CHICAGO - Travel search engine SideStep potentially may jump from drawing 4.7 million unique visitors per month to being seen by more than 39 million people monthly now that it is the travel search engine for Amazon.com's travel store. The meta search site also is launching in the United Kingdom and Ireland.
SideStep began delivering travel results for Amazon on Jan. 3. Hotwire.com previously anchored the travel store.
SideStep's Anthony Rodio, vp-product management, hailed the trend as one that combines two customer-centric companies, while Rob Solomon, president and CEO of the meta search company, noted during a Tuesday press conference that consumers are gravitating to buying directly from travel providers. SideStep filters travel-search results according to attributes that consumers select, and sends them directly to the travel providers' Web site for purchase. SideStep makes money on negotiated acquisition fees paid by the travel provider and on advertising links appearing on its site. Ads from SideStep clients don't appear on Amazon's site, but the partnership at least does give the company breadth of distribution, which it lacked.
SideStep also brought its services across the pond where the European travel market is more fragmented. The U.K. consumer typically checks five to six Web sites before booking, compared with Americans who on average search three.
"Our travel search model has proven to be extremely successful in the United States and international growth is the next logical step," said Solomon.
U.S. online travel bookings are expected to grow to $94 billion by 2007 from $65 billion last year, per market research firm PhoCusWright. Online transactions are projected to comprise 55% of all travel buys by 2007, compared with 42% last year.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Nicol to 'bring out the soul' of MSN
<exerpt>
Nicol said he is planning a big public launch for the new MSN later this year but expects to roll out some sections and features earlier, like a new travel section, which will come within the next few weeks.
"We'll announce a new travel section where we go from what has been essentially a booking page to something more expansive with research and lots of user-generated content throughout the network," he said. "Later on, we will expand it to offer the ability to upload photos to our user base and more video content, including user-created video," he said.
</exerpt>
Trip Advisor Debuts Banner Ads
| Wednesday, Feb 15, 2006 6:01 AM EST |
| STARTING TODAY, EXPEDIA'S TRIP ADVISOR will, for the first time, run graphic banner ads on its site. The Travel Ad Network will represent the company. |
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
Apartment alternatives to hotel hell
Serviced apartments offer an alternative to long hotel stays.
Thursday, February 9, 2006; Posted: 12:58 p.m. EST (17:58 GMT)
(CNN) -- After weeks of rummaging through suitcases, eating lukewarm room service and dismantling the trouser press for entertainment, sooner or later most business travelers start suffering hotel fatigue.
Top end hotels are usually able to alleviate the symptoms through sheer quality of service, but for those condemned to hit the road on a lower budget, the world often becomes a blur of brown and dreary rooms.
The last 10 years, however, have seen a dramatic shift for the travel industry, resulting in the emergence of a new sector that bridges the gap between hotels and full-blown property leasing.
Serviced apartments usually take the form of a suite of rooms, including a bedroom, bathroom and fully-fitted kitchen. Some also feature a dining room for entertaining guests.
But while hotel guests enjoy round-the-clock room service and a daily visit from cleaning staff, most serviced apartments are spruced on a weekly basis, and in the absence of a restaurant, guests must fend for themselves.
Despite other issues -- such as a lack of hotel-style star rating system -- corporate accommodation firms say the secret is out and business is booming.
"People are cottoning on to the fact that they are cheaper, they're bigger and there's more facilities," says Richard Cruise of Britain-based apartment provider MiNC.
While well established in the Asia-Pacific region, the apartment concept is only just gaining popularity in the United States and Europe, where a broadening spectrum of providers offers an increasing quality of product.
"In the past five years it has kicked off tremendously," says Gillian Taylor, an account manager with U.S.-based Pricoa Relocations, a company which specializes in helping executives with long-term moves overseas.
"In London alone, it's gone from one or two serviced apartment providers to hundreds," she told CNN.
According to Gavan James, Los Angeles senior vice president and general manager for Oakwood, the largest serviced apartment provider in the world, the industry is now worth $3 billion a year in the States alone. Of this, Oakwood claims $500 million.
