Travel Industry

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

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. We hope this series lends itself to more insightful discussion during the Town Hall presentation.–Patricia Jenkins, Editor

Why do people blog, or read blogs? If you restrict the discussion to travel blogs, it gets rather interesting. Here’s a breakup and some examples of the different types of travel blogs, which should offer some answers as to their utility for both consumers and the industry.

Bootsnall

UGC Blog Networks – Where every traveler and blogger is also the consumer. Examples include TravBuddy, Bootsnall and Real Travel. Members publish travelogues, and others read it. Provides authentic destination and attraction reviews for consumers, and this aggregated UGC database is what travel content providers are looking at as a source for travel guides.

Gadling

Company Owned Blogs – These blogs aim simply to inform and interact with visitors, and engage the community. Examples include Worldhum, Gadling and Jaunted. As far as consumers are concerned, they get the latest travel news, reviews and trends.

Worldhum belongs to the Travel Channel which Scripps is buying from Cox Communications, Gadling is part of the Weblogs Inc. Network which belongs to AOL, and Jaunted is part of SFO Media which in turn is a part of Conde Nast. Inspite of the tangled corporate web, these blogs are stand-alone, in the sense that the business model is based on revenue from ads, and not as part of a larger strategy to promote the parent company.

UpTake

Travel Company Blogs – Where the blog is part of an overall corporate strategy for brand promotion and marketing. Examples include UpTake’s blog network (more details here), and the Oyster Hotel Reviews blog.

 Of special note is the photo fake-out section on the Oyster blog, where they show side-by-side pictures of promotional images put out by a hotel, and the real ones taken by Oyster’s own reviewers. This section on their blog has gained Oyster lots of free publicity and media references.

Travel Rants

Consumer Travel Blogs – Focused on issues important to real travelers – complaints, problems with service, solutions to make travel easier, etc. Examples include Christopher Elliott’s Elliott.org and Darren Cronian’s Travel Rants.

These blogs form a bridge between consumers and the industry, and offer an outlet for consumers to voice their complaints and get some response from an errant company. 

Marriott on the Move

Corporate Blogs – Blogs run by corporate executives of a travel company as part of a marketing strategy to improve brand visibility, put forward a human face as a representative of the company, and aid traffic acquisition.

Best example is the Marriott on the Move blog authored by Bill Marriott, which has accounted for $5 million in sales for Marriott International.

More examples include  Arthur Frommer Online, which is providing a whole new level of visibility to Frommer’s Travel Guides; and Royal Caribbean CEO Adam Goldstein’s Why Not blog, which aims to take visitors into a behind-the-scenes look at Royal Caribbean’s ships. 

Goldstein has been providing running commentary on the progress of ‘Oasis of the Seas’ – the world’s biggest cruise ship which set sail from Finland on its maiden voyage, and is expected to berth in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. on Nov 13.

These corporate blogs also provide an excellent platform for the company to convey its vision to, and communicate with, the company’s own employees.

Visit Florida blog network

DMO Blogs – For blogs run by Destination Management Organizations (DMOs), the main objective is to introduce the destination to prospective visitors.

When the information comes via a blog with an individualistic voice and offers something more than the usual boiler-plate, it makes the DMO – and the destination, seem that much more attractive.

Examples include Visit Florida’s Travel Insiders blog network, GoPhila’s uwishunu.com and San Francisco’s Foodie411 blog.

Related Posts:-
Travel Writers: Why your DMO needs tech savvy story tellers
Some Travel Companies Just Get It!
Travel BlogCamp at the World Travel Market

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. We hope this series lends itself to more insightful discussion during the Town Hall presentation.–Patricia Jenkins, Editor

The battle of bloggers vs journalists ended a long time ago. Simply put, journalism got taken to the woodshed. Which is why we’re talking about the blending of blogging and journalism. The MSM (mainstream media magazines) have since taken to blogging with a passion, backed up by massive resources, big brand names and the reporting and writing skills that journalists possess.

