We wrote about Advertising at a Crossroads nearly a year ago, today we read about Expedia's new PassportAds, the first program of its kind in travel advertising.
We wrote about Search At a Crossroads, and now TripAdvisor (actually another Expedia company) launches Integrated Search.
It's to be expected - the whole way we do business is shifting fundamentally. Like Philip C. Wolf, President and CEO, PhoCusWright Inc., says, it's a perfect storm:
“Each element in the search-shop-buy triumvirate is undergoing a period of intense innovation, making each increasingly significant, yet interdependent. In fact, searching, shopping and buying – once distinct terms describing different behaviors – are blurring at a furious pace”.
Our Bookable-Ads.com was launched late in 2008; it's almost old hat now and we wonder why it took so long. But the change is just beginning.
The most pervasive change is happening now and it's going to change the entire web and all that we do. Wolf was only half right; it's not about advertising and searching and buying only; equally important is the merging of publishing and communication with what we call the Social Web.
Social Web is just a new word for communications and networking. It started with teenagers, got noted by adults and is moving full steam into the mainstream.
Wolf should have added that publishing and conversation are merging, and that is going to throw the monkey wrench into the media!
Monday, 2 March 2009
Monday, 2 February 2009
Social Net
A Social Net Primer - how to use Facebook in your travel business
Obama has 5 million support Friends on Facebook - it helps him get his message out and stay in contact. Spurred on by his successful use of social media, more and more businesses are using, or wondering how to use Facebook and similar social sites.
In December 2008, AXSES began a project to use and evaluate the technology and the network. In the first week of this exercise, Kathy-Lynn Ward became a fan of Jennifer Figge, who is attempting to be the first woman to swim the Atlantic, from Africa to Barbados. Jennifer's manager contacted us through Facebook and AXSES put him in contact with the Barbados Tourism Authority (BTA). The BTA launched a similar Facebook project shortly after.
So we have to say it has value from a business perspective for tourism. It's hard to get to grips on just how to optimize it in a positive and socially acceptable way.
But we are beginning to see that the network and the technology can be a significant resource. The key is to shift thinking from a marketing perspective to one of helping and sharing. It's a good shift, and one that many companies are practicing without being on the Social Net.
Here is how it works: You sign up and then go about inviting Friends, who invite Friends, who invite more Friends to become your Friend. The Friends can become advocates and clients. Start using it, but be warned, it is addictive!
The first thing to learn is that if you want to be successful, don't choose your friends - just accept all that apply, that way it will grow. I don't do that well - I like my privacy, so I am careful who I approve.
Next, learn to create pages to describe, in pictures and words, your company and/or some of your products. Post it to your profile so it is visible to all that check to see who you are.
At AXSES, we created pages for the Barbados Tourism Encyclopedia (BTE) (http://Barbados.org),
http://BookingsBarbados.com, http://BookingsStLucia.com and http://BarbadosBoardwalk.com as a photo gallery, to name a few.
I say we did this, meaning that our people did. Facebook is personal, so a real person, not a company, is expected to create a Facebook account. They may then add pages, photo galleries, groups and make comments which can be sent to others. Facebook pages can be about companies and products. In fact, we made the mistake of setting up a profile for the BTE page and, in fact, there are advantages (more detailes to follow). It seems many companies also made this mistake! But for visibility on access, a page is superior; a profile is private and will not be picked up by SEO, whereas pages may.
Facebook groups may be formed to discuss topics of interest and share news and happenings. They are a good way to network and keep up to date and in contact. It's similar in a way to the thing they call a Wall, where all can post messages to be read by others who look at your Wall. Sort of like graffiti. Groups are more focused and you can create multiple topics. In the St. Lucia group, there are discussions going on about Amy Winehoue, as well as the new St. Lucia Marketing strategy. Unlike Pages groups, they are not open to the public; they are only accessible to Facebook people and you have to belong to the group to participate.
Margaux Daher, an AXSES Associate from St. Lucia, has taken the lead in creating links and sharing insights on the St. Lucia page and the St. Lucia group we created. Her friends have joined the group and now others are joining. It's not generating business but it is away to communicate and share.
Kathy-Lynn, always thinking of our hotel and travel clients, established RSS feeds which grab Holiday Specials off our bookings services and display them on the respective Facebook pages. Anyone who looks at the page can see a Special on offer.
Facebook's pages, photos, videos, events, invitations, discussion boards, Walls and messaging, as well as Flash and numerous applications, give us a very rich platform for a travel dialogue and e-commerce. It has potential for hotels and tourism operators.
We have already deployed arcRes Booking Engine on Facebook. Our next step is to integrate clients information on Facebook, to link in our travel network with special applications built on our travel platform.
4 million people use http://Barbados.org each year. If they choose to become a Friend or Fan of our Facebook page for Barbados, they will see all the Barbados.org posts, news and specials, all in one place. It will give us a useful way to communicate with travelers in a social way, on their terms, and with not in-your-face advertising.
