Directline Holidays are using Twitter in a far better way

The lastminute.com-twitter debate is still rumbling on.

And it seems the floodgates are beginning to open.

This morning we have had two new followers to the Travolution Twitter account - Devon Hotels and Directline Holidays.

Devon Hotels is using the service very much like lastminute.com, plugging deals etc.

But Directline Holidays appears to using it in a different way, throwing random thoughts about travel into the ether.

The only problem they have, and need to rectify soon, is that the last update was March this year!

So based on the Twitter idea of responding to the question "What are you doing?", some might construe that the only answer from Directline over the past few months was "not a lot"!

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: twitter

Lastminute.com has a 'social media press office'

Okay, this is an industry first, of sorts.

Or maybe that's just because of its confusing title.

The pink'uns have created a blog on the blogspot platform to run alongside the Lastminute.com Twitter activity and, one suspects, a whole host of other Web 2.0-esque marketing activities.

The Lastminute.com Social Media Press Office is - by the looks of things - another outlet for offers - but perhaps we'll see some commentary, too, on industry issues, seeing as it's a blog and all that.

[Thankfully the background is not as garish as its Twitter page!]

Maybe this will go some way to appeasing the recent moans and groans from Travel Rants to have more involvement from travel companies in blogging.

Probably not.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Do I want to follow lastminute.com on Twitter?

Travolution is currently followed by over 200 people on Twitter - the micro-blogging service and on-off darling of Silicon Valley.

[Follow Travolution]

Our latest fan is everyone's favoruite pink online travel agency, lastminute.com. The email arrived earlier today:


The OTA joined the service earlier this week, according to the updates list on the lastminute.com Twitter page.

This is the first UK OTA we have found to be actively using Twitter as a brand. There are plenty of individuals from travel companies using Twitter.

Anyway, inevitably, lastminute.com is using Twitter to flog, er, lastminute deals - five in one day this week.

It also has a decidedly garish screen!



So the question is this: do I want to follow lastminute.com - and have its updates getting in the way of other, perhaps more personally relevant people I'm following - if it is just going to serve deals to into Twitterland?

I can see why they are doing it - just not sure if I want it.

What do you all think?

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: twitter lastminute

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

Dead lastminute.com - the full(ish) story

So last Friday we revealed how lastminute.com and a string of sister sites had seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth.

It actually turned out to be a pretty serious problem, as our story today indicates.

The sites - including Medhotels, Holiday Autos and Travelocity.co.uk, as well as the Tesco.com white label - remained offline until 2am on Saturday morning, over ten hours after the "power outage" at IT supplier Colt took place.

We have only limited information about the circumstances surrounding the problem but questions will certainly be asked of Colt, no doubt about it.

Some might translate "we're working with our provider Colt to ensure this doesn't happen again", to actually be code for "we're going tear strips off these guys after our sites went dark for over 10 hours on one of the busiest days of the year!" - but probably not.

Anyway, it's a tricky area to analyse as it is completely impossible to monitor every travel site on the web to gauge how often something like this happens.

It was only good fortune that we saw the dead LM last Friday afternoon and stuck around until the wee hours of the following morning to see when it returned. We actually gave up at 1am and went to bed!

So, how common is the problem? What do travel companies do in a situation like this? Apart from panic.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Good news and bad news for lastminute.com

While trying to check out if lastminute.com is matching its rivals Expedia and ebookers with our quest to find cheap as chips fares to Los Angeles in November, we came across this:

[Click on the picture to enlarge]


The message reads:

The good news is that our fantastic offers are proving so damn seductive, that it seems that everybody is trying to get a piece of the lastminute.com action. The bad news is that we've had to give our site a chance get its breath back (in a manner of speaking).

So that's alright, then.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: lastminute

Travel in the BB House

Any Big Brother fans out there?

No, I thought as much but to get over the boredom of another series we thought we could come up with a fantasy travel big brother house.

Where? How about the Aphrodite Hills Resort in Cyprus - we hear there might be a few travel people out there quite soon for some conference thingy.

And, besides the travel industry loves a lock-in.

We need some glamour so let's have Ian McCaig of lastminute and Steve Endacott of the On Holiday Group.

We also need someone for them to have a fight with so that it makes interesting viewing so that means the entire Google travel team!

A US contingent would also add some colour if Kayak's Steve Kafner could make himself available or maybe Bill Gates.

Failing that we could organise a live satellite link-up.

But, what would they talk about all day, who would do the cooking and more importantly who would be evicted first?

Suggestions please and feel free to add to the fantasy BB travel team, some female company could even things out a bit.

Linda Fox, lead reporter, Travolution

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

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

Travolution Summit - panel videos!

