Travel Industry

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.

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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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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This November, the travel industry is all set to be one of it’s own biggest customers, as hundreds of travel & tourism leaders and executives enjoy Orlando’s hospitality. The PhoCusWright Conference will be held at the Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate (Nov 17-19, 2009).

The PhoCusWright Conference

This is the sixteenth year for The PhoCusWright Conference, and promises to be just as big, interesting and informative as last year. Even more so, given the wrenching changes in the last year or so.

Attendees will discover how other travel  companies are growing their businesses, hear where the industry is heading to and learn how to apply new strategies and ideas. Millions of dollars’ worth in deals and networking opportunities are there for the taking.

Day 1 (Tuesday, Nov 17) starts with the Travel Innovation Summit. Thirty innovators from around the world will demonstrate applications, mobile technology and solutions that significantly impact travel planning, purchasing and memorializing.

The audience rates the innovators in real-time, and the top 4 innovators will duke it for the big prize on Nov 19. You can see the full list of this year’s innovators here. Last year’s winner was Interactive MOBILE @dvertising (iM@)

Day 2 (Wednesday, Nov 18) is Deal Day and makes up the meat of The PhoCusWright Conference. In addition to two DMO workshops being presented by PhoCusWright, you can learn about future trends and hot products from workshops presented by Compete Inc., Akamai Technologies, TripAdvisor, Expedia Media Solutions and others.

A big attraction on day 2 is the Bloggers Summit town hall presented by Tips from the T-List, moderated by Stephen Joyce. The panelists include:-

Kevin May – Editor|Tnooz;
Dennis Schaal - Travel Industry journalist & blogger for Tnooz;
Joe Buhler – PhoCusWright blogger & social media consultant;
Elliott Ng – UpTake co-founder and the driving force behind UpTake’s blog network

Attendees will also be able to dig further into the innovators and establish new relationships, cultivate leads and meet diverse companies face-to-face on the exhibitor floor.

Day 3 (Thursday, Nov 19) brings Center Stage, focused on “Money, Media, Mobile and Moxie” - this year’s theme, which translated reads something like this – financial stability, expanded revenue streams, technical innovation and the guts to achieve challenging objectives in a demanding, complex environment. The audience is encouraged to question the speakers – challenging them and providing their own insights.

One more interesting aspect of this year’s PhoCusWright Conference is the Online Ticket, which brings the Conference to your Desktop. If you’re not able to be in Orlando in-person, then this ticket is the next best thing – you can watch the conference real-time, interact with the audience and online attendees worldwide, and review archived presentations.

PhoCusWright says the response to the online tickets has been stunning, but equally stunning is the heavy registration for in-person attendance this year – which included the highest single-day registration sales ever on record for any PhoCusWright Conference.

This is a shining example of the travel industry showing the way for reconciliating the necessity of face-to-face meetings & business travel with the power of technology and virtual conferencing.

Registration and ticketing information – www.phocuswright.com/the_phocuswright_conference_register.

Ask any executive why the business travel segment is suffering, and you’ll likely get an earful on how the government has stigmatized the traditional corporate meetings in Las Vegas and Hawaii.

business travel changes

Believe me, I like to make Uncle Sam my whipping boy at every opportunity, and the government has put a fear into companies who think a resort in Palm Desert looks nice for an incentive trip. But according to PhoCusWright’s U.S. Corporate Travel Distribution report, no less than seven trends are shaking up the status quo right now:

1. Balancing the Triple Bottom Line

Accounting now looks at a company’s environmental and social performance areas in addition to pure cash. It’s also known as “going green,” and with environmentalists blaming airlines for 7 percent of worldwide carbon emissions, it puts the squeeze on decisions involving lots of airport check-ins.

2. Putting the E Cart Before the T Horse.

A clever way of saying “we want to reconcile booked vs. ticketed vs. pre-trip vs. spend vs. reconciled (or post-trip) travel data.” Still scratching your head? According to PhoCusWright, it means companies want to pull all of their travel partnerships into one end-to-end solution.

