Future growth in display, not search

Or so says, Tim Brown, managing director of Blue Lithium EU.

The forecast came during a forum on ad networks at the AOP this week.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: PPC display advertising AOP

The (infamous) CEO interview with Steve Hafner at the Travolution Summit - hello TravelSupermarket

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Seven days to paint an aeroplane

OpenSkies, the new British Airways-backed airline flying between continental Europe and North America, is gearing up for its launch in June with a blog and various bits and pieces, such as a call for "innovators".

The buzz also includes a bit of viral marketing on YouTube, with this time-lapse video taken during a respray job of one its Boeing 757.

And a brush-busting 282 litres of paint!



Almost 17,000 views so far...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: openskies british airways BA paint

Big two offer little (dot)comment

Europe’s two largest leisure travel operators, TUI Travel plc and Thomas Cook Group, both issued their half-year results this week. Reading through the numbers one would imagine that the internet doesn’t exist.

Listening to the calls with analysts, one would imagine the internet doesn’t exist.

And calling their financial PRs to ask for some more colour about their online business, one would imagine that the internet (to say nothing of Travolution!) doesn’t exist.

So what did we find out? For TUI Travel, online accounts for about 35% of its UK mainstream business. ‘It’s building, but it has slowed,’ said chief exec Peter Long. Requests for more details were met with a polite ‘it’s not the sort of information we give out’ response.

The UK is a mature market for both travel and online so a slowing in growth while volumes increase is no surprise. TUI has been reducing capacity on its loss-making seat-only operations. Fewer seats will lead to fewer web bookings.

So where is the growth coming from? Mass-market price-led fly and flop short-haul packages, or exclusive upmarket Holiday Villages/Sensatori products? Thomson.co.uk or firstchoice.co.uk?And what about the web side of its separately reported specialist and activity units?

Its consumer-facing dotcoms are doing well enough. Laterooms lifted its bed nights booked by 146% to 994K while hotelopia was 18% up at 1.3m.

A technical hitch prevented questions from being asked on Thomas Cook’s call with the trade press. “Thomas Cook is still on target to achieve 35% of group sales online in the 09/10 financial year,’ it said after the event, repeating comments made earlier this year. “In the year to end-Oct07 online accounted for 13%.”

Hopefully there might be some more details when the big two’s full year results come out at the end of the year. Travolution isn’t reading anything too sinister into their muted response this week, but it hasn’t stopped us from idly speculating on how important the internet is to Europe’s two biggest travel companies.

Martin Cowen, chief writer, Travolution

Friday competition - Spot the difference

An outrageously cynical member of the industry emails to suggest the creatives at Lastminute.com (or its ad agency) might not be as innovative as people think.

Many of you will recall the video we posted yesterday of the pink'un's "first" viral TV ad.

The similarities between it and this effort earlier this year by ImprovEverywhere are purely coincidental, of course.



Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: improveverywhere lastminute viral ad

Calling all travel start-ups

Travolution has an exciting project planned for the autumn of 2008 and we are looking for start-ups in the travel sector.

Details will be revealed in the coming weeks - but if you are running a new company or have an idea kicking around the brain matter, then we want to hear from you.

Email me directly.
Send a message via Facebook.
Twitter Travolution.

We look forward to hearing from you!

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: start-up travel start-up

Sing when you're winning

Apparently this is Lastminute.com's first viral ad, according to Brand Republic.



Although, of course, there is this ad from a few years back, which just happened to find its way onto YouTube after never seeing the light of day in the real world of TV advertising.

Had viral written all over it...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: lastminute youtube

All inclusive holidays popular in a weak economy

Guest blog post from Robin Goad, research director at Hitwise UK:

The combination of a weakening economy, falling house prices and a rising cost of living thanks to inflation mean that many British consumers are looking for ways to cut their expenditure.

Add in the impact of a strong Euro (although not Dollar), and it seems likely that one area facing a cutback in consumer spending will be travel. One interesting trend we have noticed which indicates that this may be the case is an increase in searches for ‘all inclusive holidays’.

