Tripadvisor launches officially in India, quietly in Japan

As we revealed in May, Tripadvisor is setting its sights on the Far East and the Indian subcontinent.

A few months earlier than expected, but the world's biggest hotel review site has unveiled its Indian site today, tripadvisor.in.

A good move for the Expedia-owned site, of course, although one wonders why India was chosen first rather than China, given the enormous attention the 2008 Olympic host is currently getting.

Anyway, Tripadvisor.cn still blank.

But check out the flags at the bottom of a number of the Tripadvisor country site homepages and you'll notice that Tripadvisor Japan is also up and running in Beta.

Global domination beckons...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: tripadvisor expedia india china beijing olympic games 2008

Beijing visitor numbers are not that impressive - so bargain bucket hotels aplenty

Dramatic scenes this afternoon on the TV at Travolution Towers (i.e. our BBC iPlayer!) of the opening ceremony at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

But it has emerged this week, courtesy of data from hotels.com, that there is apparently a bargain to be had for last-minute travellers.

The reason for this is that the anticpated stream of visitors has not materialised. In fact, it is expected there will be just a maximum of an extra 30,000 tourists in the city in August this year, compared to the same month in 2007.

Another interesting fact is that in April this year the average price of a room in the Chinese capital during the Games was close to £400. This was slashed to £144 in July.

So unless you have desire to protest on behalf of the Free Tibet movement, now is a rather good time to visit the Smoggy City.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags:  beijing olympic olympics olympic games china tibet

The Superbrands thing [Sigh]

So plenty of coverage everywhere about the release of the latest Superbrands survey of top brands in the UK.

Google tops the list for the first time, ahead of Microsoft, Mercedes-Benz and the BBC.

In the travel-hospitality world, British Airways comes out on top (5th), with Hilton (20th), Eurostar (47th) and Virgin Atlantic (70th) all featuring in the top 100.

Thomas Cook has made a great PR play today with its top billing amongst tour operators and agencies in 72nd position, beating Kuoni (340th), Sandals (355th), Expedia (401st) and Lastminute.com (476th).

And this is where all this branding stuff gets murky and silly.

It was only last year that Expedia was named the coolest travel brand in the, er, Superbrands' Coolbrands list.

So, one question:

Is it better to be a 'cool' brand or a 'super' brand?

Anyway, back to the Superbrands list. Well done to Thomas Cook (which, according to marketing boss Simon Carter is "head and shoulders" above its competitors). But is it REALLY 46 places behind the Royal Albert Hall, for example?

Take this one step further and you could also ask the following question:

If the Royal Albert Hall is 46 places ahead of Thomas Cook, how on earth can Thomas Cook be at least 428 places higher than Thomson, its biggest and bitter rival and, let's face it, a fairly big travel brand in its own right.

[Thomson actually doesn't figure anywhere in the list of 500 brands]

And THAT is the problem with branding lists - not that Thomson doesn't feature, but that the results are so random when all evidence to the contrary (sales, adspend, offline and online presence, word-of-mouth and history) indicates that a company such as Thomson should at least have a higher ranking than Maltesers, Stannah Stairlifts and Nicorette!

There are plenty of people who have strong views about Superbrands et al - the comments button is dying to hear from you...

* The Superbrands selection criteria can be found on its website.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: superbrand

Booking with the Beeb

LonelyPlanet.com has announced a new accommodation booking service in partnership with Expedia Distribution and hostelworld.com.

Travolution reported last week that BBC Worldwide paid c£90m cash for a 75% stake in LonelyPlanet late last year, with a view to exploiting the profit potential of the web site. The commercial terms of the deal with Expedia Distribution and hostelworld.com are not disclosed (‘twas ever thus) but it’s a start to monetizing a site which has 4.6m unique users.

Lonely Planet prides itself on the independence and quality of its advice by using a team of 360 professional writers to review hotels and hostels. But if the site is to become a profit centre in its own right there are many dangers to this independence. When deciding which hotels to review, will LP be more inclined to look at properties which it can sell? If ‘Martin’s B&B’ isn’t available through the partners, but ‘Kev’s B&B’ next door is, which one is the most likely to get a write-up on the site?