On the other hand, individual bloggers who have never seen an AP-stylebook or a grumpy editor in their life are increasingly being considered as respectable sources for breaking news and analysis, aided by the viral nature of social networking which heavily favors the voice, passion and timely news offered by bloggers and citizen journalists.

The two sides are heading towards a convergence which is still a work in progress, the rules for which are being made up along the way. A few examples from the travel industry which throw some light on this ongoing convergence:-

LA Times

Jen Leo (Los Angeles Times) – Jen Leo is the star of the LA Times’ Daily Deal blog, which offers a mix of breaking travel news, deals and special offers, and reviews of hotels and destinations.

For LAT readers and other travel media professionals, Jen Leo is a blogger. But as far as travel companies who are the subject of the news are concerned, Jen Leo is a journalist and a reporter for the LA Times.

NY Times

New York Times – Probably the best example of how the MSM has co-opted blogging and turned it into a cocktail of traditional journalism on a blog platform. When you read a post by Matt Gross – The Frugal Traveler, or on Globespotters, In Transit or The Times Traveler, you wouldn’t be wrong in saying that the Times has some amazing bloggers. But it’s not as simple as that.

This excellent Venturebeat piece explains how a blog post published on an NYT blog is a team affair – “Times bloggers don’t work on their own. They don’t handle every aspect of their blogs. Who does what is divided up to bring specific expertise to bear on different parts of each post.” And the team effort continues even after the blog post is published, with promotional efforts on the site and on social networks being divvied up.

TSA Scanning

Nicole White – Freelance writer who runs a personal blog got embroiled in a massive controversy last month, when she accused the TSA of ‘taking her child.’ The blogosphere piled on the TSA in support of Ms. White, and the story quickly went viral. Then the TSA released video which categorically disproved most of the accusations.

Fact remains that no one checked the facts, and almost every major travel blog picked up the story and hit the TSA hard, accepting Ms. White’s version of events on face value. This wouldn’t have happened back in the days when the MSM didn’t publish anything until it got cross-checked and the sources verified.

Press Trips, Freebies & Junkets – Should a blogger accept freebies & junkets? If not, then it becomes virtually impossible to make an in-person visit to a destination before writing a review. Jeremy Head, Tnooz, laments the fact that he was “recently offered $300 to write a 1,500-word feature about El Salvador by a major UK national newspaper. Not just to write it, but to go there, do the trip, take the notes, come home, write it up. And no expenses either.”

Basically, journalists from major magazines and lowly freelance bloggers are now on an almost equal footing, as far as freebies are concerned. And if it is ok to accept freebies as a necessary evil, should there be a disclosure about it included in the post? As per a recent FTC ruling, “the post of a blogger who receives cash or in-kind payment to review a product is considered an endorsement” and needs to be disclosed, or face a $11,000 violation.

Offbeat Guides

Travel Guidebooks based on Blogs – Books and reviews in big magazines published by well-known writers who travel the world are now giving way to travel content sourced from local blogs.

David Sifry’s OffbeatGuides, which allows you to create custom travel guides, sources its information from the internet, and combines it “with information from established authors and thousands of locals who are always updating the information about where they live.”

Tnooz

Blog Networks hiring Journalists – Until recently, popular bloggers were snapped by the MSM and put to work as journalists. But nowadays, with newspapers everywhere shutting down or downsizing, it is the blog networks that are doing the hiring.

Tnooz editor Kevin May, with a 16 year background in journalism, says that Tnooz has “a mixture of professional journalists and a range of industry bloggers and other experts in the sector. And, for me, there is no distinction between them all. They all produce unique content for Tnooz and in turn reach a wider and global audience.”

La Times Building photo by Omar Omar; NY Times building photo by alextorrenegra; TSA photo by hughelectronic; Logos courtesy Offbeat Guides & Tnooz.

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. We hope this series lends itself to more insightful discussion during the Town Hall presentation.–Patricia Jenkins, Editor

How does social media marketing fit into your overall marketing plan? How to get corporate execs to buy into social media as part of your strategy? Some of the examples provided below demonstrate how corporate execs are warming up to social media marketing and factoring it into an overall strategy.

