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

New Skyscanner site in Beta

Check it out the new Skyscanner website. Explanation of features.

Results page:

Route map:

Busy week in meta search land.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: skyscanner

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

Travolution Summit - panel videos!

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

The Search Gap

Some good insight from Gareth Williams of Skyscanner on what's wrong with search in the travel sector.

What Williams terms as the 'gap' in search appears when you enter something like a flight number and what you get back is nonsense.

It is a problem that needs solving and is something that is holding the industry back.

"Travel desperately needs a solution to getting flight information and a number of other areas . One of the reasons that search gap exists is search technology for travel is really difficult. It lags behind other sectors," said Williams.

He goes on to say that if Google solves the problem there is the incentive of huge margins and it will make for a more efficient experience for consumers.

Over the course of today's Travolution conference we have heard a lot about different sectors of the industry taking each other on - kayak attacking tripadvisor and google - and now it seems Skyscanner is gearing up to also take on Google with its answer to much improved flight information.

Meanwhile, we have Thomson Holidays considering less reliance on the search giant.

It's that recurring theme of what do we do about Google?

Linda Fox, lead reporter, Travolution

PhoCusWright@ITB 08 - Meta search share the love

Now here's an idea:

When asked about whether meta search engines would ever charge users for extra services (such as subscriptions) or for the information they provide, a panel of meta execs shrugged their shoulders.

But then Gareth Williams of SkyScanner suggested something much more interesting:

Give half of the clicking revenue back to users.

Nice!

NB: Trivago is doing this already through a clever membership scheme.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Finding transparency in search

There’s a big difference between talking about ‘ improved conversion rates’ in a press release and using the same phrase in a regulatory filing. So when moneysupermarket group plc tells the London Stock Exchange that its travel vertical has improved revenue per visitor as well as revenue per transaction in 2007, the OTAs need to look at numbers as closely as travelsupermarket’s direct competitors.

Travelsupermarket.com’s 2007 numbers show big increases across its metrical board;

• visitors 37m (06: 19.7m)
• transactions 30.6m (06: 17.2m)
• click-based revenues £13.6m (06: £6.8m)
• total revenues £15m (06: £7.5m)
• revenue per visitor £0.41 (06: £0.34)
• revenue per transaction £0.43 (06: £0.40)

Looks like the millions of pounds put into TV advertising is working then! Analysts were shown a slide based on a ‘custom defined Hitwise report’ which ranked travelsupermarket as the UK’s most visited travel comparison web site in January – the key month for bookings in the UK.

So travelsupermarket.com seems in quite good shape for its new MD. Travolution Towers has learnt that there is a shortlist of three – former travel supremo Chris Nixon is overseeing the hunt and said he wanted someone with international experience at senior level. Travel or search experience – watch this space.

And what about the travel search generally? Kayak’s takeover of Sidestep at the back-end of last year showed the sector has legs when commentator such as Henry Harteveldt at Forrester pointed out that, in the US at least, travel search's market share was holding steady at 12-15% of the online travel sector.

Kayak.com had 5.72% of the UK market in Jan08, according to travelsupermarket’s Hitwise report. Sidestep, bless, had 0.94%. Kayak remember raised $196m as part of the SideStep takeover: Mobissimo is lurking with its revamped intuitive and customisable engine. SkyScanner – 11.34% of the UK market in Jan - picked up some funding of its own in November.

And with the market leader in Europe’s biggest online travel market confirming improved conversion rates and hikes in visitors and revenue per visitor, 2008 could be the year when travel search finds itself.

Martin Cowen, chief writer, Travolution

The travel conference of the year!

Big day today. We are officially launching our Travolution European Summit 2008, produced in association with PhoCusWright.

We have started assembling what we believe will be the best line-up of participants from the online travel industry you are likely to find anywhere in the UK in 2007.

Confirmed so far:

• Caroline Cartellieri, Expedia UK (managing director)
• Graham Donoghue, TUI UK (new media director)
• Steve Hafner, Kayak (chief executive)
• Adam Healy, VibeAgent (chief executive)
• Brent Hoberman, Mydeco.com (executive chairman)
• Chris Lee, Barclays Commercial Bank (head of travel sector)
• Yen Lee, Kango (president)
• James Lohan, Mr and Mrs Smith (managing director)
• Ian McCaig, Lastminute.com (chief executive)
• Chris Nixon, Travelsupermarket.com (acting managing director)
• Andrew Owen Jones, Amadeus (director, travel distribution solutions)
• Jeff Revoy, Yahoo (Europe vice president, search and social media)
• David Soskin, Cheapflights (chief executive)
• Robert Torres, Google (managing director, travel advertising and marketing– North America)
• Gareth Williams, Skyscanner (chief executive)
• Philip Wolf, PhoCusWright (president and chief executive)

More names will be added in the coming weeks.

Delegates places, more information, programme, and the rest, available from the conference website.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Who will be the next outsider to make a bold move in travel?

our latest column in Travel Weekly:

For much of its history, the fate of the industry was guided by those who lived and breathed ‘travel’ for most of their professional careers.

An ambitious rep or counter clerk in an agency could rise through the ranks of a company or sector to become a key figure in shaping how the business developed.

Relationships – for ours is, perhaps more than any other, a ‘people’ industry – were an important catalyst in securing deals.

This is still the case, of course, but the web has enabled people with no previous interest or experience in the travel industry to swoop in with a big idea and make a success of it.

This is good news for the existing travel industry. Competition from outsiders with a fresh prospective can only be a positive thing.

In the past few years a number of supposed outsiders have made their mark on the web in a big way.

Travelsupermarket.com, Skyscanner.net and WAYN.com, for example, are all led by people with little or no experience in running travel businesses – but are doing an excellent job.

And, lest we forget, Expedia was created pretty much as a side project by that well known tech firm Microsoft.

The point to all this is that disruptive influences from outside the normal confines of a sector should be watched carefully, rather than shunned as ‘not one of us’ or ignored.

Something we are often asked is what outsiders are likely to emerge as big players within the travel industry in the coming months or years.

This is difficult to determine, such is the pace at which this industry develops, but from personal experience, there is one organisation we at Travolution feel has the opportunity to make a huge impact.

After spending countless hours browsing the web last June trying to find a holiday, Family May settled on one from a rather unlikely source.

Watch out for eBay.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Publicity shot of the year #1

Okay, so promotional photography is - come on, admit it - rather dull, more often than not featuring politicians standing by a new building (the local mayor planting a rose, sticks in my mind from local press days) or staff grouped together in a boring office.

Perhaps it is the excitement of a fresh injection of funds at Skyscanner, but founders Gareth Williams, Bonamy Grimes and Barry Smith have taken a different approach to producing the company snap.


Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: skyscanner flight search

The future for Kelkoo - the black sheep of meta search

The Financial Times today reports Yahoo! is considering its options over price comparison site Kelkoo.

[Full report here - will need subscription in a few days]

This is a bit of a funny one as, in terms of travel, Kelkoo almost feels like the outsider these days.

Talk to anyone in the travel search/price comparison arena and Kelkoo barely warrants a mention.

There is always plenty of back-slapping between the likes of TravelSupermarket, Kayak, Sidestep, Skyscanner, even Cheapflights - but when was the last time anyone heard Kelkoo mentioned in the same breath.

Mind you, it has managed to achieve the Holy Grail of travel search: apparently securing a relationship with Expedia, although Travelsupermarket works with on some car hire products.

One suspects this story is going to develop...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: kelkoo yahoo meta search price comparison

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

Web advice in the Guardian

The Guardian newspaper got in touch last week, asking us to contribute to its Top Tips 2007 feature for the following Saturday.

Happy to oblige, of course.

Travolution joined the likes of one our advisory board members Graham Donoghue (TUI), alongside Sabrina Wolfe (Cheapflights) and Barry Smith (Skyscanner) to produce a list of tips for readers surfing the web for holidays.

Our own little nugget of advice:

"Desktop pingers help you keep up with offers and fares from online travel agents and don't clog up your inbox. Expedia.com's Fare Alert tool notifies users when a particular price for a route becomes available. STA Travel's Skinker lets you know when fares, blogs and podcasts are updated."

Read the full article here.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution