Where are your Customers Online….?

You may wonder where all your potential customers are online and how to attract them to your travel website. Well on Alexa you can see the top 500 websites in the world based on traffic.

World Top 20 WebSites

1. Yahoo!
2. Microsoft Network (MSN)
3. Google
4. YouTube
5. Windows Live
6. Myspace
7. Baidu.com
8. Orkut
9. Wikipedia
10. Facebook
11. Hi5
12. http://www.qq.com
13. Rapidshare.com
14. Blogger.com
15. Megaupload
16. Friendster
17. www.sina.com.cn
18. Microsoft Corporation
19. Fotolog.com
20. EBay

There were quite a few websites that I haven't really heard of and I bet you haven't either, albeit that this is a list of the worlds top websites, when you then have a look at the UK's top websites it is interesting also however most I know. The Internet Movie Database, AutoTrader and Gumtree are the suprising ones to be in the top20.

UK Top 20 Websites

1. Google UK
2. Yahoo!
3. Facebook
4. Google
5. Microsoft Network (MSN)
6. EBay UK
7. BBC Newsline Ticker
8. Myspace
9. YouTube
10. Windows Live
11. Bebo.com
12. Wikipedia
13. Amazon.co.uk
14. Blogger.com
15. The Internet Movie Database
16. Microsoft Corporation
17. Flickr
18. AutoTrader
19. Gumtree
20. Orange

Most of these websites sell advertising space but how many today do you deal with?

One further note on all of these, is that despite "travel" being a popular activiy on the internet, there is not one travel specific website in either the World or UK top 20. You can see however a list of the top travel websites on Alexa.

Alexia, I must admit is an excellent FREE service allowing you to see traffic information on most of the top websites in the world. Here you can find the fast growth and get a feel for where you could/should be looking to promote your website online.

The Blended Travel Search

As dynamic packaging is getting more established and the technology round it maturing it is interesting to see how it is being sold along side the traditional package.

So that we are all on the same page, let me outline the difference between a Dynamic Package and a Package Holiday.

Dynamic Package combines and prices the components (flight + hotel) from various sources real time or near real time.

Package Holidays are created and priced in advance and sold as a single component. Typically based on accommodation and flight committed allocations.

There are many travel companies selling both package holidays and dynamic packages online. This is correct for online travel agents, traditional tour operators selling direct and traditional travel agents. Most are selling both so that they offer the customer choice, however there are probably differing underlying motives in every case.

To gain a view about what is happening I have taken the top 10 travel websites (as defined by Hitwise UK agencies category, and marked whether they have a blended search, Dynamic Packages and Package Holidays.

My definition of a Blended search is where there is one search form for Holidays and the results displayed include both Dynamic Packages and Package Holidays. There are some cases where the website has offered both a single holiday search and separate Dynamic Packages and Package Holidays searches.

Summary of what the top travel websites doing in the UK around blended search:

Expedia.co.uk:	NoBlend	DP	PH
Thomson Holidays:	Blend	DP	PH
Lastminute.com:	NoBlend	DP	PH
First Choice:	NoBlend		PH
MyTravel:	NoBlend		PH
Thomas Cook Holidays:	Blend	DP	PH
Travel Republic:	NoBlend	DP
ebookers UK:	NoBlend	DP
Opodo UK:	NoBlend	DP	PH
On The Beach:	NoBlend	DP

Blended Search = Blend
Dynamic Packages = DP
Package Holidays = PH

As you can see out of these top 10, only 2 websites feature a Blended Search, 8 sell Dynamic Packages and 7 sell Package Holidays.

One of the most interesting points from this, is that 8 out of the top 10 websites all have Dynamic Packaging. The 2 that don’t have Dynamic Packaging, MyTravel and First Choice businesses have recently merged with Thomas Cook and Thomson respectively and so probably wont be long before we see it.

