A Day @ Ecommerce Expo in London (Olympia)

I spent most of yesterday at the Ecommerce Expo here in London. I was here in London for business in any case and it was a good coincidence that the expo was here at the same time and was only a 15 minute walk from the Millennium & Copthorne office in Kensington.

First thoughts was that it was a small show. Olympia seems to be quite a large venue and we got slightly lost because signage was not very good. We initially went to the wrong hall - as did other people so we did not feel so stupid. (Note to EC&O who runs this exhibition venue, you need to get on search engine marketing - big time. The site is alright - once you find it. And you need a good domain like olympiavenues.co.uk rather than eco.co.uk.)

Anyhow, despite being a "small" show, there was a lot of buzz in the air. The companies there were mostly relevant and you had the anchor exhibitors like Google (huge booth plus the Google Academy "classroom" downstair which was 4 times the size of their booth).

So what did I find interesting to me?

WebCredible - With the recent website relaunch, I would love to run some usability test to compare with the EyeTracking studies we did last year. They seem like a good outfit. Asked them to meet me on Friday as I was leaving that evening. Let's see what happens.

Gomez - Gomez's describes themselves as "a leading provider of on-demand web application experience management solutions, helping the world's top businesses ensure quality web experiences for their customers". Yada yada yada... cutting through the clutter: "Internet performance monitoring service". I had been thinking about using a service like Gomez to monitor my site's performance from the end-user's perspective. Akamai had recommended them as a 3rd party independent monitoring service, and it had been in the back of my mind to call them up. But hey, they were here and did a decent demo. Please call me.

Omniture - OK so we already use them. I have been seeing on my Omniture Dashboard about TouchClarity product and wanted to find out more. Interesting stuff actually. Using information from their tags to tell our servers to deliver targeted content. So it can be simple like providing specific promotions to people coming from specific geographic locations. Or, in theory, marrying that with your CRM to provide personalized customer visits. Anyhow, for M & C, it probably at least 2009 stuff.

SEO Junkies - I had a call from these guys a few weeks ago so did prearrange to meet them. They focus solely on search engine optimization - no pay-per-click, no advertising, no creative. (though their parent company Advantys does some of this agency stuff.). It's a good strategy since SEO is so paramount to eCommerce strategies and is the neglected in favor of PPC. And yes, there are tons of companies offering to optimize PPC campaigns. I stayed away from those (and.. oh.. yeah.. by the way, these PPC optimizer also do SEO on the side... yeah right).

Google - of course I have to pay homage to Google. They shouted a lot about Google Checkout and how "Sellers get free processing on all orders in 2007". There is also a plan in place where for every dollar you spend on Adsense you get ten dollars of free processing value. Something like that. I asked about Google Checkout for my hotels since I am looking at a prepayment product. Alas, Google CheckOut does not service the travel sector as a policy. They are getting a lot of requests.. something like half of their requests are from the Travel sector, but the company policy right now is no travel. Don't know exactly why. Is there a lot of fraud? Is it the "mail order" merchant thing?

There are many free seminar, but they are mostly pitches for the companies that are presenting. That's actually fine, but of the 4 seminars I attended, only 1 was worth the time. It's alright to sell your product, but the delivery and the pitch could be a lot more engaging. I won't mention any names.

It's a two-day event, but one day was enough. We all have work to do!

Joe... Out.

Asiatravel.com partners with travel search engine Bezurk.com

Good news for the Asia travel meta search sector.

I had AsiaTravel's Boh Tuang Poh (Executive Chairman) and Bezurk's Craig Hewett (Chief Marketing Officer) on my HEDNA OTA panel two weeks ago (presentation here). Craig mentioned that they were working closely together and hinted at something further. So what was launched was (See Bezurk's press release here):

"Asiatravel.com, the pan-Asia total travel reservation service and Bezurk.com, Asia Pacific's leading travel search engine today announced a marketing partnership as part of which Asiatravel's hotel and flight prices will be integrated into the Bezurk travel search which will expose Asiatravel to a large new audience."

This will take advantage of Asia Travel's instant online confirmation for air tickets (see their PR piece here).

Bezurk also hinted that they would soon relaunch its brand into a "four-word" name. Something to compete with ... say... Zuji.com. Anytime now...

Online Travel Agents: Can we live without them? Part 3

Finally, the last part of this trilogy. So we ask: Why do OTAs dominate the top of the visitor report by so much? Why have hotel brands not been as successful?

OTAs innovated and have created many "firsts" in the online travel marketplace. Priceline's "Name your own price" boosted the whole opaque distribution model. A number of the large OTAs with direct access to GDS and feeds introduced the calendar availability to consumers; now calendar availability is expected. Traveler reviews: TripAdvisor is the "gold standard" in the travel sector though epinions.com was the first consumer review site ever.). True dynamic packaging is not yet available, but OTAs have long allowed you to buy airline ticket, book hotel rooms and buy parking at the airport. Affiliate model... Hotels.com in the US circa 2002-2003 ('nuff said). Those affiliates tend to be small sites that go after niches and locality, hence basic "niche marketing". And ...umm.... they are "independent"... uh--huh... sure.

But honestly, they did bring consumers online. The OTAs spent a LOT of money brand building and getting consumers to start booking online and be comfortable with giving their credit cards online. Would the online travel industry be where it is without OTAs?


Why have Hotel Brands not been as successful online as OTAs? Because the hotel industry ADAPTS slower than OTAs INNOVATE.

A painfully true comment... And all of you hoteliers are nodding your heads. And you OTAs are smirking, but you can't blame us. The hotel's core business is running a hotel, while OTA's core business is to sell hotel rooms (and other travel products.). A hotel's major investment is in the infrastructure, the rooms, and the building, while the OTA's major investment is in technology and innovation. OTA's, which grew out of the dotcom era, are naturally and instinctively tech savvy, adaptable (technology and business models), and hungry.

And OTAs are now on the defensive since a couple of years ago...

I had a bit to trouble cobbling this data together but managed to fine some stuff regarding share of online bookings between Hotel Direct (Blue line above) and OTAs (red line above). In 1999, it was 55% or so for the Blue Team and 45% for the Red team. As you see by the bubbles at the bottom, the next few years had companies IPO, being founded or spun off (Expedia, Priceline, TripAdvistor, hotels.com); the share of the Red Team rose to 48% or so. But with the dotcom bust and Wall Street getting shy, we started to see consolidation in end 2002/beginning 2003 onwards. At the same time, the Blue Team (at least the Michael Jordans, Shaquille O'Neils, and Yao Mings in the team) started getting their act together and investing in technology and people to catch up. By end 2005, it was more like 54-46 for the Blue Team. And in 2006, the star players on the Blue Team are saying they are at over 80% while the second stringers ( ahem...smaller hotel chains) and free agents (independent hotels) are bringing in the rear. So the trend for the next few years is to increase that average score to 64-36 by 2010 according to Merrill Lynch. I am not so sure about that, because us second stringers and independents need the OTAs because we do not have the brand clout and spread of hotels. We need them as part of our distribution strategy.

Meanwhile, OTA's will continue to innovate faster than most of us can follow (except perhaps the star players.)
TripAdvisor is in Facebook (which is now worth USD 15billion dollars by the way) with "Where have you traveled" application. Travelocity increase its CRM efforts with Farewatcher Plus.

And Orbitz combines social networking with information like departure and arrival times in Traveler Update. So a traveler can update (a la twitter) about the bad restaurant in Terminal 1 in O'Hare or the long security checkpoint at Gate 1. Would a hotel group do something like this? Not very likely as the ROI on such a venture would not be worth it. Orbitz does it because it is part of their "service" to customers as well as brand awareness and position.

So OTAs have their place, and they will have a share of the online marketplace. What share will depend on which hotel group, on which destination and on which property. Some properties will depend more on OTAs than others just as some hotels will naturally depend on one channel over another.

So as I ended my presentation:

"OTAs. You can't live with them, but... You can't kill them."

The End.

Online Travel Agents: Can we live without them? Part 2

So next is the Scene - i.e. What is brand online's medium to long term strategy? What do consumers think about brand online vs OTAs? How many visitors go to brand online vs. OTAs? How much cross visiting is there between OTAs and Brand Online?


1) What is brand online's medium to long term strategy?
Well brand online is in direct competition with OTAs on most fronts online since 90% of Shopping traffic is generated from search engines. Hence search engine marketing is the battleground i.e. SEO and PPC. Search for any hotel and you will always find at least 8 of the top 10 results are OTAs (or their affiliates) in the natural search results. And look at the pay per click advertising and you will see many ads from OTAs - unless the name is trademark protected (only on Google!).

Since the cost of sale for direct online channel is a maximum of 10% vs the average OTA commission which is over 20%, it makes sense for a hotel group/hotel to want the traffic direct and save on the additional commissions. So the medium to long-term strategy is to channel shift the consumer from booking with online travels agents to booking brand direct.

2) What do consumers think about brand online vs OTAs?
Consumers prefer to book brand direct primarily because they get the best rate guarantee, they think the get special prices and promotions, and they can earn loyal points and rewards.