Martin Cowen, chief writer, Travolution

Travo Question Time - September. A cosmic panel!

The next Travolution Question Time brings together a stellar line-up of executives from across the travel industry for an intimate and engaging evening of debate.

September 23rd in London. Full details here.

Expedia’s new vice president for EMEA, Alex Zivoder, will make his UK travel event debut alongside other well known figures in the online sector, Paul Evans (Lowcostbeds) and Chris Loughlin (Travelzoo). Joining them will be Mark Tanzer, chief executive of Abta, and Justin Cooke, the man behind award winning digital agency, Fortune Cookie.

This, the fourth in the series of Travolution Question Time events, promises to be yet another excellent opportunity to interrogate and network with some of the leading lights in the industry.

Get a ticket (£65+VAT).

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

More on the Expedia-Tripadvisor referral saga

There are some issues that just seem fire people up.

Take yesterday’s story leading our enews bulletin, revealing some detail of the Expedia-Tripadvisor partnership.

We found some data via Compete.com which showed how much Expedia benefits from upstream clicks from hotel search pages on its sister user review site in the US.

It captures 48% of these valuable leads. Accommodation aggregator Hotels.com, which is also part of the Expedia Inc empire, grabbed a further 11% of clicks.

This means that almost three out of five of all outbound ad clicks from Tripadvisor on the US site go to one of its sister companies.

We eventually managed to get a comment from Tripadvisor, but only confirming Expedia is “one of its biggest” advertisers.

This may well be PR sleight of hand as one could surmise that Expedia, according to the Compete figures, is clearly the biggest advertiser on Tripadvisor if most of the outbound clicks go to its site.

So to summarise some of the correspondence we received yesterday after publishing the story:

What must the others, who should surely be known as “some of the other biggest advertisers” on Tripadvisor, think about Expedia’s dominance of the outbound clicks?

If Expedia is only “one of the biggest”, are its ad copy-writing skills that much better than its big spending rivals to the extent that it can lure users away from clicking on other ads? [Tongue firmly planted in cheek, one suspects, with this one]

There were also plenty of comments about whether Expedia’s outbound click share correlates to the share of ad revenue on Tripadvisor from Expedia – an topic area Tripadvisor would not discuss yesterday.

All food for thought, though…

NB: More on the Compete blog.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: expedia tripadvisor user review

TripAdvisor spending more money - but now involved in search

There appears to be no stopping TripAdvisor's Steve Kaufer and co with their desire to buy as many "travel media" properties as possible.

The Expedia-owned company has bought two further sites, VirtualTourist and OneTime, both for undisclosed fees.

The addition of the pair to the TripAdvisor Media Network will give the user review firm an impressive 32 million unique visitors a month.

Of the two acquisitions, OneTime is probably the most interesting. It is essentially a travel search site which allows users to find deals across a number of OTAs (Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity) and meta search engines (Kayak, SkyScanner).

Previously TripAdvisor and its string of community sites were all primarily concentrated on producing or sharing content, much of it user-generated, but with OneTime it has reasonably discreetly added decent travel search to its armoury.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: tripadvisor virtualtourist onetime travel search meta search

Let's hope Expedia isn't about to have A Consignia Moment

Back in 2001, branding experts (apart from the company which designed it, of course) poured scorn over the Royal Mail's decision to change its name to the, er, far more memorable and trendy "Consignia".

It was an unmitigated disaster. Workers reacted with dismay and the public simply laughed.

It reverted back to Royal Mail within a year.

So, raised eyebrows all-round this morning when Expedia Corporate Travel announced it has changed its name to Egencia.

President of Egencia, Jean-Pierre Remy, said:

We pride ourselves on our ability to adapt to our customers changing needs and deliver the services expected of a true business partner, and the Egencia brand reflects who we truly are as a company.

Sounds suspiciously like the Royal Mail circa 2001.

Anyway, the Egencia name comes from a French business travel agency Expedia acquiried in 2004.

Reports at the time revealed Egencia would be rebranded to Expedia Corporate Travel following the acquisition.

