Search, Social and Mobile- pre Eyefortravel thoughts via eHotelier

I am speaking this year at Eyefortravel May 18-19 in Singapore

I have put together some pre-conference predictions for 2011 (based on by full 2011 predictions). They were picked up and published in a post on eHotelier along side predictions from Robert Bailey of Abacus and (Professor) Timothy O'Neil-Dunne of LUTE technologies (and so much more). Check out the full text here.

My predictions are:

• Search changes (again); Search already changed forever in 2010. There is more to come in 2011, especially in the measure of authority. The old measure of inbound links will be enhanced with input from social networks, context and location, expert advice, preference matching and more. Search marketing will have to change to encompass content, social, information syndication and data mining. All suppliers and all OTAs will need to ensure that their SEO experts and agents are on top of this change. In addition to the changes in authority, search will change in how results are displayed;
• Social media will challenge search and retail: the parallel rises of social media, customers asking more complicated (and open) questions online and consumers willingness to discuss and share everything openly and freely will drive through 2011 a change the way the industry attracts and retains customers. The traffic numbers of Facebook, Twitter, foursquare etc are all but unprecedented. But it is not their rise that is the story. The story is the consumer behaviour behind the rise of these products. Pick your metaphor - consumers have opened the kimono, dropped their pants or invited everyone in to their lives. Nothing is sacred. Everything can and will be shared. Marketing channels will need to be adjusted. Communications techniques changed. Customer care models and response times adjusted. Even sales channels will need to be reworked. Get ready for social search, book and buy; and
• Mobile becomes a distinction without meaning: iPhone did for the smart phones what diet coke did for soda. It created a category, lifted other categories with it and made people buy more of everything around it. The consequence is that people are using their phones (and now tablets) while they are on the move and as a replacement for laptops. Mobile no longer means mobile. By that I mean people will sit in meetings, on couches as home, at the desk...anywhere...everywhere...expecting to be connected. Not caring if a device is called a phone, tablet or netbook. Just caring that it gets them the content or experience they want. The result is device platform discussions will move from "which product is this built for" to "is this compatible for all displays". Much like we now say that a site has to be web ready rather than differentiating between its readiness on FireFox, Chrome, Safari, opera and IE. The type of the device and whether or not it is mobile is now irrelevant. Mobile/PC/Tablet will be the different "browsers" of 2011. All code will need to be written in preparation for this.
  

For a reminder of my thoughts on last year's Eyefortravel check out this post.

Cleartrip CEO : 15 months in the black. Targeting hotels, display advertising and Dubai

Cleartrip may be the smallest of the big 3 (ok medium 3) of the online Indian full service OTA business but Founder & Director, Product and Strategy Hrush Bhatt is far from worried. During a coffee break chat at eyefortravel TDS in Singapore last month Hrush told me that he is not taking being number 3 too hard. In fact he is celebrating the size difference. He tells me that although MakeMyTrip may have 1,300 employees to Yatra’s 8-900 and Cleartrip’s 260 Hrush is unworried having reported his 15th month in a row of profitability.

[UPDATE - since publishing this post I have been told that Cleartrip is bigger than Yatra and the clear number two to MakeMyTrip. I don't have numbers to confirm but it clear that the battle has only just started]

Air is still a critical part of the business but like much of the online world he and Cleartrip are targeting hotels for growth. Again like much of the online travel world he is using some creative hiring practices to help Cleartrip get there. Cleartrip have hired the founder of the Travelguru to lead their hotel contracting efforts. Travelguru was bought by Travelocity in August 2009. Current hotel count is 1,400, when it gets to around 1,800 to 2,000 Hrush says that Cleartrip will begin a marketing push.

I was interested to hear that one of the main marketing efforts for Cleartrip was display advertising. After each of Yatra, MakMyTrip and Cleartrip reached a “gentlemen’s agreement” to not bid on each other’s brand terms in search advertising it freed up a lot of marketing spend to invest in display.

This is not the only way that the Indian market has a different twist to emerging online travel markets. While India maybe smaller than the more mature Asian online travel markets Japan and Australia the target population have been online since 1996. That means by the time online travel started to take off in India in 2006, the population had already been online for ten years, allowing for speedy growth and rapid adoption. PhoCusWright reported this week that the 2009 Indian online travel market was US$3.4 billion (Indian Online Travel Intermediary Review).

On functionality, Cleartrip have taken a Kayak look and feel approach to travel (as opposed to the more traditional OTA look of MakeMyTrip). This is deliberate according to Hursh. They are looking to new approaches to travel search, targeting the image lite Google like approach of text boxes.