"The growth of serviced apartments is really on a trend of travelers who want more comfortable and more home-like rooms," he told CNN.
"It is a better way to go. Generally speaking, we're less expensive than a mid-line hotel on a daily basis, although our services are a lot more limited."
Taylor -- whose firm is a long-term Oakwood customer -- puts the attraction down to economies of scale.
"Corporate apartments are more a home away from home, people can bring their families and it can work out considerably cheaper than hotels in the long-term, especially when we're handling business trips of up to 60 people."
Despite touting their advantages, most serviced apartment providers are keen to point out that their business does not encroach on the hotel industry.
"We rarely bump into each other directly, we do go up against some suite hotels but we're really a unique segment" says Oakwood's James.
Adds Taylor: "Hotels have their advantages, you can book one or two nights at short notice whereas apartments usually require seven days."
"Hotels have advantages which we do not," says MiNC's Cruise, who has worked in both sectors. "But for stays of three days or more, we can be much better."
Friday, February 10, 2006
TripAdvisor inks deal with TV station websites
The agreement calls for TripAdvisor to be the primary provider of travel content for the travel channels of 65 Internet Broadcasting websites. more...
Web U: Working Out the Local Search Bugs
| http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=38956&Nid=18347&p=307939 |
| by Todd Friesen, February 2006 issue |
| IT SEEMS LIKE EVERYONE AND his brother has jumped on the local search bandwagon: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask Jeeves, all the usual suspects. Local search results have become an integral part of popular applications like Google Maps, Yahoo! Maps, and Mapquest. Bonus local listings now appear above the natural listings on many regular search engine results pages. The big search engines' local offerings vary in quality and usability. Clearly, they remain a work in progress for all of the players. Yahoo! Local Search appears to draw on users' search histories to gauge their interests when serving results, while MSN has made much of its geographical and demographic targeting capabilities. But a recent search for "bars" in my hometown produced some curious results -- like ice cream parlors (maybe the tool knows I have small children?). Google's local product combines information from a variety of online sources, and Google Adwords now offers advertisers the option of targeting regions, cities, or even parts of cities, based on the zipcode of the area you want to reach. Google claims it can even custom-target an area that an advertiser defines. The geo-targeted ads are then served to searchers who include a location in their query, or to those who search from an Internet address within the targeted area. (But what happens if the user is accessing their service through a geographically separate portal like AOL? Google isn't saying.) To have a presence on local search engines, as well as the local versions of Google, Yahoo!, and msn, you need bricks and mortar, and a presence in the city where you want to be listed. Simply adding place names to the search terms for a purely online offer won't work if it has no other connection to the geographic location. In the early days of local search, you might see results from as far as 50 miles away. That's no longer the case, as the search engines get more sophisticated and precise in their targeting. And when planning your local search campaign, it's wise to keep in mind the relevance of your search terms. Are you bidding on the terms that users within your target area are likely to search for? There are other ways to play in the local search space. Ever notice that online Yellow Pages like Verizon SuperPages often show up in the results for searches that are city-specific? For example, if you're a chiropractor in Boston, you might not rank at all in natural results for the term "boston chiropractor," but you can be the featured advertiser in places like SuperPages for relatively little cost. And the basic Yellow Pages listings -- which can include contact information, hours of operation, payment options, Web links, and descriptions of products and services -- are free. What's the next step for local search? How about a marriage between local search and social networking? Advertising to local markets through location-based online social networks makes a lot of sense. By their nature, these networks provide marketers with a wealth of useful detail: We know who the people in the networks are, what they like to eat and drink, where they hang out, and what music they listen to because they disclose this information voluntarily through their user profiles. Perhaps it's time to start earmarking part of the search engine marketing budget to focus on the clusters of Internet users that you know are in your target demographic. Finally, when targeting local search, be sure to come up with a metric that will account for offline conversions. And make sure you get credit for your efforts. Todd Friesen is director of search engine optimization at Range Online Media. (todd@rangeonlinemedia.com) |
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Engadget
The MacMini Portable
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
About Me
