Ian Clayton's take on travel technology

ComptingCrossroads

2009-07-08T05:03:00.001-07:00

In our last Blog we speculated that Google's wave may do more than replace email. http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2009/06/googlecrossroads.html

"Google Wave (and the Wave Protocol), already indicates the end of the email era wave to replace email. But it is more! Have we finally reached the point where the entire premise of the computer business, the operating systems, is at a Crossroads? Well Goggle would like to think so and Microsoft would prefer not to". Today i read that Google is working on a new Operating System built on Google Crome.

Google says over 30 million people use Google Crome regularly. It was designed for people who live on the web. "However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be".

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html

Interesting Indeed. We will be watching this. Google is changing our universe, Watch It!

GoogleCrossroads

2009-06-15T10:09:00.001-07:00

Google at a Crossroads with Wave Technology

We stared writing these blogs on technology as a journey into the crossroads of marketing and communications. For some time we have seen that the world is at a breakthrough point in transformation. Technology and is application are leaping forward almost at the speed of thought. We wrote about the crossroads for search, advertising, marketing, destination marketing, travel distribution and the Internet.

In our blog newweb, we noted that there was a critical mass of technology and more importantly a critical mass of knowledge about technology and how to build on it. It’s the critical mass of knowledge that is exciting. Knowledge is what will drive the success of Google wave. It is interesting to see that Google recognises this. By demonstrating Google Wave to applications developers and inviting them to be creative, Google is hoping to accelerate the evolution of Google Wave technology.

Many believe Google Wave (and the Wave Protocol), already indicates the end of the email era wave2replaceemail. But it is more! Have we finally reached the point where the entire premise of the computer business, the operating systems, is at a Crossroads? Well Goggle would like to think so and Microsoft would prefer not to.

What is certain is that the Internet is becoming a full platform for computing in a way that the PC was. The next step forward is collaborative working, and networking computers. The possibilities can hardly be imagined. Google wave is an advanced set of; protocols, robots web services and applications for networking. But its success as a platform will depend on the applications and our knowledge of how to use it effectively.

Google wave resources
Easy link to this blog http://tr.im/waveblog
AXSES short definition - http://tr.im/wavedefined
A more technical definition http://tr.im/wavetechnology
Google wave Demo in small chucks - http://tr.im/bytesizewave
or - u can at 80 min video http://wave.google.com
Questions and Answers http://tr.im/waveFAQ
How the wave works – very technical - http://tr.im/howdoeswavework
Will wave replace email - http://tr.im/wave2replaceemail

Related ideas on technology
The Next web - linked data: by Tim Berners

Email and Google Friends Connect
Social Media For Tourism & Travel marketing

Keep up with Technology for travel and tourism http://axses.com/travelwatchnews.cfm

HouseHolidays

2009-06-06T14:57:00.000-07:00

We have been running travel portals for over 12 years now. In some of our channels I find that very best value is often overlooked. Travelers have pretty fixed ideas about what to look for. For instance they will insist on being on the beach - but across the road we often have far better hotels; offering better value and sometimes a far more comfortable and elegant setting.

House rentals is another area that tends to get passed over. There is a passionate following for villas but I am still trying to figure what a villa really is. We have villas that are really apartments or condos, and that to me is wrong. To me, a villa has to have a private front door - not an hallway and elevator. So really a villa is some sort of house. In Roman days it was a upper class country house and through the middle ages it was associated with luxury. wikipedia.org suggest that today a villa refers to a specific type of detached suburban dwelling. I don't think that holds. Settlers Beach Villa complex in Barbados is not detached but it is clearly a Villa Resort of the highest standard and on a perfect beach.

Now I know that holidays are a chance to get away and one likes to go to a hotel where everything is catered for - But golly gee, the Villa-Home complex across the road has better prices, full maid service, a cook you can hire, a pool, a fantastic view and its private - spacious - spotlessly clean with a helpful and friendly family management and staff. Its a whole house with washer, dryer, stove, microwave, a full stand up fridge, iron and board, 3 rooms - kitchen, patio and a garden with fruit trees you are invited to pick from! Why are so many people ignoring houses and settling for a Room. A house is so much more that a room - why settle for less!

I think the holiday home resort vacation is undervalued. If you don't want to cook - there are many restaurants that offer more variety. But part of a real holidays is exploring - shopping - going to the market and buying your fresh fish and local vegetables - experimenting and sampling another culture. Lets hear it for Island house rentals and holiday home living!