As you can see from that chart below, the amount of traffic that travel websites are receiving from this price-sensitive / budget-conscious search term has increased by 24% compared with last year.

The table below illustrates the top 10 search terms containing the phrase ‘all inclusive holidays’, and it is noticeable that people searching for such packages are more concerned with the 'all inclusive' element than with where they want to actually go.

Six of the top 10 search terms don’t mention a location at all, whereas - by way of comparison - nine of the top 10 searches containing the term ‘cheap flights’ over the same period include a destination.

Another thing that jumps out is the low success rate for the term ‘all inclusive family holidays’. Almost two fifths of people searching for this term don’t find a relevant result in a search engine that they a happy to click through to, highlighting a potentially lucrative area for SEO or paid search activity.

As you can see, the people currently looking for location specific all inclusive deals are choosing warmer sunshine destinations around the Mediterranean and Red Sea: Spain, Egypt, and Turkey.

This leads me on to another hypothesis: as money is tight and the strong Euro means that European destinations are becoming more expensive, will we see a decline in travel to Europe and bumper year for domestic tourism?

Throw in 10 days of lovely sunny weather, and it seems likely that UK holiday bookings will be up this year.

Not so fast. I heard a representative from TUI (which owns Thomson Holidays) on the Today programme the other morning claiming that overseas bookings from the UK were up - and the company’s financial release bears this out.

Back to the Hitwise data and the news also isn’t great. As you can see from the chart below, the amount of traffic that searches for both ‘uk holidays’ and ‘british holidays’ send to travel websites is on the decline.

Maybe a few more weeks of good weather and some first hand experience of the strong Euro will help reverse this trend?

We’ll keep and eye on this and report back with any changes.

Robin Goad, research director, Hitwise UK

Read more of Goad's posts

Will enthusiasm for travel apps be the same on MySpace?

For very obvious reasons TripAdvisor is to push its three enormously successful Facebook applications onto rival social network MySpace. We got the story this morning.

The trio of apps - Cities I’ve Visited, Local Picks and the frighteningly addictive Traveler IQ Challenge - have attracted six million downloads over the last year, which is impressive.


But we are pondering a few things:

• Is the drive for apps slowing down?
• Many people are members of both social networks, so would it be unlikely (odd, even) if the same user dowloaded the app again for MySpace?
• What is the longevity of a travel app?
  

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: myspace facebook tripadvisor apps

New Purple Pod - social, carbon, trips and bookables

Latest episode out now, featuring WAYN, Tamar, Bookable Holidays and TripSay on The Sky's The Limit.




Remember you can subscribe to the Purple Pod by adding this feed to your RSS reader or via iTunes [NB: link opens your iTunes application].

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: purple pod WAYN

More twists and turns in Google saga

Google is protecting its position - in the face of legal threats from travel companies against it and between one another.

A short but very interesting statement we obtained this morning speaks volumes.

Information from Thomas Cook [contained in the same article] revealed that it is also attempting to crack down on activity against its brand name and those of its myriad of subsidaries.

The issue is such a hot one that a bit of keyword analysis at our end has shown that upstream search traffic to the main Travolution website is being boosted by a number of phrases such as "google trademark travel", "google brand name travel" and - astonishingly - "google PPC travel".

There are many senior figures who are preparing to dig in for a major battle with either Google or rival travel companies. This will run and run...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Travel mag publishes edition with (almost) 100 per cent user generated content

This will send a shiver down the spine of many old school editors but Budget Travel, a glossy travel mag in the US, has decided to commemorate its birthday by producing the entire edition with contributions from readers.

All copy and photography was sent in by loyal fans - bar its regular Deals section, which staffers wrote.

Editor Erik Torkells admitted an "extraordinary amount" of editing was needed to knock it all into shape and the whole exercise was not cheap at all.

The opposite of TripAdvisor, then.

Foliomag.com has more details and an interview with the editor.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: budget travel

Still no word on a sale then

Interesting profile piece in the Telegraph today on WAYN.

Good to read co-founder Peter Ward's frankness over the company's switch away from a pure subscription model, as we reported last June.

