On Tuesday, I had been invited back to speak alongside Homeaway and Starwood at the Goldman Sachs Technology & Internet Conference about trends in online travel.

I wanted to solicit your thoughts on three topics. With your help, perhaps we can spice up the discussion:

1. Which start-ups will get the capital they need to survive?
2. Who will benefit during the long slow travel recovery over the next 2-3 years?
3. Mobile and social media are the rage in travel, but is anyone going to generate revenue from it?

First look into your crystal ball: Who is going public? Which of the start-ups is going to get the capital they need to survive?

How do you think 2010 will play out for the online travel players looking to go public? Travelport has already postponed their IPO. How about Homeaway (fresh off their Super Bowl ad) and Kayak (rebounding nicely from airfare fee cuts and with their own NFL ads)? And let’s not forget Sabre. Which of them will have successful IPOs?

The myriad of travel start-ups that need follow-up capital to survive (e.g. Nileguide, Travelmuse, Yapta) will surely be grateful for the inevitable positive trickledown effect if there are successful travel IPOs. A number of start-ups have already had to shutter (Professional Travel Guide) or cut back (Oyster, Tripology). Which start-ups will fail, which will get the capital they need to survive and grow?

Remember Elliott’s ‘Field of Dreams’ post? Here is Compete.com on which of the start-ups are getting and holding customer mindshare.

What a difference a year can make! At last year’s Goldman Sachs conference, we still had OTA fees to book flights. And Expedia was close to its 52 week low of $6.3 (now trading in the mid-20s) and Orbitz was close to its 52 week low of $1.2 (now trading in the $6-7 range). I’m hopeful for the online travel sector. But I want your opinion!

Please take a second look into your crystal ball: who will be the winners and losers as consumer and business travel slooooooooooooooooooooooowly bounces back?

Let’s put aside the extraordinary results from Priceline and strong results from Expedia. They are taking shares from suppliers, other channels and the other OTAs for a number of reasons. Yeah, they are kicking it. And will likely continue to.

Putting these two behemoths (and their subsidiaries – Booking.com, Hotels.com, TripAdvisor) aside – who else will win and lose from the slow, painful recovery?

First, some hard data: some (almost) good news on the Hotel RevPAR front. {Note: Hotel RevPAR is a key metric in the hotel industry that measures the amount of revenue that hotels generate from the rooms they have available. The equation for RevPAR is occupancy (% of time available rooms are filled) X revenue per available room.}

Why only ‘almost’ good news? Because this graph from Piper Jaffrey and Smith Travel Research tells us that RevPAR is declining more slowly. In October of 2009, RevPAR declined 14% from 2008 and in November RevPAR declined 12%. And in December, RevPAR only declined 8%. Now, ‘declining more slowly’ is not the same as growing, but… it’s better than shrinking at an increasing rate.

So, let’s assume we are on our way back. And let’s assume, as it did after 1992 and 2001, that it takes about 2 years to get back to where we were before the dips.

Which online travel companies will survive and which will thrive during this slow recovery – and why?

Some winners may well be those from the ‘old’ school evolving their business (e.g. Lonely Planet’s digital content sales growing 40-50% annually – including direct sales via the iPhone), start-ups evolving old proven models (e.g. Getaroom, Bloomspot and Groupon), or companies cracking international markets.

Final look into your crystal ball: mobile and social media are all the rage, and online travel is no exception. But how does it translate into economic benefit? The TripAdvisor Media Group (owned by Expedia) will generate north of $400 million in 2010 revenue is no small part because of their dominant position in hotel reviews. No one is generating bookings from mobile. So, who in online travel is going to be able to generate material, quantifiable benefits from mobile or social media?

Please don’t hold back! Unlike Jeff Boyd (Priceline) and Dara Khosrowshahi (Expedia), I don’t get invited to the Goldman Sachs conference to speak because I run billion dollar online travel companies that dominate the sector. I’m assuming I get invited because I’m an opinionated SOB. So help me out

If you would rather share your opinions in private, please feel to email me at yen (at) uptake.com

If you have data and factoids to support your opinions, that would be a welcome bonus!

Bring it on!

