Travel Technology Show 2007

Travel Technology blog on TTS 07.

I will report in full next week. Here are a few thoughts of what it might mean to small travel technology companies like AXSES

Many of the show vendor were distribution aggregators. These mega-systems, search multiple platforms and sites to find, aggregate, evaluate and render results in under 35 MS. The task is massive.

Nearly everyone claims to offer dynamic packaging!!. Mostly this is limited to accommodation, cars and air. The booking of destination activities is still underdeveloped. >>> more to follow.

A number of experts point out that with all this massive computing power, the systems are not working well. FredHopper and HitchHiker demoed how many empty results there are for a detail request on several of the large systems. There are it seems many "holes" in the content. While the search algorithms and options have improved the content lags.

Luke Mellors of Expotel http://exportel.com says hotel content on GDS is a joke. Most hotels on the GDS are chains. The few small hotels on the systems load just 1 or 2 rooms and these are usually at HIGHEST rate. "Its just not respresentative of the industry".

I attended 3 session: "Mobile markets", "Blogs" and "Hotel Distribution".
>>> more later!!

I also attended many product demos including: Airline tickets to mobiles (e2 systems). Website merchandising (Fredhopper; observs the need to employ user logic to provide alternatives to all the "holes" in information). Eliminating the papertrail (stortexfm). Developing a winning wesite strategy (Netizen incl. incl. an interesting SEO summary). >>> more later!!


I handed out cards for our business but left no brochures. Solution suppliers at this sort of show are interested only in selling their solutions. A couple of vendors were interested in on-selling our hotels through their networks (travelberry.com and expotel.com). Expotel has 15,000 resorts and is bigger that any GDS!!. Some marketing co's were interested in advertising their major clients like British Virgin, on our sites like http://barbados.org .


INSIGHTS for travel technology development

While most TTS exhibitors were concentrating on massive distribution system there was not much for the small hotel and specialty channels.

Luke Mellors of Exportel, suggest that field management systems (eg: PMS, Yield management, Channel Management etc) will control distribution in the future. He points out that the massive distribution systems are not grass routes. They are not ultimate suppliers and cant control the content well.

This leaves an opening for small companies to build feld management solutions that are integrated with Global distribution and specialty channels >>> more >>> see AXSES Travel Technology Strategy.


THE MESSAGE:

The travel supplier is the hotel and activity not the GDS and aggregator.

The best dynamic packages technology solutions will be grass route systems on hotel websites and focused destination channels.

Give hotels the tools to take back control of the market!!