An example i like is http://poinsettiaapartments.com. Its a family run complex of 7 villa style homes/apartments, tastefully furnished, fully equipped and on a hill overlooking a lovely bay with a working marina. Its not on the beach and you need a car to get around, but if you have a car its a perfect spot for the more discerning traveler who prefers not to be one of a crowd and have their own space.

Check out the latest webpage dedicated to Island House Holidays in St. Lucia - http://island-houses-for-rent.com - a http://bookingsstlucia.com initiative. Soon to be a Caribbean service - if you would like to participate please contact us.

facebook

2009-05-16T10:12:00.000-07:00

How to use Facebook for tourism and travel marketing

A frank discussion of how Facebook operates and what its terms and condition imply. The article illustrates how Facebook is positioned relative to search engines and what may be in store!. It illustrates how to use FaceBook to boost your position on the search engines and drive more travelers to your website. How to use Facebook pages, discussions, groups and events for tourism and travel marketing. There are strategic Tips on how Facebook can help you reach out to new social groups and market your hotel, activity or tourism destination.

Links to the best social media marketing resources and technology on the net.

http://arcres.com/facebook-travel-marketing.cfm

SocialMedia4TravelMarketing

2009-05-13T20:07:00.000-07:00

How to market travel on social media

Who is using which social media - how is the traveler using social media, which social media site is best for travel marketing.

This blog/web page offers a simple explanation with easy to understand detail. Social media clients have been analyzed in depth. Patricia Brusha of hospitality.net talks about 5 types of social media users - what they like and what social sites they might frequent - she adds marketing implications and lots of good advice for the travel marketer.

The blog/page summaries this dialogue with a simple table chart. In addition it offers a table of the leading social media channels for travel - with a layman's explanation of what they are and how they can apply. The page is full of examples and links to useful tool and resources for hotels, tourism operators and destination marketers.

The page is a social media resource of AXSES.

AXSES is a travel marketing and applications developer; building tools for travel suppliers (hotels and tourism operators) to market and manage their travel business. AXSES recently launched a Bookings engine and tourism marketing & e-commerce application for Facebook.

TravelMarketing

2009-05-07T13:41:00.000-07:00

Travel Marketing Tools for Travel Suppliers
(hotels & tourism operators)

Marketing tools for travel marketing and management range from a simple booking engine to managing content on multinational sites and on numerous Internet travel portals and marketing channels. They also include property management systems relating to managing inventory and reservations.

To optimize an Internet marketing campaign, hotels and tourism operators need to deploy multiple strategies such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, Brand advertising (Impression), direct e-mail marketing (such as iContact) and a spectrum of e-commerce and rates management across channels such as Global Distribution (GDS), Internet Distribution Systems (IDS), Social Media Channels (Facebook, Twitter etc), Affiliate Programs, Travel Agents and Tour Operators.

Managing allocation in all channels has become a major problem for travel suppliers (hotels and tourism operators).It is so complex that many hotels and tourism operators opt out and prefer to contract their entire inventory with prime wholesalers and distributors.

The opt-out strategy is a quick fix but it is not sustainable in the new order. All too often these dependencies result in huge loss of market when things go wrong. A hotel I know lost its entire distribution when its sole contractor asked for conditions it could not meet. They took their business elsewhere and bookings of 100 rooms per night were gone. It is imperative that hotels and tourism operators build a balanced strategy and take more control of their own brand and marketing.

A wide array of tools, technology and marketing options exists for tourism operators. Channel management systems such as EZYield, rates management with RateGain, Global Distribution via many GDS integration companies and hundreds of Internet Distribution Systems (IDS) like Travelocity as well a thousand Destination Travel Portals and Travel Guides.

At AXSES, we have developed a marketing suite for small and mid-sized hotels and tourism operators. This was built on our travel booking engine arcRes Bookings-Expert.com. The Bookings Engine has been vastly expanded to do much more and it is now a Travel Marketing Suite; an e-commerce platform that works for Social Media and conventional travel channels. See http://www.arcres.com/ecommerce-and-travel-marketing suites

Many hotels have opted to jump on the GDS bandwagon and mistakenly concluded that they are now well represented on thousands of IDS channels such as Travelocity. Wishful thinking! It was true at one time but IDS are opting for direct contracts with hotels – Expedia has signed up nearly 100,000 hotels to its Expedia Special Rates (ESP) program and GDS content is far down the line in priority. That is unfortunate for the hotels as they must now manage Expedia, Travelocity and all the major distribution contracts that they choose.