Consumers also feel that they are more satisfied when buying direct.

So while they say they like to go direct, what do they actually do in practice? Where do they go and how do they shop?

3) How many visitors go to brand online vs. OTAs?
Here is Comscore's August 2007 data for the worldwide Travel Category. Of the 791 million internet users worldwide, 38% go to travel sites during the month (or 301 million users). Expedia tops the travel category with 62 million users, followed by Travelport, Yahoo! Travel, Priceline and Lastminute. The first hotel company that comes on the list is IHG at number 12 with 7.4 million users. So even though consumers say they like brand online sites better, most of them still shop at OTA websites.

4) How much cross visiting is there between OTAs and Brand Online?
What's more interesting is to see this overlap. Here the column data is from Hilton and InterContinental groups crossed with the same Travel Category report in the slide above. So 48% of hilton user also go to Expedia, 26.2% also go to Travelport sites during that month. The Index column reads like "hilton users are 6.11 times more likely to visit expedia sites than the average internet user". So take a look at the InterCon column against the Travel Category.

Now check out the Index for Hilton vs InterCon and Marriott and Wyndham. The Index is over 2 times that of OTAs; 18.48, 23.58, and 14.83 respectively. This means that consumers are looking everywhere and not just your brand online and OTAs. They are looking at other hotel sites too. Probably your direct competitive set for your particular hotel.

Think about it. It's not that hard. Just a few click of the keys into Google and you can see it. Better yet the OTAs may very well tell you who is in the area. You can start your research there.

So that's the end of Part 2. In the next part, we will look at: Why do OTAs dominate the top of the visitor report by so much? Why have hotel brands not been as successful? And we will come to some sort of resolution.

Online Travel Agents: Can we live without them? Part 1

I moderated a panel discussion yesterday at the HEDNA Asia Pacific Conference here in Singapore. The panelist were: Roshan Mendis from Zuji/Travelocity, Boh Tuang Poh from Asiatravel.com, and Craig Hewett from Bezurk.com.

So I had a short "scene setting" presentation (15 minutes). But the first few slides were more of setting the stage, i.e. the stage comes before the scene.


The stage, or the online marketplace, as we know it, is quite convoluted with OTAs, corporate websites, hotel websites, search engines, social networks, user generated content, blogs, etc. etc. etc. How does a revenue manager resolve all this into a revenue management strategy? (remember HEDNA stands for Hospitality Electronic Distribution Network Association so the people here are mostly Revenue Managers/Directors).

So we need to distill this marketplace from the perspective of distribution:

1) The Users, or Consumers, on the left side.
2) On the other side, you have the inventory which resides in the CRS or PMS.
3) That inventory is distributed to brand online websites by the Internet booking engine and distributed to OTAS via CRS, GDS or extranets.
4) So the big question is how do Consumers get the brand online websites and/or OTA?

A) Some go direct to the brand online site like www.millenniumhotels.com and type that in. Some go direct to OTAS like expedia.com or hotels.com.
B) BUT MOST GO THROUGH SEARCH ENGINES! At least 90%!

Look at the number of searches done worldwide (below) and see the share of the search market by the likes of Google, Yahoo and Baidu (yes that Chinese search engine).


Google has 60.8% of the over 61 BILLION searches done worldwide in the month of August 2007 (according to Comscore qSearch). This is from a base of 754 million unique searchers. Each searcher averaging over 21 search VISITS per month. (a visit is a browsing session that is not interrupted by 30 minutes of non-activity, so each visit can have many searches).

So yes.. people search... a whole damn lot. What about Web 2.0 and travel 2.0 and all this User generated content and TripAdvisor and facebook and MySpace? Don't people book from there?

Look to yourself for an answer. What do you do?

1) Research Phase: before you even go somewhere you are influenced by someone about how good or bad the destination is. After you know where you are going, you will then start to "research" into what hotels are good and where they are located. How do you get this informations? You use the search box at the top of your browser window! OK you also might wander through to your Facebook/MySpace or even TripAdvisor to see what people have to say. Now you are influenced by your research and you decide to stay at say the Orchard Hotel Singapore (obvious plug). What do you do now that you are ready to shop?

2) Shopping Phase: YOU GO TO THAT SEARCH BOX AGAIN and type in "Orchard Hotel Singapore cheap discount rate" or something like that!!!!! Don't deny it.. that is what you do. Why? Because it is easy. Just because someone said that they got a good deal on hotels.com 5 months ago, it does not mean that hotels.com has the best deal TODAY. You want to check everywhere, and it's really not that hard to do. With a few click on Google, you will know what is a good rate and what is not. AND WHERE TO BUY IT? And where is this? It is the Brand Online sites or one of the OTAs that our Revenue Managers work with. If you have time to spare, you MIGHT call a travel agent and be put on hold and wait for them to get back to you "later today"... yada.. yada... yada.

