen a demo of this product already and the buzz behind them is super strong;
• Vayant - though they have stood me up for interviews a few times they are also trying to change the way air searches are conducted;
• Hipmunk - best name in online travel ever (maybe 2nd best to Appolicious). Can the product live up to the hype? Will consumers adapt to new ways to search?; and
  
• Gekko.com - trying to turn review writers into affiliate businesses.
  

One of my favourite parts of PhoCusWright is the "PhoCusWright Surprise" which occurs when I meet an online travel start up(s) at PhoCusWright that I have never heard of but is (are) number one in their category by some reasonable measure. See stories on last year's surprises Localyte and geckogo.

If you are going to be there and are interested in setting up a meeting or an interview please email me.

If you are interested in attending you can register here but hurry. Ram Bandrinathan of PhoCusWright tells me that already the primary and secondary hotels are sold out and there are only a very limited number of conference tickets left.

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

Qunar mulling IPO in second half 2011

Quick one - check out the news report from the 26th from the Nasdaq news pages, Qunar CEO Fritz Demopoulos is contemplating an IPO for the 5 year old Chinese meta-search company. According to Crunchbase they have raised $25mm to date. News story is here

Thanks to Brett Henry for alerting me to this.

WebInTravel: 10 things I overheard from companies (Tnooz)

Over at Tnooz I have written two posts following the WebInTravel conference in Singapore last week. Part 1 is 10 things I overheard from companies. Check out the post called "Part One of Two: The Asian online travel zeitgeist". Companies covered include Wotif, Cleartrip, TripAdvisor, DaoDao (TA in China), Mobilizy, Kaha, eLong, AirAsia, Small Luxury Hotels of the World, Abacus and Accor. Part 2 tomorrow is on industry trends.

Business Traveller Tip – 10 tips for surviving economy class flying

They call it Business Class for a reason. To ensure that everyone travelling on business feels a pang, a dip and a sense of hopelessness when not travelling in the class with your name on it. But often we must turn right on entry to the plane and keep on walking to seats numbered in the 30s or lower. Here is the next chapter in the BOOT's Business Traveller Tips – 10 tips for surviving flying economy class on business

1. Aim for day flights - travelling up the back is much easier if you don't have to sleep. Check and re-check schedules to see if you can take a day flight rather than overnight. I would prefer to fly during the day on a usually un-preferred carrier than overnight on my favourite carrier;
   