I don't regret what we did with subscription. Yes, we could have become the next Bebo or Facebook had we not charged from the beginning, but equally we were looking at it from the point of view that we had to make money because we did not have the capital and we were looking at it very much as a business.

And, once again, despite being pressed on the issue, there's still nothing to say about a potential sale.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags:

Sneak preview

It's still in testing and a few weeks away from launch but we thought you might like a sneak preview of travel.co.uk - the OTA/price comparison hybird.

Here is the home page with flexible search options and the results comparison page enabling consumers to see what they're getting with each holiday.

As per our story earlier today managing director Ray Mason is bullishly estimating it will be among the top 1o travel sites around the close of the year.

Linda Fox, lead reporter, Travolution

Bloggers reunited - in the real world

Many of you will know of The BOOT, a great blog from Australia written by Tim Hughes.

Hughes has been in London for a few weeks on business (he wears a senior HotelClub hat during the day) and invited UK bloggers to an unofficial meet-up last night.

Here he is (on the right) with Guillaume Thevenot of Hotel Blogs. Any questions regarding the flyer Thevenot is holding should be directed to Hotel Blogs. :-)


Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: travel blog

What ThomasCook.com can do better

According to E-Consultancy.com.

Full analysis on the main site, but summarised:

• Avoid returning no results for holiday searches
• Provide some user reviews and feedback
• Load my search results faster
• Don't surprise me with hidden charges
• Allow users to save their previous searches
• Provide a contact number during the booking process
• Don't display unavailable flights
• Provide more useful information on airports/destinations
• Improve the calendar
• More flexible search options

Interesting piece. We've got in touch with TC to see what they think of the article.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: thomas cook e-consultancy

First official legal threat in travel over trademark bidding

To end a pretty turbulent week in the world of Google pay-per-click, Teletext issued a statement last night threatening any company with legal action if it bids on the word "teletext".

As far as we are aware this is the first legal challenge made public by any travel company in the UK.

You can see who is still bidding on the word "teletext" by clicking here. At least one major travel company pulled its ad less than an hour after the threat being issued, so it worked.

It brings to a close one of the most bizarre weeks in recent memory for search marketers as companies have been forced to decide whether to bid against rivals and protect their brand name by throwing money into the system to ensure their own ads are not out-bid.

Or sit tight and see how the market reacts...

But throw another spanner in the works in the form of supposed "gentleman's agreements" (we revealed this a few weeks back), which some believe may be contravening competition laws, and the issue starts getting very messy indeed.

An email last night from one chief executive summed up the week and the feeling of many pretty well:

"Lawyers will get rich, Google will get richer - a pain for us all. Big brands will defend, little ones will exploit - a mess."

Our prediction is that the ease with which Google made the switch in the US in 2004 will not be replicated so smoothly here in the UK.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: trademark PPC

Caption Competition - sarcasm recommended

Rough Guides is in PR overload as it pushes its new guidebook to England.

Press release blurb:

...in a country where “queuing remains a national pastime” the Rough Guide says there’s one thing that unites the nation: “their sense of humour”.

“The English are devoted to sarcasm on a gigantic scale.”

Well let's see how devoted we are - and readers in other countries, of course - to the lowest form of wit (but the highest form of humour) with a caption to go alongside this picture of Kayak co-founder and CEO, Steve Hafner, at the Travolution Summit a few weeks back.


Entries via the comments button. A prize for the best one...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: rough guide hafner kayak england caption competition

Scoble lays into travel sites - advises Google to go vertical

Just came across this post from the blogmeister Robert Scoble. Sorry for the delay.

It was written on the 2 May, before Microsoft backed away from its attempt to buy Yahoo!, and goes into some detail about how bored he is about a potential deal and why Microsoft is full of - for want of a better word - luddites, etc, etc.

Google gets a bit of a poke in the ribs, too.

He uses travel as a prime example, pointing to the Google Travel page. A poor directory page effort circa in terms of style to 1999.

He asks:

Does that page help? Not really. No video. No cool people telling you about interesting places. No personality. No branding. No interesting Web services.

The big brand travel sites aren't any better, he continues.