Our next step will be to investigate how best to help hotels use social networks (more later).
According to eMarketer research, Social network users made up 41.2% of the US Internet population in 2008. 60% of Internet users are consumers of all user-generated content.
eMarketer estimates that 115 million people use the social media.
By 2013, the total number is expected to be over 154 million.
It's growing because its easy to use, appears to be more credible and it's free!
(Credit: Compete.com)
Resources:
see Jason Falls on FacebookBrand Page Best Practices/
Facebook Population
The Rush to Social Networks
Obama has 5 million support Friends on Facebook - it helps him get his message out and stay in contact. Spurred on by his successful use of social media, more and more businesses are using, or wondering how to use Facebook and similar social sites.
In December 2008, AXSES began a project to use and evaluate the technology and the network. In the first week of this exercise, Kathy-Lynn Ward became a fan of Jennifer Figge, who is attempting to be the first woman to swim the Atlantic, from Africa to Barbados. Jennifer's manager contacted us through Facebook and AXSES put him in contact with the Barbados Tourism Authority (BTA). The BTA launched a similar Facebook project shortly after.
So we have to say it has value from a business perspective for tourism. It's hard to get to grips on just how to optimize it in a positive and socially acceptable way.
But we are beginning to see that the network and the technology can be a significant resource. The key is to shift thinking from a marketing perspective to one of helping and sharing. It's a good shift, and one that many companies are practicing without being on the Social Net.
Here is how it works: You sign up and then go about inviting Friends, who invite Friends, who invite more Friends to become your Friend. The Friends can become advocates and clients. Start using it, but be warned, it is addictive!
The first thing to learn is that if you want to be successful, don't choose your friends - just accept all that apply, that way it will grow. I don't do that well - I like my privacy, so I am careful who I approve.
Next, learn to create pages to describe, in pictures and words, your company and/or some of your products. Post it to your profile so it is visible to all that check to see who you are.
At AXSES, we created pages for the Barbados Tourism Encyclopedia (BTE) (http://Barbados.org),
http://BookingsBarbados.com, http://BookingsStLucia.com and http://BarbadosBoardwalk.com as a photo gallery, to name a few.
I say we did this, meaning that our people did. Facebook is personal, so a real person, not a company, is expected to create a Facebook account. They may then add pages, photo galleries, groups and make comments which can be sent to others. Facebook pages can be about companies and products. In fact, we made the mistake of setting up a profile for the BTE page and, in fact, there are advantages (more detailes to follow). It seems many companies also made this mistake! But for visibility on access, a page is superior; a profile is private and will not be picked up by SEO, whereas pages may.
Facebook groups may be formed to discuss topics of interest and share news and happenings. They are a good way to network and keep up to date and in contact. It's similar in a way to the thing they call a Wall, where all can post messages to be read by others who look at your Wall. Sort of like graffiti. Groups are more focused and you can create multiple topics. In the St. Lucia group, there are discussions going on about Amy Winehoue, as well as the new St. Lucia Marketing strategy. Unlike Pages groups, they are not open to the public; they are only accessible to Facebook people and you have to belong to the group to participate.
Margaux Daher, an AXSES Associate from St. Lucia, has taken the lead in creating links and sharing insights on the St. Lucia page and the St. Lucia group we created. Her friends have joined the group and now others are joining. It's not generating business but it is away to communicate and share.
Kathy-Lynn, always thinking of our hotel and travel clients, established RSS feeds which grab Holiday Specials off our bookings services and display them on the respective Facebook pages. Anyone who looks at the page can see a Special on offer.
Facebook's pages, photos, videos, events, invitations, discussion boards, Walls and messaging, as well as Flash and numerous applications, give us a very rich platform for a travel dialogue and e-commerce. It has potential for hotels and tourism operators.
We have already deployed arcRes Booking Engine on Facebook. Our next step is to integrate clients information on Facebook, to link in our travel network with special applications built on our travel platform.
4 million people use http://Barbados.org each year. If they choose to become a Friend or Fan of our Facebook page for Barbados, they will see all the Barbados.org posts, news and specials, all in one place. It will give us a useful way to communicate with travelers in a social way, on their terms, and with not in-your-face advertising.
Our next step will be to investigate how best to help hotels use social networks (more later).
According to eMarketer research, Social network users made up 41.2% of the US Internet population in 2008. 60% of Internet users are consumers of all user-generated content.
eMarketer estimates that 115 million people use the social media.
By 2013, the total number is expected to be over 154 million.
It's growing because its easy to use, appears to be more credible and it's free!
(Credit: Compete.com)Resources:
see Jason Falls on FacebookBrand Page Best Practices/
Facebook Population
The Rush to Social Networks
Thursday, 29 January 2009
BookDirect
Travel rants has a good article on the trade offs on using different channels to book travel. see Direct Bookings
Travelers have moved dramatically to direct bookings over that last few years. The split is now slightly in favour of direct bookings and seems to be stabilising there.
see a full discussion on this at hostipality biusiness (merrill lynch survey)
The main reasons:
They deal with the owners and host of the place they will stay.
