Travel planning becomes a do-ityourself occupation

The Internet has changed forever how people purchase travel, and those who pitch hotels or destinations need to get on board or get left in the low-tech dust.

"Today's customers are time-starved, tech-savvy and information-rich," Travelocity.com founder Terry Jones told local tourism leaders at the Scottsdale Convention & Visitors Bureau's annual meeting Friday at Camelback Inn in Paradise Valley.

Americans and their computers or PDAs have turned travel planning into a do-ityourself occupation, he said.

By 2009, they will be spending $100 billion a year on online travel purchases, Jones said. Already, 68 percent of the U.S. population is online, and 79 percent of U.S. travelers are.

Even more important, Jones said, 98 percent of college kids have made an online purchase. "And today's college students are next year's consumers," he said.

"You need to fish where the fish are," Jones said.

Get the full story at the East Valley Tribune

Online customers take flight from poor travel sites

Online travel companies are missing out on bookings or driving customers to rival sites because of poor web site design or user experiences, according to new research.

The study of more than 25 travel web sites suggests that cumbersome search engines, hard to find booking forms and hidden charges are the biggest mistakes.

Webcredible, who carred out the research, says a lack of print-friendly page designs and not promoting competitive prices on home pages also caused people to click away.

'The travel sector experiences one of the highest levels of comparison shopping online. A massive one in four visits to travel web sites come from another site in the same category,' said Webcredible director Trenton Moss.

'Users are unlikely to hang around for long if they can't find what they are looking for, but by making a number of easy-to-implement changes online travel companies can significantly improve the satisfaction of their web site visitors. This would ultimately lead to increased bookings and revenue.'

Get Webcredible's "Online Travel Sector Usability Report"

Hoteliers eye podcasting

A number of hotels and hotel companies are testing the waters in what some believe might be the next big tool in the electronic marketing toolbox: podcasting.

With initial investments being small, these hoteliers feel that it's worth a shot to experiment with the medium in case it does take off.

"We see podcasting as alternative radio," said Ryan Bifulco, president of Travel Spike, an electronic marketing consulting company. "You do not need an iPod or other MP3 player to download a podcast. In fact, you can listen to a podcast at your desk, on your computer or you can listen to it on satellite radio.

"Think of it as a radio show or audio blog that you can also listen to on your computer or iPod," he said.

Bifulco sees huge potential for podcasting. At the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International Internet Travel Marketing Conference in New York, he drew attention by saying, "Podcasting will be bigger than blogging."

Get the full story at Hotel & Motel Management

SideStep syndicates its travel search service

SideStep is syndicating its online travel search service so that Web sites can allow their visitors to search for airline tickets, hotels and car rentals directly from within their sites, the company said in a statement.

Using SideStep's syndication technology, site publishers will be able to offer visitors access to more than 600 airlines, 125,000 hotels and 30,000 car rental sites around the world. SideStep's first syndication partner is ForbesTraveler.com, the company said.

Source: CNET News.com

InterContinental Hotels Books TurnHere for Branded Web Films

› › › ClickZ News  By Kate Kaye | September 14, 2006

http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3623430
 

In the hopes of getting people into its swanky rooms, InterContinental Hotels and Resorts is aiming the camera at what's outside of them. Local online travel video producer and distributor TurnHere has begun producing short Web films about each of the lodging company's 140 worldwide hotel locations. The effort, which is TurnHere's first wide-scale sponsored film series for an international advertiser, is part of InterContinental's broad branding initiative to promote its personalized concierge services and neighborhood smarts.

"What sells the hotel isn't just the hotel but the neighborhood and what you're going to do there," suggested TurnHere CEO Brad Inman.

The hotel's sponsored mini-movies will spotlight sights and places of interest surrounding each hotel. Keeping with TurnHere's mission to harness the charismatic appeal of neighborhood characters, the InterContinental flicks will be narrated by each hotel's concierge. In the first of the series, Robert Watson, chef concierge at The Willard InterContinental Hotel, offers viewers an insider's guide to his favorite Washington D.C. spots, beyond The White House and other requisite destinations.

