Interview with Ted Souder, Head of Regional Industry - Travel at GoogleIt is being increasingly believed that being direct, transparent and getting information out quickly is paramount to communicating with users.

Published: 25 Mar 2010

Interview with Ted Souder, Head of Regional Industry - Travel at Google

It is being increasingly believed that being direct, transparent and getting information out quickly is paramount to communicating with users.

For their part, travel companies such as Virgin America highlight that it’s still up to the user to communicate needs rather than for the company to guess their preferences. However, with social search some companies are data mining for keywords and route preferences or keeping dashboards to track comments and preferences.

In order to know more about the latest developments in the online travel space, EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta spoke to Ted Souder, Head of Regional Industry - Travel at Google. Excerpts:

On predicting user preferences and the integration of social search into online travel:

Ted Souder: There is still a ton of growth to come in the online travel space; for example, inventory and pricing in ads could be more real-time, landing pages and booking paths could be better and more websites should embrace UGC.

Social search is important because travel is one of the more social, or at least socially influenced, things we do.

Many consumers like to use their social networks to discover new information or get details which would be helpful in taking a trip. For example, if I am planning a trip to Park City, search results are great -- but if they’re complemented by information generated by people I know, trust or admire, I’m able to get a better overall picture.

On how the semantic web is going to shape up and it making SEM a lot easier and more transparent to administer:

Ted Souder: SEM is a mix of human and algorithmic actions. The hard part is that it’s difficult, at scale, to take real-time reality into account. At the moment, using two hotel properties as an example -- Property A and Property B -- provides an easy view into some issues. In this hypothetical and common scenario, everything about hotel Property A is different from hotel Property B -- different rates, a different number of rooms, different clientele, different attractions nearby and a different restaurant in the lobby -- yet they are often held to the same ROI metric, have the same bid or fall under the same business rules at the bid management firm.

This approach could be better, if it was possible to micromanage ROI on a per property, per day, per customer, per search basis; getting there in a scalable manner will improve SEM for the travel industry.

On semantic web making it more efficient to create and manage online campaigns:

Ted Souder: Over time computers will get smarter, as will the semantic web, but I don’t know how this will impact the search algorithms beyond the fact that search will evolve with the Web and the world.

On the role of mobile phones in online travel in the immediate future:

Ted Souder: Mobile computing is huge -- just look at the success of smartphones like the iPhone and Android. For travel in particular, location based services like Traxo and FourSquare will help make computing more social and more relevant.

For example, a few weeks ago, I arrived at SFO a couple hours before my flight. I “checked in” via FourSquare and found all sorts of useful information about things like where to find a special discount on coffee and where the shortest security lines were. This sort of real time, relevant information is useful, and it’s just the beginning.

The industry is moving toward mobile devices as the defacto standard for how we access travel information and how we interact with things such as airline check-in. Someday, mobile check in kiosks at the airport may go away and the entire process will be handled via a handheld device.

On significant moves from Apple and Google towards mobile advertising and their impact on search and social media via mobile phones on the travel industry:

Ted Souder: Smartphones such as Android-powered devices and the iPhone are driving the next stages of mobile advertising. These devices have high-definition browsers and computing power, allowing people to have a full Web browsing experience and access to useful applications. Advertisers can now show search ads next to mobile Google searches on iPhones and Android, as well as reach consumers using mobile applications who are part of our AdSense for Mobile Applications programme.

On how search differs for mobile phones vis-a-vis PC:

Ted Souder: Web search patterns on high definition mobile devices (such as the iPhone or Android-powered devices) are similar to web search patterns on desktop computers, as these phones permit a high-quality search and browsing experience. |Google Research Blog, May 2009|. This makes high-definition mobile search a natural home for search ads.