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

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

Friday competition - Spot the difference

An outrageously cynical member of the industry emails to suggest the creatives at Lastminute.com (or its ad agency) might not be as innovative as people think.

Many of you will recall the video we posted yesterday of the pink'un's "first" viral TV ad.

The similarities between it and this effort earlier this year by ImprovEverywhere are purely coincidental, of course.



Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: improveverywhere lastminute viral ad

Sing when you're winning

Apparently this is Lastminute.com's first viral ad, according to Brand Republic.



Although, of course, there is this ad from a few years back, which just happened to find its way onto YouTube after never seeing the light of day in the real world of TV advertising.

Had viral written all over it...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: lastminute youtube

More twists and turns in Google saga

Google is protecting its position - in the face of legal threats from travel companies against it and between one another.

A short but very interesting statement we obtained this morning speaks volumes.

Information from Thomas Cook [contained in the same article] revealed that it is also attempting to crack down on activity against its brand name and those of its myriad of subsidaries.

The issue is such a hot one that a bit of keyword analysis at our end has shown that upstream search traffic to the main Travolution website is being boosted by a number of phrases such as "google trademark travel", "google brand name travel" and - astonishingly - "google PPC travel".

There are many senior figures who are preparing to dig in for a major battle with either Google or rival travel companies. This will run and run...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Quotoid #12

Lastminute CEO Ian McCaig is still feeling a little upset despite an hour of therapy at lunchtime he tells us.

"I don't know if there is anyone from Google left in the room but it's lastminute.com from a trademark perspective. Sorry, I know that's cheap, well, certainly cheaper than protecting my trademark on Google."

That pesky trademark issue!

It seems that Google trademark issue that is creating heartache this side of the pond went down smoothly when it happened in the US four years ago.

Or, so Google's Rob Torries would have us believe!

He plays it down massively and even invites us to talk to some of the big brands in the US to see how it worked out for them.

And, yet he warns of big change for everyone.

Lastminute's chief executive Ian McCaig makes an emotional plea for some explanation of the move.

"There is an awful lot of disappointment, hurt and pain - not only in what you are doing but how it has been done."

McCaig predicts it will cost his business a seven figure sum in Euros a year!

Addressing Torres, McCaig says: "Your own trademark you defend with passion and vigour so we feel a strong compulsion to do the same."

And, Torres reponse is that he 'hopes' it won't cost as much as that and that it's all about relevancy and getting rid of the rogue ads that clutter the service.

Linda Fox, lead reporter, Travolution

Trousers are pulled a little too high

Or so it says in a pretty good profile interview of Simon Cowell Brent Hoberman, founder of Lastminute.com.

Read the interview on the Guardian website.

Anyone intrigued to see whether the trouser reference is just cheap journalistic licence to add colour to a feature piece or, in fact, embarrasingly true, can find out at the Travolution Summit in April.

[See, a rather cheap plug from us for our conference]

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Thomson's magic 500

That's actually 500% more money channelled into online advertising (display) in 2007 than in the previous 12 months.

The figures from Nielsen Media Research [here on Brand Republic - registration required] reveal Thomson spent £4.6 million in 2007, a figure which accounts for 26% of its overall adspend and puts it in 17th position overall in the UK.

[Obviously PPC keyword spend is not included in any of these figures]

Other travel firms featuring in the top 100 UK spenders include:

• 32: British Airways - £2.7 million - up 47% (9% of total)
• 40: Expedia - £2.1 million - up 53% (14% of total)
• 52: Travelzoo - £1.6 million - up 662% (100% of total)
• 54: Lastminute.com - £1.6 million - up 124% (26% of total)
• 73: P&O Ferries - £1.2 million - up 88% (34% of total)
• 76: MyTravel - £1.2 million - up 279% (30% of total)
• 87: EasyGroup - £1.1 million - up 2000% (98% of total) Yes, up 2000%
• 88: Eurotunnel - £1 million - up 26% (52% of total)
• 95: Hotels.com - £992K - down 20% (26% of total)

The overall highest spenders in the UK are Personal Loan Express (£28.5 million), Ebay (£19.8 million) and BSkyB (£15.8 million).

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: marketing adpsend

Ouch! Airline Network ignores ad watchdog. Gets slammed.

Airline Network has received a firm wrap across the knuckles by the Advertising Standards Authority this morning after it ignored a request for information about an apparent mis-leading ad.

Lastminute.com made the complaint to the ASA after an email blast from Airline Network to promote long-haul fares.

The ASA asked Airline Network to explain. The Airline Network didn't respond. The ASA didn't like that one little bit.

The full - subsequently upheld - citation.

This last line in the citation should be of particular concern to Airline Network.

We asked CAP to inform its media members of the problem with Airline Network.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: airline network lastminute ASA advertising watchdog