Do Users Care?
The main thing about a Blended Search is that I believe customers don’t care whether it is a Dynamic Package or a Package Holiday, they are more interested in the price and what they get for their money e.g. hotel facilities and location.

Why Blend?
One of the reasons for blending is that users don’t care, however it also makes the website simpler and the customer is able to compare similar products side by side so that they can convince themselves that they are making the right choice. Without blending the customer will have to dart around the website to try and compare all travel options next to each other.

Blending Tours and Other Travel Types
I have described blending Dynamic Packages and Package Holidays; however there is other product that warrants blending. Examples are Tours, Tailor Made Holidays and Fly Drives….there will be more.

Pricing and Protection
The one thing that is noticed is that when blending it is important that the user knows what each holiday consists of so that they know they are comparing like for like when they see a price. Examples of such things are transfers, in flight meals and taxes, which all can add significant additional costs to the holiday. The customer should also know whether they are protected or not with all the product, however with most of the top travel companies it would appear that most are bonding the Dynamic Packages as they would a Package Holiday.

Technology
There are now quite a few technology providers saying they can do this e.g. Traveltek and Comtec, however the devil is in the detail with each one and the product that it is being blended. Comtec powers the Thomas Cook blended search and Thomson Holidays I believe has been developed in-house. One issue that I know Comtec has overcome is the speed difference between a dynamic package search and a package holiday search. The Dynamic Package search tends to be the slowest if it relies on external sources of product such as bedbanks – it is as quick as the slowest bedbank connection. Caching Dynamic Packages like Package Holidays is the solution to ensure fast results.

Will the Blended search become the norm?
This is only applicable to those that sell more than one travel type, however I would say the answer is yes. It is too important for the customer to see all options in one screen for the destination that they are looking at, albeit getting to the destination by plane, rail, car or ferry.

Yahoo Pipes – 2.0 Plumbing!

• Tool for combining multiple web 2.0 information/feeds
• Simple to use
• Sharing information with others
• Copyright Issues with publishing other RSS feeds?
• Distribution for Travel?
• Too much information to digest?
• One I created earlier which combines several travel eCommerce related blogs into one feed. Travel eCommerce




• Only if plugging in multiple suppliers was as simple as this for search, quote and book!
• http://pipes.yahoo.com

Second Life Growth

Comtec with Travel.co.uk was an earlish adopter of Second Life - built a presence in SL back in April 2007. This was previewed at the Travolution Summit in April.

The number of residents was in the 5 million mark. I have just looked at the number of registered users and it has grown to a staggering 8.8 million.

I said at the time when we launched the Travel.co.uk presence in SL that we were unsure whether this will take off or not - it would seem that it is still attracting significant new users and not a fad.

Maybe time to revist it?

p.s. if you are a Second Lifer then you can see what we did with Travel.co.uk by connecting via SLurl (Second Life URL)

Are the Online Travel Portals adding value?

There are many travel portals emerging with various business models, from media websites to meta search engines. I guess what they all want to be able to do is replace the outgoing? travel agent on the internet. They do this by providing added value to the customer when they are choosing which travel company to travel with and or what to do when they get there. The outgoing travel agents in most cases are now competing with their traditional suppliers and packaging and selling direct. The big question is are travel portals really adding value and are there now too many for them all to survive? Does it cost more now for a travel company to distribute through an online travel portal now than a traditional travel agent trade channels? Which model will prove to be the best?

The Media

• Telegraph
• Times
• Guardian
• Lonely Planet

Meta Search Engines

• Travelsupermarket.com
• Cheapflights.com
• Teletext.com
• Skyscanner.net
• Travel.co.uk
• Kayak.com

Social Travel Portals

• Tripadvisor
• Boo.com

So Called Outgoing Travel Agents
They are changing their business models to compete with their traditional suppliers they mainly sold. Some might call them tour operators?

• Holidayhypermarket.co.uk
• STA Travel
• Hays Travel
• Expedia.co.uk
• Opodo.co.uk