3) Purchase Phase: Then you buy....

So search engine are VERY important in this online world, Google being the top dog - BY FAR. Yahoo only has 20% of the market compared to Google's 60%. Google makes over USD 11 BILLION dollars a year and over 60% of that is from the search engine results page (SERP) that you see whenever you do a search.
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“Google reported revenues of $3.87 billion for the quarter ended June 30, 2007, representing a 58% increase over second quarter 2006 revenues of $2.46 billion and a 6% increase over first quarter 2007 revenues of $3.66 billion.

- Google-owned sites generated revenues of $2.49 billion, or 64% of total revenues,
- Google's partner sites generated revenues, through AdSense programs, of $1.35 billion, or 35% of total revenues
- Revenues from outside of the United States totaled $1.84 billion, representing 48% of total revenues in the second quarter of 2007"
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So that SERP page is not as simple as you think....

So that is the stage. My next post will be about the Scene... i.e. What is brand online's medium to long term strategy? What do consumers think about brand online vs OTAs? How many visitors go to brand online vs. OTAs? How much cross visiting is there between OTAs and Brand Online? So hold on for Part 2.

Recommended Book: "Microtrends" - A Very Interesting Read

I just finished reading Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow's Big Changes by Mark Penn and E. Kinney Zalesne. I actually read it cover to cover (except for the Footnotes and Glossary of course). The authors goes through the book highlighting 75 small trends (mainly in the US) that have reached the 1% threshhold i.e. 3 million people. Each trend is bitesized at 4 or so pages so you can lay the book down easily and quickly pick up where you left off. It is a great complementary to "Competing on Analytics" in that all these trends were backed up by solid numbers and statistics that Burson-Marsteller is know for (Mark Penn is the CEO of Burson-Marsteller).

Overall, it is funny, well-researched, cleverly written and makes great talking points.

See also review from Publishers Weekly:
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From "Soccer Moms," the legendary swing voters of the mid-1990s, to "Late-Breaking Gays" such as former Gov. Games McGreevey (out at age 47), Burson-Marsteller CEO (and campaign adviser to Sen. Hillary Clinton) Penn delves into the ever-splintering societal subsets with which Americans are increasingly identifying, and what they mean. For instance, because of "Extreme Commuters," people who travel more than 90 minutes each way to work, carmakers must come up with ever more luxury seat features, and "fast food restaurants are coming out with whole meals that fit in cup holders." In a chapter titled "Archery Moms?", Penn reports on the "Niching of Sports": much to the consternation of Major League Baseball, "we don't like sports less, we just like little sports more." The net result of all this "niching" is "greater individual satisfaction"; as Penn notes, "not one of the fastest-growing sports in America... depends substantially on teamwork." Penn draws similar lessons in areas of business, culture, technology, diet, politics and education (among other areas), reporting on 70 groups ("Impressionable Elites," "Caffeine Crazies," "Neglected Dads," "Unisexuals," "America's Home-Schooled") while remaining energetic and entertaining throughout. Culture buffs, retailers and especially businesspeople for whom "small is the new big" will value this exercise in nano-sociology.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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Customer Reviews for Hotel Site????

HotelMarketing.com pushed out an article from ClickZ titled: "How to Use Customer Reviews to Increase Conversion". In it, ClickZ says:

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Consider dipping into the traditional marketing budget to invest in a customer review system. A review system allows you to let your customers market your products for you. Need more rationale? Consider these facts:

According to JupiterResearch, 77 percent of online shoppers use reviews and ratings when purchasing.

Reviews drive 21 percent higher purchase satisfaction and 18 percent higher loyalty, according to Foresee Results.

In a study of 2,000 shoppers, 92 percent deemed customer reviews as "extremely" or "very" helpful, finds eTailing Group.

BizRate found 59 percent of users considered customer reviews to be more valuable than expert reviews.

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So HotelMarketing is telling hotels to put customer reviews on our own sites? Are they mad?

Seriously, it is one thing to be an online retailer selling products made by someone else and letting customer whine about that product. It is a completely different thing to have a forum on your site to let customers (or competitors or any Tom, Dick and Harry) complain out loud for ALL THE WORLD to see. On your own site where you are trying to convert a sale? Most people know that a hotel's sites (or product maker's site) are marketing spiel. They expect it so if you don't show them the mess in the kitchen... it's ok. Airing your own dirty laundry isn't going to help.

Travelers now have A.D.D.