"The main objective of this is that we want to provide our guests with authentic and local knowledge of each destination," said Jennifer Ploszaj, global director of brand communications for InterContinental Hotels and Resorts. "[TurnHere's] business model allows us to scale this across the world," she stressed. "We'd never be able to do this on our own."

Over 80 cities in the U.S. and elsewhere are represented by quirky locals and their favorite haunts on the TurnHere site, which features hundreds of professionally-produced films about neighborhoods, shops, restaurants, bars, clubs and other points of interest. Thus far, most of the short Web movies are not sponsored. However, paid advertorial films promoting local advertisers like Atlanta's bottle opener maker, Brown Manufacturing, and Poughkeepsie's wiener joint Soul Dog, are cropping up on the site.

The film production firm is setting it sights on national advertisers with local footprints for future film series, and has been in talks about creating videos for liquor and bank brands, according to Inman.

Because a variety of directors will be shooting the InterContinental films, they "won't be formulaic," Inman noted. Movies focused on Paris, New York, Prague, Mexico City, Toronto and other hotspots are in production for the hotel chain.

The advertiser aims to have about 40 of the intended 140 movies completed by the end of October, according to Ploszaj. In addition to the TurnHere site, the films will be featured on InterContinental's pre-trip planning concierge Web site, and later will be integrated into the company's main site. In addition, Inman noted, InterContinental might place films on its in-room television video network or post them to the homepage of each hotel's wireless network.

The firm also will feature its films in e-mails. "We're developing a viral marketing strategy," Ploszaj told ClickZ News. "Our goal is to share this information with a wider audience of consumers."

The advertorial films, which will be co-branded by InterContinental and TurnHere, will be distributed through Google Local and Google Earth, according to TurnHere's Inman. The production firm in July introduced its integration with Google Earth, which allows users to download an application that marks map locations with icons linking to TurnHere movies about those cities. TurnHere also distributes its shorts through MSN Video, Google Video, iTunes and Yahoo.
All of the production firm's movies can be e-mailed, downloaded or linked to. The company also lets affiliates place a text ad-supported TurnHere player on their sites that automatically streams different mini-flicks each day. Affiliates can license a premium player and split ad revenue with the film company.

InterContinental's recent marketing efforts include sponsorship of an Aston Martin racecar driver, according to Ploszaj, who added that TurnHere will shoot a "day in the life" of the speed demon at the upcoming Petit Le Mans race in Atlanta. Along with the video series, Ploszaj said InterContinental is running banner ads on AOL and Yahoo, targeting finance, travel and lifestyle content. In addition, the advertiser is running new campaign spots on CNN International, and plans to re-launch its site next year.

In related news, TurnHere on Monday announced it will be providing video production services to online video job recruitment firm RecruiTV.

Google Earth gains chimp pix, travel videos

New partnerships with nature- and environment-oriented groups offer videos, photos and blogs for specific locations.

By Candace Lombardi
Staff Writer, CNET News.com

Published: September 13, 2006, 6:12 AM PDT

Content from new partners, including videos, photos and blogs, is coming to the maps on Google Earth.

The search giant apparently hopes to encourage curiosity about the world--and its Google Earth map application--by offering overlays of content from the United Nations Environment Program, the Jane Goodall Institute, the U.S. National Parks Service and the Discovery Network, alongside its satellite imagery.

"Think of it as a browser to fly around the planet and discover things about the Earth," said John Hanke, director of Google Earth and Google Maps.

Google Earth will include before and after satellite images of environmentally endangered locations originally published by the U.N. Environment Program as a coffee-table book. The Kilimanjaro geographical point on Google Earth, for example, now includes an icon that brings people to a 1976 satellite image of the snow-capped mountain, as well as a more current image sans snow, Hanke said. A timeline slider bar lets people move between the two images to view the significant change.