Hrush is also looking to expansion beyond India. Cleartrip.ae is now live and targeting consumers in Dubai. Not a traditional place of expansion for an Asian online travel company but in Hrush's view Cleartrip already have some awareness and it is a small enough market for Cleartrip to test expansion

Want to read more on Cleartrip? I was not the only one to catch up with Hrush in Singapore. Check out Siew Hoon's piece called "Cleartrip out to make the world smaller".

Overhead at Eyefortravel TDS – social media stole my conference

The word social media appeared nowhere in the title for Eyefortravel’s Trave Distribution Summit Asia (they have other conferences that do) but it was the number one topic from presenters on April 29 in Singapore.

In my keynote, I spoke about the rise of transactional questions on Facebook and Twitter. I highlighted a number of examples of consumers using twitter and Facebook to ask questions that are begging for advertisers to provide answers. Opening up social search as a real competitor for Google. Sharat Dhall of Tripadvisor spoke of the never ending flood of user reviews/photos and hotelier responses. Particularly of interest in his presentation was the launch of TripWow and how Tripadvisor is expanding their insatiable lust for content from text to photos. Joe Nguyen of comScore showed the numbers with a left to right sharp incline for Facebook travel stats. Starwood spoke of having 1 million mentions in social media in 2 weeks (though many of us weren’t sure the numbers were right). Brett Henry of Abacus called Foursquare and Gowalla as the future must watch emerging businesses. Morris Sim of Circos Brand Karma told a story of a 4000% ROI on a social media marketing campaign (though admitted that scaling it was extraordinarily hard). Aloke Bajpai of ixiGo spoke of the future of apps and mobile as social devices – as soon as someone launches a more advanced mechanism for app search and discover. Even speakers that started by expressing concern that the conference had become dominated by social media talk ended up talking non stop about the user forums on their site.

It turned me to thinking about whether or not it was fair to hijack the conference and talk so much on this one area of consumer interaction and marketing. On one level it is understandable given that social networking sites are generating the most traffic, buzz, funding and consumer attention. But (as I said in my keynote) we cannot allow ourselves to get caught up in excitement and forget that the number one online battle ground for transactions is still on Google/Yahoo/Baidu/Naver etc. We must get engaged in social networking and content but cannot take our eye, money and talent off the traditional search battleground. My tip for social media was to focus on data, content and customer monitoring first them look to transactions in social media in a year or two (or three). For more on my thoughts see my post ad:tech thoughts here.

Some of the hoteliers in attendance may have felt disappointed that they did not hear more about how to rank on Google, spend on banners effectively, sign up with OTAs, manage content and improve SEO performance. This is was not a conference for talking about what to do now in the places that generate traffic and business. This was a conference for thinking about what was next – where we talked about how to engage with an audience that wants to talk to you and be with you online.

Attendance was solid in terms of numbers with a majority hoteliers, then online agents then technology and service providers. I have been noticing more and more that airlines have all but stopped turning up to online specific conference, limiting themselves to airline specific ones. On the format, eyefortravel are pulling good quality speakers but it is time to do away with the 3x15+QA format. That is the format where each session has three speakers giving a 15 minute presentation each followed by panel Q&A. Conferences like this need less power point and more QA and interview formats. Moving the format away from collective presentations to interview and panels will reduce the sales pitching that continues to creep (and sometimes storm) in and increase the speed at which the conversation gets to the interesting analysis.

Finally snaps to Don Birch who was a great chair. Insightful questions and summaries.

Eyefortravel TDS: follow tweets at #tdsasia

Will be at Eyefortravel TDS Thursday April 29. Keynote presentation in the morning on Future Trends and Technology in Travel. Then tweeting at #tdsasia. Follow me via @timothychughes or search #tdsasia.

BOOT at eyefortravel TDS Singapore April 28-29

Assuming Eyjafjallajoekul calms down enough to let people get to and from Singapore then the BOOT will join scores of others next week at the Eyefortravel Travel Distribution Summit Asia at the Marina Mandarin in Singapore April 28-29.

I am part of the day 2 keynote (April 29) called "Future Trends and Technology in Travel – Planting the Seeds for Profit". Will be on stage with

• Sajith Sivanandan - Head of Travel, Retail and Automotive Google South East Asia. Sanjith's pre-conference interview is here.
• Mark Inkster, General Manager, Microsoft Online Services Asia. Morris' pre-conference interview is here
  
• Morris Sim, Co Founder, Circos Brand Karma

The official blurb for the session is

The progression of technology and innovation in the travel industry continues at a quickening pace and Asian countries are closing the gap on their western counterparts. The dizzying pace has the power to undermine existing revenue models or create exciting and highly lucrative new opportunities for those in the know. Learn from the best to save you time and make you money.

More on the schedule here. Not too late to register here.

Part one of my pre-conference interview is here. Part two is here.

Let me know if you are going to be there on the 29th and would like to organise time to meet me