Imagining a travel shopping cart that lets one add different components from different sites

IN-DEPTH: Understanding the delivery of online content, the maturity level of e-commerce and personalisation in the online travel world

Published: 08 Sep 2010

IN-DEPTH: Understanding the delivery of online content, the maturity level of e-commerce and personalisation in the online travel world

By Ritesh Gupta

Delivery of content is empowering and critical, but should be tied back to the business objectives that one wants to achieve.

Considering that websites as a tool for travel companies is one of the main platforms for communicating with its customers, the industry is just not focusing on serving up dynamic and personalised content, but it has to be at the heart of everything a business does.

For instance, in case of VisitBritain.com, the UK national tourism agency has inverted its online pyramid; previously all of its activity was aimed at driving all traffic to its website. However, in-depth research showed that long haul travellers primarily arrived at a National Tourist Board site after they had made the decision about where to travel. Therefore, the agency chose to ensure two things: its website was aimed at converting interest into action, and it chose to start putting content into the online arenas further up the decision making process of the consumer. i.e. syndication via Yahoo! Travel and the like, and of course embracing the opportunities made available by social media.

Assessing the significance of online content at every stage of a traveller’s journey, Frederick Buhr, VP e-Business, Rail Europe , says, “In 2007, RailEurope.com was a train booking engine stuck at the end of the buying cycle, so customers came to us last minute when all their travel arrangements were already made. In 2009, we totally redesigned and re-architecture the site into a European travel portal chock full of content, images, videos, interactive features etc... Something quite extraordinary happened: we moved upstream in our customers buying cycle. We became the official site of an imaginary land called “Rail Europe” where it is easy to move from city to another using high speed trains.”

E-commerce and Personalistion

Personalisation is important in terms of being more efficient in communicating a message to a customer that is relevant.

OTAs, especially those focusing on price as their promise, admit that perhaps the most important message they send to a customer is that they will provide the lowest price available. Now what is critical is to make sure the lowest price is related to something that a particular customer is interested in. It does no good to send a message about a low cost trip if the customer has no interest in that particular destination.

The industry is moving slowly towards personalisation and there are some clear reasons for this. Travel isn’t bought all that frequently, possibly only two or three times a year, so the industry’s ability to build up an accurate picture of travellers’ needs – which may change in any case between business and leisure travel for example – is much lower than other industries. The industry is beginning to see this to change though, and within the constraints of increasing concerns about user privacy, one expects more investment in this.

The travel industry has witnessed a series of initiatives over the past few months, resulting in a fully customisable offering as per a traveller’s preferences.

On how e-commerce in the travel sector has moved towards personalisation, priceline’s executive vice president - corporate development, Glenn D. Fogel, says, “It is getting better but I think it can be improved. No travel service knows me well enough yet to make algorithmically driven suggestions that would be correct a high percentage of the time. Of course, part of the issue is many people don’t want to have all of their interests, history, etc. accessible by businesses. The privacy issue is an interesting one as we all want personalised service but are reluctant at times to provide the personal data that is needed to create such a service.”

According to Rail Europe’s Buhr, the industry has seen “very little” progress towards personalisation.

“I was part of the Eurovacations.com project back in 2000 and we basically invented the custom vacation packages with “a la carte” components to create and price custom travel packages on the fly. Then it went all bust after the bubble exploded. Today all OTAs have their own package engine and tripit is an interesting tool so we see a comeback in the online packaging business model,” Buhr said. “However, I have yet to see a travel site offering a real time pricing on multiple inventory and instant confirmation without any manual interventions or system glitches.”

Buhr added, “Moreover, customers do not like “pre-made” packages , they love to package themselves by cherry picking on different sites. The packaging site of tomorrow could just be a travel shopping cart that lets you add different components from different sites then price it for you when you are ready and even finding the lowest price and you are ready to book.”

Personalised insight

Online travel companies have been trying to create tools that work in the organic way people like to think about travel. Browsing content is a critical part of the research phase, however travel businesses must get better at communicating their unique value proposition or generating urgency in the buying process. Consumers do a lot of research prior to booking, and having a better understanding of what content is most useful at every stage in the trip booking lifecycle can help companies more effectively make that content accessible at the right time.

Social networking and user-generated content are now de facto components in the travel research and trip booking process for consumers. For travel companies and marketers, they serve a variety of roles. In media- and content-focused channels, they are tools for engaging customers around a brand, building community and sharing information. In transactional channels, where the booking of travel actually takes place, user-generated content is getting to be more and more influential in the purchase decision and conversion.

“We know social networks, travel review sites, OTC reviews and blogs continue to grow in volume, scope and influence. We know that path to prominence is paved by a growing traveller appetite to read and share travel experiences. And, we know the influence these shared experiences wield in the final purchase decision. Now comes the tricky part. How do we leverage, quantify and affect the influence being driven? What are the levers we need to pull to drive higher conversion percentages and larger booking volumes?” says Ronnie Gurion, president, Orbitz Worldwide Distribution.

He added, “If we look at just the review portion – which is the fastest growing and most influential area of user-generated content in the travel industry – there’s been a proliferation of data over the past few years. For example, some hotels on Orbitz and sites like TripAdvisor have literally thousands of user reviews, and that volume becomes overwhelming for most users. The next big innovation is looking at the aggregate data and figuring out how to extrapolate or extract the most relevant data in a way that is most useful to an individual traveller. We’re evolving past the point of aggregation to personalised insight.”

The whole sector is maturing and due to the data that can be collected around peoples’ browsing habits along with the chance to communicate with them directly through social networking, enables sites to be tailored to the customers’ needs . This brings a more competitive marketplace and so the companies have to up their game in order to catch the customers. The customers know this and so their knowledge of what they want and expect online makes them a little more switched on.

Online Marketing and Social Media Strategies for Travel Summit Europe 2010

Frederick Buhr, VP e-Business, Rail Europe, is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming two-day Online Marketing and Social Media Strategies for Travel Summit Europe 2010 (5-6, October) to be held in Prague.

For more information, click here

Or contact:
Gina Baillie
VP Global Marketing & Events
EyeforTravel
London, UK: +44 (0)207 375 7197
gina@eyefortravel.com

 
 
 

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