2. Check in online 23 hours and 59 mins before your flight - Most modern carriers allow online check-on 24 hours before take off. Do what you can to be on their website at as close to the 24 hour mark as you can. Assuming you are a relatively high grade flyer you will get the better choice of seats. There are two schools of seat choice depending on your view. My choice is aisle up the front. Up the front for as fast as possible exit. The aisle to add a little bit more leg room and eliminate the need to climb over any one to get anywhere. If you take this option then look for the latch under the aisle armrest that unlocks it and allows the arm rest to be lifted up to be in-line with the seat. Not all economy class seats allow for an uplifted arm rest but many do. The ones that do need a little cajoling before they lift – but when they do lift they open up and free the right/left hand leg, thigh, buttock, shoulder and much more. Just watch out for the speeding food trolley. The other view is the privacy and extra lean value of the window seat. The aisle brings more room with a lifted arm rest, aisle leg room and an easy exit. The window brings a big resting place but requires a lot of dexterity and balletic skills to exit and reach the bathroom. Either way, avoid the hell of the middle. In fact better to have one off the aisle in the middle set of four than the middle of the left or right window set of three. Goes without saying that either way exit row is the best. Be careful with exit rows. Choose middle or aisle as sometimes the window exit row seat has the leg room blocked by the emergency slide compartment attached to the door;
3. Dress loose – in a perfect world you would dress in good clothes as you board and change into shorts and a t-shirt during the flight (see tip "What to wear on-board"). But in cattle it is often hard to change clothes. To get the best rest you can, you need to be in loose clothing. In a perfect world you would come on board in pyjamas. As that is not possible I suggest loose cotton pants and a t-shirt or long sleeve polo. Take off your belt and shoes, keep them overhead. The belt will tighten and constrict as the trip continues. Your feet will swell making them uncomfortable in shoes;
4. Eat before you board - The food on economy class is cut rate at best. They are doing everything they can to cut a buck or two. Give yourself 20 mins at the airport to eat before you get on board. The food at the airport will be much better than on board. If you have lounge access this is easy. Taking a meal in a CX, SQ, QF, BA, VS, etc lounge before boarding will leave you happily full. If you don’t have lounge status I recommended eating at an airport restaurant and charging it back to your company as a work meal. Eating before you board not only gives a better meal, it also gives a more comfortable seat. When the meal service is on the tray table is down. When the table is down, you are forced upright with your knees up. You are boxed in even more than usual. The less you need to eat on board the less you are boxed in by the table;
5. If you have to check – check it all - Chances are if you are up the back you will have to check luggage as the chances of bringing 2-3 bags of 20 plus kgs will be pretty slim. Therefore if you have to check bags, you might as well check as much as you can. Leave yourself with as little as necessary to take on board. If you have to check something, check everything. [see more in tip 6];
6. Board sooner rather than late - Business class has little to no space limitations for cabin baggage. I know as I have often trudged on board with a suit carrier, roly bag and laptop bag. All told 30 kilos and a whole over head bin of space. In cattle class the overhead bins fill up fast. If you have carry on, you will do well to get on board sooner rather than later to claim the limited space availability over heard. If you miss out over head the only place will be under the seat in front and you want to keep that space for your legs;
7. Bring Ear Plugs and a mask – planes are noisy. Particular ones with 10 people in a row rather than 7. The pointy end provides not only less people to reduce the noise but technical implements to help keep it so. The back of the plane is noisier and absent in technical implements. Therefore bring your own. While the seat may be upright, a mask and ear plugs will make a world of difference. Somewhere in an old amenity pack you will have a mask and plugs. If you don’t, spend the 10 bucks to get one before boarding for the back for the bus;
8. Bring Drugs – I have a separate post on the best (legal) drugs that every business traveller should take with them on any trip. Within the list of seven pharmacological necessities are two critical sleep aids – Unisom and Melatonin . These are not knock out drugs. I eschew the true knock outs like Ambien and Stilnox as I do not enjoy the wake up afterwards. Unisom wont knock you out but they will help you drowse – especially in an upright seat;
9. You can hide an iPod – if you try - For sleeping you drown out the cattle noise with the ear plugs (see tip 7). You will want to use your iPod to drown out the waking hours noise. This is easy during the flight but hard on the ground and during take off. For some reason the aviation industry has convinced itself that a $200+ million plane can be brought down during take off by a $300 mp3 player. Cabin crew will obsessively walk up and down the cabin looking for downed tray tables, lent back seats and plugged in ear pads. If you try to listen to an iPod in the usual way (white earphones in both ears) I give you a 15% chance of not being spotted and enjoying music from 0 metres to 10,000 meters above sea level. But if you follow my tips, the chances of listening to music from door close, through wheels up and onto seat beats off increase to 77% (or thereabouts). Step one – get black earphones. White pads stick out like dancing silhouettes against a purple background. The cabin crew are less likely to spot black cords and pads. Step two – hide the iPod/Phone under a book or blanket. Don’t give them anything to look for. Step three- only listen in one ear. Do not put pads in both ears. Put a pad in the ear opposite to the aisle. Left ear in seats A, B, C, F and G. Right for D,E, H, J, K (in a typical 3-4-3 seat layout). This is the ear that the cabin crew can’t see. Then run the black ear cord down the arm away from the aisle in such a way that it cannot be seen from the aisle. A black cord down your arm from an ear that can’t be seen for the aisle connected to an obscured music box will work more often that it doesn’t in keeping you wired for sound before and during take off; and
   
10. Bring spray or moisturiser – 30,000ft is dehydrating. Just being there will dry you out. They seem like silly touches but the Biz Class perks of hot face towels every four hours and moisturiser in the bathroom make an important difference to keeping you dry and hydrated. Up the back I recommend replicating those experiences with spray on water (like the Evian stuff) and one of the bottles of hotel creams that are sitting in your draw at home.

Over to you dear readers. Any other tips for flying coach?

