Old habits die hard

Ciaran Lally’s departure from ebookers UK – as reported by Travolution today – is a good example of how some things in the world of publishing remain constant despite the profound impact of the internet on journalism.

The Travolution team is particularly pleased with this scoop. We [the royal “we”, that is] picked it up via a tried and tested source of news, a source which existed before RSS, Google and disgruntled employees’ blogs - a lead from a job ad, courtesy of online travel recruitment specialist Puregenie.com. The wizened old-school hacks who taught us news reporting way back when would be proud of us.

As the line between cut-and-pasted press releases and news blurs, we will use our combined experience – we’re talking decades here - to try to bring Travolution readers unique content.


And when we do cut and paste a press release, we’ll let you know...

Technical error or lucky find? PhoCusWright here we come!

[UPDATE (x2) at the bottom of the post]

Travolution is off to California in November for the PhoCusWright conference.

So, browsing Kayak - and other sites, hasten to add - for a flight from London to LAX, and we find this little nugget of good fortune:


The search results shows an Air France return flight from LHR to LAX on the required dates. On the Air France website it is £862; on ebookers £384!!

Schurely schome mishtake?

Follow the link through to ebookers and - da-da - the same fare is still there:


We also carried out a search starting from the ebookers engine and same again:


Now for some this would be an incredible coup. And indeed it is. But it seems to be too good to be true.

We asked someone more familiar than us with booking engines, fare loads and the like to get an idea of why the fare is so incredibly cheap.

• Loading error (either automated or human).
• Revenue management system on the blink.
• Some commercial deal where ebookers/Orbitz wants to put a certain volume through just prior to a renegotiation with an airline - so will take anything.
• Some event happening in the UK at the same time (with lots of people coming from states) - hence extra flights have had to be put on - and now demand has to be created in the opposing direction (but that would have impacted all flights).
• Its what they intended.

Or, on a lighter note, our mole suggests, it could be the seat by the toilet.

If anyone has any further suggestions, please add via the comments section.

UPDATE:

According to the ebookers' flight team, this discovery is in fact good fortune and the price is correct on the site. A message reads:

Ebookers should nearly always have cheaper fares than the airline's direct site (with the exception of BA where ebookers match).

Which they would say, of course.

Anyway, it also appears that Expedia has gone all laissez faire with Air France and is also offering the same ticket for £374. Opodo also has it for £378.

It's a wonder the OTAs stay in business! We jest...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: orbitz ebookers kayak phocuswright los angeles california silicon valley

++Good news day for Ebookers - MSN ahoy++

More details here, but ebookers - with its parent company Orbitz - has secured a deal to provide full online travel agency functionality on the MSN Travel channels in the UK and US respectively.

A few things spring to mind:

• Best piece of partnership news for ebookers in a long time.
• The new Orbitz-wide technology platform is clearly working from a business opportunity perspective.
• Global deals can be done.
• Blood is clearly NOT thicker than water - why Orbitz over Expedia [the OTA it created in 1996], which previously ran the search and bookings tools on MSN.
  

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

People love using Wikipedia for information about travel companies

Wikipedia has created a tool which reveals the number of searches carried out for any keyword.

It's interesting in the context of the sheer number of times people are looking for information on individual travel companies.

Obviously one thing to ponder here is the extent to which consumers (let us assume it's primarily consumers for now) will go to learn more about a company.

Is this a question of uncertainty on the part of potential customers? Or the web just showing that if information is there, people will want to find it.

Anyway, here is a sample showing the number of Wikipedia searches in February 2008 for various travel related companies.

British Airways - 230,694
Eurostar - 23,980
Expedia - 21,323
Orbitz - 10,627
Virgin Atlantic - 10,194
Thomas Cook - 8,742
Lastminute.com - 1,273
Ebookers - 968
Opodo - 834
Kuoni - 24

One remarkable thing about this is that Google was searched 334,841 times - just 100,000 more than BA.

And now you can play around with the tool at the heart's content.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Hat-tip: Travelvine [side project of Darren Cronian of Travel-Rants] for flagging this up.

Technorati tags: wikipedia wikitravel wiki encyclopedia

PhoCusWright@ITB 08 - Tab sick

Audience question:

Will the current - and very traditional - menu options on homepages disappear over time?

Alan Josephs from Ebookers says: "I'm sick of the tabs!"

Well said, Sir.


This leads nicely to a brief discussion about the search process on an OTA.