Optimising distribution channels requires diligence. To be on the top of the IDS ‘by price’ list you have to offer the best rate. But it is not always desirable to be at the very top! You need to be high on the list for hotels in your own class and offer a value added service rather that the best price. That way your ROI and Brand is protected. There are e-commerce companies and consultants that specialize in running IDS campaigns. They arrange the contracts and manage them for you.

The travel industry is working to integrate the marketing channels and you can purchase channel management software. Generally this software is not easy to use and is too expensive for a small hotel. An industry standard that would ease the management of channels is not imminent.

The GDS representative companies who have built Central Reservation Systems (CRS) that interface hotels to the GDS systems ( Sabre, Amadeus, Travelport and Pegasus) >, are also building systems to help hotels manage many IDS channels (Expedia etc) from the same CRS. For example, Genares has integrated their CRS with Expedia/TravelWeb (Expedia Quick Connect). This allows hotels to manage Expedia and TravelWeb rates and allocation using the Genares CRS and saves having to learn another online system. The cost is $4US per booking. For Orbitz, Travelocity, Priceline and others the fee is $4 plus the GDS fees. The IDS will generally require a minimum of 25% discount from your rack rate. Using the GDS as a channel manager thus will cost anywhere from $4 to $10 per booking in addition to the channel cost (25% minimum). It’s not a lot if you consider the time it takes to learn all the different systems.

arcRes Travel Booking for Facebook (arcResBookings) is the first-of-its-kind travel bookings application. It allows any hotel to load rates, property information, room descriptions, photo and rates directly from arcRes into Facebook and manage it from arcRes. It is a huge time saver and makes managing Facebook very easy. Both the bookings engine and quotation system are embedded in Facebook, so that guests can easily book directly with the property or tourism operator, or get an immediate quote. See Facebook Travel Bookings (Live example)

ArcResBooking.com for Facebook is a part of the arcRes Marketing Suites, a comprehensive e-commerce platform for travel. It is currently the easiest GDS setup in the industry. Contracts are signed online, and the hotel information, rates and seasons are all loaded directly from information already in arcRes.

As more and better tools for travel marketing become available, the role of the hotel marketer is becoming more technology driven. Hotels need to invest in hiring the right people and training staff to understand and be comfortable with technology. It cannot be avoided! It is essential to success in the long term.

NewOrder

2009-04-02T06:15:00.000-07:00

The new order of the web

The web is becoming a platform for participation rather than a medium for delivery. It is a paradigm shift in thinking, communications, connection, engagement and expression. It seems to have a life of its own as it morphs into a new order changing how we work, engage and communicate.

The first generation of the Internet was about delivering information. In that arena a cohesive focus became how to organize and search for information. Search became the driving force of the Internet. Soon web applications expanded to include information processing, with applications like e-commerce and travel bookings. Later came expert system where smart processes analysed behavior and delivered tailored results (see htp://RealHolidays.com). Information became packaged with process to create knowledge services.

I wrote some time ago about ‘search at a crossroads’. That crossroads is here now. Searching is no longer just about finding content. It is about information, its source and its relationship to your own personal network. It is about knowledge.

The new crossroads is the evolution of the Internet. Unlike the previous incarnations it is not here by grand design but by evolution itself. The web has morphed into a huge ‘small world network’, connecting services, applications, people, places, ideas and knowledge in unforeseen ways. Adam Smith once spoke about “The invisible hand that guides the market.” The Internet’s invisible hand is evolution, not the balance of demand and supply.

Peter Hershberg managing partner of Reprise Media, points out that YouTube, Twitter and Facebook all started out with simple objectives and have evolved to something much more:

“YouTube started as a service that allowed people to post videos but has since become the de facto place people turn to when they want to find video content on any subject imaginable. Twitter started as a way to issue personal status updates to your friends, but is morphing into a search engine that allows you to tap into the ‘now’ - what's going on now? What's the groundswell of sentiment around a topic? Facebook began as a way to see more information about people you were going to school with. Now it's become a way for friends to share interests by becoming fans of brands and lifestyles and posting articles, opinions and information”.

This evolution has created a network, never conceived and still not defined. It is a work in progress. But it is clear that form, function, process and context have changed and all parts are merging almost at the speed of thought.

Web design and marketing, once about ensuring that people could find your website, is now also about your website finding people. It’s about reaching out to people where they already are, i.e., participating in a personal social network. It’s about adding value by interacting with these networks of people in a meaningful way.

There are over 400,000 independent developers building Facebook applications to harness this. One is Oodle who helped Facebook with their marketplace classified ads application. I used it recently to list my house for rent and within a week I could have rented it twice.

