Skyscanner tries one method of pushing search results into Facebook

Came across a quirky feature on the new Skyscanner site this morning when, inevitably, we were looking at Ryanair fares on other websites.

Underneath the search results there is a small Facebook logo titled "Brag about this flight on Facebook".

Click on the logo and, if you are logged into the ominpresent social network, a new window appears in Facebook with a message already set up, allowing members to add the results onto their profile page or send as a direct message to friends.

Nice idea and probably being done elsewhere. It was the subtlety of it, ironically, which got it noticed in our case.

Facebook better watch out though. It doesn't want to be added to The List.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

The problem at the heart of travel PR

Fantastic guest post from Neil MacLean, author of the Travel PR Blog:

The marketing blogosphere is navel-gazing again, this time about the current state of PR.

No surprise there then. Every few months somebody declares PR dead and a bevy of PR’s write about how the world would go to hell in a hand basket without them.

Eventually the whole thing settles down until yet another A list blogger gets hit by a hundred irrelevant pitches.

It makes me wonder though about the state of the travel PR business, particularly in the UK where I personally lobbed press releases into waste bins for the best part of 20 years.

Is the UK travel PR business dead?

Not totally. It just smells like it.

The problem is the business still swivels on traditional media relations.

Scan the PR’s own pitches and you’ll find all the emphasis on cosy relations with journalists and the "ability to control press coverage on our clients' behalf".

It doesn’t take a PhD in fragmented media to know that model is about as up to the minute as Mr D’Arcy’s breeches.

Sure, some travel PR’s make noises about new media and getting down with Facebook, but many still gaze at email with the wonder of war-time kids setting sight on a banana.

They’ll protest - ok, I’ll protest for them - that they have had great success getting, I don’t know, three regional hacks out to Barbados to cover the Deck Chair festival.

But travel companies increasingly find those sums don’t add up anymore. It’s just not worth it.

I know a travel company which scored a four page spread in a Sunday broadsheet and only received one call about the trip next day.

Besides, traditional press coverage is like a sugar rush. The returns are short-lived and you have to keep on doing it over again.

PR needs to be more closely tied with results. It must be seen to generate measurable revenue for the client. It needs better strategies to generate long-term benefit.

For that it needs to speak directly to the public as well as hacks, build relationships with customers, treat Google as vital media, drive search traffic, communicate the benefits of the product to anyone with a broadcast voice, official or not. In short it needs to go where the market is and go online.

Here are some of the skills a modern PR agency needs - online copywriting, web monitoring, SEO, search marketing, basic web dev, multimedia content creation, web analytics.

The alternative? Marketing money will continue to shift to the people who already pitch this stuff and therefore can provide truly measurable results: the search marketing companies and digital agencies.

And then what will be left for the poor travel PR’s? A few quid for organising cocktail parties at WTM.

PR in this country needs a travolution (that’s not trademarked or anything is it?). [That's enough "'lutions" - Ed]

Neil MacLean, Travel PR Blog

[Neil MacLean writes the Travel PR Blog and provides online media services. A former journalist, he wrote travel features for the Sunday Times, edited the Daily Mail travel section and was launch producer of Expedia in the UK]

Read about Travolution's new press release policy.

Technorati tags: marketing PR future of PR

We desperately need a new word for 'Trip' [Tripwolf]

So after two months of private beta testing (we had access here), Tripwolf has finally come out of the shadows to the wide - and scary - world of the discerning traveller.

The buzz surrounding the project will now need to be translated into usage and, most importantly, engagement.

There's no point in having a travel social guide if no-one gets involved in it.

So the public version has a few nifty tools:

• A printable PDF guide which can be created by dragging and dropping content into a widget.
• Content brought in automatically from Flickr, Wikipedia and Youtube.
• Facebook integration.

In addition, the start-up, which has attracted investment dollars (around $1.2 million) from i5invest, has pulled off a coup of sorts by persuading MairDumont to throw all its content into the site - for free.

MairDumont is "Europe’s largest publisher of travel guides" and produces titles under the Baedeker, Dumont and Marco Polo brands.

So while the site is pretty impressive on the whole, TechCrunch raises an interesting point when it says:

And while it features a fairly comprehensive listing of interesting locales, it may have a hard time differentiating itself from countless other travel sites - there doesn’t seem to be anything too unique going on here.

The name would've been a good place to start:

Tripmate, Tripwiser, Tripbase, Tripup, Tripology, Trippert, blah, blah, blah. After Tripadvisor, few stick in the memory. This is not a good thing...