3. Business Travel Goes Retail: Supply Chain Management

When the going gets tough, the tough expect their partners to share insider information on their key performance indicators, too. Companies with corporate travel accounts want to see risk-reward set ups that give them extra perks for exceeding their terms — luckily, they’re willing to pay a penalty for missing, too.

business travel on the move

4. Traveler-Centric vs Trip-Centric Buying

Thanks to the Internet, travelers of all stripes expect a little “me” in everything they book. The game isn’t about finding a great destination now at a great price — it’s also about knowing this traveler’s history and profile at the same time.

5. Going Mobile

Nearly 70 percent of frequent business travelers have a smartphone somewhere on their person. Corporate travel players need to know how to send down itinerary changes, boarding passes and other pertinent information to these phones. Pretty soon, they’ll be demanding e-wallet payment options, too, so look lively, industry.

6. Video Conferencing: Traveling Without the Trip

Face it, if companies can set up face-to-face meetings over the Internet without the travel drama, they’re going to run with the opportunity.

7. SMEs Become Big Business

SME stands for small and mid-sized enterprises, that group of businesses whose employees do some travel, but they’ve always just asked a secretary to make the booking on Expedia. The recession is actually an excellent time for the travel industry to introduce itself to these dollars, as any offer to help save time and money gets bigger play today.

Photography: laverrue, vandelizer

Douglas Quinby, Carroll Rheem & Lorraine Sileo - PhoCusWright Analysts

Participating in the forum, held on June 9, 2009, were reps from major players in the vacation rental marketplace - including Homeaway Inc. and Endless Vacation Rentals by Wyndham Worldwide. And both Starwood and Hilton.

Amd also destination marketers from across the world - Switzerland, Hungary, and Netherlands, among others.

Douglas Quinby, Senior Director, Research at PhoCusWright, spoke about the challenges and opportunities in the vacation rental sector. He described a market with only 1% dissatisfaction rating among guests, “The myth of ‘SNAD’—significantly not at described—has officially been debunked.”

There’s a rising trend to look upon vacation rentals as a part of the travel industry, as opposed to a real estate investment. But there’s a long way to go – demand is still very seasonal and local, and lack of awareness is the main reason most people don’t consider vacation rentals. Only 27% of vacation rental owners list their properties online. The web accounted for 15% of all vacation rentals in 2008, out of which 25% was booked through an intermediary. Bottomline is that it still mostly works based on personal offline marketing. 

On the positive side, a full two third of vacation rental guests do their research online, and as mentioned above, only a tiny 1% minority had a bad experience.

Lorraine Sileo, PhoCusWright VP, Research, spoke about the Impact of ‘Destination Marketing’ on consumer travel choices. Turns out that the choice of destination is influenced most by search engines (39%), OTAs (36%) and DMO sites (18%). DMO users are younger, more affluent and savvy and active on the web than the average, and 65% consider travel reviews a must-have for DMO sites.

Also, DMO sites are visited equally before and after booking. Couple that with the fact that just over half of DMOs actually offer a booking engine, and you can see that the DMOs are wasting a huge opportunity to influence trip planning.

Carroll Rheem, PhoCusWright Director, Research, provided psychographic measure to help travel leaders predict consumer intentions. She explained that Gen Y travelers have the greatest amount of global wanderlust and Boomers slightly favor traveling off the beaten path.

Younger travelers are more likely to spend more in 2009 and Boomers are more likely to pull back. And the younger set has it’s own peculiar set of characteristics – very little brand loyalty, heavily influenced by social networks, big users of meta-search and travel review websites, and prefer online intermediaries over suppliers for puchasing as well as shopping.

The next PhoCusWright Analyst Forum will be held in September in New York City.

PhoCusWright has launched a new forum called PhoCusWright Connect (http://connect.phocuswright.com/) which offers news, commentary, video and social networking features.

PhoCusWright Connect features blog posts from PhoCusWright analysts and other select bloggers, video interviews with leading travel industry executives, conference photo streams, a Wall for community member comments, and other tools for engaging and debating the latest industry trends and issues.