In another example – I used a knowledge service, to find professional help we needed. It was a database of Internet professions classified by skills and experience. There are users’ reviews and ratings of services and skills to help you select the right person or team. But I wanted to know more about the person behind the professional. The system did not help me with that, so I turned to Facebook and Linkedin to see who their friends were and what they liked. I don’t think Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, ever thought of that use originally. We still don’t know how it might be used in the future.

At AXSES, we have built our arcRes.com travel platform into a Facebook application. It allows arcRes users to publish specials as well as rates and web content to Facebook. All this information on FaceBook as well as the ability to get holiday quotes and to book, is managed from the arcRes admin system which also manages information on the user’s website and a network of other marketing channels. Facebook is a different type of channel – one where meaningful participation and shared knowledge is the driving force.

Knowledge is an evolutionary force. It evolves personally and socially at community, global and spiritual levels. When Ford built the first car in America, German engineers were separately developing a similar invention. The world of knowledge evolves as we do. Along with it the knowledge highway, media, publishing, communications and marketing are changing.

see the man who developed the web (Sir Tim Berners-Lee) talk about this http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/484

Our resources of who uses what and how on Social Media see
http://arcres.com/Social-media-travel-marketing.cfm

Jeff Besos (Amazon) a really fun and very useful analogy of the internet

AtaCrossroads

2009-03-02T06:12:00.000-08:00

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.

Its to be expected - The whole way we do business is shifting fundamentally. Like Philip C. Wolf, President and CEO, PhoCusWright Inc. says, its 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, its 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 its going to change the entire web and all that we do. Wolf, was only half right, its not about advertising and searching and buying only, equally important is merging of publishing and communication with what we call the Social web.

Social web is just new word for communications and networking. It started with tanagers got noted by adults and is moving full steam into the mainstream.

Wolf should have added publishing and conversation are merging, and that is going to throw the monkey wrench into the media!

SocialNet

2009-02-02T12:28:00.000-08:00

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 success 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 optimise 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 or 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 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 company and products. In fact we made the mistake of setting up a profile for the BTE page and in fact their are advantages. (more detailes to follow). Its 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. Its similar in a way to the thing the call a Wall, where all can post messages to be read by others who look at your wall. Sort of like a graffiti. Groups are more focused and you can create multiple topics. In the St.lucia group there are discussions going on about Amy Winehoues as well as the new St. Lucia Marketing strategy. Unlike Pages groups and 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 stlucia group we created. Her friends have joined the group and now others are joining. Its 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, photo, video, events, invitation, discussion board, wall and messaging as well as flash and numerous application 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 e-marketer 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.

e-marketer estimate that 115 million people use the social media.
By 2013 the total number is expected to be over 154 million.
Its growing because the its easy to use, appears to be more credible and its free!

(Credit: Compete.com)

Resources:

see Jason Falls on facebookBrand Page Best Practices/

Facebook Population

The Rush to Social Networks

BookDirect

2009-01-29T04:39:00.001-08:00

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.

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.

Distribution

2008-10-28T08:21:00.000-07:00

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 demand। (on-line 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 netwrk 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 assets 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 is the travel marketing business. The technology is becoming afordable 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 tecnology is driving direct business and making it easier to control and manage distribution. Technology is more accessable 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>>>

Destination Marketing

2008-10-24T14:22:00.000-07:00

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.

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.

Links: http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/web-credibility/travel-booking.shtml

Marketing

2008-06-30T06:19:00.000-07:00

Marketing at a Crossroads

“In 2008, 40% of all leisure and 35% of business travel bookings will be done online. By 2010 over 50% of leisure bookings are expected to be online. The percentage of meeting planners researching and booking online is also growing at a rapid pace. An estimated 89% of planners are researching event locations on the web, and by 2008, 41% of all groups and meetings travel revenues will come from the Internet” Max Starkov & Jason Price, 2008. Internet Marketing.

The Internet is a new kind of marketplace with a new kind of marketing. 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)

TheSupplier

2008-06-20T05:13:00.000-07:00

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:

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).

We need to gear-up now for this market and take control

* Merill Lynch report is dated 20078 the table says 2008 but it probable is 2007. This is to be verified!

Advertising

2008-06-19T11:02:00.000-07:00

Advertising at a Crossroads

At AXSES, we have been musing about the internet advertising business, wonder how it will evolve. With Google loosing ground to other choices, such as social networking, meta search, bookings and interactive services, it will not be long before they morph their business to give travelers what they want. Google decided not go the bookings route, and did not offer to buy Expedia. It has opted to move more into social networking see Google Travel Plans. MSN in contrast is moving to interactive shopping, with its purchase of Farecast.