Lonelyplanet

Lonely Planet (www.lonelyplanet.com/) – The dominant publisher of travel guide books is rapidly shifting from books written by LP writers to digital content partly aggregated from the community.  As a result, Lonely Planet has been ramping up their Thorn Tree Community Forum, factoring it into the future development of their main business, and encouraging their website visitors, guide book readers and purchasers to become contributors.

Lonely Planet CEO Matt Goldberg says the shift in focus towards the community and digital content is part of a plan to provide solutions to consumers’ needs, instead of being only a content provider.

Carnival

Carnival (www.carnival.com) – The Carnival Cruise Line, as mentioned here, is aggregating UGC on Twitter and Flickr published by cruise passengers while on-board Carnival’s ships, and keeping up the engagement via John Heald’s blog, and CarnivalConnect.com - an in-house social media platform for their community, and FunShipIsland.com – an interactive virtual tour. All three sites now routinely bring in over 1 million visitors each, and are being used by Carnival for strategic brand positioning.

But it didn’t start like that. John Heald started blogging to create buzz for the launch of a new ship. CarnivalConnect was launched to encourage guests to send invitations to their friends and family. Carnival saw the potential across these platforms, and merged it all into an overall strategy of showing new visitors what’s happening on board, and allowing new and prospective visitors to engage with loyal customers via social media.

Banff

Banff Lake Louise Tourism (www.banfflakelouise.com/) – BLLT was chugging along like most other tourism organizations in Canada, when the Banff Crasher Squirrel popped into a photo and triggered a viral tsunami wave on social media platforms – over 300 blog-posts, 5,000+ tweets, and 650+ facebook posts.

BLLT understood the potential early, and set up a YouTube video, a twitter account for the squirrel, and a Facebook page, along with a search-engine marketing campaign with keyword “squirrel.” End result – $3 million in ad value, reaching out to 80 million people in North America and Europe via online channels, print and TV. The squirrel is now on billboards marketing Banff, and has established a permanent presence on social media platforms.

Affinia

Affinia Hotels (www.affinia.com/) – For hotels wanting to wade into social media marketing, Affinia offers a valuable lesson – It’s all about listening, and responding on time. They’re all over Twitter, talking to their guests, offering assistance and answering queries.  Their My Affinia program allows guests to customize and pre-select in-room amenities – from pillows to iPods. Items are added on to this list or modified based on the feedback that the Affinia reps get from the social media chatter. 

Another good example of a hotel implementing social media marketing as part of an overall strategy is the Roger Smith hotel – details here. The fact that Chris Brogan gives them high marks for listening to their customers and being social-media savvy is a testament to their success at playing the game.

Southwest

Southwest (www.southwest.com/) – Southwest Airlines looks at social media as an extension of their customer engagement offline. Their ‘Nuts About Southwest’ blog is a lot more popular than any blog owned or run by any other airline. The Blog-o-spondent video contest run on the blog went massively viral last year. The blog is updated constantly by a team of Southwest employees.

Newly uploaded videos can be seen every week on Southwest’s  youtube channel. Thousands of networked Southwest employees form a web that stretches into every corner of Linkedin. Jeremy Jameson, Corporate Strategist,  Strategic Planning for Southwest Airlines, says that the social media success is simply an online extension of their corporate culture of engaging in authentic relations and conversations with customers.

Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic (www.virgin-atlantic.com/) – Richard Branson’s mothership offers a valuable lesson in course correction. After taking flak last year over the firing of 13 employees who posted derogatory remarks about customers on Virgin’s corporate Facebook page, Virgin seems to have retooled their approach.

The airline now has a cross-functional Social Spaces Forum group comprised of personnel from eCommerce, PR, customer relations, product and service, marketing etc. The team works closely to understand the social marketplace, shape the direction for activity in social spaces and develop a framework for the business in this area, according to Allison Wightman, Head of Marketing Systems, Virgin Atlantic Airways.    

