Tnooz: HomeAway, Home and Away and the links between online travel and teen angst

HomeAway is the largest vacation rental site in the world. Home and Away is one of Australia's longest running soap operas and a launch pad for plastic surgeons, vampire hunters and psychotic clowns. What do they have in common? Check out my latest Tnooz post "HomeAway and the real life Home and Away soap opera" to find out.

Social media is either overhyped, underhyped, or somewhere in the middle

Across two conferences two sets of travel executives have highlighted the challenges in figuring out how much to invest in social media for online travel companies. At last year's PhoCusWright Steve Hafner of Kayak called social media "overhyped". A session or two later former Expedia CEO Rich Barton called it "underhyped". At this year's No Vacancy Glenn Fogel of Priceline called social media experts "charlatans" while Toga Hospitality CEO Rachel Argaman said the future of the internet was pages inside Facebook. Meanwhile Wotif provided the perfect case study to test this debate by launching $11 rooms for 11 minutes via social media.

In my latest Tnooz post I discuss this debate and look in depth at the Wotif promotion. Check out the story here.

Tnooz: Q&A sites and the search revolution

Next in my series of posts on the revolution in search is live on Tnooz called "Question and Answer sites – another piece of the online travel search revolution". Includes profiles of Quora, Aardvark, Travellr and Mygola.

1001 not out (and Happy 2011)

2010 has closed. Welcome and all the best for 2011. In time for the end of 2010 I have completed another milestone here at the BOOT.

The rate per month may be slowing but another 100 posts are live on the BOOT. In my regular "not out series" recap I post a few reminders and highlights form the last 100 posts. It started with 101 not out and continued with 201, 301, 401, 501. 601, 701, 801 and 901 not out. Here we go....

I examined search, looked at the future of recommendations and made up a lot of new words:

• Introduced the Tastegraph via an interview with LikeCube. Also talked Tastegraph with TripAdvisor's Adam Medros;
  
• On Tnooz published five tips for launching a social media strategy;
• Discussed the future of Page rank and authority also on Tnooz (with new words like memegraph, expertgraph and genomegraph);
• Introduced some new (made up concepts) of search becoming multi-destinational and multi-destinational (more Tnooz goodness)
• Introduced the concept of the Twelevator pitch - if you cant describe your business in 140 characters then something is wrong
  

Focused on Australia I looked into:

• How Groupon took over the world and the business model hit Australia with a bang (Jump on it raised millions);
• How interesting and competitive the online vacation rental/short let marketing was getting in Australia via a conversation with the boss of Occupancy.com and estimated the size of the online vacation rentail/short let market in Australia at $450-$500mm per year.
  

Some handy tools:

• Summarised all of the TripAdvisor acquisitions in a (hopefully) useful table; and
• Posted the BOOT's guide to researching the world
  

From various conference presentations and attendences I:

• Took you through how social media "hijacked" Eyefortravel asia - in a good way;
  
• Shared some Stories from TravelTech;
  
• Presented at WebInTravel and posted two follow up stories on Tnooz (part 1, part 2); and
• Attended PhoCusWright and posted reviews and comments on Everbread, Movitas, HomeAway, SilverRail and Revinate vs TrustYou
  

Speaking of reviews, the BOOT covered another 200,000kms or so and wrote reviews of

• Air NZ economy class;
• Virgin Atlantic Premium Economy;
  
• Qantas Premium Economy
  

Ultimately I ranked Cathay Pacific as my airline of the year after a close pitched battle between the Cathay Pacific and Virgin Atlantic Herringbone seats

On the quirky front:

• I shared Best looking cappuccino in the world care of the Observatory Hotel
• Qantas killed Virgin in a on-board movie; and
  
• I wrote and published on Customer Underground my biggest post ever. 5,500 words on Dell Hell.

Three more business traveller tips were published on

• Surviving 5 star hotels
• Travelling in China; and
  
• Surviving business travel in economy class

Finally - the BOOT received mentions in

• The Guardian;
  
• USA today; and
  
• The Australian

If you are still reading, I will keep writing. All the best for 2011 - see you on the road.