In our view the days of static ads and list that link to websites are limited. We expect to see this change even on the search engines. Travelers need to be able to compare options and get fully costed holiday at a click.

Hitwise, the Internet statistics company recently noted a significant shift in searchers favouring Branded searches. “I looked at the top 300 search terms sending visits to Travel websites and found that more than three-quarters - 77% - of visits from these queries were from branded search terms such as “Hilton hotels” or “Expedia” in the four weeks ending April 26, 2008”, Heather Hopkins, VP Research, Hitwise UK.

Simple put, the Hitwise findings, mean searchers are now looking more for names they know and not relying as much on generic terms. If the trend continues, it will mean that we can’t rely on the search engines to help people discover our hotels for the first time. We can’t rely on a middleman to market us!. Marketing ourselves is something we can’t avoid.

In light of the trends to buy direct, it is interesting that Expedia is a top of mind search term. Yet Expedia reports, unofficially, that 70% of visitors to the their site use their list to find resort matching a budget, and then go directly to the resort website to make a contact and book. 95% of Expedia visitors do not buy from Expedia. Aware of this trend Expedia introduced a Cost Per Click (CPC) advertising option, similar to Google. Interesting indeed! Has Expedia seen the writing on the wall?. Perhaps they got the idea that they were the new search engine for travel. So now instead of paying 25-30% in commission advertisers are paying 30-40% and don’t have any control on their brand.

The Cost Per Click (CPC), is the cost to deliver a single customer to a website as a result of a paid listing or advertisement on a medium such as Google or Barbados.org.

In a recent study of advertising costs, AXSES revealed that the Cost Per Click on Barbados.org is now less than 1/5 of costs on sites such as Google.

But they are all static ads that link travelers to the advertisers website. In addition we do free listing for every resort in the destination.
All of them, not just advertisers.

Our next release will make these ads interactive and link directly to dynamic quotation, reserve and book options. Of course all direct to the advertisers. What this means is that Barbados.org advertisers will have interactive advertisements that allow travelers to get an immediate quote and to reserve or book a holiday package, including air, online, on almost every advertisement and listing on Barbados.org. Travelers will now be able to click a button on the advertisement itself and make a booking directly with the hotel right there and then,. and this is right across all media, even on Google maps. Pretty powerful when u consider that Barbados.org maps are on the Google website ((http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=http:%2F%2Fwww.barbadosbymap.com%2Fgeorss.php) )as well as on Barbados.org map pages (and http://barbadosbymap.com)

Couple low CPC advertising with bookable ads and the supplier centered technologies now in place with arcres suites, axses travel platform and other supplier solution, and you get a powerful direct marketing solution: Enhancing suppliers brand and delivering commission free business directly to the tourism operator. Giving control back to the supplier.

We look forward to hearing from. Do you agree, do you have a point of view?. Please let us know what you know!

TravelSearch-Crossroads

2008-04-06T12:35:00.000-07:00

Have search engines lost their opportunity to be a major player in the future of travel. What will happen if Google acquires Expedia. Will Search engines offer bookings!

Its clear that Global Distribution Systems, Social Networking, local knowledge, vertical search are a threat to the traditional search options.

Meta search travel sites like Kayak, offer better search for travel. Social networks and consumer sites like Tripadvisor, are improving the travel experience by offering relevant unbiased advise. Much favored over paid search results.

Social networking sites like TripAdvisor (acquired by Expedia), IgoUGo (acquired by Travelocity) are taking searches away from traditional search engines.
Kayak now receives more than 6 million unique visitors a month. Expedia has caught Googles attention but for now seems not to be a takeover target!. They are moving instead to create more social media and community content. Already, about 50% of travelers use some sort of online social media site to research their plans, says Rob Torres, Google’s managing director for Travel

The erosion of search in favour of these sites is with good reason. The travel technology platform has developed far beyond the capabilities of generic search.

Travelers need to know details on costs and features that are specific to their own unique requirements.

Travel Search engines like Kayak, sidestep (acquired by Kayak) do this. Underlying is a travel platform, including bookings and quotation systems like; http://arcres.com, and integrated solutions like http://BookingsFranchise.com

Traditional search engines, just don’t deliver these precise results. Try looking for a hotel near Bridgetown in Barbados in the price range of $250 to $500. Google will give you a lot of results, mostly links to booking sites. You need to go to a booking or quotation site like http://BookingsBarbados.com for this. Try searching for Barbados 5 star hotels, chances are that Sandy Lane voted one of the Top ten Hotels in the world will not be in the top lists. As the search engines move further down the road to paid clicks, search results become even more eroded, less relevant and still imprecise.