 In a press statement, Bruce Rosard, vice president of sales and marketing at PhoCusWright, explains that  ”PhoCusWright Connect is a live online community that allows executives and researchers to discuss, debate and define the future of how consumers search, shop and buy travel. Using the latest social networking tools, PhoCusWright Connect brings together our publicly available content in a dynamic 2.0 way to create an active community of like-minded professionals.”

Here’s a sample snapshot of the kind of stuff they have as of now.

Phocuswright Connect

 And they’re already pretty well plugged in to the rest of the travel industry chatter. There’s syndicated posts from prominent blogs and bloggers, and the site allows users to share their favorite articles with friends via Twitter and Facebook and receive updates when comments are posted.

The forum already has PhoCusWright’s research, publications, and massive heft and authority behind it, and that’s bound to attract the big names in the travel industry contributing their own view points and commenting on hot issues. Just remains to be seen how far they take it. 

Only thing I don’t like is the use of the word ‘forum’ – makes it sound like something your parents used to do before the search engines came along. And it’s obviously more than just a blog. So I’m thinking they’ll have to come up with something new to describe it.

Nomenclature aside, if they really push hard and start piping articles and posts from the best sources,  PhoCusWright Connect has the potential to snowball into something huge – like Seeking Alpha is to Finance, and All Things D is for tech.

PhoCusWright

PhoCusWright has published the Top 10 Travel Technology Trends for 2009. Every year, PhoCusWright takes a fresh look at the technologies and innovations that have the potential to drive change in the travel, tourism and hospitality in this annual publication.Each of the 10 trends from this report, listed below, has been weighed by PhoCusWright experts for its business value and potential to change the face of travel.

Bob Offutt, senior technology analyst and editorial director, Technology Edition, explained that “Innovation is at the very heart of the travel industry-from the beginnings of air travel and global hotel brands to GDSs and OTAs. These ten technology trends will reshape the way consumers search shop and buy travel.”

1. Despite Market Woes, Pockets of Investment Still Exist
2. The Entire Trip Experience Will Be “Informationized”
3. Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing and Open Source Spawn a New Flock of Innovators
4. Suppliers (Finally!) Provide Personalized Shopping/Booking Tools
5. Technologies Will Continue to Converge
6. A Flood of New Mobile Travel and Location-Based Applications Come to Market
7. Advertising Technology Transforms Travel Distribution
8. Still Searching…for Better Search
9. Democratization of Supply Levels the Playing Field
10. Business Intelligence and Analytics Move to the Forefront

The complete article, with technology overviews, in-depth strategic implications and examples of each trend, is available here (purchase required), but I’ll give you a sneak peek at the kind of stuff you’ll find inside.

The first trend, about investment, points out that 23% of private equity companies, 5% of venture capitalists and 25% of other investors are actually planning to increase investment in the travel sector in 2009. According to their survey results, investors still believe there is plenty of room for innovation, considering the large gap between Travel 1.0 and Travel 2.0 functionality.

Examples cited for this trend include the funds raised by AdventureLink, TVtrip, Uptake and Tripwolf (when I started writing this post, I had no idea Uptake was mentioned in the report). Summary of it is that if you have the confidence in your innovation/product, now is the time to hit the road, so to speak.

The second trend, about the trip experience being informationized, details the improvements and opportunities in local information access tools and content, which have enabled service providers to hang on to travelers even mid-trip, for things like local transport, restaurant reservations, trip changes or cancellations, etc. Leveraging existing content with GPS, tools from Google and the abilities of devices like Apple’s iPhone has resulted in the opening up of a huge local content market, and provides more opportunities for offering services from the time you leave home on a trip until you return.

And this area of development is also benefiting from additional trends that are improving the ability to rapidly deploy new capabilities, like Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing and acceptance of Open Source in production applications.

We’re on to trend three here, and if I go on, PhoCusWright won’t take kindly to my considering all their hard work as open source, so… if you want to read the rest, you can get the full report here – http://www.phocuswright.com/report/09techtrend