Thanks to Dustin Ling for the photo of the BOOT in action at ATEC

Tnooz Post: Authority and Page Rank in Google is changing, are you ready?

New Tnooz post live titled "Is travel ready for the Google Page Rank overhaul?". In the post I discuss Google Places and speculate on what it means for new elements in the page rank alogrithm including the tastegraph, sociograph, memegraph, expertgraph, genomegraph, contextgraph and a lot of other made up words new media concepts. Read the full post here.

Innovation Summit: the BOOT picks two out of four

A new BOOT post on Tnooz is live discussing the finalists and runners up in the PhoCusWright Innovation Summit.

Last night I tweeted my top four picks. Two of them made the final four. My picks were all transportation search companies. I chose air search companies Everbread and Vayant, meta-search innovator Hipmunk and online rail company SilverRail. The two runners up I chose were Facebook trip planner Gogobot and social media monitoring company Revinate (competitor to finalist TrustYou). Democracy at PhoCusWright had a different view and the attendees have chosen 2010 innovation finalists up SilverRail, Hipmunk, Goby Technologies and Kony Solutions as the finalists for the 2010 Travel Innovation Summit. Runners up were TrustYou, Cruiselabs and Groundlink.

Full post on Tnooz with my thoughts here.

For more background check out my posts from yesterday on Revinate and TrustYou, Everbread and SilverRail.

WebInTravel: 10 things I overheard from about trends (Tnooz)

Yesterday I posted via Tnooz 10 things I overheard from companies at WebInTravel. Today part 2 of that post is live. It covers ten industry trends and market inteligence pieces I overheard. Post is called "Part Two of Two: The Asian online travel zeitgeist". Topics covered include China, Digital Marketing, Japan, Indonesia, Airlines, mobile, social media and search. Full post here

WebInTravel: 10 things I overheard from companies (Tnooz)

Over at Tnooz I have written two posts following the WebInTravel conference in Singapore last week. Part 1 is 10 things I overheard from companies. Check out the post called "Part One of Two: The Asian online travel zeitgeist". Companies covered include Wotif, Cleartrip, TripAdvisor, DaoDao (TA in China), Mobilizy, Kaha, eLong, AirAsia, Small Luxury Hotels of the World, Abacus and Accor. Part 2 tomorrow is on industry trends.

Tnooz: the future of search is multi-destinational and multi-dimensional

Tnooz is one year old. My latest 1000+ word piece is live called "Google Instant is just the beginning in the search revolution in travel"

In this post I discuss the history and future of search and the role Google Instant is playing. I propose a future that has search being based on more than one destination site (multi-destinational) and more than one way to measure authority and trusted content (multi-dimensional).

check out the full post here.

Tnooz: 5 tips for launching a social media strategy

My largest post ever is now live in four parts over at Tnooz. 2,500 words on "5 steps for a travel supplier looking to launch a social media strategy". 5 steps in four parts. Here they are with links to the individual pieces

Step 1 - Decide who you want to talk to and what you want to say

Step 2 - Start monitoring social media. Make it a customer service and marketing priority

Step 3 - Collect data - all of it

Step 4 - Craft product and content plans

Step 5 - Start saying and stick to it

Critical to this analysis is that it is not until Step 5 that full blown social media content creation is recommended.

Tnooz: Consolidation and M&A activity in Asia

Post live a Tnooz titled "Keep an eye on Asia for next wave of major online travel consolidation". In it I discuss how the three powerhouses of Asia - Rakuten, Wotif and Ctrip - have spent the last three years acquiring companies in Asia, Europe and America as they try to develop growth outside their respective home markets of Japan, Australia and China. I end with a prediction that

"there is more [M&A activity] to come; that we should expect to see more deals by these companies in the next three years. I would also not be surprised to see one of these companies make a major play through a big ticket acquisition in either Europe or America."