Anyway, let's see how they get on.

They have a fancy video to demonstrate how some of the bits work:



[NB: I was interviewed for the Tripwolf blog a few weeks back]

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: facebook tripwolf

300 members - and no advertising

We have written in the past about the scepticism surrounding the use of social networking sites for branding.

Ian McCaig of Lastminute.com is a passionate supporter of this point-of-view.

But I have just realised that Travolution has just attracted its 300th member to its Facebook group.

This is with no marketing at all - just a mention on the blog last year!

A free and easy presence.


If you want to join, go to the page and become a member.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Travel 2.0 reality check

So while many were disappointed that the Google-Lastminute.com showdown didn't take place yesterday, Ian McCaig used his appearance to offer a typically heavy dose of, shall we say, balance to the Travel 2.0 hype.

The Lastminute.com boss is not known for his hyperbole, especially in the area of social media and how travel companies can engage with it.

The issue for McCaig is one of ensuring, as a travel provider, that you don't lose sight of the customer.

Given that the audience has just listened to Facebook UK supremo Blake Chandlee wax lyrical about the UK's biggest social media site, this a handy counterweight to the argument.

"This is all about customer behaviour, not websites," McCaig says.

He asks two reasonable questions:

* Is it important for your customers today that you engage with them through social media?

* Or is it a better employment of resources to drive through conventional media (SEM)?

Now some would argue that a clever mixture of the two might help travel companies target this enormous audience playing around with social networks.

But, McCaig says, and as we've been writing for a while (most recently here), consumers are not in a purchasing mindset when networking with friends over the web.

He brings up the old advertising adage: “Selling implies someone wishes to buy”.

This is not the case on a social network and interuption marketing does not work, he argues.

Most - including us - talk about STA Travel's efforts on Facebook, but the challenge for everyone else of how to use social networks continues...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: facebook lastminute

Astonishing Facebook member stats for the UK

Blake Chandlee, UK director for Facebook, used the Eye For Travel conference today to reveal some new figures about UK members.

The social networking giant has an incredible 10.5 million members in the UK.

Let that sink in for a moment...

Of those 10.5 million, 100,000 have 'travel' in their profile.

There are now six billion photographs on the site. They are "consumed", according to Chandlee, a terrifying 60 billion times a week.

And, perhaps, the most remarkable stat included in Chandlee's presentation was this: in the last 30 days, 28 million 'events' were created in the UK.

It goes without saying that being able to engage with those members is not only vital for travel companies, but a pretty dark art.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: facebook

If you're looking for trouble, you've come to the wrong place

An early plenary session this morning at Eye For Travel in London promised plenty, especially as the panel included Lastminute.com boss Ian McCaig and Google's Dan Robb - a pair who represent companies not exactly on the best of terms (no pun intended) these days.

[The latest twist in the trademark tale reveals the astonishingly high costs being paid by companies trying to reach the Google Quality Score]

But imagine the sense of disappointment amongst delegates when conference chair Paul Richer doused an early bucket of cold water of any potential fireworks when he stressed that the session - Monetising Web 2.0 - would not include discussion over trademark issue.

Boo, we say. Boo.

Thankfully the Scottish duo did try to make light of what is actually a pretty serious dispute.

Robb and McCaig are still friends on Facebook, Robb joked.

"I am now going to talk about the trademark issue for 60 to 90 minutes," smirked McCaig at the beginning of his presentation.

Shame he didn't really.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: facebook lastminute google trademark

Roll up, roll up, save your company money - complete your expenses on your mobile phone!

That's it - in one simple move the fun has been taken out of travel applications on mobile phones.

Many of you may have thought your mobile phone was a useful communication tool and, if you've got a decent one, a bit of a toy as well!

Well, slap wrists all round! Amadeus and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives have got together to conduct a survey into future mobile phone usage.

No more checking your WAYN or Facebook accounts, there are deeper, darker forces at work.

'Upwardly mobile' as the study is called informs us future use will be all about increasing our efficiency, productivity, flexibility ..... while on the move.

There's the good stuff such as checking in for your flight, reserving your hotel and using your phone as a virtual room key and then there's the dreary stuff - complete your expenses, drive up travel policy compliance and generally save your company money by improving your efficiency.

Bet you can't wait!

No need to panic yet - the study shows that while 80% of travel managers recognise the role of mobile devices in improving the travel experience very few have taken any further action.

