Feature 1: A study published by digital think tank L2 attempts to “quantify the digital competence of 89 global airline, hotel and cruise brands.” It ranks each one as either a genius, gifted, average, challenged or feeble company.
L2 digital IQ index
Delta Air Lines, Southwest and Continental are ranked as digital geniuses, while JetBlue and Virgin Atlantic are said to be gifted. Overall, 41 percent of the brands are classified as geniuses or gifted, while 43 percent got tagged as feeble or challenged.
The report has a lot of interesting data, including the finding that airlines have a higher digital IQ than hotels or cruise companies. A high digital IQ translates directly into a higher percentage of online bookings.
Also, the direct co-relation between a digital IQ and average daily rate (ADR) for hotel brands shows that digitally competent brands have been able to rebound from the recession faster than the others.
Another direct co-relation is between the digital IQ and the amount of time spent by users on a brand website. Genius and gifted brands register average user time of 6.2 minutes and 4.9 minutes, respectively. Users spend only 3.4 minutes on the sites of feeble brands.
Full study – L2 Digital IQ Index: Travel – Download (pdf; free registration required)
New travel study defines digital genius – Mediapost.com
Feature 2: The PricewaterhouseCoopers “Cities of Opportunity” study ranks how 26 global centers perform across 10 key indicators including technology readiness, transportation and infrastructure. New York tops the list, followed by Toronto, San Francisco, Stockholm and Sydney.
New York aced the technology readiness and the lifestyle assets indicator measuring cultural vibrancy, sports, hotel rooms, skylines, tourism and green space. It also finished in the top three in six out of 10 indicators.
PwC 2011 Cities of Opportunity study – Download (pdf)
Here’s the rest of the week’s interesting news:
Idealab-funded startup wants to change the travel experience – Triptrotting.com (pr)
Startups prepare for takeoff – BusinessWeek
Priceline.com first quarter net jumps 95 percent - WSJ
Priceline’s reign as top travel stock threatened by IPO upstarts - Businessweek
FTC surveys internet companies on Google - FT.com
Free text travel searching gets more accurate with Eva - ProgrammableWeb
Why mules need social media - phillyBurbs.com
Tour operators to Egypt undergo social media revolution - Travel Weekly
Virgin America on why it socialized SFO - PSFK
American Airlines tests streaming in-flight entertainment – AA.com
Magellan Jets partners with Jetsetter to offer 25 hour jet cards - Yahoo.com (pr)
Group-buying companies emerge offering discounts for businesses - AllThingsD
The amenity travelers want most – power for their gadgets - NYT
Hard Rock Vegas: CRM on a smartphone - CIO.com
Image: L2
Related posts:
TravelTechnology Weekly (April 29, 2011)
TravelTechnology Weekly (April 22, 2011)
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One Response
PricewaterhouseCoopers. You changed your metrics just enough to cause Chicago to drop three slots. You lowered Chicago’s status by at least 30%! What was your purpose in doing this? It is not valid that a change you make in already established criteria should, itself make a change in the rankings and that is what you did. These rankings of the cities are always subjective, in that those responsible for the study decide what criteria and metrics will be the basis for the rankings. One could rank cities on 10 variables, 25 variables or a 100 variables of one’s choosing which would then produce rankings of the cities in various orders. If you were going to change the rules of your ranking engine you could have changed it in a way which would have left the top five rankings the same as your previous edition. For instance with Chicago, your change in the metrics caused Chicago to drop. What could have been done and IMO should have been done would be to change the metrics so that there was no net effect to the rankings. If your change caused Chicago to drop lower in the rank then you could have added a metric which have negated this effect. Such as add a metric for the total amount of commercial office space in the cities. Then let the established metrics thru time establish the subsequent rankings. IMO, to change the rankings by manipulating the metrics is not valid. Also, it seems to me one could advocate that the entire metropolitan area should be included in the ranking and not just the core city. In many instances a city’s suburbs, in terms of geographic area, population, GDP and so on are larger and even much larger than the core city. For instance the city had 2 top 500 companies, but the suburbs had an additional 7, shouldn’t that be included in the tally? Another issue I have with city rankings is the comparing of cities which vary greatly in size. IMO, with respect to certain metrics, one just can not make a valid comparison between cities which vary greatly in size due to the effect this variance in size, itself, has on the ranking. You ranked Stockholm higher than Chicago, metro Stockholm is only about 2 million, while metro Chicago is about 9.6 million how can you justify this? It does not seem valid to me. This is like saying Stockholm is more educated because 20% have masters degrees, while in Chicago only 10% have masters degrees. BUT 960,000 have masters in Chicago, while 400,000 have masters In Stockholm.