WebInTravel Australia: Call for startups to be part of the BOOT and more June 21 in Sydney

WebInTravel is coming to Sydney on Tuesday June 21 at the Shangri-La hotel. WIT Australia is a day long conference on travel distribution, travel marketing and travel technology.

I will be presenting with Ian Cummings of Getflight on trends and start up activity in online travel. I am working on a list of Australian and Asian start-ups to feature in the session. Already on the list are rome2rio, travellr, hotelscombined, adioso, viator, whl travel, Brokepacker, Globetrooper, Travellerspoint, CleanCruising, vroomvroomvroom (because one vroom is never enough) and of course Getaway Lounge and Getflight. Write me if you want to be on the list.

Here is the full blurb from the programme

"Find Your Online Groove – Timothy Hughes, BOOT + Ian Cumming, Director, Insight4 Pty Ltd

Timothy Hughes, the scribe behind the BOOT (Business of Online Travel) blog, and Ian Cumming, who’s started several of his own businesses and sold one or two, will scan their eye over the digital travel landscape and share with us what are some of the cool ideas they’ve seen in search, social media, rich media and deals – what’s hot and what’s not and what you ought to be doing."

Bookings still available here. Let me know if you're attending.

PS - we debated a lot the definition of a start-up. In my mind it is any company where the founders are still involved and no exit event has occurred. As a result companies that have been around for a while can still be considered start-ups whereas younger companies that have been sold are out.

WebInTravel Australia: Call for startups to be part of the BOOT and more June 21 in Sydney

WebInTravel is coming to Sydney on Tuesday June 21 at the Shangri-La hotel. WIT Australia is a day long conference on travel distribution, travel marketing and travel technology.

I will be presenting with Ian Cummings of Getflight on trends and start up activity in online travel. I am working on a list of Australian and Asian start-ups to feature in the session. Already on the list are rome2rio, travellr, hotelscombined, adioso, viator, whl travel, Brokepacker, Globetrooper, Travellerspoint, CleanCruising, vroomvroomvroom (because one vroom is never enough) and of course Getaway Lounge and Getflight. Write me if you want to be on the list.

Here is the full blurb from the programme

"Find Your Online Groove – Timothy Hughes, BOOT + Ian Cumming, Director, Insight4 Pty Ltd

Timothy Hughes, the scribe behind the BOOT (Business of Online Travel) blog, and Ian Cumming, who’s started several of his own businesses and sold one or two, will scan their eye over the digital travel landscape and share with us what are some of the cool ideas they’ve seen in search, social media, rich media and deals – what’s hot and what’s not and what you ought to be doing."

Bookings still available here. Let me know if you're attending.

PS - we debated a lot the definition of a start-up. In my mind it is any company where the founders are still involved and no exit event has occurred. As a result companies that have been around for a while can still be considered start-ups whereas younger companies that have been sold are out.

Revinate Sessions - talking social media monitoring with Revinates Michelle Wohl

In my annual predictions I called 2011 as the year in which social goes from an internet media platform to a core part of retail decision making through becoming part of the revolution in search and discovery.

I have published a series of posts around this theme. I published 5 tips for suppliers looking for an online social media strategy (via Tnooz), the role that social and other factors will play in the future of the Google search algorithm (also via Tnooz) and a PhoCusWright Innovation Summit piece on competition between start-ups Revinate and Trustyou to help companies search and monitor social media.

That post led me to virtual meeting with Michele Wohl (photo top left), Revinate’s VP of marketing. Michelle gave me a demonstration of the Revinate social media monitoring tool for hotels and we discussed social media, semantic reasoning, klout and more. Here is what we discussed

The Revinate Product

At first Wohl and I discussed the product. I like it. It needs a few more elements to be the complete package (see below) but I saw a very useful product for a hotel to understand what is going on in social media and user generated content around the hotel brand.

The product allows a hotel to track, monitor and respond to user generated content on site and social media platforms. Wohl spent 30 minutes taking me through what a typical hotel client (pty level or chain) can do with the tool. Basic tasks in the tool include:

• Monitoring and responding to reviews;
• Tracking commentary/updates through twitter; and
• Track consumer sentiment about a property and competing properties.

That is – an aggregation, tracking and social media monitoring tool.