It's static, formulaic - old hat, in fact.

Philip Wolf then introduces the intriguing Starwood search initiative: Four Points.

Worth a look.

The future of online travel search? A move in the right direction...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

PhoCusWright@ITB: Five alive to challenges ahead

PhoCusWright@ITB's opening session saw five leading dotcoms put on the spot when asked about the challenges ahead.

Ebookers.com MD Alan Josephs and Opodo's CEO Ignacio Marcos both expressed concerns about technology. Josephs said that the challenge was getting the new innovations to market before rivals: Martos expressed concerns, for hotel supply at least, that supplier systems were still limiting the inventory available to the consumer.

Expedia and lastminute.com appear more confident in their own systems. Expedia Germany boss Jens-Uwe Parkitny talked about monetizing the traffic as a challenge (see other post). Ian McCaig talked about the challenge of maintaining a relationship with people who had been using the site for ten years at the same time as attracting new users in new segments.

The least famous of the five on the podium was Javier Pérez-Tenessa, founder and CEO of eDreams. This OTA might not have a great presence in the UK, yet, but London/US-based private equity firm TA Associates backed a £100m+ leveraged buy-out of the business in October 06.

Perez-Tenessa is also looking at the challenge of getting suppliers to pay for what is effectively ‘free branding on the site' (cf – media model post). But despite the challenges, Perez-Tenessa was quite optimistic, about his business and the sector. ‘Growth will be strong without doing much’.

Maybe for a business strong in markets with relatively low internet penetration; not so sure whether his four co-panellists think the same.

Martin Cowen, chief writer, Travolution

PhoCusWright@ITB 08 - Media model issues

There is no doubt that last year's announcement about Expedia's media model deal with InterContinental is THE hot topic.

The opening session of the day sees PhoCusWright's Philip Wolf ask a panel of the great and the good of the OTA world - Alan Josephs (Ebookers), Ignacio Josephs (Opodo), Ian McCaig (Lastminute.com), Jens-Uwe Parkitny (Expedia Germany) and Javier Perez-Tenessa (EDreams) - about their challenges/opportunities.

Uwe-Parkitny, understandably, says the shift from a merchant-intermediary system to a media model is a big opportunity.

Expedia is going down this route because there is a lot of money online that can be grabbed.

And, of course, it allows an agency like Expedia to monetise the people that are simply using it as a search engine.

McCaig: the blended model strategically provides a different dynamic. You have to be careful, he adds, about how it affects the brand.

The other panelists:

Josephs: No, we do not support it at the moment. And sceptical.

Perez-Tenessa: You can generate other revenues from the site.

No time for an answer from Martos.

Shame...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Number One or Number Two - the topsy turvy world of online rankings

Thomson is understandably chuffed to pieces after overtaking Expedia in the first few weeks of January in the Hitwise online agency rankings.

Being able to say "We are the #1 online travel agency in the UK", or similar, on promotional material goes a long way. Not that Thomson has used it in that way yet.

But the scene at the top of the pile changes often.

The top ten for the week ending 13 January went like this:

• Thomson Holidays
• Expedia
• Lastminute.com
• First Choice
• Thomas Cook
• TravelSupermarket
• Cheapflights
• TravelRepublic
• Teletext Holidays
• Ebookers

But here is a graph illustrating the relative positions of Thomson and Expedia throughout 2007.


One can read a few things into this:

Seasonality impacts on Expedia and Thomson in different and/or the gap between the two is incredibly close, meaning the positions change frequently.

The other thing to note with the remaining sites in the top ten is the presence of TravelRepublic (above Ebookers), the inclusion of non-travel agency sites (Cheapflights and TravelSupermarket), and the absence of Opodo (number 12 or 13 normally).

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: hitwise thomson expedia

Online travel agencies are the new toilet cleaners

Interesting conversations yesterday with the boss of a new-ish online travel outfit and, later, with a senior figure in the digital marketing community.

Big question marks over the role of online travel agencies.

But this remark is in an interesting, if rather bizarre, one:

OTAs pretty much created this industry - but they are no longer growing. Suppliers are now driving the innovation and user experience. Before, everyone else was standing around cleaning the toilets, but it has corrected itself because of the power of the internet.

I suspect Messrs McCaig, Halpin, Martos, Josephs and Furner will disagree.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: lastminute expedia opodo ebookers travelrepublic online travel agency

The Joy of SEO

Search engine optimisation can be a fickle business at times. Indeed, travel companies up and down the land are known to agonise long into the night about where they appear on that Official Gateway to Instant Traffic, Google.