In addition to these trends, their is a growing list of specialty local sites like AXSES' own BookingsStlucia.com, Barbados Bookings and reservations center and Realholidays.com trip planning. These sites put users in contact with Hotels directly. More and more travelers want to contact their host. They feel they have better communications with a hotel as apposed to a meta site dealing with thousands of properties and thousands more travelers. The smaller regional sites also provide better on the location information, giving local knowledge and advise. Sites like http://realholidays.com, help travelers put together their own, made to measure itinerary, with options that may not be found anywhere else. Like star gazing with Leo, bring your own wine, he supplies the telescope and the story of the stars. You will not find that on Expedia or Kayak

"Seeking information and looking for perspective--like-minded experience and judgments--are currently trumping the straightforward hunt for the best price", says Douglas Quinby, senior director of research at PhoCusWright.

What we need is more consolidation throught advanced information engineering. The future web will be about bringing services and technology together in a powerful information delivery system.

MORE ABOUT THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNET NEXT!!!

Links

Connecting You With Your Intimate Bot (semantic web3.0)

The Gap In Google's Defenses (virtical search)

Travel Web Sites Get Personal

Need for Bookings Franchise

2007-11-27T12:50:00.000-08:00

I have just returned from World Travel Market, London, 2007, the biggest destination travel show in the world. I spend some time chatting to destination about the Bookings systems they are using. In the Caribbean many are using WWTE a white label product of Expedia. It is not working well.

The problem is that Tour operator (TO) systems just don't work for Destinations. The Destination authority is responsible for marketing its member tourism operators. This means it must use the market channels and not conflict with it. Its prime responsibility is to help its clients get access to markets, be represented in global distribution and to encourage Direct Sales.

The TO booking systems operate on a distribution and Merchant model. They get net rates on hotels, mark them up and resell them, collecting the funds in advance and paying operators. Their systems require clients to abide by their rules and terms including setting aside rooms and units for their exclusive use (allocation). If a small hotel can't do this they often don’t get listed. They don't get listed if they are too small and can’t offer acceptable NET rates. TO systems do not promote direct sales and they don’t build hotel brands. Many are opaque, obscuring the hotel brand in favour of Best Price. The Destination Marketing company has an entirely different objective.

A sensible solution for Destinations is http://BookingsFranchise.com.

PRESS Release:

Powerful New Travel Platform Now Available for Destination Marketers

http://BookingsFranchise.com: Affordable Branded Channels for Direct Marketing. A first of its kind product for tourism destinations and travel portals.

BookingsFranchise.com platform delivers top e-commerce services. It is a powerful full featured solution, integrated with Global Distribution (GDS) and Internet marketing driving Direct Business and Distribution sales. BookingsFranchise is easy for destinations and tourism operators to setup and manage and easy for travelers to use; to get quotes, find, compare and book properties.

It is a proven platform of travel technology, developed and implemented by AXSES for Barbados.org, http://BookingsBarbados.com, http://BookingsStlucia.com and http://IntimateHotelsBarbados.com to name a few.

Ian Clayton CEO of AXSES, says “BookingsFranchise.com lets you do business your way, with your own terms and your rules. Unlike Tour Operator centered system, there are no commissions and no net rates. There is no limit to size of properties and all properties have complete flexibility with terms, inventory models and payment options. Ultimately, it delivers a way to take control of the entire supply chain with supplier centered tools”.

Advance your travel marketing; global exposure, more bookings, more control.
email AXSES BookingsFranchise

For More Information please see http://BookingsFranchise.com

Contact: email AXSES

Ian Clayton, iclayton@axses.com

AXSES
Knowledge engineering

Tel: 246 429 2653

Do Business your way with multiple client terms, rate plans and rules.

Axses Travel Platform

delivers a fully interactive personalised solution

+ leading technology

http://arcRes.com |
http://arcRes-crs.com |
http://arcRes-pms.com |
http://Portal-keeper.com |

http://DestinationSuites.com |

http://TravelAgentsRes.com |
http://RealHolidays.com

AXSES Solutions cover all aspects of Travel Marketing and tourism Management.

GDS Chain Codes explained

2007-07-15T17:15:00.000-07:00

Private Label Chain Code

A 'chain code' is a two-letter code used by the GDS to identify what chain hotels belong to.