Linda Fox, lead reporter, Travolution

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

Are social network advertisers barking up the wrong tree?

Our latest column in Travel Weekly:

For many people in the industry there remains a big question mark over the value of using social networks to reach potential consumers.

At Travolution we have been unashamedly guilty of talking up the benefits of throwing increasingly scant resources at sites such as Facebook, MySpace and others in order to spread the marketing of a brand into these hugely popular new areas.

It is becoming clear to some marketers that traditional online advertising is not as rewarding – in terms of solid leads – as many would have expected, given the enormous volume of people using social networks.

One marketer said to us recently: “People use social networks to talk to each other, not buy products.”

This is a dilemma for travel brands and travel per se is one of the most experiential products.

Consumers appear very comfortable with using a social network to talk about their holidays – the planning process and, most importantly, what happened in resort.

Some travel brands – STA Travel in particular – have capitalised on this by creating simple applications within a Facebook page for people to visit, rather than traditional advertising slots.

Nevertheless, a new report by digital marketing agency Tamar suggests travel brands are still missing out on the goodwill factor often associated with a holiday.

There is a “great deal of consumer support” on social networks for travel brands, but only a few have registered their presence there.

But the most interesting fact to emerge from the study is this: brands that have tried to embrace social networks have a massive 59% more unofficial supporter groups than those with no presence.

It seems that just acknowledging the existence of social networks and creating some kind of presence is a good start.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Privacy on parade

Concerns over privacy issues about individuals’ online habits are being voiced with increasing regularity on both sides of the pond.

Today, NYC-based MediaPost has unearthed what it claims is the first law-suit to come out of Facebook’s already controversial Beacon programme.

A lady in Dallas County has objected to details about the DVDs she bought and hired from Blockbuster appearing on her Facebook profile. Her federal suit is against Blockbuster for sharing the details with Facebook, rather than Facebook. Apparently, there are specific laws to protect the privacy of US citizens’ video-hiring habits.

Admittedly, I’d be a bit fed up if my profile revealed I’d been buying DVDs on topics which I claimed to have no interest in, such as golf, S-Club 7, or When Household Appliances Go Bad. But I’m not sure whether being fed up would be a strong enough basis on which to launch a law-suit.

Harris Interactive issued some research earlier this month which looked at the privacy concerns of 2500+ US internet users. About 60% were uncomfortable with personalization. As we get older, our concerns increases, it appears.

Most of these law-suits come and go, but at some stage, somewhere, one will stick. And when one does, will the e-commerce industry be buying up instructional DVDs on how to rebuild the ediface?

Martin Cowen, chief writer, Travolution

Is the social networking boom losing momentum?

Our latest column for Travel Weekly:

There are murmurings in the force about the sustainability and usefulness of social networks.

Last year saw the huge growth of Facebook and Bebo, and the continued dominance of MySpace.

For every cynic in travel, there was an e-commerce boss ‘looking at launching a social network’ at the height of the frenzy last summer.

But while Facebook might have taken a hit on its user numbers between December 2007 and January 2008, questions remain as to the long-term viability of social networks per se.
Some sites are seeing a decline in user engagement and monetising the concept is proving difficult for many.

Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and travel network WAYN.com would appear at this stage to be somewhat protected simply by virtue of the volume of users interacting with the sites.

They pretty much caught the wave on its way up.

But ask many of those refuseniks from last year and they will feel somewhat justified that they didn’t spend fortunes developing and maintaining social networks.

The issue here is primarily one of scale and an ability – or inability – to target an audience and add value to their time on the web.

We are hearing increasingly how travel companies are desperate to reach these network-obsessed users, but are thinking the best method will be to hit them in the existing networks, such as Facebook, through widgets and applications.

Where social networks might work is when they are driven – once again, like the perennial Long Tail of Travel theory – into specific niches.

The new smallfishbigocean.com business social network for small operators and niche agencies is a good example.

Cliche corner, but time will tell; this is still a relatively new area for businesses and consumers. Nobody will risk dismissing ideas at a time when a point of difference is so important.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: facebook bebo

SES London - Cash in China; Mobile in Japan

Boy, search is complex in Asia.

In Japan keyword choice is made that bit more difficult in that the same word will have multiple spellings.

Venice, for example, has six well used versions so you need to make some informed decisions on which version(s) you use on your site.

Japan has a different no 1 SE - Yahoo with 47 million users per month to Google’s 27 and Rakuten's 27.

The number 1 social network is not MySpace or Facebook but Mixi with 17 million users.