It was some of the higher end features that impressed me including:

• “Add a ticket” and respond feature: A workflow management process that allows hotel to operationalise the information/review by assigning it to someone within the hotel and track the response. For example if the review or comment is about the restaurant it can be “ticketed” to the F&B manager to address. Very useful at bringing all elements of the property into the social media environment without over burdening staff;
• Filter and compare: The ability to filter commentary/reviews by various categories and themes. For example to see how often the “pool” at a particular property is mentioned compared to the pool at a competitor property. Allows the hotel to be able to see how they rate against a competitor at a feature and facility level, not just overall;
• Scorecard systems: Allowing data and trends to be compiled overtime and compared to competitors. Different time periods can be mapped against different competitors and different social media point. Creating the ability to set targets for staff members against measurable goals;
• Chains can roll up and deep dive: Chains can see whole of chain level and then rankings between individual properties helping to drive internal competition and improvements; and
• Pricing: The price of the product is based around the number of rooms and hotel ADR. It ranges from 1-3 times ADR per month. I like how Revinate have targeted the price of the product to be clearly measurable against a potential gain.

General Social media tips

Wohl and I also discussed some general tips and concepts around social media. Here were her tips:

1. Monitor before you create: much like the recommendations from my 5 tips for a hotel building a social media strategy Wohl says “First thing to do is the monitoring – find out what people are saying about you. Only then do let people know you are listening. Don’t sign up for Facebook or Twitter if there is no one there at the property to look after it”;
2. Respond to all reviews as long as the responses can be unique: On the question of responding to reviews, Wohl said it was critical that hotels reply to all reviews with unique responses. Even those from clearly contradictory (read mad but incoherent) consumers. She said “you are not responding to the person writing the review but the people reading it. Future bookers are making decisions to book based on management’s response to reviews and including that in their own post booking reviews.”; and
3. It is not all about TripAdvisor…but: Wohl was able to show me a series of real time client examples. In none of them was TripAdvisor responsible for more than 45% of the reviews out there on that property. Some as low as 23%. Put another way more than half of the reviews about those properties were on a site other than TripAdvisor.

More to do

As I say I like the product and it is useable right now against the volumes of UGC being created. However there is more that needs to be built to match the future quantity and iterations of content.

1. Authority/Klout measurement: There is nothing in the tool at present that prioritises one review/comment above another based on the authority/popularity/reach/klout of the creator. Wohl is aware of this and says this is one the product roadmap (update - Wohl has since told me that "Klout integration should be released in the next couple of weeks");
2. Sentiment analysis: Expanding the search, tagging and monitoring to determine whether or not the use of a word is in a positive or negative. For example is someone wrote “this hotel is the least romantic place” then being able to tell that this mention of the word “romantic” is a negative not a positive. Wohl says that volumes are manageable at present without semantic analysis ““Clients are not yet asking us for sentiment analysis as so far the review volume is manageable that they are focused on reading and responding to every review”. Clearly this volume management will not last for ever; and
3. Foreign languages: At the time we spoke the tool was tracking only English language reviews. Since we spoke - hotels can now request to have language reviews in their native (non-English) language fed into the system. The next step is the ability to combine information from foreign language and native language reviews. For example taking a foreign review that mentions the swimming pool and combining it with native language reviews in the aggregation tool. Wohl says this is "on the roadmap".

Wrap up

With social media there has to be a balance. Each dollar spent on social media is a dollar not spent on paid search. Each person hour spent on replying to a TripAdvisor review is an hour not spent on CRM analysis, on property client management, on managing an existing sales channel and other critical sale and customer retention activities. Now is the time for social media focus and work. But it is not the time for sacrificing online marketing and client management in favour of chasing every tweet down the endless social media rabbit hole. I like what I have seen in Revinate as a means for helping find that balance.

Any hoteliers out there with experience using Revinate or a competing product with any comments?

Dave Cunningham of OurExplorer on sale to Viator

Recently we read through Tnooz and TechCrunch that destination activity specialist Viator had bought human tour guide search and booking engine OurExplorer (press release here). Once the deal has closed, Viator will own the main assests of OurExplorer. An emerging start up brand and a rating system, search engine and booking functionality for 2,400 individual guides.

I had a chance last week to talk with OurExplorer founder and CEO Dave Cunningham about the sale process and what he learned as the boss of an online travel start-up. [for more background on the company see my 2008 interview with Dave]

BOOT: How was the sales process?

Cunningham: It took about fourteen weeks to complete. Six weeks of work in the background then eight weeks of due diligence to confirm the value and the legals.