Pegasus has two Chain codes, Utell and Unirez. Utell was the original code, it was used by the large chain hotel which were the first to get connected to the GDS. Utell was heavily promoted to the agents and has good visibility on the network. It uses the netbooker engine and is quiet expensive to set setup and maintain, the costs also cover advertising and promotion associated with Utell. Utell is the world’s largest representation service, representing more than 700,000 rooms worldwide

The Unirez code was purchased by Pegasus in order to offer a simpler lower cost "access only" to GDS. It has become popular with smaller hotel who could not afford the UTELL costs.

Many hotel chains and hotel marketing companies have their own 'private label chain code'. With a private chain code marketers can focus on marketing the unique characteristics of its members’ properties to the GDS and other electronic distribution channels. Agents who know the gds code often look for properties listed with it first. For example, "Special Hotels of the World" advertise and promote the "GW" chain code, a "GW" BRAND. Agents will often look for a brand they know to find hotels that fit that category.

The Unirez brand is considered the small hotels brand, whereas the Utell brand is associated with large chains. If a travel agent was looking for smaller hotels they might try the Unirez code rather than look for ALL brands or Utell.

The GDS chain code is an important sales tool used by hotel marketing programs.

see arcRes solutions for tourism, AXSES web Solution

GDS Next Generation

2007-07-04T12:37:00.000-07:00

GDS NEXT GENERATION SEAMLESS

The GDS' are the distribution backbone for travel agents, in-house corporate travel departments, and many of the Internet distribution systems like Expedia. They deliver rates and availability information for travel covering air, hotel and car rentals. The information is delivered to the travel agent, so that it appears on their desktop computer using special software to search, display rates and book.

The GDS' Hotel information was originally all input by hand and this is still done manually in many cases. Pegasus employed a house full of workers to do this work, much of this is now out sourced to India. The process is very tedious and time prone to error. Once the information is loaded software system maintain the rate and inventory changes in all GDS. The Pegasus Switch coordinates hotel information bewteen gds sytsems. Data from hotel chains, Internet sites and GDS agents all at some piont use this switch.

To avoid delays and errors hotels and their technology providers opted to integrate the GDS information with their own reservations and property management solutions. This was called seamless integration. 2 way seamless refers to the systems that can manage GDS rates from the hotel CRS or PMS. One way integration simply means the hotel system can view the GDS sales but not manage the data.

Seamless Integration is not the same as NEXT GENERATION.

Next Generation capability was built by the GDS to allow compatible systems to input the data directly into the GDS´s. There are several such sytems in place. (list of services). This means that a hotel might use an online form to input their rates and data and this goes directly into the GDS. It substantially reduces the time to get to market and eliminates some errors when re-keying data. GDS sold this option to vendors who it turn incorporated it into their hotel solutions. Some setup shop as GDS agents to offer this service.

NEXT GENERATION ROBOTICS

The technology to update a mainframe is not trivial. It involves robotics that interface online internet system with GDS mainframe computers. Mainframes are not Internet savvy computers and cannot be accessed directly to change and add data. The data is sent via packets relayed on telecommunications network. The packet relay is interpreted by the Mainframe. As these mainframes are all different systems, protocols and standards were created. Mainframes also have very specific rules on what characters are accepted. Charters and in some cases words act as tigers to set off process in a mainframe, so the information sent to a mainframe must be accurate and comply with their rules. Even years after implementation the GDS-load process was finding errors in data integrity. A simple quotation mark can trigger a failure with disastrous results.

The Pegasus switch (originally called thisco, now called Utraswitch) is not a next generation technology. That is why Pegasus bought a similar system developed by Trust that was. Pegasus plans to upgrade all system by 2008 with conversions starting with hotel factory (their Central reservation system) in November 2007. Pegasus PR

SUMMARY

Next Generation provides GDS users with real-time rates and availability that is 100% identical to the information used by a hotel company's own reservations staff. The information is more quickly available and more accurate resulting in increased confidence and usability by agents. With NEXT generation Seamless, agents are more inclined to sell more using the GDS rather than book via telephone to assure their clients the lowest rates. Galileo Inside Shopper, Worldspan Integrated Hotel Source, Sabre Direct Connect Shop, the respective GDS' Next Generation Seamless products, were implemented by 2004.

GDS Chain Codes

see arcRes solutions for tourism, AXSES web Solution

GDS History

2007-07-04T12:35:00.001-07:00

GDS, CRS and channel management

The GDS have long been the primary source of travel agents bookings in the world. Today they do much more and supply content rates and hotel inventory to thousands of On-line Travel website.