Four years is a long time in marketing. Just ask Boo.com!

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

TravelSupermarket will be delighted with this praise for Expedia

Or not.

The technology section on the Guardian website could hardly contain itself this week with a glowing tribute to Expedia, titled "Indulge your flights of fancy".

The puffery article started with something along the lines of:

...it's often the simplest, quickest and cheapest way to book a trip if it includes a flight and a hotel

And ended with:

as a one-stop supermarket that covers everything from cruises to corporate travel, Expedia does the job

Expedia's ad/PR agency - which we must, of course, had nothing to do with such fantastic coverage - will be over-the-moon.

However, there's another, er, supermarket on the UK travel scene which might be rather concerned about such flattery.

Yes, indeed. TravelSupermarket, which just happens to run travel search facilities on the Guardian website and has a handy - yet perhaps now, rather inaffective - box alongside the story about Expedia.



"Book a trip today", it says. But obviously not until you've checked Expedia!

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: expedia guardian comment is free travelsupermarket

Perspective again please

Plenty and rather mixed coverage around the web today regarding the second anniversary edition of the Hitwise-IMRG Hotshops list.

The quarterly report of the top 50 UK online retailers is a handy benchmark of whose flying or dying in the online world, albeit from a share of overall web traffic rather than individual performance.

So what did the May 2008 report reveal, compared to that of May 2006?

There are currently eleven travel brands amongst the top 50 – a list topped unsurprisingly every quarter since it began by Amazon.co.uk.

TravelMole led with how Thomson Holidays is creeping up on easyJet as the most popular travel brand in the UK, while E-Tid said ‘Travel companies lose web presence’. [both require registration]

The report indicated that almost all the leading travel brands – with the exception of Thomson – had seen in a decline in position since the report began two years ago:

EasyJet – 8 to 10
Expedia – 7 to 12
Ryanair – 9 to 14
Lastminute.com – 12 to 17
BA – 11 to 19
Thomas Cook – 18 to 25
First Choice – 20 to 29

Quite a number of travel brands have dropped off the list:

MyTravel (for obvious reasons)
BMIBaby
XL.com
FlyBe
Jet2
InterContinental Hotels
Monarch Airlines
Opodo

The only newcomer in travel:

TravelRepublic

The apparent slump in the performance of travel websites led the Financial Times to headline with ‘Airlines lose web customers’. Lose?

What the FT failed to do is explain in detail why this has happened.

A call to Hitwise’s Robin Goad, co-author of the list, confirms the obvious: travel was an early adopter of e-commerce and consumers, likewise, felt comfortable with booking via the web, thus why so travel sites commanded a large share of the top 50.

In the past two years, however, other retailers have emerged – some traditional offliners, others created to service existing markets but purely online – and have attracted new users.

So while growth in online travel bookings may be slowing compared to other industry verticals, it is by no means declining.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: hitwise IMRG hotshops retail

Travel brands on YouTube - mixed results

Listen to anyone from the Googleplex these days at an event and they talk endlessly about the benefits to travel brands of using YouTube for branding.

A campaign extolling the virtues of New Zealand is typically the example given - and deservedly so.

The Pure New Zealand page has had over 90,000 views. One particular video has been seen nearly 1 million times!

The organisation has uploaded 40 videos to its channel, with the top 5 all attracting over 15,000 views.

But how have some other major travel brands fared since giving some time and effort to creating a presence on YouTube?

Expedia UK has its own channel page and has uploaded a huge number of videos (103 videos) in just a few months, but its top-performer - the too-good-to-be-true hotels signs effort we featured a few months back - has attracted just 2,100 views.

STA Travel UK also created its own page in August 2007, but has just two videos on show. The TribeUnwanted video has 1,100 views so far.

Biggles The Bear, the YouTube nom de plume for Cheapflights, has faired much better. The channel page has attracted nearly 3,000 views, but its most popular video - Where The Hell is Biggles?, a pastiche of the infamous Where The Hell is Matt? montage - has been watched nearly 29,000 times.

Anyway, all this playing around on YouTube has revealed Travolution's skydiving extravaganza (and, no, for the last time, it isn't me in the video) has been viewed more times than 101 of Expedia's efforts.