Digital marketing agencies are appointed; months are spent on designing Google-friendly landing pages; complicated keyword folksonomies are created – all in the hope that the consumer will chance upon seeing an entry in natural search listings for a company, product or destination.

And then some upstart comes along and shows them how it’s done, without any special investment.

Type “flight search engine” into Google and appearing in first place, as you might expect, is a high profile meta search engine – Skyscanner, in this case.

But what is this? In second place is that pesky Travel-Rants consumer blog.

In fact, the US version of Sidestep, IfYouSki, GooFlight and VisitBritain are the only pureplay "flight search engines" to appear on the first page.

So, well done to Mr Cronian of Travel-Rants – a developer by day with a passion for travel, writing his blog purely as a hobby.

The message here is simple: good content – or content deemed important by others on the web – can be as valuable as any investment in a digital marketing strategy.

NB: If anyone doubts whether “flight search engine” is a phrase in demand (it not being destination specific, for example), just check out the number of companies bidding against it in Google’s pay-per-click listings.

TravelSupermarket, Travelzoo, Opodo, Ebookers, Airline-Network, Kayak, SkyScanner (again), DialAFlight, Expedia and Travelocity obviously consider it worth paying money for every click.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: search engine SEO pay-per-click natural search

One unhappy customer

Here is an interesting tale of how a technology company - Inside Messenger - ended up banging its head against a brick wall (repeatedly) when it's API plug-in to one of the world's biggest online travel agencies broke down.

Read the full story here.

Inside Messenger runs the technology behind a travel search tool for use on messaging services such as Windows Live Messenger.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Spend most of the day offline...

...and all hell breaks loose.

While Travolution was hosting its latest advisory board meeting, Blackstone - owner of Travelport (Ebookers, Orbitz et al) - was busy splashing out an astonishing £13 billion on the Hilton hotel chain.

Well, fancy that..

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Travel Survey Day #2

Another one: Travel websites represent 14 of the Top 50 retail websites in the UK, according to the IMRG/Hitwise Hot Shops survey for May 2007.

Leading the field are Amazon.co.uk, Tesco.com, Argos, Play.com and Amazon.com in the top 5 positions.

But positions six to ten are dominated by travel brands:

Expedia.co.uk (6)
EasyJet (8)
Ryanair (9)
BA.com (10)

Elsewhere in the Top 50:

Thomson Holidays (11)
Lastminute.com (15)
First Choice (20)
Thomas Cook (25)
MyTravel (27)
ThomsonFly.com (28)
Travelodge (30)
BMIBaby (33)
FlyBe.com (37)
Jet2.com (39)

Remarkably only two travel brands have lost their position in the Top 50 since the survey started in May 2006:

XL.com and Opodo.

No sign of Ebookers since the survey started.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: web traffic hitwise shopping retail

Richest in travel

The annual Sunday Times Rich List (all 1,000 of them) has been published.

Clearly the hotel industry is the way to go. And whoever said Duncan Cameron and Simon Nixon (of Money/TravelSupermarket fame) are not sitting on a goldmine...

Those trousering it in the travel and web-related sectors include:

• Sir Richard Branson (Virgin) - £3.1 billion
• Nadhmi Auchi (General Mediteranean) - £2.6 billion
• Lord Paul and family (Contemporary Hotels) – £1.5 billion
• Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou and family (Easy Group) - £1.3 billion
• Naresh Goyal (Jet Airways) – £512 million
• Duncan Cameron (MoneySupermarket and TravelSupermarket) – £480 million
• Simon Nixon (MoneySupermarket and TravelSupermarket) – £480 million
• Sir Rocco Forte and family (Rocco Forte Hotels) – £450 million
• Jasminder Singh and family (Radisson Edwardian Hotels) – £350 million
• Geoffrey Kent (Abercrombie & Kent) – £253 million
• Michael Gooley (TrailFinders) – £240 million
• Surinder Arora and family (Arora Group Hotels) - £225 million
• Andrew Davis (Von Essen Hotels) – £210 million
• Harpal Matharu (Globalgrange Hotels) – £207 million
• David Babai (Gullivers Travel Associates) – £200 million
• Peter Harris and family (Bourne Leisure) – £195 million
• Sir Michael Bishop (BMI) – £185 million
• John Cook and family (Bourne Leisure) – £180 million
• Sir Bernard Schreier and family (Danubius Hotels) – £174 million
• Michael and Xochi (Bebo) – £150 million
• Ian McGlinn (Hotel du Vin) – £146 million
• Nick Denton (First Tuesday/Moreover Technologies) – £140 million
• David Crossland and family (Airtours) – £124 million
• Jamie Moffatt and family (A T Mays) – £108 million
• David Seymour and family (Pomme d’Or) – £100 million
• Edward Faith and family (Gullivers Travel Associates) – £100 million
• Uzi Kattan (Gullivers Travel Associates) – £100 million
• Rahul and Rita Sharma (Worldwide Journeys) – £99 million
• Peter Stephens (Lotus Group) – £93 million
• Walduck Family (Imperial London Hotels) – £92 million
• Philip Meeson (Jet2) – £90 million
• Lord Daresbury and Greenall family (De Vere Hotels) – £85 million
• Maurice Segal (Modern Hotel/Expotel) – £80 million
• Giuseppe Pecorelli (Exclusive Hotels) – £78 million
• John Marston (ex-hotelier) – £76 million
• Dinesh Dhamija (Ebookers) – £75 million
• John Boyle (Direct Holidays) – £75 million
• Gulshan and Asif Bhatia (Hilton Paddington/Hyatt Regency Birmingham) – £70 million
• Tej and Bobby Dhillon (Dhillon Hotels) – £70 million

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Travolution Summit-Personalisation not a priority for Ebookers

Alan Josephs, managing director of Ebookers.com told Travolution Summit delegates that the online world is a lot like the old anecdote about two friends running from a bear in the forest:

You don’t need to run faster than the bear…you need to run faster than your friend.

Ouch!

(And here I thought Josephs was such a nice guy.)

“So, which company is Ebookers outrunning then?” asked Travolution’s editor Kevin May.

“We’re running very, very fast,” is about all Josephs would say (quite understandably, given their rather delicate current circumstances).

What Josephs would reveal is that Ebookers’ immediate strategy is about getting the most fundamental functions right.

“I disagree that advanced personalisation will move the needle for online travel agents in next couple of years,” Josephs told delegates.

The fact is that great deals still move the needle faster than great content and advanced capabilities like high-level personalisation don’t come in the top 50 on Ebookers’ to-do list, said Josephs.

“The reality is that we have a long way to go to get to something that advanced. It’s more about easily showing them the price for flexible dates and giving them a map to see their inside of their hotel, how close the beach is, etc.

“It sound like simple stuff, but it’s a long list of simple stuff and I think this is where the focus needs to be.”

Tricia Holly Davis, chief writer, Travolution

Let's tick one off the list

It appears our rumourmill round-up yesterday was right on the button:

1) Travelport’s OTA brands, Orbitz and Ebookers, will seek an IPO on either the New York or London Stock Exchanges.

Travelport has just issued a press release confirming as much.

The short statement says:

"Travelport Limited, the parent company of the Travelport group of companies, announced today its intention to sell a portion of its ownership interest in its Orbitz Worldwide businesses, comprised of Travelport’s business to consumer businesses, in an initial public offering.

"The size of the ownership interest to be sold and the amount of proceeds to be received from the disposition of Orbitz Worldwide are yet to be determined. A portion of the proceeds will be used by Travelport to reduce its outstanding indebtedness."

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Rumour mill has a new spring in its step

With so much speculation doing the rounds recently about the fate of some leading online travel brands, especially concerning Travelport and its portfolio of brands, we thought it might be worthwhile listing them all:

1) Travelport’s OTA brands, Orbitz and Ebookers, will seek an IPO on either the New York or London Stock Exchanges.

2) In lieu of an IPO, Orbitz and/or Ebookers will be snapped by potential suitors Expedia Inc, Priceline, or Sabre Holdings.

3) Sabre Holdings, which has received European Commission approval to be acquired by US-based private equity firms Silver Lake Partners and Texas Pacific Group (TPG), will itself be spun-off, possibly to Amadeus (though that alliance might have a tough time getting regulatory approval).

(TPG separately owns a stake in G2SwitchWorks, which was created by a former Orbitz executive to rival the traditional GDS systems, and has co-invested in non-travel related projects with private equity firm The Blackstone Group, which has a stake in Travelport.)