I’m not one to say “I told you so,” but it’s darn tempting to throw that phrase at New York City officials who implemented the tax on travel agencies selling available rooms in the Big Apple.

Lots of rooms, lots of taxes

After trying to figure out what the law says and exactly how to implement it this fall, the American Society of Travel Agents and a host of big online Internet players (i.e. Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, Priceline and Travelocity) responded this week with a lawsuit against the city. The grounds: extending the hotel room occupancy tax to “third-party travel intermediaries” is “unconstitutional and illegal” as the city “has no inherent power to tax.”

Other points in the lawsuit bring up the fact that New York City failed to answer critical questions and the City’s interpretation of its new rules was unacceptable. To rub salt in the wound, the City of New York imposed the tax without notice, hearing or other opportunity for meaningful input.

ASTA’s senior vice president had previously said the law was written by ”people who don’t know about the industry who just want more money.”

Technically, I predicted that travel agencies would retaliate with a huge drop in bookings in the fourth quarter. I was correct about the retaliation part — a lawsuit could deter other cities from pulling this stunt in the next six months. The move is predictably popular among travel agents, although it is aimed only at stopping taxation on online hotel bookings at the moment, which could end up giving their biggest competitors an advantage they don’t enjoy. But that’s for another day. Fighting back is the first order of business.

Happy holidays, Mayor Bloomberg.

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

You could be in your desired hotel room for less by using a few hacks.

Although hotels use “opaque sites” like Priceline and Hotwire to unload unsold inventory without diluting their brand names, with a little sleuthing customers can often figure out what hotel they’re booking. But as I recently found out, sleuths like me should beware, because if you play the game long enough, once in awhile you’re going to end up in the “wrong” property.

For my blog Frugalista, on Chicago Tribune partner site ChicagoNow, I summed up the techniques I use to figure out what no-name hotels are being offered on Priceline or Hotwire. These techniques are for using when you hope to stay at a specific property but don’t want to pay the publicly available rate:

1) Check the site you’re shopping on and other booking sites to find out how many stars your desired property is listed at. Note whether there are other properties with the same number of stars listed in the city or neighborhood.

2) Check whether the site you’re shopping on offers your desired hotel as a named property. I don’t know if this is a hard and fast rule, but I’ve noticed that if Priceline is offering a property upfront, you’re likely to find the very same place on the “name your own price” section.

3) Check a forum such as BetterBidding or BidonTravel to find out what hotels others have gotten recently by bidding in the same area you’re looking in. Usually you will notice that in a certain star category, everyone has gotten the same property. If this ISN’T the property you want, don’t bid because this is the property you’re likely to end up in!

4) If others are indeed getting your desired property, go ahead and figure out what to bid. This is something you can also learn from BetterBidding; people post the amounts of their winning and losing bids, often revealing the lowest possible price that will “win” the room. If you’re not sure what the lowest possible price is, and you have enough time, bid lower than the lowest price you see others have paid and try bidding again when allowed 24 hours later.

5) If you don’t get winning bid information from other travelers, just try bidding 50-75% less than published rates. BidonTravel’s tip sheet suggests checking rates for the same day of the week you’ll be traveling on.

In the past, I have used these techniques to get into the same hotel as other family members for a wedding and to get in the preferred spot for an urban getaway.

However, the techniques are NOT foolproof. Take this weekend, when my family is heading to a wedding near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I did my research, and felt pretty sure that the Hilton Garden, where the family was staying, was the only 2-1/2 star hotel in Oconomowoc, a small town west of the city. I went on Priceline and bid for 2-1/2 stars, only to be informed after bidding that I had been “upgraded” to a 3-star property across the freeway.

Oh well — maybe after a weekend of wedding activities, we’ll have had enough family togetherness by the time we hit the hotel anyway. And at least I paid less than half of what I would have paid through my desired hotel’s Web site or on the phone.

There was a warning that my scheme was not going to work out: Priceline had marked the 3-star category as the “best value” before I entered my bid. If you’re bidding and see such a mark on a higher star category, I would expect to be upgraded to the category Priceline is pushing, whether you like it or not.

Photo by Oakbrookterracehotels, used via Creative Commons license.