They get to know them and
more importantly they get to be known.
Dealing direct means they have better control of the itinerary, its easier to change dates and get upgrades etc. Its easier to correspond - to ask questions about the destination, activities and things to be wary of, and it from the horses mouth - so to speak.
it sued to be that middlemen had the edge on package holidays - but no so now. With hotel tools, travelers can actually create a vacation package on sites like http://realholidays.com and still deal direct with the hotel. These same tools are being used on hotel website to allow users to add activities and air to their package.
Travel tools used by destinations and tourism sites such as; hotels and activities are making it easier for us travelers to get what we want and how we want it.
Travelers have moved dramatically to direct bookings over that last few years. The split is now slightly in favour of direct bookings and seems to be stabilising there.
see a full discussion on this at hostipality biusiness (merrill lynch survey)
The main reasons:
They deal with the owners and host of the place they will stay.
They get to know them and
more importantly they get to be known.
Dealing direct means they have better control of the itinerary, its easier to change dates and get upgrades etc. Its easier to correspond - to ask questions about the destination, activities and things to be wary of, and it from the horses mouth - so to speak.
it sued to be that middlemen had the edge on package holidays - but no so now. With hotel tools, travelers can actually create a vacation package on sites like http://realholidays.com and still deal direct with the hotel. These same tools are being used on hotel website to allow users to add activities and air to their package.
Travel tools used by destinations and tourism sites such as; hotels and activities are making it easier for us travelers to get what we want and how we want it.
Tuesday, 28 October 2008
Distribution
Travel Distribution at a Crossroads
59% of online travel shoppers stop at online agents, like Travelocity, first, presumably to comparison shop. The average consumer makes 12 searches and visits 22 sites before they book (Uptake, June, 2008). To be found, you need to be seen on “appropriate” sites, even if you don’t get bookings from them. 95% of visitors to these sites do not buy on the site. In 2006, it was estimated that 70% of visitors to sites, like Expedia, ended up buying Direct from the supplier. This is why Expedia has moved into advertising, realizing that they do influence buying decisions at a growing rate. The GDS imposed minimum monthly billings as a way of charging for exposure.
In a fragmented global market, distributors emerged as the place to shop, and hotels have fully supported this channel. But distributors set their own rules and resell price. Prices in distribution are often much lower that the hotel-published rates. As competing distributors try to match rates, the pressure on hotel profitability is intense. Often, a hotel that could not meet a requested price would be dropped. In this aggressive distribution-driven market, the hotel Brand was eroded and rates fragmented.
The large hotel chains moved effectively to take back control with Best Rate Guarantees and by offering consumers the service (technology) they demanded (online costing, bookings, packaging).
Many travelers prefer to deal direct (i) and the technology is helping to drive more business direct to suppliers. Field Management Systems and small travel application developers and travel integrators, such as AXSES, play a large part in driving direct to supplier business.
Consider Intimate Hotels of Barbados. The Intimate portal is powered by AXSES arcRes Portal-keeper.com and arcRes-CRS (Central Reservations Systems). These solutions can be fully integrated with GDS, with the hotel bookings and Property Management System.
In this scenario, the small hotels manage rates and inventory on their own arcRes web booking engine, the Intimate Hotels Barbados Portal and 10 arcRes-powered channels, like BoookingsBarbados.com, BarbadosVacationSpecials.com, etc.
Global Distribution Systems (GDS) are an important part of the market mix and are now affordable for small hotels. GDS is the largest travel distribution network in the world. Over 600,000 international travel agents use them. In addition, many Internet Distribution Systems (IDS), such as Travelocity, have traditionally pulled content from the GDS to offer booking for resorts not signed with them.
The GDS have acted, to some extent, as a channel management tool for thousands of IDS sites. This, too, is changing, as IDS favour direct contracts with resorts and always put their own direct contracts on top of the list. We expect that IDS will drop GDS content when they have a critical mass of direct-contract suppliers.
The issue, then, is how many systems will you, as supplier, be required to manage.
Distribution is here to stay. It offers services, like comparison-shopping, that cannot be feasibly offered by a resort website. Travelers will continue to comparison-shop there to assess which supplier sites to visit.
The role of marketing is becoming very much the role of controlling content, rates, availability and visibility on the Internet (Channel Management).
Channel Management is a top priority of just about everyone in the travel marketing business. The technology is becoming affordable and easier to use. GDS suppliers are now rolling out integrated solutions to let hotels manage rates on other channels. Companies, like Rate Tiger, are reaching a critical mass and lowering their rates.
The new order is taking shape. New technology is driving direct business and making it easier to control and manage distribution. Technology is more accessible and affordable and Suppliers who use it are taking control.