BOOT: 14 weeks to do a deal – that’s quite quick?

Cunningham: It felt very long. For a small team due diligence is a lot of work. It is a massive risk as a start-up to engage in a sale process. The company we lost 10-15 weeks of growth in the process.

BOOT: What did you learn from the sale process that would benefit other start-ups?

Cunningham: Three steps to us building out OurExplorer

1. Build the platform an website
2. Establish the supplier base (guides); and
3. Build demand

Of these - do not underestimate how hard the work is to build out a supplier base. Need dedicated sales people – start-ups constantly underestimate how hard to get a quality supplier database. Only once you have a decent supplier base can you drive traffic – which is difficult enough.

I wish I’d had more paper evidence of supplier’s commitment. Both in terms of contracts and exclusivity. OurExplorer would have been worth a lot more with paperwork on supplier.

BOOT : Did you user a broker or advisor? If so, do you have any advice in using an advisor?

Dave: Yes. If getting biz broker to help – insist that they take less up front and more on the back end. This made it easier for us to see who had the contacts in the industry. We negotiated to double exit fees and reduce upfront. Any company that said yes to the deal provided us with confidence of the value of their network.

Too many start ups have the same number of companies on their power point deck as the exit. In Australia everyone has Fairfax [large AU media company] or News [News Ltd, the AU arm of News Corp] on their slides as a buyer. Need to have a profitability strategy in your plan. Cannot be reliant on a sale exit – especially in Australia where there are limited buyers.

BOOT: What are the integration plans with Viator?

Dave: Viator have confirmed that they will keep the brand. Viator had two options

1. integrate product – select the top 1000 or so guides (out of 2,400) and add them into the Viator product set; or
2. keep the OurExplorer brand and dedicate effort to grow the business and brand

Viator are doing both. Integrating and keeping brand alive. Viator have around 5,000 products. By adding 2,400 guides to the product list this is a big add.

BOOT: What’s next for you?

Cunningham: One job left. I am going to the World Tour Guide Association conference in January for a good quality hand over. Then done. Then looking to buy into another start up. To help them drive sales and marketing.

My Take

OurExplorer are the definition of the long tail in travel (I mean that in a good way). They are the first (that I know of) to provide searching, rating and booking of individual guides. I think it makes a good addition to Viator.

For my 2008 interview with Dave see this post

Thanks to Håkan Dahlström via Flickr for the photo

Introducing the Twelevator Pitch - an elevator pitch in the age of Twitter

I helped out at the WebInTravel Innovation Bootcamp as a start-up mentor. In this I was advising a start up on their 5 min pitch to investors. Four companies pitched, then broke with their mentors for a 1 hour workshop, then pitched again. Three of the four will get to hit the WIT Mainstage. More details here

I won't mention the name of the company that I helped out because their pitch was in real trouble from the beginning. After their initial 5 minute pitch I had no clear idea what their product was. This was not a question of complexity or being too deep in technology. Rather their pitch had so many different angles, commentary and ideas in it that the product could be anything from a dating site, social network, trip planning site, content site, niche online agent, community site and more.

The first job we had as mentors was to get the company to describe their product in a quick and clean format. I set them a challenge. Break for 5 minutes and come back to the mentor group with a tweet like 140 character description of the product - what a laughingly called later on a twelevator pitch. Our reasoning for this is that a start up has to be focused. To be focused you need a simple goal and product aim. If your product/business can't be described in a 140 characters then chances are different parts of the start up team have different ideas as to what the company is working on and will pull the company in different directions.

I knew the start up was in trouble when 15 mins later the team had still not returned with a product description tweet. In those 15 mins they were debating as a group what it is they wanted to do and constructed a long and involved idea. Eventually they did return but with closer to 280 characters of pitch.

We put together a new pitch for the rest of the period but the lack of focus in the start up was telling.

There are a lot of elements that a start-up needs to include in a venture pitch but before you do anything make sure you can describe your product in a short sharp twelevator pitch.

Thanks to splorp for this great photo via flickr

Tnooz: Zoombu introduces door to door search

Latest Tnooz post is live "Great way to search yet five big challenges for door-to-door site Zoombu". My thoughts on UK travel search start up Zoombu. Their product is one of the first to do “multimodal door-to-door search”. Check out my interview with founder Rachel Armitage, thoughts on the product and challenges they face. Full post here.