United

United (www.united.com/) – Again, a lesson in how to turn around a bad situation on the social media networks. Only, United hasn’t done it yet. I’m sure you’ve heard the viral Dave Carroll video on Youtube, which the Canadian singer created after United broke his guitar and refused to pay for it.

In a similar situation, Electronic Arts was hit with a user-uploaded video of a glitch in their game which showed Tiger Woods walking on water. EA promptly responded to this with a professional ad video featuring  Tiger walking on water, which in turn again went viral and nullified all the negative impact of the first video.

As Julie Sturgeon notes, the right approach for United would have been to co-opt Dave Carroll and turn it into an ad, or put out a video of their own in response. 

AA

American Airlines (www.aa.com) – American isn’t usually counted amongst the savvy kids on the social media block, but they have taken a right step with the creation of BlackAtlas.com – a community site offering travel insights from an African-American perspective. No other airline has a brand community like this, and it should go a long way towards helping AA score some much needed social media creds.

According to Roger Frizell, American’s vice president of corporate communications, they’re planning a site in 2010 which would collect in one place all the social media videos and chatter about AA. American, he says, intends to be a part of the conversation, instead of just letting it happen without them. 

Wyndham

Wyndham (www.wyndham.com/) – Again, Wyndham is probably the only hotel group to offer a community site – Womenontheirway.com – which aims simply to foster a sense of community among female travelers.

This community goes a long way towards humanizing Wyndham and adds a touch of gentleness  to the corporate image.

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. We hope this series lends itself to more insightful discussion during the Town Hall presentation.–Patricia Jenkins, Editor

It’s hard to overstate the importance of being able to game the media and keep your company in the news. But at the end of the day, this is a losing proposition - there’s a limit to the number of press releases, interviews and travel columns you can  squeeze out of the media before they get tired of your PR pitches.

To get past the traditional media barriers, some travel companies are straddling the divide between making the news and breaking it – by becoming a part of the media. The travel companies listed below are the ones who are stealing the media’s mojo and beating them at their own game.

Cheapflights

CheapFlights (www.cheapflights.com/) – CheapFlights has a news section where you’ll find plenty of breaking news. It’s not just about air travel - they write about all things travel – hotels, vacations, legislation, destinations, etc. Even more important – the news really is breaking news, and they consistently publish it before everyone starts weighing in.

Bing

Bing (www.bing.com/) – Microsoft’s Bing Travel hosts a community travel blog with some big-name contributors, including Pauline Frommer, Peter Greenberg, Joel Grus and Rick Steves.

  Entries from this blog are getting a lot of exposure in discussions of hot topics in the news, and it’s quite safe to say that this is one of the things that Bing is doing right. 

Uptake

UpTake (www.uptake.com/) – The sum of it is that the traditional media approach was found lacking, so UpTake took a large part of its PR budget, and launched a blog network with 7 blogs and 50 bloggers, as part of a plan to inflict lethal generosity on the travel industry.

UpTake co-founder Elliott Ng explains it in this Businessweek piece – “Now we’re breaking industry stories… covering other companies’ launches… getting invited to cover conferences as bloggers. We’ve built real relationships with people in the media rather than just pitching stories.”

CarRentals, UK

CarRentals, UK (www.carrentals.co.uk/) – Has a news section, entries from which have started turning up in breaking news alerts of late. The news section features stories from a wide range of subjects, most of which have something to do with either travel or the UK or both.

Rogersmith

Roger Smith Hotel (rogersmith.com/) – Take a look at Roger Smith Life and Roger Smith News and you’ll find that everything – the news, the art and all the people – leads you right back to the hotel in New York. And the connections are a lot deeper than just plain talk.

Earlier this year, they ran an ‘experiment’ where a couple from the UK was put up in a storefront recreation of one of the hotel’s suites. Basically, the couple was living in a see-through glass room on the street in New York City, and it was an art experiment by Roger Smith Life covered by Roger Smith News which brought in huge publicity for the Roger Smith hotel. 

