technology

Snippets and Factoids from Henry Harteveldt’s OpenTravel Presentation

by RobertKCole on April 26, 2011

Henry Harteveldt, Forrester Research‘s Vice President and Principal Analyst for Travel opened his keynote for the OpenTravel Alliance 2011 North American Advisory Forum with Bette Davis’ famous quote as Margo Channing in All About Eve, “Fasten your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”

Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy ride
Creative Commons License photo credit: Jerad Heffner

Travel distribution executives are warned to fasten their seat belts. They may be encountering more than a bump.

Speaking to over 100 travel industry distribution executives at the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas, Henry’s premise was that when the greater degree of customization demanded by consumers collides with the direct connections proposed by suppliers and is further complicated by market forces pushing for new Global Distribution System business models, the flight will encounter considerable turbulence.

The following is a synopsis of some key factoids and snippets of Henry’s always insightful perspective.

Travel Industry

  • Overall Retail Sector (all products) is up 13% year to date through March, 2011
  • Airlines Reporting Corporation reports that Airline Revenue is +10.7%, but the number of passengers flying is down 1.6%
  • Fuel price increases are removing discretionary income from travelers prior to the peak summer travel season
  • 30% of travel suppliers report that the booking window in 2011 is shorter than in 2010

continue reading →

Tagged as: airline, hotel, insight, marketing, mobile, online travel companies, statistics, strategy, technology, travel, trends

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HITEC Presentation: Mobile Distribution – No, It’s Not Billboards and Neon Vacancy Signs

by RobertKCole on June 28, 2010

It was great to see that attendance rebounded healthily at the annual Hospitality Financial & Technology Professionals HITEC conference, held in Orlando, Florida June 21 – 24, 2010.

The hospitality industry needs to discover what its guests want and figure out what combination of Apps and devices should be supported

There's not only an App for that, but there's also a device and operating system as well, plus a bunch of travel industry complexities...

The good news was that I had been selected to speak on a subject that combined two of the hottest topics in technology and travel: Mobile Distribution. It’s always fun to speak on a topic that should attract a good crowd…

The bad news was that the session was scheduled for 8:00am Wednesday morning – A time slot generally not conducive to strong crowds, especially following a second straight late night of highly entertaining client parties…

Rather amazingly, the early start time still produced a good sized audience that was sincerely interested in the monumental changes taking place in the mobile space and its impact on the hotel distribution landscape.

Many thanks are owed to to Rob Torres of Google, Flo Lugli of Wyndham Worldwide and Brett Keller of Priceline who generously provided some great graphics and data points regarding mobile and hotel distribution in presentations at the Association of Travel Marketing Executives Conference the previous week in Boston. Several of the statistics included are staggering.

The session was titled “Mobile Distribution – No, It’s Not Billboards and Neon No Vacancy Signs” continue reading →

Tagged as: Apple, distribution, Google, hospitality, hotel, marketing, mobile, strategy, technology, travel

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Impact of Structured Data on Travel Search

by RobertKCole on May 6, 2010

Search is radically changing to become more contextual, relevant and focused on producing the right answer for the user. The shift from a web of documents to a web of data is evolving. The impact can be seen on search engine results pages across many product categories, which foreshadows the future of travel search.

Search
Creative Commons License photo credit: [le]doo

Search engines are providing travelers with an increasingly dense forest of options

Moderating the “The Impact of Structured Data on Travel Search” panel discussion at the Open Travel Alliance 2010 Advisory Forum in Seattle last week provided an opportunity to highlight some of the dramatic steps forward in the area of travel search. Unfortunately, in the process, there were also some unintentionally ugly results discovered as the industry and the major search engines struggle to cope with the geometrically expanding range of unstructured data.

The topic was exceptionally timely given the breaking news regarding Google’s rumored acquisition of ITA Software and Facebook’s launch of its Open Graph protocol (that leverages RDFa data sets.) Even Apple Computer’s leaked iTravel patent filing incorporates search functionality for flights, hotels, rental cars, cruises, trains and buses. These three applications create new paradigms for travel search – all relying on access to the “Deep Web” – the source information that serves as the foundation for today’s web pages. continue reading →

Tagged as: innovation, open travel, search, semantic search, technology, travel, Web 3.0

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Google Maps Hotel Prices: Fear & Loathing in Online Travel

by RobertKCole on March 24, 2010

I was frankly surprised and shocked that people were surprised and shocked by Google’s announcement that they are experimenting with including hotel pricing in Google Maps search results for a small. select group of users.

Fear and Loathing
Creative Commons License photo credit: IkaInk

Google, how dare you put hotel prices on your local map listings! Now you've ruined everything!

