Travel Marketing in the Age of Web 2.0 & Beyond

This seems to afflict a large number of people......

The human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.

P. B. Medawar
British (Brazilian-born) anatomist (1915 - )

 

Half of All Web Viewers Watching What The Other Half Has To Say

According to the just released Deloitte's study on Media & Entertainment practice, looking at how American consumers between 13 and 75 years of age are using media and technology today, Millennials (13-24) are leading the way, embracing new technologies, games, entertainment platforms, user-generated content and communication tools. Data from the survey show that user-generated content is in tremendous demand across the generations, with 51% of all consumers watching and/or reading content created by others

This leads David Weinberger on his Joho the Blog: to ask the fair question:

"Now that we're in the majority, could you please stop calling us consumers?"

Efficiency secrets from Shanghai Airlines

reported by James Fallows the Shanghai based Atlantic Monthly writer. The most surprising to me is this one about buying tickets online:

Buying tickets is easy – you can walk into the airport and pay in cash, or order online through a unique high-tech/low-tech process I’ll describe some other day.*



* OK, I’ll describe it now. C-Trip is a popular online booking service that covers most of China’s airlines and is faster and easier to use that most US sites. You choose your flight, push “buy now” – and two hours later, a courier shows up at your house or office to hand you your ticket and collect the exact-change fare, in cash.

Interesting. Looks like the Chinese version of an e-ticket is a "c-ticket" as in "courier".......! I guess the booking fee collected by U.S. online travel agents eliminates this option.

 

10 Future Web Trends

as covered in Read/WriteWeb provides us with a glimpse of what is coming down the pike and it sure sounds exciting. I've stated many times before that on the web "we ain't seen nothing yet" and reading these ten trends confirms this. It's going to be exciting to watch which existing companies will take advantage of these new innovations and introduce successful new services based on them and what new ventures are going to appear on the scene. Can only say, stay tuned!

Tags: future, future web, nextnet, trends

WebSlides converts bookmarks to slideshows

by Diigo

I've been using Diigo for quite some time now to annotate, bookmark and share webpages. Now, they are offering a new functionality with the potential to become an even more effective tool to share knowledge in a great format as the video explains.

Imagine collecting all your different web pages to research a vacation or group trip, annotate them, add voice commentary and then share them with friends or participants. Also, a travel agent could put together a collection of information and send it on in an attractive form to a client.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: web2.0, socialweb, bookmarking, sharing, tool

ETC Reports User Generated Content Here to Stay

in this coverage in Modern Agent which then begs the question: "Why aren't they and their members there?" offering innovative tools for the millions of visitors to Europe to share the wealth of their collective wisdom for future travelers rather than maintaining traditional, and in many cases outdated websites. I understand there is an effort underway to revamp the exisiting visiteurope.com site that was introduced only two years ago with great fanfare but apparently doesn't cut it any longer.

It remains to be seen, whether the choice of web supplier will be able to get them a leading edge site this time around rather than play catch up like last time.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: onlinetravel, ETC , travel2.0

Humanizing the digital travel experience

is the title of a new Forrester Report that Travel Weekly's Arnie Weismann comments on. If by "humanizing" the report means to say that the clock needs to be turned back to a pre-digital travel experience, it seems to me as a non-starter. Commodity products / services such as an airline seat can no longer be sold profitably that way. We might as well feel nostalgic about the black rotary phone!

In the much discussed area of complex travel, the human element in the form of an expert travel counsellor still plays a role and will also in future, using the digital tools available to the trade as well as the public. This added value will gladly be paid for by many travelers who mostly are time, not information, starved. As long as the digital experience to research, plan and book such travel is not improved, this is where the humanizing plays out.

Now, what will happen in this context, as the technology being developed for the next phase of the web as it evolves beyond 2.0  in the next five to ten years remains to be seen. With the advent of this semantic web, data will become more intelligent and online travel technology will become more than what today is still often the cumbersome melding of legacy systems with web 2.0 mashups and user generated content, all thrown in the mix.

Will this make for a more "humanized" experience? Probably not, but the digital experience will be so much improved that it might actually feel that way.

Tags: onlinetravel, web3.0, semantic web,