Hilton

Hilton (www1.hilton.com/) - Hilton’s Homewood Suites recently launched a family travel blog and community site named SuiteTrip.com. In their own words, “SuiteTrip.com is your go-to guide for everything family travel-inspired.” 

Another Hilton outreach is into Travelskoot’s Videos (www.travelskoot.com/hilton) - Hilton provides destination videos featuring concierges working at Hilton hotels in these destinations.

Starwood

Starwood (www.starwoodhotels.com/) - Starwood runs a blog for its SPG members, called The Lobby, which is more of a traditional travel blog talking about destinations and attractions from all over the world, rather than just a Starwood blog talking about Starwood hotels and resorts.

Related Posts:- Some Travel Companies Just Get It

The PhoCusWright Conference kicks off on Nov 17, 2009 with the Travel Innovation Summit, where travel innovators will demonstrate applications, technology and solutions that significantly impact travel planning and purchasing. Part I and Part II  introduced to you the first 20 innovators. Listed herein are the remaining companies.

Planetism

Planetism (www.planetism.com/) – Gaithersburg, MD based Planetism is an eco-friendly tourism service which promises a ‘revolution in online travel shopping.’  The company, and their website – is premiering at the PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit.

Travelport

Travelport (www.travelport.com/) – New York, NY based Travelport’s lines of business include their Global Distribution Systems and GTA, which combined, represent a global travel distribution footprint. Travelport’s IT Services & Software business provides next generation IT solutions for airlines worldwide.

Traveltainment

TravelTainment (www.traveltainment-group.com/) – Aachen, Germany based TravelTainment provides a multi-market, multi-channel distribution system for sale of leisure travel products. TravelTainment AG was founded as Usbeck Engineering GmbH in 1991, renamed TravelTainment AG in 2000 and became a subsidiary of Amadeus Technology Group SA in 2006.

Traxo

Traxo (www.traxo.com/) – Dallas, TX based Traxo enables users to share their past and future travel plans with their network. Starting with travel plans booked anywhere on the web, Traxo automatically detects travel reservations and imports this information into a user’s travel dashboard in Traxo, creating itineraries and keeping track of all past and future travel.

Tripcase

TripCase (www.tripcase.com/) – Tripcase is a travel application put out by Southlake, TX based Sabre which currently works for the iPhone and Blackberry, with plans to add a version for Windows Mobile. The Tripcase app allows you to organize information about your upcoming trips, and will automatically import trip details from connected travel partners.

Tripware

Tripware (www.tripware.com/) – Mesa, AZ based Tripware is a travel service for people who plan, book, and manage their own trips. Tripware can be integrated with your Microsoft Outlook calendar using the Tripware OutBook plugin so that the entire process for booking travel can be done right from Microsoft Outlook.

Voyage.tv

Voyage.tv (www.voyage.tv/) – New York, NY based Voyage.tv – currently in beta, provides  destination video programming, with hotel & resort Profiles, activity & tour videos, and signature series that deliver content that is unbiased, current, accurate and personal. Their technology is provided by Trisept Solutions.

Voyij

Voyij (www.voyij.com/) – Cupertino, CA based Voyij allows users to explore and discover travel sales and deals regardless of origin, destination or dates. Enter where you are and Voyij presents a comprehensive list of travel deals on the web at a given time. Further filtering can be done based on travel dates, hotel star ratings, destination, activities, price, and more.

YourTour

YourTour (www.yourtour.com/) – YourTour is a personal tour planner put out by Mons, Belgium based DeciZium SA, which offers customized trip propositions based on users’ preferences. YourTour allows users to plan and book customized self-drive tours, with the help of content provided by Lonely Planet and online reservations from Booking.com.

ZipSetGo

ZipSetGo (www.zipsetgo.com/) – Dayton, Ohio based ZipSetGo.com is an online community-based travel website which aggregates extensive amounts of credible content, organized in a usable format. Members have access to downloadable documents and hundreds of data points of aggregated information per destination.