The Jane Goodall Institute is using Google Earth to map the habitat of its chimpanzees in Tanzania, Hanke added. Photos, blogs and RSS feeds from the scientists observing and tracking specific chimpanzees in Africa will now be featured on Google Earth for public view.

Meanwhile, red outlines and information on more than 10,000 trails from 58 parks, provided by the National Parks Service, has been overlaid on top of satellite images of actual trails. Photos of select vistas are also included.

The Discovery Network is contributing three- to five-minute clips of existing nature and travel channel programs. (Google Earth previously linked to a more limited amount of Discovery content.)

The new video, photo and blog content is immediately available on Google Earth as part of the free download, the company said Wednesday. All of the new content will be available under Google Earth's "Layers" section, Hanke said. Existing users do not need to upgrade to a new version of Google Earth software in order to see the new features.

 

While the KML language used to integrate content with geographic information systems ( GIS) data is freely available, Google provided some technical support to each of the partners in order to get their content up on Google Earth, according to a Google representative. There are no content agreements with regard to what has been posted, however, and "no money has changed hands," the representative said.

In the coming weeks, Google expects to make more partner content available to Google Earth.

The interactive content announcement follows a presentation Tuesday in London by Google Earth Chief Technical Officer Michael Jones of the timeline slider, now available on the free version of Google Earth. The feature, which lets people view photos of a single location over years, was previously exclusive to the premium version, Google Earth Pro.

Google Targeting $10 Billion Local Market

At an investor Q&A in New York, Sheryl Sandberg, Google's vp of Global Online Sales & Operations, discussed the company's latest push to target the $10 billion annually spent by local businesses on advertising. Sandberg pointed out how Google's local search product is vastly improved over what it was four years ago. Between Google Maps and Google Local results integrated into the Web search page, you can often get good local results for local queries. Advertisers are starting to use these services, too, buying placements on Google Maps that contain things like coupons. Sandberg notes that local ad dollars still represent a largely untapped opportunity. "When you think about what people are looking for when they look for local information, it is almost always commercial in nature. You're looking for a local product or service most of the time," she said. Google is now letting advertisers target by geographic location, so a New York-area advertiser knows its ad will only show up in front of someone looking for information in New York City. Offerings like this are a good step forward, but the main issue remains--getting tech-averse local advertisers to use Google's self-service AdWords system. "In that area, we think the market is widely under-penetrated," Sandberg said. "It sounds surprising to a lot of us, but even in the United States, arguably the most developed market in the world for ecommerce, less than 50 percent of businesses even have a Web site, or let alone advertisers." ( Read the whole story... ZDNet)

Problems with travel websites send many people to agencies

Customers lured by convenience and promises of the best deal are booking more trips online. But is Internet booking always the better way to go? That depends on the traveler and the type of trip.

The general rule is that the more complicated or expensive the itinerary, the better it is to book through a travel agent.

"The more components you add to your trip — hotel, plane tickets, etc. "... the more you should consider a travel agent," said Chris Elliott, National Geographic Traveler magazine's ombudsman and syndicated travel columnist. "The other thing, a human agent has the experience of visiting a hotel or a ship or a part of town. There's nothing like walking into an agency and talking to someone who has been there."

Jim Vallas of Phoenix, a frequent international and domestic traveler for business and pleasure, said more than anything people should consider their personality. He said he enjoys researching destinations and feels confident he's getting a deal. But Vallas also said his research isn't fail-proof, as he once booked a hotel in an unsavory part of Washington, when a travel agent might have steered him away from such a hotel.

Travel agents rally behind stories like these, saying a traveler who is looking for been-there, done-that knowledge should consult a real person, rather than a Web site, which naturally will show the best - if not exactly accurate - pictures.

Get the full story at St. Cloud Times

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