I’ve been thinking a lot about my annual predictions for online travel technology for 2011, and whilst this article on Tnooz is not that list, it will give you a strong clue as to where my thinking is headed.
The five trends I have written about in detail are
- The convergence of pre-shopping and shopping
- The convergence of Online and Offline throughout the entire travel process
- The convergence of mobile and desktop
- The convergence of commercial and redemption booking flows
- The convergence of personalization and content management
To read the article in full, head over to Tnooz.
December 15, 2010 at 8:57 am
Martin as usual you’ve just dropped a mind bending cocktail
.
I’ve got some points to make upon your great list:
* Mobile (or information ubiquity) + personalization: I strongly believe both are but one major trend in need of someone to get it just right. A great personalization tweak will be to understand where your consumer is (ubiquity of your offering) and what mind map she is currently on (make your offer relevant to what she is needing). “Martha purchased a trip to NYC via her usual OTA, now she flips open her internet appliance and she is right in Broadway, wouldn’t it make sense for the same OTA to offer tickets to the show she is actually thinking she might attend dropping some comments on how her friends liked/disliked the show?” I like to think of these kind of situations as “Atrapalo.com” on steroids.
* on/offline convergence.
a trait I’ve not seen outside LATAM (disclaimer: I am part of this movement) is the development of travel/leisure prospect magnets: deploy offline POS where there is high pedestrian traffic in “buying” mode (eg. mall, supermarket, etc). Those venues have proven that having an agent helps people solve: their “why not” questions and deliver the purchase in contrast on a solo situation (facing the web at night with the anxiety of buying something you haven’t actually experienced before: first trip to disney anyone?) and rationalize among their misgivings (internet sales still has some pretty big barriers in developing countries: identity theft fear, fraud fright, etc.)
lets get together some day and share ramblings around some beers. you are more welcome to visit buenos aires any time
December 15, 2010 at 10:16 am
Mario, I’ll expand a little upon the response I left at Tnooz.
Personalization is a tough one as once it gets too good it can look invasive and like Big Brother is watching, so the real challenge is how to make it good at increasing revenue without scaring off the customer. It is possible, but it is more difficult than most people realize.
The online/offline convergence is probably the one trend out of the five I mentioned that I would be least expert on, and this is why I quoted Sean Sutherland extensively on the topic. But your example sounds very interesting, and I’d be interested to hear more about it sometime.
Never been to Buenos Aires before and now that my territory is The Americas, I’m deterimined to make a trip into your part of the world as soon as I get a chance. Maybe taking a look at the project you are doing with online/offline convergence as well as a greater discussion on airline e-commerce trends and innovation would make it very worthwhile.