And here it is again...!



Our sister title, Travel Weekly, has a ship tour video of the Norwegian Gem, which has an impressive 6,300 views against. Three times as many as Expedia's best performer.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Ryanair does a Craigslist

Plenty of coverage on news sites and blogs last week as Ryanair press released news that it is launching a new product, Ryanairvillas.com.

In short, it's a classified advertising portal. The system allows users to upload ads for their own properties to a microsite, add photos and detail product information, etc.

But there are a few things about this:

The launch shows – once again – that airlines are seeing plenty of opportunity in bringing in new elements to add to the core flight portal.

[If it turns out something like this, for example, British Airways will resemble something closer to an online travel agency]

Ryanair has product deals with Isango (for destination activities) and, of course, its well-publicised product functionality courtesy of Expedia.

Not wanting to be left out of the game, EasyJet recently signed a similar destination services deal with Viator.

But a user-controlled listings service is a very significant move indeed. And a smart one for Ryanair.

Why? Well, in theory, responsibility for the content and control of the ads rests with the user, pretty much removing Ryanair from the picture entirely apart from an initial check when the listing in posted.

Furthermore, a call into Web Reservations International, the Dublin-based company powering the Ryanairvillas system, reveals that Ryanair has definite plans to develop the platform.

Indeed, there are huge opportunities for cross-selling once the system is up and running, in terms of promotions and advertising.

And, at some point in the future, it is more than likely that live Ryanair fares and availability will be streamed alongside the ads.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: ryanair easyjet expedia

Will enthusiasm for travel apps be the same on MySpace?

For very obvious reasons TripAdvisor is to push its three enormously successful Facebook applications onto rival social network MySpace. We got the story this morning.

The trio of apps - Cities I’ve Visited, Local Picks and the frighteningly addictive Traveler IQ Challenge - have attracted six million downloads over the last year, which is impressive.


But we are pondering a few things:

• Is the drive for apps slowing down?
• Many people are members of both social networks, so would it be unlikely (odd, even) if the same user dowloaded the app again for MySpace?
• What is the longevity of a travel app?
  

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: myspace facebook tripadvisor apps

Leading travel stocks after a third of 2008

[UPDATE at bottom of post]

Some interesting stats...

Expedia: started 2008 on $0.31 a share. Now $0.25. -19%

British Airways: started 2008 on £3.09 a share. Now £2.48. -19%

EasyJet: started 2008 on £6.13 a share. Now £3.24. -47%

MoneySupermarket (owner of TravelSupermarket): started 2008 on £1.40 a share. Now £1.14. -19%

Orbitz Worldwide: started 2008 on $8.50. Now $8.78. +3%

Priceline: started 2008 on $1.15 a share. Now $1.26. +10%

Ryanair: Started 2008 on Euro 0.39 a share. Now Euro 0.30. -23%

SilverJet: started 2008 on £0.48 a share. Now £0.15. -69%

Thomas Cook: started 2008 on £2.82 a share. Now £2.66. -7%

TUI Travel: started 2008 on £2.94 a share. Now £2.41. -18%

Travelzest: started 2008 on £1.01 a share. Now £1.02. +1%

Travelzoo: started 2008 on $0.14 a share. Now $0.11. -21%

UPDATE:

Sam I Am asks in the comments about the market conditions as a whole.

FTSE 100: started 2008 on 6456. Now 6215. -4%

NASDAQ: started 2008 on 2652. Now 2464. -7%

So one might say that the Orbitz and Priceline in the US - and not Expedia - are bucking the trend, while airlines in the UK are seeing a decline in share price worse than the overall market decrease.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Thus spake Khosrowshahi

“We’re a big spender on search, but we’re also a big spendee,” Expedia Inc’s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi told analysts yesterday. ‘On tripadvisor, some of the revenue growth came from higher CPC prices that travel companies are spending.’

The revenue growth for Expedia’s advertising and media business came in at 73% higher than the first three months of 2007. And the organic growth rate was 50%. As a proportion of the Expedia first quarter pie, it accounted for 9% of worldwide revenue.