But probably the most intriguing fact is that more people in Japan now access the
internet via mobile then PC.

But China, forecast to overtake the US in internet users this year, really takes the biscuit (I would say Fortune Cookie but apparently these don't exist in China and are actually made in Mexico).

China search is dominated by Baidu.

This is very different from Google, not least in that paid inclusions sit at the top of the 'natural results' yet 90% of users don't realise they're paid for.

On the subject of paying most Chinese still prefer to pay in cash.

Particularly in travel with 60% of online transactions on C-Trip (the Chinese 'equiv' of Expedia) involving cash on demand that involves a man on a moped arriving at the online buyers doorstep, getting the cash then handing over the tickets.

This will change as credit cards are growing but, in the meantime, this is a stark example of just how different internet business really is in China.

Matt Brocklehurst, marketing director, Latitude Group

Social Media versus Search

More from TFM&A.

The effectiveness of advertising travel products on social network sites is still up for discussion – users are coming to the sites to interact, not transact.

Enter stage left Blake Chandlee, UK commercial director for Facebook, keynoting to an eager audience.

[Not that Facebook is a social network site, by the way – "it's a utility to help members manage their relationships, a social media platform", apparently]

Chandlee bigged not only Facebook but the social media(utility) sector generally.

Live demos of products and scary growth charts galore, but things got really interesting in the Q&A when a figure from the back mentioned the m-word – monetisation.

The banner ads on Facebook, sold through Microsoft, we know about, but Chandlee introduced a different revenue stream – targeted ads within a member's profile.

"We want to integrate ads into the conversation," he says.

He pulled up his own profile on screen, which featured a video ad for a film which had been mentioned by a friend who had added a review of the movie to her own page.

The connection is obvious – less so the return on investment for these ads, which are to be sold on a CPM basis. If a friend tells me about a great holiday they've had in New York, an ad for New York might appear.

Earlier, Chandlee mentioned that social media was changing the dynamics of search – suggesting that members are starting to ask their "social graph" for travel inspiration rather than Google.

If this trend develops, and Facebook can offer travel suppliers genuinely targeted ads, could social media sites start to steal some of search's fire?

Co-incidentally, I picked up a copy of a magazine called Brand Management just after Chandlee's session which included a Q&A with Lastminute.com's chief marketing officer Simon Thompson. "PPC annual cost inflation within the travel category is now close to outrageous," he says.

So will targeted ads within social media sites exploit concerns over the cost of PPC?

Chandlee kept referring to Facebook's 23-year-old founder Mark Zuckerburg as a visionary.

Visionary enough to threaten search's dominance on online marketing spend? Not so sure...

Martin Cowen, chief writer, Travolution

Technorati tags: facebook microsoft social network

Google blames social media

Plenty of excellent analysis across the web to Google's "disappointing" financial results.

Dan Farber and Larry Dignan on ZDNet.

Greg Sterling on SearchEngineLand.

Both go into a lot of detail about comments from chief financial officer George Reyes about the impact (or not) of social networks advertising to the bottom line.

In not so many words, the clicks on Google Adsense from the likes of MySpace are not meeting expectations.

An apparent problem with social networks, as someone put it to us a few days ago, is that users are not in "transaction mode" when they are visiting a social network - they are in "chat mode".

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: google social network

WAYN saga will run and run and run

What is it about WAYN that it seems to attract a disproportionate amount of attention in the travel industry for a site of its size?

This summarised the - unfortunately - private comments of a senior executive from the industry who I spoke to yesterday afternoon after we published the latest twist in the AOL takeover non-story.

I suspect he meant "size" with regards to its commecial elements, because it does have rather a few users.

But it's a good and valid point to make because the WAYN travel community has come from nowhere to be hailed by some as the best travel social network on the web.

So is it justified?

We will leave that to consumers to decide, but no site seemingly comes from obscurity to become a significant player in its market (think Facebook, Flickr) without something decent to offer users.

From an industry perspective, what WAYN does have is two young and obviously bright frontmen who have ploughed the conference circuit over the past 18 months, spreading the word about the site.

In the meantime the team has certainly done a remarkable job of attracting commerical partners to the site (Lastminute.com, Isango for starters).

It hasn't all been plain sailing. This time last year WAYN was seeing traffic levels take a worrying turn southwards - something which probably didn't exactly encourage its suite of new investors.

But rather than attempt a sale then, when it could have made a fair few quid for its creators and staff, WAYN pretty much admitted that its original subscription model was not reaching initial expectations and axed it, apart from a few key services.