Google’s mantra is to organize the world’s information and to simplify the user’s search experience. Price plays an important role in the hotel purchase decision and Google’s research undoubtedly indicates that people would like to know the price as soon as possible for their desired dates as they research various travel options.

Google Maps is not the endgame here, That is ultimately the search results page. One must understand that Google is merely testing the water on the Maps platform in preparation of launching the hotel price integration into the Universal Search results on all Google results pages.

Universal Search is the nifty technology that provides all those great image, video, news, map and shopping links in the Google search results page. Everyone agrees that Location Based Search and Mobile are major drivers of travel innovation – this new functionality is both geo-centric and reduces clicks /keystrokes.

Did anyone seriously expect Google to pass on this opportunity? Especially since Bing is already providing full date-driven hotel meta-search capability? continue reading →

Tagged as: Google, hotel, online travel companies, travel search

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High Points from PhoCusWright@ITB 2010

by RobertKCole on March 13, 2010

My recap of the PhoCusWright@ITB 2010 conference has been published as a guest post on Josiah Mackenzie‘s Hotel Marketing Strategies Blog. Titled “30+ Takeaways from PhoCusWright@ITB 2010“, the reality was that Josiah actually requested the Top-10 take-aways from the conference and I expanded a bit on the premise. The session covered considerable territory, including all key areas driving travel industry innovation from a business model, strategic and technology perspective.

Hotel Marketing Strategies Blog

PhoCusWright@ITB 2010 Recap on the Hotel Marketing Strategies Blog

Presenters included PhoCusWright CEO Philip Wolf; Gene Quinn, Chairman of PhoCusWright; Krista Pappas of Microsoft’s Bing; David Roche, President of Expedia’s Hotels.com and Venere.com brands; Rick Seany, CEO of FareCompare.com; Google Travel Spain MD Javier González-Soria; Daniel Krisch, Director of Client Services for h2 consulting; Jean-Louis Richard of the Millennium Foundation; Norm Rose of Travel Tech Consulting; and Lonely Planet CEO Matthew Goldberg.

My sincere apologies to Timothy O’Neil-Dunne of T2Impact who truly belonged in the recap, but I wound up missing a good portion of his case study on Intermediary Opportunities In Ancillary Revenue.

In the final analysis, when determining what organizations were most worthy to deserve the greatest profits and/or funding originating from the travel industry, the decision was not extremely difficult. In the running of course, were the large online travel agencies, the venture capitalists, public markets & private equity funds, innovative start-ups, enabling technology developers, and the major travel suppliers.

From that lot, I have to select Jean-Louis Richard of the Millennium Foundation. MASSIVEGOOD is a noble and worthy cause. If their goal of solving the challenges of HIV/AIDS, Malaria, Tuberculosis and supporting maternal/child health improvement is accomplished, there will be a great many more people able to enjoy the joy and adventure of travel.

Please Join MASSIVEGOOD, and ask others to click MASSIVEGOOD. The large banner at the top of my Views from a Corner Suite blog cannot be missed – and that is exactly the point.

Tagged as: airline, hotel, innovation, marketing, online travel companies, social media, technology, travel

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HITEC Presentation – Web 2.0 & 3.0 Impact on Hospitality Technology

by RobertKCole on July 2, 2009

Speaking in Anaheim at last week’s Hospitality Financial & Technology Professionals annual HITEC conference, I was joined by friend and twice former colleague Mike Robinson, head of product architecture for InterContinental Hotels Group. Our topic? The impact of Web 2.0 technologies on the hotel industry. Given that Web 2.0 is now nearing its fifth birthday, we decided to vary a bit from the program and add in our view of what Web 3.0 might look like.

Expecting a technically diverse audience with backgrounds ranging from technology vendors to hotel operations and marketing personnel, the basic objective of the presentation was to give the group a primer on how key web technology has advanced, the benefits provided and an overview of some emerging technologies that serve as the foundation for Web 3.0. Not to get too academic, we also wanted to to provide some examples of practical applications of these technologies and how the organizations deploying them are differentiating themselves from their competitors.

Progression of Web 1.0 2.0 and 3.0 Technologies

Amazing Advancements in Web Technologies - Now if we can only get the hospitality industry to use them...

One somewhat startling observation – when I was surveying a number of leading industry figures for recommendations of web sites where hospitality companies were
effectively utilizing Web 2.0 technologies, the most frequent response was something close to “none come immediately to mind…” This is a rather painful statement to hear repeatedly, particularly within an industry that claims to be constantly seeking creative methods to showcase product benefits and more effectively engage with its customer base. The good news is that there is ample room for improvement – as organizations update, there are opportunities for strategy to be reassessed and new tools to be deployed. continue reading →

Tagged as: HFTP, HITEC, hospitality, hotel, technology, travel, Web 2.0, Web 3.0

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