The rest of the PhoCusWright Travel Innovators can be found in Part I and Part II.

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The PhoCusWright Conference Travel Innovation Summit takes place in Orlando on Nov 17, 2009. In Part I, we took a look at the first ten travel innovators. This is the second part of an introduction to the 30 odd companies taking part in this year’s Travel Innovation Summit. 

Goby

Goby (www.goby.com/) – Boston, MA based Goby (pronounced Go-be) is a search engine that helps people find fun new ways to spend their free time. Goby creates an information model that provides semantic organization and lends structure to unstructured data. It can search, sort, filter, map, and contextualize heterogeneous web data.

GuestCentric

GuestCentric (www.guestcentric.com/) – Stamford, CT based GuestCentric Systems provides an integrated platform for hoteliers that includes website design, a dynamic booking engine, reservations platform and internet hotel marketing. It gives you your own branded specialty store on the Internet where you have full control over the content, inventory and pricing.

iPerceptions

iPerceptions (www.iperceptions.com/) – New York, NY based iPerceptions offers solutions which allow companies to collect feedback from actual customers in self initiated, real situations. Their webValidator Continuous Listening Solution and the iPerceptions Satisfaction Index (iPSI) help you get inside the hearts and minds of your visitors to discover the issues that matter most to them.

Language Weaver

Language Weaver (www.languageweaver.com/) – Los Angeles, CA based Language Weaver offers solutions and products for automated language translation. Their translation solutions are designed for organizations that need to translate large volumes of information into one or more languages, at high speed and high accuracy.

LuggageTag

Luggage Tag (www.luggagetag.com) – West Chester, PA based LuggageTag.com offers a design tool for you to personalize designs for luggage tags, which the company will then manufacture and ship to you.

Milestone Internet

Milestone Internet Marketing (www.milestoneinternet.com/) – Santa Clara, CA based Milestone Internet provides online hospitality marketing and consulting services, with complete soup-to-nuts solution for hotels, resorts, and hospitality industry for enhancing internet presence.

Mondial Assistance

Mondial Assistance (www.mondialusa.com/) – Paris, France based Mondial Assistance offers specialty insurance and assistance services. Their US offerings – based out of Richmond, VA – include Access America travel insurance and Event Ticket Protector insurance. Mondial also offers worldwide medical assistance and concierge services.

Tourabout

Tourabout (www.tourabout.com/) – Sydney, Australia based Tourabout offers a travel platform called ‘The Social GDS’ where community and commerce are merged in a marketplace and organisations connect and engage directly with travellers. It exists in the Facebook and mobile environments and is integrated with Twitter.

Translations

Translations.com (www.translations.com/) – New York, NY based Translations.com offers website localization, software localization, GMS (Globalization Management System) software products, and enterprise-level, professional translation services.

TravelGuard

Travel Guard (www.travelguard.com/) – Stevens Point, WI based Travel Guard is a travel insurance plan provider, specializing in providing travel insurance, assistance and emergency travel service plans which are distributed through virtually every distribution channel in the travel industry.

The rest of the PhoCusWright Conference Travel Innovators are introduced in Part I & Part III.

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Where is the Apple of Online Travel?

The PhoCusWright Conference takes place Nov 17-19 in Orlando, and the highlight on Day 1 – Tuesday, Nov 17, 2009, is the Travel Innovation Summit. Attendees are expected to rate all 30 innovators in real-time, based on their demonstrations.

Over the next few days, we’ll introduce to you all 30 travel innovators. In this post, we take a look at the first 10 companies.

10Best Solutions

10Best Solutions (www.10bestsolutions.com/) – Greenville, SC based 10Best Solutions  provides search engine optimization, content management, content creation and design/development services to an impressive roster of clients including major hotel chains, cruise lines, airlines and travel sites. 10Best Solutions is a division of 10Best, Inc.