Thanks to clstal via flickr for this fantastic photo of a Ugandan cattle ranch

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

Tweeting from WebInTravel in Singapore Oct 19

Follow me my tweets tomorrow at WebInTravel either directly vi @hughestim or hashtag #webintravel.

BOOT off to Japan on Qantas Premium Economy...maybe

Am off to Tokyo this week care of Qantas Premium Economy....I think.... Rumour has it that the refitted plane including Premium Economy and the updated business class is not yet ready.

The BOOT in the Guardian

The BOOT has been mentioned in The Guardian/The Observer newspaper. In an article from Sunday called "Are guidebooks facing extinction?" journo Benji Lanyado discusses the rise of location based services and online content and the fall of the guidebook. Towards the end of the piece he references me and my discussions around the rise of the open ended question online.

Read the full piece here.

thanks to DaveWilson via flickr for the photo

BOOT's guide to researching the world

I have been asked many times how and where to collect data about countries for research and planning. Top line data such as population and economic numbers as well as travel industry specific numbers. Here is my recommended list of four sites for collecting data about a country:

Wikipedia: a obvious choice. Positives about wikipedia is that every country is covered and has a detailed entry. The downside is that the dept of the writing and attention paid varies greatly between each article. The number one wikipedia challenge is that it's greatest strength - a near limitless supply of writers - is also it's greatest weakness as it can result in inconsistent layouts between different countries and different source materials for each each country. Therefore while wikipedia is useful for discovering information, it is less useful in comparing data between countries.

CIA world factbook: is everything that wikipedia wants to be from a data point of view. Since 1943 the predecessors of the CIA (and now the CIA) have been collecting country information and collating it into a central place - that is now freely available online. While it is is not updated as often as wikipedia, there is a consistency of measures and tracking that allows for a clearer and cleaner comparison between countries on topline metrics such as GDP, population, unemployment rates, languages and government structures. There are also useful numbers that are less obvious but just as helpful in planning such as size of the labour force, percentage below the poverty line, number of mobile phones and number of internet hosts. Very useful site for comparing a series of countries with data from the same source.

Wolfram Alpha: Wolfram Alpha is the Internet's way of saying "there are bigger geeks in the world than anyone at Google". The founders of Wolfram Alpha are the geeks of geeks, nerds of nerds. These guys are living maths and algorithm gods. They have tried to build a search engine focused on fact based questions and collecting data. Type in a country name and an easy to read list of useful stats appear. The uber geek part of this is the ability to generate charts and dive deeper into certain facts. For example look at the demographic section of a search result on Wolfram Alpha and you can diver into the details such as the distribution between male, female, children, adult and elderly.

World Travel & Tourism Council: The WTTC Travel Research Centre is the only place I know for consistently calculated data on travel demand. The good is that it covers every country and splits between business spend and leisure spend. Each country can be compared based on the same calculation method for the same travel categories. The bad is that in calculating the key categories such as "personal travel & tourism" and "business travel", the WTTC takes a very expansive collection methodology. Make sure you review the definitions before using this data. For example personal travel & tourism is calculated to include "all personal spending by residents on Travel & Tourism services (accommodation, transportation, entertainment, meals, etc) and goods (both durable and non-durable) used for Travel & Tourism activities. Spending may occur before, during or after a trip. Spending covers all Travel & Tourism, both domestic and international". In other words it includes everything spent before, during and after a trip. From luggage bought before the trip to the taxi home from the airport. It is a very expansive number. The WTTC research is great for comparing different scale between countries but be careful if you rely too much on the absolute (rather than relative) levels of spend.

Any other sites you use?

thanks to Chuck "Caveman" Coker for the photo over at 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.

Media Watch: the Australian puts a "c" in Webjet

Quick media watch moment his morning. Front page of the business section of the online version of the Australian newspaper contains a piece speculating on Fairfax media (owner of newspapers that compete with the Australian) might be considering a move on Webjet (#1 online air agency in Australia). Unfortunately the front page sub-editor has stuck a "c" in Webjet and is running the headline "Fairfax had Webject on board" linking to story headlined "Fairfax held Webject stake last year". Second photo below and full story here.

PS- as regular readers know I am probably the last person who should be pointing out typos.

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?