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

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

Rubbish link baiting - legalilities ahead?

Someone left some comments on New Year's Eve against two posts.

After looking at the source - which the commenter provided - and some links in the text, because the comments were poor and off-message, it turns out that a string of blogs have been created using existing travel company brand names.

There is, some might argue, nothing wrong with that. But the blogs are not content-driven and exist only to scrape some revenue out of Google AdWords.

The same person/organisation, it appears, has created the following blogs:

BestAtTravel.Blogspot.com [which has nothing to do with BestAtTravel]
DialAFlight.Blogspot.com [ditto Dial-A-Flight]
Travel-Republic.Blogspot.com [ditto TravelRepublic]
Travel-Supermarket.Blogspot [ditto TravelSupermarket]

It beggars belief that these make any money from AdWords, so what's the point?

Well it also looks like someone holds a bit of a grudge at least against one of the companies.

In a post (one of two) on the BestAtTravel blog, there is a link to a "blog" about BestAtTravel's co-founder, Rita Sharma, which many would conclude has been created by the same source.

The content is not very complimentary - and a decent lawyer would have a reasonably good chance of bringing about a libel case against the content owner.

All very messy and unhelpful.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

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

We will fight them on the beaches - well, not our beaches

The British are full of the "bulldog spirit", apparently - something the tabloid newspapers are forever reminding their readers when 1) England football team loses again on penalties or 2) two inches of snow falls overnight and plucky Brits have to use their initiative.

And so, unsurprisingly, travel companies have been quick to show the "resilience" of the British people following the terrorist incidents in London and Glasgow last week.

TravelRepublic put out a press release yesterday claiming the past seven days - since the attacks - has actually been the best in the company's four-year history.

In fact, on the day of the attack on Glasgow airport, bookings were up almost 22% on the previous Saturday.

[TravelRepublic is celebrating moving up the Hitwise rankings in recent months anyway]

Meanwhile over at Cheapflights, chief executive David Soskin reckons British consumers are defying the "doctors of death" in their droves.

The price comparison site has seen a 33% increase year-on-year for the first four days of July.

Strange how neither company mentioned the appalling weather to have inflicted the UK in recent weeks.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Technorati tags: cheapflights terrorist glasgow bomb

Web design tips #1 - Beware of automatic copy placement

Trawling the top 20 UK travel websites last night - as you do on a chilly January evening - and suddenly came across the country pages in the hotel section of Travelrepublic.

Some relatively subtle signage on the pages. However, will double-check, of course, but surely Switzerland and Laos are both land-locked...


Kevin May, editor, Travolution