Dear Mark Watkins and the Goby Technologies team,

Mark Watkins presents at the PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit 2010

I think I first met you guys at TravelCom in 2009 when you were still in stealth.  At the very beginning, it was obvious that you had a highly talented team focusing on a space similar to what we are doing at UpTake.  You’ve truly created a delightful product (with a much more distinctive brand identity than what I created at UpTake!) and have impressed PhoCusWright delegates each year you have presented. Congratulations!

I’m totally in sync with the way you are trying to solve the problem of hyper-local content.  You need tools to tap into your social networks for advice and recommendations, but ultimately your 150 friends on Facebook or Twitter really don’t have the coverage and comprehensiveness of search on the internet.  The world of attractions, restaurants, and travel destinations is just too fragmented to rely on solely your friends.

I haven’t downloaded the iPhone app but I’m sure it is a great user experience, like your Website.  I agreed with your comment, “Today, people’s brains are moving into their mobile devices; mobile is social, local, and actionable.”

I think the biggest challenge for the Goby model (and to some degree to UpTake business as well) is how to get traffic.  From looking at Compete and Quantcast, it doesn’t seem that Goby has really cracked the traffic nut in a big way since the last PhoCusWright conference.  With Google Places and Google Hotpot,  Google is clearly not standing still.  High quality web sites with local content will still play a role in filling Google’s search results with high quality results.  But aggregated sites like Goby increasingly have to ask themselves how they are adding distinctive value to turns into signals that demonstrate to everyone–especially Google–that consumers really care about you.

The challenge for getting Web traffic is substantial.  The challenge for getting iPhone app adoption is frankly even larger in my opinion.  You might find a way to create a hit iPhone app like Angry Birds or Plants vs. Zombies.  But I’m not sure there is an example of an iPhone app that is more utilitarian (shopping, coupons, local, travel, etc.) that has become a runaway hit.  How are you guys going to get your app discovered?

I’m sympathetic to your challenges, because in many way they are similar to the challenges we think about all the time at UpTake.  In my opinion, you need to find a strategic blind spot where Google can’t go, Facebook will ignore, and TripAdvisor won’t prioritize.  Not sure what that is, honestly.  I suspect it means abandoning your search roots and looking for something much more social and fun.  Heck, maybe you (and UpTake as well) should jump on the “gamification” wagon!  In a way, I think Google Hotpot is an example of Google trying to do the same thing.  In short, we live in interesting times.

In the meantime, congratulations on your continued success in moving forward travel innovation, especially in the area of attractions and “things to do.”

Great one day event in Berlin. Here’s one man’s take on the best and worst of the latest PhoCusWright

Most honest - David Roche, head of hotels.com (globally) and Venere. (I’m paraphrasing him liberally): “we have a match for Priceline in the U.S. with Hotwire, but Booking.com is on fire and we don’t have a match for them globally” {my two cents is that TripAdvisor is the bulldozer Expedia eventually uses to level the international field}.

Most greedy - Matthew Goldberg, CEO of Lonely Planet. Matthew is credited for convincing Rupert Murdoch – when he bought the Wall Street Journal – that News Corp. could have their proverbial cake and eat it too (i.e. keep readership free but also charge a premium for a slice of premium content). Well, Matthew has rebuilt the LP team and is doing the same – and then some – down under: licensing LP content, selling content in snippets to consumers via iPhone apps, and making money off transactions and ads on the LP website. Hey, in Canada, we call that a hat trick eh?

Most controversial - Séverine Philardeau of TripAdvisor starting off her talkback with Matthew by asking (again, I’m paraphrasing because I have a memory like a sieve) “Matthew, you lost 7 million pounds last year, what’s that all about”. In the genteel world of PhoCusWright, that’s the closest thing to controversy we get.

Most disappointing
1. Google. Yes, we heard you aren’t entering the travel vertical (but nevertheless, the reality is that the local “horizontal” business is having a huge impact on organic search for travel businesses), video is the next big thing, and we should all buy more ads. Hey, we have heard Rob Torres say that for years – and eloquently too. So… what’s new? Stop coming and telling us the same thing. {note: apparently Travelcom got a little bit more – see Dennis Schaal’s post}
2. Bing. OK, visual search is the next big thing and consumers love it (hey, if that’s true, share some numbers to convince us; it’s hard to believe visual search makes a material difference to consumers and Google can’t be bothered to replicate), you are a global search engine and you are in Germany but you don’t have a German product yet, and you do software releases quarterly (quarterly?!?!?! That’s slower than shrink-wrapped software companies). Note: these are all nits, after 9 months, Bing has shown clear market share gains — from 8.4% to 11.5%. In the world of web search, this is ENORMOUS!

Most not-sure-what, but good news nevertheless
1. Tripology off death watch, purchased by Rand McNally (Tnooz news, of course)
2. Pixell bought by Amadeus
3. Norm Rose – great data on the continued evolution of mobile, complete with a prediction that 50% of phones will be smart phones by EOY 2010.
4. Rick Seaney from FareCompare about U.S. carriers starting to update rates for international flights hourly. Gone is the day where we could check Tuesday morning – real time all the time!

Most surprising – that only three hands when up when Norm asked the attendees who had built a mobile application already.

Most common occurrence we have elected to accept – “The black screen of Apple” – attendees who couldn’t check email or anything else because their iPhones ran out of battery life. That is one heck of an exceptional phone for us to suffer through that terrible battery and AT&T in the U.S.

Most unknown company (not in attendance) with a travel pedigree that came up – After Norm Rose’s insightful take on mobile and implications for travel, two different attendees mentioned they use the Skyfire mobile browser and it’s great. Remember Jeff Glueck, formerly CMO of Travelocity? He’s the CEO of Skyfire. Nice to know there is life after the gnome (note: Skyfire is also a Trinity portfolio company).

Best after-party – I would tell you, but I can’t remember the name of our host (but I do want to thank Christina Norton for getting us in). I do remember it was a FABULOUS party complete with ice sculptures, cavier, cohibas and Abba. Who could want more?

I welcome your comments – please let me know what your observations were about the day, if you there.

Elliott wrote a great summary of the Travel Innovation Summit and I wrote a summary of the rest of the PhoCusWright Conference. Here’s a lighter view of the best and worst  of the PhoCusWright 2009 Conference.

Best Sound bites – tied

• Robert Flynn from Frommers on why professional content is the best way to go, referring to why TripAdvisor is flawed said,  “We (Frommers and other professional publishers),  don’t need to put the word ‘trust’ in our tagline.”
• Tom “Mr. Walking Sound Bite” Romary, president of Yapta in response to Bob Offutt’s question “if you had a magazine title, what would it be”. Tom’s answer “Playboy: The naked truth (on prices)”

Best guerilla marketing

• The Yapta Cabana. Yes, by the pool. Yes, open to 3am (to the chagrin of the Omni security). And yes, stocked with Oban single malt scotch and ice. Bravo!

Oban Single Malt Scotch

Hardest comment to agree – or argue – with

Jeff Boyd,  “Online media in travel is slowing and it’s hard to break through against Kayak and TripAdvisor”.

• Yes, it’s hard to compete with those two 800 and the 8000 pound (Google) gorillas respectively. But they do $100M, $300M+ and $2B in annual online media revenue respectively and the online media sector in travel is north of $3B annually, so it’s likely worth trying. On the other hand, Priceline grew 47% YoY, they dominate European hotels, they have typically zigged when everyone else zagged, and their market cap is currently bigger then Expedia’s – so who’s going to argue with their strategy, execution or anything their CEO says?

Worst personal moments – tied

• Realizing there was no  coffee at 8:45am on Wednesday morning. Coming from the West Coast, that was cruelly early and unusually harsh.

No coffee was a low point

• Realizing it was 3:00 am and I was in the Yapta Cabana with a glass full of scotch

Best “I’m too cool to be flustered” routines – tied

• Jason Shulman from x+1 who had to do improv for 15 minutes while they tried to figure out why his presentation wasn’t working.
• Philip Wolfe and (most of the PhoCusWright team during the fire alarm. It was remarkable how they got the show back on schedule.

PhoCusWright execs were cool under pressure

Worst example of charismatic leadership (good leadership channeled in all the wrong ways)

• An unnamed OTA executive (almost) convincing conference attendees to go swimming at 3am (yes, this is related to the Yapta whiskey)

Best microcosm of the value of twitter and whether it’s connected to mainstream anything

• (Elliott, please don’t stone me) – Realizing there was no correlation between the twitter/blogger sentiment of who the top innovators were (e.g. excellent summary posts by Tim Hughes, Stephen Joyce, Kevin May, and Elliott Ng) and who the Conference attendees & Judges voted as the winners

Best teams no one is talking about

• Travis has done a remarkable job rebuilding the Travelport team. Scuttlebutt is they have hired bankers are going public in 2010
• Paolo has quietly built a very talented and hungry team at VFM Leonardo. Plus they have the corner on high quality photos and video.

VFM Leonardo corners the market on high quality photos and video

Worst team that people were talking about

• {Pat made me take this out}

Best stuff left for us to read between the lines & Best company to follow in 2010

• Bob Denier on why he and Dave Litman returned to launch Getaroom and how it’s similar to Hotels.com,  “We stick to our principles (that in a down market we can get hotels to give us huge discounts AND pay over 30% for us to sell rooms for them), stay disciplined to numbers and making money (we made over a billion dollars last time around, so we think we know a little bit about this), and move fast (amazing to Dave & I that 10 years later, Travelocity and Orbitz still don’t have hotels businesses.)”. Especially if you believe the Cornell and Jake Fuller data that the hotel sector is 3-4 years from recovery…

Worst post-conference moment

• Seeing poor Bruce Rosard wear a Yankees cap because he lost a bet when the Phillies lost the World Series.

Best Lazarus act

• Barney Harford, Mike Nelson, Frank Petito, Ramesh Bulusu and the rest of the Orbitz team. From death’s door with the fee cuts to surviving, thriving and now with a fresh $100M in cash.

Best persistence in continuing to flog the same product even though we aren’t buying (yet?)

• Rob Torres and video in a blog interview with Tim Hughes. Hard to feel sorry for anything or anyone at the 8000 pound gorilla called Google, but selling video and brand in this travel economy can’t be easy.

Best after-conference events – tied

• AC/DC concert – unnamed OTA executives clever nuff to sneak off

The Little Duck at AC/DC

• Alligator night tour of the Everglades with the Travel Insights 100 and UpTake Blog Network bloggers

Travel Insights 100 and UpTake Blog Network tour of the Everglades

Best real data and substance

• Hands down – the Bill Carroll, Chris Anderson, Jake Fuller presentation on why the lodging industry will be in the tank until 2012.

Lodging Recovery Scenario

What were your favorite and worst moments? Let me know! (you are most welcome to make fun of my best/worst moments, but please submit yours too!)

Photos courtesy of:

• Oban Single Malt Whiskey
• Coffee cup by m4tik
• Fire Alarm by selva
• Alligator from AllAnimalWebGuide

Elliott Ng will represent UpTake during  the PhocusWright 2009 Conference, Blogger Summit Town Hall on Wednesday, November 18th at 9:00 a.m. Ten topics were suggested by the panelists for discussion during a planning meeting a few weeks ago. We decided to collect the best posts and  examples about each subject and showcase them here. We hope this series lends itself to more insightful discussion during the Town Hall presentation. One of the topics suggested was “how to build community.”

The reooccuring directive I found across all the advice for building an online community sounds like something Lenin would say:

Community First. Always. 

Here are ten tips from ten experts to build a great online community:

A good community needs time.

1. Be clear about your strategy, the time needed and how the community will benefit.   Jordan Viator of  Convio  slideshare delivers the basics needed to create an online community.  She encourages an almost idealistic approach suggesting success depends on the community being open, trusting, and engaging. Oh yes, and you must  promote it using all forms of social media. I am still amazed at the amount of time needed to administrate much less grow a community.

2. You need a little wind, not a gale. In her interview, A Primer for Building Online Community, Nancy White from Full Circle, an online community consultancy firm, gives clear, basic advice to review before you draw your first wire frame.  She suggests a community organizer, “create just enough structure to create just enough comfort and navigability – don’t over build, over legislate or over formalize, especially at the start. It’s like making a wind break to get the fire going. You need a little wind, not a gale.”  I would like to make quite a few changes to Travel Insights based on this idea alone.

3.  Give up and give control to the participants.  Jeremiah Owyang in a Forester report suggests no one is in charge of an online community. He suggests the community organizers allow the participants to run the show and expect the results to be unpredictable.  I find the concept of giving up control strangely comforting and it makes me re-think the current design and features.

4.  Go offline to build the online group.  Pam Mandel of NerdsEyeView and travel editor at Blogher  encourages bloggers to meet their online friends in the real world.  I suggest you attend a Blogher conference to see the power of this advice. But it was also suggested by Tony Adams, instigator of San Francisco Geek Dinners. He said it well, there are commonalities between the two that can be important in building your online community like creating conversation, participation, etc.”  I too believe offline and online can work in tandem to create a cohesive community.

5.  Think community before technology suggests Cindy Waxer of IT Management.  She states that bells and whistles are more likely to frustate users rather than encourage them to come back.  Match technology to the community needs and desires.

6. Give people something they can be proud of. This is Matthew Haughey’s suggestion on Fortuito.us for generating good community content to encourage better communication and weed out the “cranky screeds,” as he calls them.

7. Conversations build communities. In the Wall Street Journal  article, The Fan Knows Best, the authors suggest the best communities foster multiple means of interacting. including the opportunity to chat in real time, on forums, ability to promote events, blog, etc.

8. Think small. A community of 100 active members delivers a better experience than thousands of members with nothing to say suggests Jeb Banner, CEO and co-founder of  SmallBox.

Be a Cheerleader

9. Become a cheerleader.  This tip is from the always helpful, Problogger.  Simply put, cheer your community along by sharing in milestones hit, traffic, editorial mentions, etc.  Share the success.

10. Get them engaged. Angela Connor states on her Online Community Strategist blog. Her ideas were straightforward:   interview them, find out what they want, help them, communicate with them. Sounds easy, but refer back to number one–how much time do you have to devote to the engagement?

Remember:  Community First. Always.

Photos courtesy of:

Clock image courtesy of: Mararie on Flickr

Cheerleader image courtesy of: DeusXFlorida