AboutAnywhere

AboutAnywhere (www.aboutanywhere.com/) – Miami, FL based AboutAnywhere.com offers a direct-to-consumer travel website, with a low-cost online travel agency business model with major innovations in e-marketing services and improved functionality for both hotel partners and consumers.

Amadeus

Amadeus (www.amadeus.com/) – Madrid, Spain based Amadeus IT Group SA is the leading Global Distribution System (GDS) and the biggest processor of travel bookings in the world. From global network airlines to low cost carriers, from multinational travel agencies to independent hotels, Amadeus provides IT solutions to everyone in the tourism and travel industry.

CarTrawler

 CarTrawler (www.cartrawler.com/) – Dublin, Ireland based global car rental distribution company CarTrawler offers large selection of car rentals from over 500 car rental suppliers in 135 countries in 15,000 city and airport locations. 

CheapLimoRates

CheapLimoRates  (www.cheaplimorates.com/) – Phoenix, AZ based CheapLimoRates.com claims to be the first comparison shopping and booking engine website for the limousine industry, and matches millions of consumers with nearly 10,000 limousine companies who offer discounted rates to book their unused vehicle inventory.  

Twavl

Twavl (www.connectme360.com/) – Twavl is a city-specific community service based on twitter which offers answers and provides insider tips in the form of tweets. Twavl is run by Connectme 360 – a Denver, CO based answer logistics company which helps employees of travel and hospitality companies locate the perfect response to customers’ queries in less than a minute. 

Dapper

Dapper (www.dapper.net/) – San Francisco (and New York) based Dapper provides technical solutions for quickly creating widgets, Google gadgets, and Facebook apps — leading to its flagship product, Dapper Dynamic Ads, which pull live product and inventory from your site, bringing the right offer to the right consumer at the right time.  

Exalead

Exalead (www.exalead.com/) – Paris, France based Exalead is a global software provider in the enterprise and Web search markets, and the maker of CloudView, one of the top platforms for search-based applications (SBAs), which uses advanced semantic technologies to bring structure, meaning and accessibility to previously unused or under-utilized data. 

Expedia Media Solutions

Expedia Media Solutions (www.advertising.expedia.com/) – Bellevue, WA based Expedia Media Solutions is the world’s largest travel lifestyle media company, which leverages the nearly 30 million customers that visit the Expedia, Inc. network of sites every month. 

Gliider

Gliider (www.gliider.com/) – Based in Brooklyn, NY, Gliider offers a browser plugin and travel tool which helps you to collect travel information from around the web in one place by simply highlighting and dragging and dropping the part you like.

The rest of the PhoCusWright Conference Travel Innovators are introduced in Part II & Part III.

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PhoCusWright doesn’t just talk and issue reports about innovation and travel technology. They’re actually doing a little bit of innovating themselves.

The PhoCusWright Conference Online Ticket

Thousands of people working in the tourism& travel sectors the world over would no doubt love to attend industry events such as The PhoCusWright Conference being held in Orlando from Nov 17-19, 2009.

But time, budget contraints and distance make the trip unfeasible for many.  If you fall into this category, then PhoCusWright has just the ticket for you – An Online Ticket.

Signing up for this ticket enables you to experience the best speakers, the most crucial topics and the biggest innovations… all from the comfort of your home or office.

You get on-demand content from Center Stage, The Travel Innovation Summit and exclusive interviews with renowned travel leaders. You’ll be a part of the audience, listening to the best speakers, joining in for intense debate and live question and answer sessions –  previously available only to in-person conference attendees.

The Online Ticket leverages Twitter’s vast network and allows participation and discussion with other online viewers, attendees in Orlando and the speakers on Center Stage. All streaming video is available on-demand for 60 days allowing Online Ticket viewers and conference attendees to review content and never miss a session.

It’s early days yet, but what PhoCusWright has done with the Online Ticket - a successful marriage of face-to-face networking and virtual conferencing - is likely to be used as a template for every single major travel industry conference in future.

See a Preview of the Online Ticket, and if you like it – Register here.

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