The GDS systems are a huge network of thousands of computers set up originally by companies like Sabre, WorldSapn. Amedeus, Galileo and Pegasus. They provided Computer Based Reservations (CRS) services to all travel agents long before the Internet. These system are still in place and are used by more that 480,000 agents worldwide.

When you visit a Travel Agent you will see them at the CRS to find and book flights and resorts.

It has traditionally been an expensive distribution system requiring setup fees in the thousands of dollars as well as booking fees, transaction fees and agents commissions. As a result many smaller hotels are not represented in the GDS and GDS have not been too interested in this sector as they problem of coordinating inventory has been too great (a small hotel just does not have a sufficient supply of rooms to justify the effort of cost them up).

With the advent of new technology this has changed. Now there are GDS agent companies who specialise in supplying content to the GDS computers. The Internet also makes it easier to get the information and distribute it. This has made GDS widely available to hotels of all size. An inovator in opening up the Market was Tom Egan of reserv, who single handedly changed the face of distribution by offering an easy to use system with no setup fees and no minimum charges. His system worked on next Generation technology meaning that the entire process of setting up a hotel was done on-line, no manual entry. Alas Tom sold out and his ideas hot the dust.

2 way integration

New e-commerce systems (such as arcRes http://Bookings-Expert.com, http://axses-innkeeper.com and http://arcRes-CRS.com) are integrated with the GDS system to make it even easier and more affordable for hotels to market throught GDS. The two way integration makes it easier to setup and to manage rates and inventory in multiple channels. It essentially means that a hotel can use their own web booking engine or front desk software (that is GDS integrated) to see and process GDS reservation and to update allocation and rates. This is a great advantage as it means less to learn and to manage.

GDS in transitions

2007-07-04T12:24:00.000-07:00

With so much happening in the world of travel its a good idea to share what we know.

For Example, i have been watching the press releases re Pegasus purchase of wizcom from www.trustinternational.com/, a travelport company, and part of the Cendant empire. The stories say trust has decided to vacate that part of the business. An insider says not so, the are building a new GDS next generation interface!.

Where does that leave Pegasus, did they get sold a bundle?. Pegs says NO, They are actively promoting the Next "Next Generation" at the HITEC show june 2007.

More >>>>

GDS History

GDS NEXT GENERATION

ArcRes GDS integrated bookings

Strategy for Small Travel Solutions companies

2007-02-17T07:26:00.000-08:00

This article was inspired by my visit to the travel Technology Show 2007.

See previous blog

At AXSES we believe that ultimate control of distribution rest with the travel operator. That means the hotel, activity and rental company supplier.

Hotels have encouraged distribution dominance by offering huge discounts to tour operators in exchange for guaranteed bookings. At the same time the distributors had marketing clout and could afford the technology that consumers demanded (on line booking, dynamic packaging etc). In a fragmented global market, distributors emerged as the place to shop.

The tour operators set their own rules and resell price. Prices in distribution were thus 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 would not meet a requested price would be dropped. In this agressive distribution driven market, the hotel Brand was eroded and rates fragmented.

The large hotel chains have moved effectively to take back control with Best Rate Guarantees and by offering consumers the service (technology) they demand. (on-line costing, bookings, packaging). Thanks to technology, operators have increased and continue to increase their influence via direct bookings and by greater clout in managed distribution pricing and inventory.

At the same time “travel consumers are exchanging more information and exerting much greater influence over online content - from travel blogs to social networking, they are driving change” (source).

Travelers prefer to deal direct(1) and the core technology that is driving this trend is Field Management Systems and small travel application developers and integrators play a large part in delivering these solutions.

Consider AXSES portal clients like Intimate hotels of Barbados. The Intimate portal is managed by Portal-keeper.com and arcRes-CRS (central reservations Systems) these solutions are fully integrated with GDS and with the hotel bookings and (bookings-expert.com) and Property Management System http://axses-innkeeper.com.

In this senario the small hotels can manage the rates and inventory on the Intimate Hotels Barbados Portal as well as the GDS. The technology they use not only powers Intimate in Barbados but at least 10 other channels that are vital marketing forces for Barbados and the Caribbean. The next step is to add full channel management extending to sites like Expedia, Travelocity and all 40,000 IDS sites.

Notes
1. PhoCusWright 2005: "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>>>

Travel Technology Show 2007

2007-02-16T10:16:00.000-08:00

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!!