Full post here

Google and ITA: deal confirmed, BOOT was right, read what the pundits think

While I was minding my business on a work trip in Taiwan, teams of Google lawyers were dotting i's, crossing t's, cutting cheques and making rich people of out of the founders of flight search software company ITA. Overnight Tnooz carried the story that the deal was done for $700mm. This makes it Google's fourth largest acquisition (behind Admob, Youtube and DoubleClick). At risks of self indulgence, the BOOT first broke the rumour that Google was planning a push into travel meta-search.

With the deal done it is time for the pundits to pontificate analyse. Kevin May at Tnooz central has quickly collected the thoughts and analysis of five (and counting) Tnooz nodes/pundits including me. You can catch all of our thoughts and feelings on this deal over here.

Here is what I had to say at Tnooz

In my view the Google/ITA deal is a response to two challenges Google is facing in search generally and travel search in particular

1. Search is no longer the number one activity online. Social networking is. Part of this is the rise of networking but part of it is that search continues to operate in an environment where one site has the answer. Where you type in a search term and Google points you to the one site with the answer. Search queries are becoming more complex and more open ended. The answer to an open ended search query is unlikely to be found on one site. Google knows this is especially true for travel. It knows that it risks losing travel open ended travel search queries to social networks and meta-search. China is a great example of this trend with social networking planning a greater and greater role in travel search and discovery activity. Google knows they need a means for showing multi-site answers to search queries; and
2. Meta-search is building loyalty. In the early days of meta-search, the business model was almost pure traffic arbitrage (I discussed this back in 2007). Meta companies bought traffic off Google for one price and sold it to suppliers and OTAs for another. Meta-search profitability was determined by their ability to buy clicks from Google cheaper than they could be sold back to OTAs and suppliers. But in the last year or so meta-search has started to built loyalty and alternative marketing channels. To generate direct brand traffic and affiliate partner referrals in particular. I have heard reports from a number of meta's of dramatic increases in customer loyalty and direct traffic. Kayak themselves spoke of this phenomenon to me as early as 2008 just after the sidestep deal. To combat meta's growing loyalty Google clearly felt the pressure to bring pricing and the details of offers one step closer in search results

While the deal may help Google solve these two challenges - in presents Google with two new challenges

1. Competing with customers: Meta and other travel search companies spend a lot of money with Google. So too the suppliers and OTAs. There will be a fear and concern here from all of these Google cheque writers the Google might be planning to go direct and cut out more and more of the intermediary market; and
2. Execution and retention: Travel search technology is very very complicated. This is proved by Google's decision to buy rather than build. But each time a company makes a buy vs build decision they open themselves to the challenge of retention and execution within the acquired company. Once you have made very rich people at the core of the asset that you have bought - you need to work very hard to either keep them engaged or train up your old organisation to know everything there is to know about the new one.

More analysis and commentary over at Tnooz.

[reminder my views are mine alone and not the views of Orbitz or HotelClub]

Tnooz: part 2 of mobile post on interoperability and multi-tasking

Part 2 of my Tnooz post on the mobile revolution is live. Post is called Part Two of Two – Two missing pieces from the mobile revolution jigsaw. In it I interview a number of people on the impact that poor app interoperability and limited multi-tasking is having on the mobile revolution. People interviewed include

• GlobalMotion Media (creator of Everytrail) founder and CEO Joost Schreve;
• Appolicious’ vice president of product, Dan Hont; and
• Point Inside CEO Kevin Foreman

check it out here.

part 1 is here.

Tnooz: The need for App Search to drive mobile revolution

Latest Tnooz post is live. The post is called "Part One of Two – Two missing pieces from the mobile revolution jigsaw".
In this one I am looking into the mobile revolution. I look into how the rise of the mobile device is being driven by the rise of the app. I share some start up activity in the areas of app search including Appolicious. Check out the full post here.

Tnooz: Four types of non-destination based search and what it means for online travel

Just live over at Tnooz.com is a post by me titled "Four types of non-destination based search and what it means for online travel". In it I look into the new approaches to online travel search and boo king coming from a variety of start ups including Gliider, Joobili, Triporati, TripIt, Traxo, Jetsetter, BonVoyou and many more. From the post and interesting discussion has started in the comments on the future of search. Check it out here