Enough of the percentages – in dollar terms that’s $200m revenue over the past four quarters.

And as Dara said, that’s’ high margin revenue’.

With more to come. “Advertising revenue on our transaction sites continues to gain traction. Later this month we will launch version2.0 of our travel ads in test markets, including the implementation of travel ads on hotels.com.”

It’s not just in the US. CFO Michael Adler had no reservation in revealing that ‘20 to 25%’ of ad/media revenues are coming from international markets. “And in respect of ads on our transaction sites, our European advertising business is starting to scale very quickly.”

Quicker, Dara added, that the growth in European traffic.

Expedia Inc is clearly committed to a global media model. It will be fascinating to watch this channel develop over the coming quarters. It’s almost as if Expedia is getting ready for any fall-out from the double-digit keyword inflation on Google...

Martin Cowen, chief writer, Travolution

+++Expedia UK boss leaves+++

This just in.

Caroline Cartellieri is no longer running Expedia in the UK. She left a few weeks ago - Expedia is being very tight-lipped about the whole issue.

More detail on our news story.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: expedia

Maybe Microsoft just misses running Expedia

Extremely light on the blogging front recently as we're preparing for the Travolution Summit and Awards next week.

So, alas, we've not been able to follow-up on our Farecast story from earlier in the week with any sensible analysis.

Anyway, it turns out that rumours suggesting Expedia was the buyer were a bit wide of the mark and Microsoft is new proud owner of Farecast. Maybe someone mentioned it at an Expedia-Microsoft alumni party?

How about this for an understated announcement on the Farecast Blog:

We’re excited to confirm that Farecast has been acquired by Microsoft! This acquisition creates tremendous opportunities for the Farecast team and our customers. We look forward to sharing more details in the weeks to come. On behalf of the Farecast team, thank you.

Perhaps rather sensibly, comments were not activated on the post.

The deal has, predictably, got the Silicon Valley types foaming/frothing at the mouth, with some earlier in the week excited enough to say any deal should be seen in the context of a Google-Expedia deal.

Our prediction on that: get over it. Always happy to proven wrong, of course.

The best coverage we've seen is on the Motley Fool, which suggests Farecast's fantastic prediction technology should be used by Microsoft to work out when it should bid more for Yahoo!.

Maybe Microsoft has simply just given up on Yahoo! and sees Farecast as the next best thing. Oops...

For some serious analysis of the Farecast deal, Musings typically has the best. Over to you, Mr Bainbridge.

Yen Lee on the UpTake Blog has some more.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: expedia farecast microsoft google

All the fun of the Farecast...

The Seattle Post Intelligencer is reporting that Farecast has been sold for $75m (£38m at today’s exchange rate).

The buyer is currently not known. The report suggest Expedia as ‘one natural choice’. Expedia told the paper that it doesn’t comment on rumour and speculation, as we all know by now.

Farecast positions itself slightly differently from other travel2.0 businesses. It datamines historic pricing data from a number of partner sites to let customers know if the current price offered is likely to go up or down. Its air fare tool is well established, its hotel channel still in beta.

The business has an impressive line-up of VC backers, as reported by Travolution’s US correspondent last year.

Farecast’s model is an interesting one, and with intelligent search being such a buzzword at the moment it'll be interesting to see who has taken it over. $75m/£38m is an interesting price point – spare change for someone like Google, well within the range of someone like Amadeus, maybe a punt too far for someone like TUI Travel plc.

Martin Cowen, chief writer, Travolution

Expedia videos look a bit dodgy

Expedia UK has a page on YouTube and is also dabbling in user-generated video content.

One of their efforts is this series of clips supposedly of random signs in hotels around the world. And it wants consumers to send in their own clips, etc, etc.

Rather amusing. But is it me or is the camera work and production just a little too polished - dare I say it, staged?



Are we being unfair?

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Hat-tip: Hotel Review Guide

Technorati tags: expedia

Mainstream media tracking blogs for gossip

It's not every day we get mentioned in the Los Angeles Times.

Especially for a non-story...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: los angeles times LA times expedia google