Notes
1. PhoCusWright: "In fact, more than twice as many online travelers (36%) believe that the supplier-direct channel provides the best customer service, compared to 15% who choose the online travel agency channel. Even offline agencies, which are coveted for their personal touch in a technology-driven world, did not fare as well, with 33% claiming they provide the best customer service ...."
more>>>
59% of online travel shoppers stop at online agents, like Travelocity, first, presumably to comparison shop. The average consumer makes 12 searches and visits 22 sites before they book (Uptake, June, 2008). To be found, you need to be seen on “appropriate” sites, even if you don’t get bookings from them. 95% of visitors to these sites do not buy on the site. In 2006, it was estimated that 70% of visitors to sites, like Expedia, ended up buying Direct from the supplier. This is why Expedia has moved into advertising, realizing that they do influence buying decisions at a growing rate. The GDS imposed minimum monthly billings as a way of charging for exposure.
In a fragmented global market, distributors emerged as the place to shop, and hotels have fully supported this channel. But distributors set their own rules and resell price. Prices in distribution are often much lower that the hotel-published rates. As competing distributors try to match rates, the pressure on hotel profitability is intense. Often, a hotel that could not meet a requested price would be dropped. In this aggressive distribution-driven market, the hotel Brand was eroded and rates fragmented.
The large hotel chains moved effectively to take back control with Best Rate Guarantees and by offering consumers the service (technology) they demanded (online costing, bookings, packaging).
Many travelers prefer to deal direct (i) and the technology is helping to drive more business direct to suppliers. Field Management Systems and small travel application developers and travel integrators, such as AXSES, play a large part in driving direct to supplier business.
Consider Intimate Hotels of Barbados. The Intimate portal is powered by AXSES arcRes Portal-keeper.com and arcRes-CRS (Central Reservations Systems). These solutions can be fully integrated with GDS, with the hotel bookings and Property Management System.
In this scenario, the small hotels manage rates and inventory on their own arcRes web booking engine, the Intimate Hotels Barbados Portal and 10 arcRes-powered channels, like BoookingsBarbados.com, BarbadosVacationSpecials.com, etc.
Global Distribution Systems (GDS) are an important part of the market mix and are now affordable for small hotels. GDS is the largest travel distribution network in the world. Over 600,000 international travel agents use them. In addition, many Internet Distribution Systems (IDS), such as Travelocity, have traditionally pulled content from the GDS to offer booking for resorts not signed with them.
The GDS have acted, to some extent, as a channel management tool for thousands of IDS sites. This, too, is changing, as IDS favour direct contracts with resorts and always put their own direct contracts on top of the list. We expect that IDS will drop GDS content when they have a critical mass of direct-contract suppliers.
The issue, then, is how many systems will you, as supplier, be required to manage.
Distribution is here to stay. It offers services, like comparison-shopping, that cannot be feasibly offered by a resort website. Travelers will continue to comparison-shop there to assess which supplier sites to visit.
The role of marketing is becoming very much the role of controlling content, rates, availability and visibility on the Internet (Channel Management).
Channel Management is a top priority of just about everyone in the travel marketing business. The technology is becoming affordable and easier to use. GDS suppliers are now rolling out integrated solutions to let hotels manage rates on other channels. Companies, like Rate Tiger, are reaching a critical mass and lowering their rates.
The new order is taking shape. New technology is driving direct business and making it easier to control and manage distribution. Technology is more accessible and affordable and Suppliers who use it are taking control.
Notes
1. PhoCusWright: "In fact, more than twice as many online travelers (36%) believe that the supplier-direct channel provides the best customer service, compared to 15% who choose the online travel agency channel. Even offline agencies, which are coveted for their personal touch in a technology-driven world, did not fare as well, with 33% claiming they provide the best customer service ...."
more>>>
Friday, 24 October 2008
Destination Marketing
Destination Marketing at a Crossroads
Not so very long ago a traveler had few options and the world of travel was pretty straightforward and perhaps a little too expensive।
Travelers went to their neigbourhood agent and pored over brochures, got advice and booked with the agent. Agents got to know the traveler well and could recommend vacations that suited. Travelers were well served, although the service was not necessarily timely or convenient.
Today the traveler is overwhelmed with armchair choices. Travelers who still go to agents often will first research on-line, and more and more of them are booking on-line. Arm-chair booking a holiday can be a tedious and time-consuming process. Travelers will look at several sites, consult friends and agents, read reviews on social sites, check airlines and look for the best value. Back and forth, they go looking at maybe a dozen sites.
Most people begin their holiday research by searching for destination guides (typically through Google). Often, they end up on Destination sites such as Tourism Authority sites, where the information is general, helpful but often limited in its ability to offer real in-depth comparison, shopping and planning services. The destination sites are often great for finding official resort websites, but the resort websites don’t present information in a consistent form and they are hard to compare.
Travelers move on to shopping sites like Expedia to compare resorts, to Trip Advisor to read reviews and to other sites to get more information and find deals. In the process they have a confusing and muddled array of information. The sites that help them most stick. The sites that don’t stick fall off the radar.