There's then follows a bit of hand wringing about what Microsoft may or may not do with its purchase of Farecast.

But there are two key and rather tantalising paragraphs:

I find that Google listens a lot more than Yahoo or Microsoft does. Google has left billions of dollars on the table that it will go after over the next year, if they are as smart as I think they are.

Google: take the money off the table — build great niche search sites around topics like travel, wine, parenting, housing, automobiles, etc. You have a year to do it before Microsoft can even START to figure out where you’re weak.

It's a fascinating article and raises some of the fundamental questions about where Google, search, vertical search and travel search in particular may head next. Read it.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: scobleizer robert scoble troogle

Are social network advertisers barking up the wrong tree?

Our latest column in Travel Weekly:

For many people in the industry there remains a big question mark over the value of using social networks to reach potential consumers.

At Travolution we have been unashamedly guilty of talking up the benefits of throwing increasingly scant resources at sites such as Facebook, MySpace and others in order to spread the marketing of a brand into these hugely popular new areas.

It is becoming clear to some marketers that traditional online advertising is not as rewarding – in terms of solid leads – as many would have expected, given the enormous volume of people using social networks.

One marketer said to us recently: “People use social networks to talk to each other, not buy products.”

This is a dilemma for travel brands and travel per se is one of the most experiential products.

Consumers appear very comfortable with using a social network to talk about their holidays – the planning process and, most importantly, what happened in resort.

Some travel brands – STA Travel in particular – have capitalised on this by creating simple applications within a Facebook page for people to visit, rather than traditional advertising slots.

Nevertheless, a new report by digital marketing agency Tamar suggests travel brands are still missing out on the goodwill factor often associated with a holiday.

There is a “great deal of consumer support” on social networks for travel brands, but only a few have registered their presence there.

But the most interesting fact to emerge from the study is this: brands that have tried to embrace social networks have a massive 59% more unofficial supporter groups than those with no presence.

It seems that just acknowledging the existence of social networks and creating some kind of presence is a good start.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Because pilots have nothing better to do

...technology lights up terminal floors and allows pilots and passengers alike to actively interact and have an entertaining and fun experience with featured brands and interactive games, all while waiting for their plane to take-off.

PILOTS?!?


Anyway, a new interactive system from Reactrix Systems for US airports.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

And so it begins - brand bidding on Google...

Deals done behind the scenes to not bid on one another's brand terms might be easy to discover if you have the time to check all the major travel brands via a Google keyword search.

For those not party to such agreements, welcome to the PPC bun-fight [click on an image for more detail]:








Those with good memories will recall a pledge by Cheapflights last week not to bid on the brand names of its advertisers.


UPDATE: It has emerged that the inclusion of Cheapflights, as seen above, is a by-product of how this policy change may be seen in the industry, according to Cheapflights, which is understandably keen to stress that its pledge still stands.

What the company is doing is bidding on the keyword "airways" and thus why Cheapflights appears against searches for "British Airways".

This afternoon, the company has run a negative match against "british airways" so it no longer appears.

As someone mentioned in a meeting this afternoon: there will be almost universal confusion in the first few weeks as companies decide which words to bid on or brands to bid against.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: trademark PPC brand name

The (conference networking) world moves in mysterious ways

Bruce Poon Tip of GAP Adventures and James Dunford-Wood from Worldreviewer both appeared on-stage at the Travolution Summit a few weeks back.

By amazing coincidence the pair announced a partnership within a week of the event to run GAP's products through the Worldreviewer site.

Surely the wheels of new business cannot work that quickly?

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Webby Awards agree with Travo judges

Looks like a clean sweep for Kayak in recent weeks.

The meta search engine has won a coveted Webby Award in the US, just a fortnight after scooping a Travolution Award.

Kayak landed the People's Voice award and flight prediction site Farecast won the main Webby in the travel category.

An American roadtrip series from the New York Times won in the travel category for online video. Discovering Cross-Cultural Solutions Brazil scooped the People's Voice prize.

[Valleywag has a typically cutting piece of analysis regarding the Webbys. NB: no money changes hands at the Travo awards]

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: farecast kayak webby