So rather than try something else, WAYN has had another go.

The company certainly has its detractors. Travolution received a string of mystery emails last spring from someone slamming the industry for fawning over WAYN and questioning - with some interesting analysis - its chances of success.

However, as another senior figure said recently: "Their determination to get the WAYN thing right impresses people in an industry which sometimes gives up too easily."

Perhaps that is the difference? In the travel industry there is a certain 'wow factor' about WAYN - in new media circles, far less so.

WAYN certainly has its work cut out in the coming months. There are sites emerging in the US which will absolutely give it a run for its money - and Facebook is not going away.

So - as we revealed - AOL was not one of the companies which has come looking in recent months, but others are clearly interested.

For that reason, and because it has a tendency to do the unexpected (in comparison to others in the travel sector in the UK at least), we suspect WAYN will continue to get a fair amount of attention in the industry.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: wayn aol facebook
social network

Say Hello to new ways of meeting

Our latest column for Travel Weekly, with some more predictions:

The travel industry has finally accepted its fate: that it needs to embrace as many distribution channels as possible to reach the modern consumer.

This shift in thinking will be put into practice by many travel companies in 2008, with equal emphasis given to offline and online interaction.

But what else can we expect this year?

Expedia’s announcement in November last year that it would adopt what it calls a “media model” (cost-per-click for referrals) for its partnership with the InterContinental Hotel Group set tongues wagging across the online sector.

Not only did it signal the return of IHG to Expedia after a high-profile bust-up in 2004, but it triggered discussions about how the online travel agency model will develop.

The industry is divided as to the logic behind Expedia’s decision to effectively become a metasearch engine for that particular client.

Rival OTAs and suppliers will be watching this relationship closely – and expect an escalation of the model by Expedia to others if it works.

A significant change to the OTA business model has repercussions throughout the online travel industry.

Meanwhile, this year should also see whether the (often wild) enthusiasm for social networks by consumers is going to stay or simply disappear before you can say “MyTravel, remember that?”.

If social networks continue to grow then it is critical travel companies try to reach consumers in these new channels.

With only 300 or so travel-related applications on Facebook, for example, including TripAdvisor, Sidestep and, more recently, Youtravel, there is certainly plenty of room still for innovation.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Predictions from around the web

Ahead of our own crystal ball gazing post (currently being written), check out the predictions from the Travolution RSS reader.

Guardian's John Naughton - Internet's own 9/11.

Drama 2.0 - The lighter side of the tech world.

Mashable's Adam Ostrow - News Corp to sell MySpace. Mobile social networking. Blogs become acquisition targets. Facebook goes truly mainstream. Start-up consolidation. Microsoft buys Yahoo. Email lives.

Mashable's Mark Hopkins - Battle between apps. Intellectual property. Rise of Green Tech. No bubble bursts.

ZDNet's Dana Blankenhorn & Paula Rooney - Battle for the network.

Computerworld's Stacy Collett - Google in 2008.

Struan & Associates Tourism Destination Crisis's David Beirman - Gulf states growth. Eco tourism. Eastern Europe. Stopover in Asia.

ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley - Microsoft in 2008.

Guardian Travel Section - Destinations aplenty.

We will add more as they come in during the next few days.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Where I've Been first of many on Bebo

A fair bit of hullabaloo yesterday about Bebo's announcement to allow third party applications.

These ranged from:

Bebo embraces Facebook [Techcrunch]
Bebo snubs Google [Techcrunch]
Nielsen's top ten social networks: Where's Bebo [Mashable]

We've got an interesting angle - Where I've Been will be the first travel app - on the main announcement.

If the Bebo application platform is a "clone" of the Facebook one we can probably expect many more travel-related tools to launch on Bebo in the coming months.

[Recent post about the most popular travel apps on Facebook]

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: bebo facebook opensocial

Bebo will its open doors to applications

We've heard in recent days and Mashable has announced that social networking site Bebo will follow in the path of bitter rival Facebook and open its platform to third party applications.

Developers are being invited to an event in San Francisco, California, this afternoon (GMT) where they will be told who are the first partners and how the system will work.

You can almost feel that a travel-related app will be on that inital list, such is the synergy between social networks and travel experiences.

The debate Mashable is focusing on surrounds whether Bebo will use the new Google OpenSocial system or develop one of its own.

We will update if anything concrete about travel comes out of the event in SF.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: bebo opensocial san francisco