In the end the traveler will narrow down options to the few sites that help them most, the ones that give the best information and the best deals. They will narrow down the options to a few preferred resorts (unless it is an opaque site) and many will want to review the resort website, if they can find it. The traveler soon learns that it is impossible to get back to the actual resort because the shopping sites like Expedia, are a closed loop. All too often a search for a particular resort links them back to a shopping site. The big online portals have the budget and the knowhow to get listed on the Internet search engines (SEO); small hotels often don’t.
Destination sites are often the best place to find links to the official website of selected resorts, so the “clicked out traveler” may come back to the destination sites in the last stages of the decision making process. Many travelers prefer to book direct and most like to see the resort website. Convenience, value, service and after sales support drive the decision of where to buy, but all to often the hotel website is not convenient, does not offer the best value and can be difficult to find.
This buy cycle is not well documented, but it is intuitively understood. Its implications for travel websites are important.
The buying cycle and its implication for the destination supplier website
The Destination site is a pivotal point, Shoppers often use it first and may return to link to the resort that they have subsequently selected. The questions we ask are; how can the destination site hold onto that traffic or how do they get people to come back. It is unrealistic to expect the destination site to be the only place travelers go. So the real question therefore is, how do they get them back.
Ultimately the Destination site is the key portal to support direct marketing for the destination suppliers. It must move beyond being a information site to becoming a system to help shoppers plan, compare and book, in harmony with its trade partners.
Not so very long ago a traveler had few options and the world of travel was pretty straightforward and perhaps a little too expensive।
Travelers went to their neigbourhood agent and pored over brochures, got advice and booked with the agent. Agents got to know the traveler well and could recommend vacations that suited. Travelers were well served, although the service was not necessarily timely or convenient.
Today the traveler is overwhelmed with armchair choices. Travelers who still go to agents often will first research on-line, and more and more of them are booking on-line. Arm-chair booking a holiday can be a tedious and time-consuming process. Travelers will look at several sites, consult friends and agents, read reviews on social sites, check airlines and look for the best value. Back and forth, they go looking at maybe a dozen sites.
Most people begin their holiday research by searching for destination guides (typically through Google). Often, they end up on Destination sites such as Tourism Authority sites, where the information is general, helpful but often limited in its ability to offer real in-depth comparison, shopping and planning services. The destination sites are often great for finding official resort websites, but the resort websites don’t present information in a consistent form and they are hard to compare.
Travelers move on to shopping sites like Expedia to compare resorts, to Trip Advisor to read reviews and to other sites to get more information and find deals. In the process they have a confusing and muddled array of information. The sites that help them most stick. The sites that don’t stick fall off the radar.
In the end the traveler will narrow down options to the few sites that help them most, the ones that give the best information and the best deals. They will narrow down the options to a few preferred resorts (unless it is an opaque site) and many will want to review the resort website, if they can find it. The traveler soon learns that it is impossible to get back to the actual resort because the shopping sites like Expedia, are a closed loop. All too often a search for a particular resort links them back to a shopping site. The big online portals have the budget and the knowhow to get listed on the Internet search engines (SEO); small hotels often don’t.
Destination sites are often the best place to find links to the official website of selected resorts, so the “clicked out traveler” may come back to the destination sites in the last stages of the decision making process. Many travelers prefer to book direct and most like to see the resort website. Convenience, value, service and after sales support drive the decision of where to buy, but all to often the hotel website is not convenient, does not offer the best value and can be difficult to find.
This buy cycle is not well documented, but it is intuitively understood. Its implications for travel websites are important.
The buying cycle and its implication for the destination supplier website
The Destination site is a pivotal point, Shoppers often use it first and may return to link to the resort that they have subsequently selected. The questions we ask are; how can the destination site hold onto that traffic or how do they get people to come back. It is unrealistic to expect the destination site to be the only place travelers go. So the real question therefore is, how do they get them back.
Building a compelling reason to return!
1. Provide online shopping
The challenge is in balancing integrity of information with on-line shopping, channel conflict and channel competition. The cost of a good destination site is rising. So operators are moving towards a business model that stresses income generation in an effort to make the site self-sustaining. But this comes at a price of muddling the roles and creating conflict with destination trade partners. Destinations can involve trade partners with affiliate marketing, but it is not always equitable and the question is who are the affiliates and where do tour operators fit. Destinations are reluctant to cut out the tour operator and agent and they don’t for the most part want to be either a travel agent or a tour operator।
2. Offer the tools travelers need.
Destinations can help travelers research by providing expert intelligent systems that learn who the traveler is and configure the experience based on unique requirement. These tools will necessary include offering comparison-shopping. Ideally the result will be to give the traveler the option to choose the channel, including dealing direct with the supplier. Word of mouth reviews and a traveler forum will also help keep them on the site and give the site top-of-mind recall. It is not appropriate for a destination site to link to Trip Advisor and such, as these are shopping channels that will not keep them coming back. Cost conscious travelers are always looking for a deal and the destination needs to offer a list of specials and deals and the ability to sign up for newsletters on specials and deals।
3. Award & create loyalty
Destinations have a great opportunity to reward repeat travelers and cooperate with airlines point systems to encourage them to book a destination hotel
4. Offer travelers their own website itinerary and own planning tools
There are huge opportunities for destinations to lead this charge by providing destination specific planning and a place to return to manage and share a holiday itinerary and the memories। Travelers should be able to build a personal website brochure by adding any page they look at to it. The traveler website should also be a comprehensive personal information resources and planning tool. Travelers may read and add reviews here, see a calendar of activities and events taking place during their holiday, and link to other social media sites and others like Tripit and Traveldk. It may include personalized maps showing the options they are interested, ranking them according to preferred and final selection etc.
Ultimately the Destination site is the key portal to support direct marketing for the destination suppliers. It must move beyond being a information site to becoming a system to help shoppers plan, compare and book, in harmony with its trade partners.
Monday, 30 June 2008
Marketing
Marketing at a Crossroads
No longer are the 4 P’s; Place, Price, Promotion and Product the main tenants of marketing. Marketing on the Internet is more about Relationships and Process.
Process is about technology, platform and intelligent, expert systems. Marshall McLuhan said a long time ago that the medium is the message. The Internet is a very sophisticated medium capable of delivering messages target to a single client, tuned to their precise interest at every point of purchase. It is automatic, re-engineering and personalizing the message for multiple users all in the same instance of time.
Your travel product, a travel experience, is as multidimensional as your clients. For example, you may cater to weddings and romance as well as lazy beach living, active holidays, gold vacations and gourmet dining. You can’t say it all at one time to one traveler. Information about your product must be engineered and differentiated; it must be made personal to each traveler.
Information must be malleable, configurable, searchable, accessible and delivered tailored to suite।
For example you may choose to advertise a golf holiday, you deliver content and images that are tailored to what you offer the golfer. You direct golfers to a special page dealing with that experience. You do this on your website, and on every channel you market on. – you cannot organize and deliver it manually. The process and platform configures and deliver the message dynamically. For this your information must be engineered with systems that are very smart, learning what motivates the clients and delivering the experience they are looking for. The difference is that the online message is a "Pull" message prompting an action, offline it is typically a "Push" message to gain awareness. With that the entire focus of marketing has changed. For more on this, see United Airlines Case Study by Double Click.
People are not talking to people at this stage, it’s a process, and the process understands people, gathering and analyzing information about them every step of the way. The smart systems (the Platform) tracks clients interaction, recognizing patterns, responding appropriately, managing and analyzing data in the process of building the digital relationship. See digital-relationships
But Process and Platform are not enough. In a complex integrated world, Partners are essential. Microsoft has said this clearly, telling its Value Added Resellers (VARS) to Partner or die!. Simply put you can do it all yourself, so you must rely on people with skills and passion that complements your own. The mechanics of Internet is very complex, we must cooperate to succeed; outsourcing is essential!
Finally, the Internet is driven by Passion. Thousands of ordinary people, professionals, workers, teachers and student donate time and resources freely, building content, services and applications that they feel passionate about. People are building relationships, offering comments, writing blogs, helping others, for free. This community has spawned the social network, which interacts and influences everything on the Internet.
Jason McNamara, CMO of Atlerian says that the new marketing is driven by passion, we need to be passionate about marketing and today, more that ever before, that means being passionate about understanding and measuring the digital footprint. ”Being able to apply sophisticated marketing analytics to every piece of information you collect about your customers is like bringing the customers themselves in-house to tell you not just what's working and what isn't, but why. You can use this passion to your advantage, helping generate ideas, proving their relevance, and justifying the money you spend” See Jason McNanara’s article on the new 5 P’s of marketing: People, Process, Platform, Passion and Partners (http://www.alterian.com/solutions/marketing.aspx)
###### Over 50% of leisure bookings are online in 2012. An estimated 89% of planners are researching event locations on the web.
Related Posts (at a crossroads series):
New Order of Commerce:
Destination Marketing
Distribution http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2008/10/distribution.html
Travel Marketing http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2009/05/travelmarketing.html
The Supplier http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2008/06/thesupplier.html
Marketing http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2008/06/marketing.html
Advertising http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2008/06/advertising.html
Search at a Crossroads http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2008/04/have-now-lost-their-opportunity-to-be.html Publishing at a Crossroads http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2009/03/atacrossroads.html
No longer are the 4 P’s; Place, Price, Promotion and Product the main tenants of marketing. Marketing on the Internet is more about Relationships and Process.
Process is about technology, platform and intelligent, expert systems. Marshall McLuhan said a long time ago that the medium is the message. The Internet is a very sophisticated medium capable of delivering messages target to a single client, tuned to their precise interest at every point of purchase. It is automatic, re-engineering and personalizing the message for multiple users all in the same instance of time.
Your travel product, a travel experience, is as multidimensional as your clients. For example, you may cater to weddings and romance as well as lazy beach living, active holidays, gold vacations and gourmet dining. You can’t say it all at one time to one traveler. Information about your product must be engineered and differentiated; it must be made personal to each traveler.
Information must be malleable, configurable, searchable, accessible and delivered tailored to suite।
For example you may choose to advertise a golf holiday, you deliver content and images that are tailored to what you offer the golfer. You direct golfers to a special page dealing with that experience. You do this on your website, and on every channel you market on. – you cannot organize and deliver it manually. The process and platform configures and deliver the message dynamically. For this your information must be engineered with systems that are very smart, learning what motivates the clients and delivering the experience they are looking for. The difference is that the online message is a "Pull" message prompting an action, offline it is typically a "Push" message to gain awareness. With that the entire focus of marketing has changed. For more on this, see United Airlines Case Study by Double Click.
People are not talking to people at this stage, it’s a process, and the process understands people, gathering and analyzing information about them every step of the way. The smart systems (the Platform) tracks clients interaction, recognizing patterns, responding appropriately, managing and analyzing data in the process of building the digital relationship. See digital-relationships
But Process and Platform are not enough. In a complex integrated world, Partners are essential. Microsoft has said this clearly, telling its Value Added Resellers (VARS) to Partner or die!. Simply put you can do it all yourself, so you must rely on people with skills and passion that complements your own. The mechanics of Internet is very complex, we must cooperate to succeed; outsourcing is essential!
Finally, the Internet is driven by Passion. Thousands of ordinary people, professionals, workers, teachers and student donate time and resources freely, building content, services and applications that they feel passionate about. People are building relationships, offering comments, writing blogs, helping others, for free. This community has spawned the social network, which interacts and influences everything on the Internet.
Jason McNamara, CMO of Atlerian says that the new marketing is driven by passion, we need to be passionate about marketing and today, more that ever before, that means being passionate about understanding and measuring the digital footprint. ”Being able to apply sophisticated marketing analytics to every piece of information you collect about your customers is like bringing the customers themselves in-house to tell you not just what's working and what isn't, but why. You can use this passion to your advantage, helping generate ideas, proving their relevance, and justifying the money you spend” See Jason McNanara’s article on the new 5 P’s of marketing: People, Process, Platform, Passion and Partners (http://www.alterian.com/solutions/marketing.aspx)
###### Over 50% of leisure bookings are online in 2012. An estimated 89% of planners are researching event locations on the web.
Related Posts (at a crossroads series):
New Order of Commerce:
Destination Marketing
Distribution http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2008/10/distribution.html
Travel Marketing http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2009/05/travelmarketing.html
The Supplier http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2008/06/thesupplier.html
Marketing http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2008/06/marketing.html
Advertising http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2008/06/advertising.html
Search at a Crossroads http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2008/04/have-now-lost-their-opportunity-to-be.html Publishing at a Crossroads http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2009/03/atacrossroads.html
Friday, 20 June 2008
TheSupplier
Who is the supplier of travel
It worries me that many of our small hotel customers, do not perceive themselves as suppliers. They often see themselves as a “product” “supplied” to the market by middlemen. Nothing is further from the truth. The hotel owner is the supplier of rooms and of an experience. Together these make up the core product of a holiday. The hotel owner should choose to be inventive and create total packages that fulfill the travelers dream”.
Ultimately travel marketing is about selling a dream, and each hotel is distinct, offering a unique experience. All of the tools the hotel needs to package an experience, even including airfare is available for direct bookings.
Believing that middlemen are suppliers erodes the hotel brand and places market leadership in the wrong hands. When consumers go to online channels to book reservations, they are influenced as much by the channel used to book the reservation as they are to the actual hotel they selected
It is time to take control.
Control of the channel is not about getting more sales out of middlemen – it is about offering a service that competes with middlemen, marketing your own brand and engaging customers directly; getting high margin sales at lowest costs, being in control of your market and your brand.
Max Starkov, Chief eBusiness Strategist, Hospitality eBusiness Strategies writes “The Internet is all about transparency, efficient distribution of information, and inexpensive e-commerce transactions. It is simply the best direct-to-consumer distribution channel ever created and it definitely favors supplier-buyer relationships”.
The trend is clear, the Internet is revolutionizing marketing with more and more travelers choosing to go to the suppliers website and book direct rather than with a middleman. Travelers say they feel they have more control working with the supplier directly, but they expect rates and services to be comparable.
There are now new tools and services for travel suppliers to help them provide the full set of interactive and social networking solutions expected। AXSES has been a pioneer, providing 'supplier centered tools' to manage and distribute travel products. These can be installed directly on the suppliers own website. They include:
All of these may be integrated with:
What the middlemen do well is offer comparison shopping and search capabilities. AXSES bookings and reservation portals like http://bookingsBarbados.com, http://BookingsStlucia.com and http://CaribRes.com provides this also, but with this twist - requests and bookings are made directly with the hotel. (see axses arcRes supplier travel suites).
Unlike middlemen systems the hotel is not hidden and travelers can go direct to the hotel website at any time. There are popups and standard views of the information which travelers like as supplier websites follow no standard and it is confusing to compare several. All information on the direct channel (including websites content, amenities and features) is under the control of the Hotel.
These new tools are different to middlemen solutions for suppliers and destinations। The supplier-centered tools are designed from the ground up for suppliers, ie hotels, apartments, villas, activities and all tourism operators. They are configured to any set of rules and rate options. The tools are a powerful set of integrated suites to help tourism suppliers compete with all middlemen, for more high profit DIRECT business.
But be wary, not all who claim to be direct are!. Some marketers are jumping on the bandwagon, without credentials. A direct channel will not hide your brand, infact direct is about marketing your brand. A direct channel will allow users to go to your website and will not require guest to prepay the booking, deposit it in their bank, and pay you the balance less commissions. A direct channel gives you control on payment options, terms, content, rules, branding, and customers.
In 2008* 60% of online travelers chose to BUY Direct from the supplier, bypassing the middleman. The trend to direct is expected to continue. Merrill lynch forecasts that it will exceed 65% in the next 2 years. Current the large chains receive over 80% of online business direct (see trends by Merrill lynch HeBs).
We need to gear-up now for this market and take control
* Merill Lynch report is dated 2007, the table says 2008 but it probable is 2007. This is to be verified!
It worries me that many of our small hotel customers, do not perceive themselves as suppliers. They often see themselves as a “product” “supplied” to the market by middlemen. Nothing is further from the truth. The hotel owner is the supplier of rooms and of an experience. Together these make up the core product of a holiday. The hotel owner should choose to be inventive and create total packages that fulfill the travelers dream”.
Ultimately travel marketing is about selling a dream, and each hotel is distinct, offering a unique experience. All of the tools the hotel needs to package an experience, even including airfare is available for direct bookings.
Believing that middlemen are suppliers erodes the hotel brand and places market leadership in the wrong hands. When consumers go to online channels to book reservations, they are influenced as much by the channel used to book the reservation as they are to the actual hotel they selected
It is time to take control.
Control of the channel is not about getting more sales out of middlemen – it is about offering a service that competes with middlemen, marketing your own brand and engaging customers directly; getting high margin sales at lowest costs, being in control of your market and your brand.
Max Starkov, Chief eBusiness Strategist, Hospitality eBusiness Strategies writes “The Internet is all about transparency, efficient distribution of information, and inexpensive e-commerce transactions. It is simply the best direct-to-consumer distribution channel ever created and it definitely favors supplier-buyer relationships”.
The trend is clear, the Internet is revolutionizing marketing with more and more travelers choosing to go to the suppliers website and book direct rather than with a middleman. Travelers say they feel they have more control working with the supplier directly, but they expect rates and services to be comparable.
There are now new tools and services for travel suppliers to help them provide the full set of interactive and social networking solutions expected। AXSES has been a pioneer, providing 'supplier centered tools' to manage and distribute travel products. These can be installed directly on the suppliers own website. They include:
- Airfare ‘search and book’ that can be put right on the hotel website
- Dynamic packaging that for hotel suppliers that adds activities that match travelers profiles
- RSS feeds, blogs, travelers’ comments and travelers ratings
- Website booking engine
- Rates management and
- A range of travel components that hotels can put on their sites
All of these may be integrated with:
- Hotel Property Management Systems
- Global Distribution Systems (GDS) and
- The Internet Distribution Companies like Expedia.
What the middlemen do well is offer comparison shopping and search capabilities. AXSES bookings and reservation portals like http://bookingsBarbados.com, http://BookingsStlucia.com and http://CaribRes.com provides this also, but with this twist - requests and bookings are made directly with the hotel. (see axses arcRes supplier travel suites).
Unlike middlemen systems the hotel is not hidden and travelers can go direct to the hotel website at any time. There are popups and standard views of the information which travelers like as supplier websites follow no standard and it is confusing to compare several. All information on the direct channel (including websites content, amenities and features) is under the control of the Hotel.
These new tools are different to middlemen solutions for suppliers and destinations। The supplier-centered tools are designed from the ground up for suppliers, ie hotels, apartments, villas, activities and all tourism operators. They are configured to any set of rules and rate options. The tools are a powerful set of integrated suites to help tourism suppliers compete with all middlemen, for more high profit DIRECT business.
But be wary, not all who claim to be direct are!. Some marketers are jumping on the bandwagon, without credentials. A direct channel will not hide your brand, infact direct is about marketing your brand. A direct channel will allow users to go to your website and will not require guest to prepay the booking, deposit it in their bank, and pay you the balance less commissions. A direct channel gives you control on payment options, terms, content, rules, branding, and customers.
In 2008* 60% of online travelers chose to BUY Direct from the supplier, bypassing the middleman. The trend to direct is expected to continue. Merrill lynch forecasts that it will exceed 65% in the next 2 years. Current the large chains receive over 80% of online business direct (see trends by Merrill lynch HeBs).
We need to gear-up now for this market and take control
* Merill Lynch report is dated 2007, the table says 2008 but it probable is 2007. This is to be verified!
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