For a travel supplier or an intermediary, the challenge is to make a company’s website and/or social media campaign flexible enough to be intelligently absorbed by new web tools.

Published: 19 May 2009

For a travel supplier or an intermediary, the challenge is to make a company’s website and/or social media campaign flexible enough to be intelligently absorbed by new web tools.

In this context, it is critical to assess the right approach for the same.

From Cheapflights’ perspective, its CEO Chris Cuddy says getting recognised by search engines or other online tools is still secondary to building a great product and solving a user’s need really, really well.

“People have asked us, “what is your web 2.0 strategy?” or “what is your social media strategy?”. We ask ourselves a different question that starts with “what information do our users want?” and “how can we make the information and experience more useful?”,” said Cuddy.

The trend of building websites largely for search engine recognition is too common today and distracts from providing the user with the most useful information, according to Cuddy.

In an interview with EyeforTravel.com’s Ritesh Gupta, Cuddy spoke about social web, web’s increasing intelligence and other issues. Excerpts:

Travel consumers typically visit six sites or more before making a travel purchase. Each link in the chain offers more choice – and more complexity – than ever before. In this context, how do you think social web is empowering travel decision-making?

One of the fundamental attractions of the Internet is that it provides the consumer with an unmatched number of choices -- all just one click away. Seemingly every week a new site launches aiming to meet a need from the popular to the obscure.

However, the relatively low cost of startup and distribution online can breed an overwhelming array of choices of widely ranging quality which take time to visit and sort out. This is where consumers need guidance in finding the best sites and deals quickly. This guidance comes in some traditional ways, like expert reviews, ratings and “top 10 lists”. It is increasing from more modern techniques like individual reviews, buddy lists, and other social networking. For example, Cheapflights has established thousands of followers on Twitter who often comment personally on deals that Cheapflights recommends which gives other travellers the confidence to try them for themselves.

Google has said that 2 of every 10 searches are for images, and that number is growing. With the explosion of video, social networking and user-generated content, how do you think travel suppliers or intermediaries should consider featuring of rich online experiences such as these?

Travel and images are made for each other. However, there are times when images are indispensable, and times when they waste valuable real estate. Travellers crave realistic photographs of a beach or hotel they are considering. But a photograph of an airline seat is less powerful than a seat map showing its location or a map of the airport relative to the downtown destination. The best websites will find ways to integrate professionally provided images and videos, with user generated images.

How do you expect the web becoming more intelligent as it moves into the new, semantic era?

The web’s increasing intelligence is directly related to the increasing personal history it compiles on each of our activities. For example, Cheapflights can recommend better deals today than ever before by reviewing a users explicit and implicit history of activity once you sign up. Explicitly, users indicate their travel preferences across more than two dozen different categories including beach destinations, family vacations, etc. Implicitly, Cheapflights “learns” your favourite destinations, preferred seasons for travel, etc. which help to make travel recommendations appear more and more intelligent.

Regarding the possibilities, an expert told me: Think about a web page that posts its content to a blog that turns itself into a RSS feed that gets republished to your Facebook page and emailed to your customer list. What do you expect as far as the type of inter-operability and flexibility that will position any travel company for success? Do you think semantic web is still a long way off?

The most useful travel websites will increasingly offer users what they want, when they want it, how they want it. That means a user can select their choice for delivery of content. For example, “send me the best deal to my web page during weekdays, my phone at night, and my email on weekends”. This technology exists today. It is up to users to vote as to how they want to receive information.

Despite the quality of phones improving, with the iPhone setting a new benchmark, do you think users want to access on a mobile is different to what they want to access on the web?

Although mobile applications exist today to hit songs from iTunes, books from Amazon, and plane tickets from British Airways, far more purchases take place on those companies websites. Users today use the web to explore, plan and purchase especially for more expensive items or items which require research. Mobile is popular for repeat transactions like checking the weather and checking the on-time status of your flight. We expect purchases of repeat items and less expensive items to grow on mobile platforms especially in those countries where mobile penetrations exceeds credit card penetration.