That's stands for Attention-Deficit Disorder. According to a study by Akamai Technologies and Babson college, "one-third of travel consumers abandoned their online search after waiting for more than four seconds for their results to load".

Lucky our website is on Akamai and we are about to bump up our service level to Dynamic Site Accelerator. Damn that sounds sexy doesn't it. Vroom... Vroom....

We are going to be as sexy as InterContinental Hotels Group as Bryson Koehler, Vice President, Global Distribution Technology said: "Akamai provides us with a complete e-business solution that addresses our requirements for 100 percent availability of critical Web, Voice and Web Service applications, massive reach to support worldwide customer demands, and the use of an extended infrastructure to support widely varying traffic on demand."

As sexy as Pegasus, Steve Lapekas, Chief Technology Officer is quoted: "Leveraging Akamai's Web Application Accelerator will further allow us to increase speed and availability, while reducing infrastructure load and increasing SaaS application adoption of our next-generation travel reservation platform."

Maybe they will quote me too, after I get the makeover to become sexier like the Hilton Brand.

"Hiring For Search (Marketing)"

Digital Media - a magazine for the Asian market by BrandRepublic - interviewed me a couple of months back for a piece they were doing on Search Marketing. Here's the piece:

(Continued below)

My exact answers to the questions were:
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Q1. When it comes to hiring a search agency, what are the advantages and disadvantages of hiring a specialist over a general media agency?

PPC is easy set up and run, so the general media agencies can compete with the specialists. However, to really optimise the return-on-ad-spend or ROI, you need a specialist who understands the ins and outs and knows the "tricks". Over the last few years, general media agencies have hired specialists to run their PPC campaigns. So this is more balanced. But as a
client, I want direct access to that specialist and not through an Account Manager. This is because even specialists would not have experience in my industry, and industry input is needed to optimise.

SEO is still such a hazy field, maybe a large part is due to the fact thatthe search engines keep everyone guessing at their algorithms. Specialists are in a better position to keep up to date with the search engines and have the necessary tools and knowledge to do this effectively. General media agencies will claim to perform SEO, but they really do not understand this
field. Many focus mostly on search engine submissions and basic meta tagging, but do not understand the need content optimise based on keyword popularity.


Q2. In general, do you think the extra revenue gained from a specialist's expertise is worth the extra management and research it may require on the part of the advertiser?

For my PPC campaigns, I use both a specialist and a general media agency. I learn a lot from the specialist and at the same time can work with them to test out ideas and tweak my campaigns further. I then try to implement these learnings into my other campaigns with the general media agency. This is the same approach I take to regular reports in order to establish
consistency across campaigns. If the advertiser does not have the domain knowledge or the resource dedicated to PPC, then it should engage a specialist. It is worth the money if the terms are correctly defined - especially for "pay for performance" contracts.

For SEO, I have not encountered a general media agency that I would feel comfortable giving my account to.

Q3. Do you need to understand the technical side of search to go with
a specialist?

You go with the specialist to get that experience. As an advertiser, you need to understand and develop the right key performance indices (KPIs) for your SEO and PPC marketing. You do not need to get "technical" but you should understand the basics of what search engines do and how SEO and PPC works. This knowledge must be integrated with your knowledge of your
industry and business. The KPIs are specific for you because even specialist do not understand your business as well as you do.

Q4. Using a general media agency usually means better integration with the rest of your media strategy. How important do you think this is?

The general media agency should be able to understand your industry and business better than the specialists because they have had a long relationship with you. For a specific integrated campaign with online, print, TV etc (with specific campaign periods), general media agencies are in a better position to understand integrated marketing. It takes more time to get the specialists involved in such a campaign.

For a hotel group, over 90% of our PPC and SEO activities are constant and on-going, rather than fixed-period "campaigns". I have been promoting internally the concept of "PPC As A Sales Channel". So this "edge" that the general media agencies have are really for a minor part of the search engine marketing portfolio.

Q5. How can advertisers best choose which option (specialist or generalist) is best for them? How important is the pitch process in doing so?

It depends on how knowledgeable the advertiser is and how much resources the advertiser can put into it. If you know your KPIs and are comfortable with steering from a strategic direction standpoint (or only have resources to do so), then engage a good general media agency. If you do not have the time and resources, or need to understand more in order to establish KPIs, or
want to get deeply involve in tacticals and new developments, then look for a specialist.

With the pitch, you want to talk to the specialist within the general media agency. You need to establish that the person doing the work understands your needs and KPIs. If you have a good AM or AD that can facilitate this, this is good, but you still want to meet the brains.
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I don't have a link, but I will find it.....