4) Silver Lake Partners and TPG will keep Travelocity as their core asset and build up a complementary portfolio by acquiring other consumer-facing travel brands…possibly Expedia.

5) Google will buy everything - end of story.

But seriously, since all four GDSs and their respective subsidiaries are already loosely affiliated through mutual stakeholders, a re-shuffling of assets as enumerated above is not inconceivable.

The big question is just how much shuffling can the market and regulators bear?

Tricia Holly Davis, chief writer, Travolution

Travolution@ITBPhoCusWright - Too darn nice

Day Two of the PhoCusWright conference is the same Day One - a move to give delegates that need to hold meetings elsewhere in ITB the opportunity to come and go as they please.

Carl Michel (Holidaybreak), Laurie Myers (Octopus Travel) and Damon Tassone (Lastminute.com) are on stage talking about online travel agencies and tour operators.

A question comes up on the big screen message board

"Which of the following OTAs is nithe most precarious position as a business? Opodo or Ebookers?"

"Defintely not Ebookers, because of the [re-design] developments," says Myers.

"I'm ex-Opodo, so I won't comment," adds Michel.

Tassone sits quietly. The debate moves on...

What a shame...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Why the Thomas Cook-MyTravel merger was always going to happen

The timing might have come as a bit of shock, but nobody seriously doubts the reasoning behind today's announcement that UK-based MyTravel is to merge with its German-owned rival Thomas Cook.

Indeed consolidation appears to be a theme for the travel industry in the mid-2000s, with the GDS sector shrinking last year - in terms of ownership - following the acquisition by Travelport of Worldspan.

[December cover feature on future of the GDSs here]

That particular deal followed the massive shake up of the online travel agency market in 2005 with the £577 million purchase of Lastminute.com by Sabre and that of Ebookers for £201 million by the then Cendant group (now Travelport).

[Interestingly both Sabre and Travelport are now in the hands of private equity groups]

So now we have the Big Three, rather than the Big Four in the traditional sector.

This is clearly the biggest story for quite a few years in the industry, but people shouldn't be surprised.

The pre-packaged, so-called bucket and spade holiday market - the core part of the traditional UK-Europe holiday business - is in decline.

All four operators have attempted - with varying amounts of enthusiasm and success - to diversify into areas such as dynamic packaging and city breaks.

However there has been a huge question mark for years as to whether the new and vastly empowered consumer base - kowtowing to the freedom the web has given them - would be able to support four companies.

Today's announcement supports this view...

Even with extended product ranges and impressive websites coming on stream, consolidation has never been a question of "if" but "when".

The most likely merger was probably always going to be between Thomas Cook and MyTravel - both have operated their businesses in similar ways and have not particuarly digressed into new areas.

So where it gets interesting now is how the Big Three will operate as businesses.

First Choice is increasingly moving into the long haul market; Thomson will be counterbalancing the drop in pre-packaged sales by actively pushing its new strategy of uber-dynamic packaging, using a combination of its own aircraft, accommodation and third parties suppliers, including other accommodation and flight providers.

As for the Thomas Cook Group, which it says will now be the number one travel company in the UK, expect the company to not drop its focus on its pre-packaged holidays - like Thomson - and make a major push on its short-haul business.

[Read the opinions of some city analysts on the Guardian website]

[Download the KarstadtQuelle AG presentation here (PDF)]

The next question, of course, is this: what is next for the online-only outfits? Rumours are still circulating about what Expedia should do next...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Orbitz-Ebookers mutterings

Much rumour and speculation in the industry this week, once again, about the future of Orbitz/Ebookers et al.

The latest round of titter tatter began on Tuesday when the New York Times published a story about Travelport considering a spin-off of its Orbitz US online travel agency, "less than six months after leaving the public markets", and perhaps even here in London.

Tim Hughes commented here that perhaps a reason for the London listing could be to avoid the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation.

Others, however, are suggesting somewhat darker reasons: roll out the Orbitz brand into Europe at the expense of Ebookers, despite it heading for a major relaunch in April 2007.

For many of us a lot of this doesn't really add up.

Why would Travelport spend a hefty amount on a rebranding of Ebookers, only for it to be scrapped and replaced with a site Europeans are unaware of?

Equally, while Travelport may indeed be considering spinning off various parts of the business, despite only eight months or so since its $4.3 billion takeover by Blackstone, surely the high profile - and profitable - brands are worth more in the long term?

Bring me a City analyst...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution