Tracking Tourism: The Tourism Research Blog Archive for the ‘Conference learnings’ Category

First let’s get the confession over with

Sorry readers, we’ve been bad, bad bloggers.  Santa is very disappointed in us.

If there is one rule to all this it is “post regularly”. We’ve often advised people asking us about blogging to find a post frequency that works for you and stick with it through thick and thin. And we followed our own advice for over 2 years and 140K words without so much as a waiver.

But things got complicated.

Online communication channels multiplied, devices multiplied, demands on our time multiplied as our business expanded.  Newsletters became blogs became Facebook became syndicated through the T List became YouTube became Twitter – hence the posting break since July.

Some catching of breath and evaluation of Tracking Tourism was required.  An updated online and social media strategy was required too.  And that is a whole other post…..

But a recent visit to EyeForTravel’s Travel Technology Summit at World Travel Market, London has helped rekindle my mojo.

More specifically, it was a privilege and a pleasure to join with others in the travel industry in tackling:

•  online booking process optimization

•  the mobile web

….and at last the combination of both!

Hooray, mobile and transactions in the same breath…

Yes indeed what excited me most was hearing major organisations like Lufthansa reporting that they are starting to see customers transacting in a pretty normal way on their mobile phones. Normal in the sense that it is not just for “last minute” flights, or business travel, but for price sensitive dates 6 months in advance.

I know I’ve said it before – ignore mobile at your peril. But there has been great excitement before about mobile that has supposedly failed to deliver on its promise. But I strongly believe we’re at a tipping point – certainly for travel and tourism. According to Nielsen, in the UK market the number of people browsing the web on mobile increased 32 per cent between Q2 and Q3 to 10.4 million, with over four million people downloading apps to their handset.

Crikey, even a phone Neanderthal like me has a shiny new wi-fi hopping, app downloading piece of super kit (sorry iPhone lovers, like the bulk of UK smartphone buyers in Q3, I stuck with Blackberry).

UK smartphone ownership jumped 10% between Q2 and Q3 of 2009 and 1 in 7 Britons now own a smartphone. Expect that growth to soar in the coming months, along with a corresponding growth in serious mobile web usage.

Interestingly, Eye For Travel Research report that while mobile browsing is experiencing rapid growth, travel services (apps) access is not growing at the same rate – which means prioritizing mobile site development and simplified “on the move” mobile site processes.

And I have to say, once you have a lovely wi-fi enabled smartphone in your hands it makes complete sense as a consumer that your phone is just another browser into the web. The screen is a bit smaller, your expectations initially somewhat lower perhaps, but ultimately it is just a dinkier version of my already dinky netbook – and it is location aware. It has rapidly become my expectation that I can engage with any business I like this way.

The Lufthansa example

Speaking at Eye For Travel, Stefanie Heucke, Mobile Services Manager at Lufthansa explained that it was this kind of customer demand that drove their investments in their mobile portal and mobile boarding pass technologies. As evolving technology was providing customers with the devices, so evolving customers demands and expectations grew that airlines would let them better use that technology to more easily meet their needs.

The mobile boarding passes that Lufthansa have introduced have been a huge hit and delivered costs savings – and they have had a viral marketing impact. People see other people using mobile boarding passes and they want to be able to access the technology themselves. They’re currently issuing 120,000 mobile boarding passes per month.

To put the importance in context, in this year alone Lufthansa have moved from an 80/20 web/mobile split of boarding pass traffic to a 60/40 web/mobile spilt– not far from the predicted 50/50 PC/mobile that we reported is predicted to occur by 2012 a while back!

Their mobile portal only contains content you may need to access whilst on the go, including a quick check-in process (the most used feature) and a 6 step mobile booking process that is leaner than on the main site. There are also demo processes you can use on your phone (highly used) so you can see if your phone can handle mobile boarding passes etc and you can lose your fear of using your phone to book and check in.

The results they are seeing is that people are booking travel and it is not just for tomorrow, they’re booking far in advance, but choosing to do so while they’re on the go. It was an unexpected finding for Lufthansa – and they suspect that because the travel industry has just assumed people don’t advance book on their phones, they haven’t made it possible to do so.

“apps were hip but it is mobile sites where the value lies”  Lufthansa

Once Lufthansa’s new portal made it easy to book fullstop, the result was significantly more ticket sales across the board. They doubled ticket sales in a one week by offering price selection for the first time – and discovered it isn’t just business travelers and frequent fliers booking on their mobile.

So many thanks Stefanie for demonstrating how demonstrable savings and revenue earnings are starting to come though the mobile channel.  For more of Lufthansa’s step by step mobile  recommendations, see Eye For Travel’s mobile report, which remains free (with registration) until Christmas 09.

Conversions, ROI, attributions, analytics to drive and save revenue – more music to my ears

The other Tracking Tourism mojo rekindling aspect of the event was the great big unabashed focus on ROI and attributing marketing results.

When I was originally invited to speak at the Travel Technology Summit at World Travel Market, I was really pleased to discover that not only did they have virtually an entire day dedicated to analytics and measurement but I was going to have the opportunity to get specific (along with colleagues from Expedia and Hertz) about the nitty gritty of using analytics to improve conversion in the booking process.  This is so critical because it is where analytics can have the most dramatic impact on the bottom line – by identifying where the opportunities to make more revenue or stop haemorrhaging sales lie.

My follow up post, next week, will dive into this.

Getting better insight into your online marketing campaigns and why this matters

OK, I’m guessing that many of you already know which websites send you what kind of traffic.  I don’t just mean whether search engines send 60% of your traffic but also what other sites are sending you that other 40% of visits.   Such as press mentions, local directories, online articles, blogs that mention you etc.

But if this is all you know, then you could still work your data a lot harder – with the ultimate goal of less spend, more results.  With a little bit of web analytics customisation to your campaign activity, you could be able to answer questions like:

• Which paid button on XYZ page gets me more traffic – the one in the section about golf or the one in the section about fishing?
• Do either of these buttons lead to more people booking than the free text link also on that site or the direct email I sent to my newsletter subscribers?
• Is the banner ad I ran on the front page of a directory three months ago more successful than the one I am running there at the moment?
• I’ve been pushing a special offer to my email list and online – what’s the value of each approach?

What we are doing here is moving from just tracking generic sites and marketing efforts as a whole, to tracking specific Campaigns.  To do this you need Goals.  And for a travel and tourism company wanting to maximise their return on investment in today’s climate, this is a vital step forward.

So,  if you cannot yet answer questions like those above about your site, then you need to look at some form of campaign returns analysis.   This involves campaign link tracking, setting specific goals within your web analytics tool and pulling results together in a way that factors in cost.  This is something you can do easily through most web analytics packages and a simple Excel spreadsheet.

Tracking Campaigns – an example.

Imagine that you run a hotel in Scotland and you decided to place an advert with a link on the front page of a  site like http://www.extramilescotland.co.uk/ to link to a great deal you have for golfers. In addition you also want an advert on the same page linking to a great deal for anglers. Just looking at your traffic sources in your Google Analytics data will not let you tell these adverts apart.   One of them may have worked, one may be a complete waste of money.

And, at the same time, you decide to email your past fishing customers telling them about a deal with a link to your site and you do the same for the golf customers.   It is starting to get really difficult to isolate precisely which of your activities are moving the needle.

BUT – there is a way round this.  Just a little tweaking of the names you give those links, you can tell all your ads apart without needing to do anything to your website.

Not only that, once you tweaked that URL, you would start to get really detailed marketing effectiveness information that would tell you a lot more than just where the visitor came from.  This is the wonderful world of campaign tagging (OK, not really that exciting – but so very useful!)  The “how to do this” is spelled out further down the post.

By identifying how people responded to different promotions, you can start to take control of what’s working for you.

But you need to take just a few more steps to start to make this really really powerful stuff.  You need to define what success is for you. You need to define what you want you visitors to do.  You need to define your Goals.

Campaigns + Goals = now analytics gets actionable

As Vicky argued in a previous post,

“online success is not about how many people come to your site in total, its about those people that come to your site and then do what you want them to do (or not!).”

In other words, you need goals.

Let’s revisit that example above and, had we tracked each different campaign correctly, we might get some figures like those shown in the table below:

The table above shows us

• The number of visitors to the site each type of campaign attracted,
• How many completed goals can be attributed to those visitors attracted by the particular campaign,
• What percentage of visitors per campaign achieved the goal.

If you did not have a goal defined, then you would simply know that more people came to your site but you would have little understanding of how they behaved.  It would be a bit like advertising a shop opening but not bothering to record what your customers bought – or if indeed they even bought anything at all.

Put simply, Goals allow you to assess how successful you are at getting your customers to do something you want them to do.  And some campaigns will be more successful at getting them to do that special something than others.  In the example above, we can see that the ‘golf email’ link was the campaign that was the most successful in getting customers to do what you wanted them to do.

A goal can be anything from a sale through to anything other tangible action you want a visitor to do on your site – for example, a brochure download or visiting the directions page.

But if you do sell (or make reservations) through your site, then we can take the final steps and start to measure very exactly what these different campaigns did for your bottom line.  If we assume that your site is ecommerce enabled, then the table above could start to look something like this:

And what could we conclude from these (fictitious) figures?

• A lower percentage of ‘fishing banner’ visitors’ complete their goal (’make a sale’ in this example) than ‘golf banner’ visitors – but the ‘fishing banner’ visitors spend more when they do get to the site.  The activity cost more than the email activity, but it paid for itself.
• The emails in both cases got more people to convert than the banner ads for the same interest area – but the revenue from them was much lower (perhaps the emails drove more last minute cheap deals than the high margin banner ads).
• Despite the lower revenue generated by the fishing email, it represents a superior return on marketing investment to the fishing banner ad because of its low cost.  It was a quick win and by no means a worthless activity!
• But look at the golf banner – in this instance our marketer spent £500 yet only acquired revenues of £300.  The activity had a negative return and doesn’t justify being continued.

Note that not all analytics packages will automatically calculate a Return on Investment or a Cost of Activity figure for you (Google Analytics does for adWords but not for customized links). Even if your package  doesn’t, it’s pretty easy to work this out from your data.  You simply need to paste it into a an Excel spreadsheet, and if you’re interested, the ROI formula we’re using here is:

(Revenue from marketing activity – Cost of marketing activity) / Cost of marketing activity.

So what?

When you only have a finite online marketing budget, you need to know whether you are spending it wisely.  Thinking in terms of campaigns,  goals and campaign returns allows you to work out exactly what is and what isn’t working for you.  It identifies whether marketing in Directory A is better than Directory B.  It enables you to work out whether emailed customers (for example) are more likely to buy or complete a goal with you than visitors coming via other sources.

This is giving you near-real time information about how successful your marketing is.

The technical bit – how it’s done

Although I am aware that there are a wealth of analytics products out there, Google Analytics is the most commonly used at the moment and so this section uses this tool as the building block.  The process would be broadly similar in other packages.

Campaign tracking: Campaign tracking looks daunting to begin with but essentially it means adding a bit of code to the URL you to direct people to your site from your banner ad, text link or whatever. For Google Analytic users, there’s a useful tool here to help you out.

Setting up Goals: I can do no better than to echo Vicky’s earlier post by recommending Justin Cutroni’s article here and  his video here.

Integrating adWords and ecommerce: try Google’s intro here.

Still confused?  Well…you can always hire us to sort out the issue!

Filed by Stephen (17/06/09)

Optimizing business, not just websites – music to my ears

The eMetrics Summit is always a chance to learn directly from the best web analysts and emarketers in the world. But at this week’s Toronto eMetrics I really felt Travelocity took it to another level. Shankar Mishra, Travelocity’s Director of Enterprise Business Intelligence presented on developing an enterprise web analytics strategy.  Not reporting.  Not doing cool stuff because it is interesting.  But building a framework that relates all web metrics to business outcomes.

A framework prompted, he reckons, by a question from Travelocity’s Chief Financial Officer John Mills, of: “Where is all the money you claim to be generating?”

Travelocity and the brands they own – such as Lastminute.com and World Choice Holidays – are naturally sitting on vast quantities of data.  The web is their business, so there is a critical imperative that they are continually optimizing not just websites, but web businesses.

Shankar expressed a refreshingly strategic view of the importance of true analysis, not simply data and measurement.  Too often organizations struggle to simply measure what they have, reporting on what their tool has to offer them, not on the business essentials.  He explains:

“You need to come up with independent metrics based on the business objectives and outcomes, not the tool’s data….and a framework which relates all web metrics to business outcomes”

“Socialization” of business critical insight

Travelocity’s focus is not on what can be done with the data they have, but what they want out of that data.  The framing of the right questions, focus and clarity of goals, strategic optimization of the business – not simply the website.

I have always felt that web analytics is a subset of a wider intelligence strategy – which is perhaps why I found Shankar’s session so valuable.  My own presentation in Toronto was about moving from clues in web analytics data, through to surveying and conducting user testing with real customers, in order to understand motive and real context.

But context, insight and causality are not sitting within your analytics tool – they’re with the people inside the organisation and the cutomers you engage with.  Why Shankar blew my mind so thoroughly is he presented an enterpise level analytics strategy that factors in human nature and politics, as well as actionable measurement.

They go through a circular analytics process whereby they:

• monitor
• analyze
• prescribe
• act

It is the prescribe stage that leaps out for me.  It includes the usual testing and prototyping – but it is the “socialization” aspect that in my mind is the critical one.  It is the step almost invariably missing – the people bit.

Through “socialization” – or “the people bit” if socialization sounds a little too George Orwell for you -  they know what is and isn’t compelling to the internal folks that are affected.  They create checkpoints of who needs to be convinced and what people will really find useful.

“don’t even think about data – just figure out the question. Then start talking to people who are stakeholders, the people down the line who’ll be impacted”

Before they think about data, they examine needs, usefulness and what compromises may be required to achieve traction.  This isn’t proclaimed from above (or as is even more common, unsuccessfully attempted from the bottom up) – socialization appears to be an essential consensus building process for the success of their strategic analytics.

This is a lesson that I believe businesses of all sizes can take on board.  People typically take actions based on what other people tell them about data – not because you have the best tool set on the planet.  People take actions because other analysts and marketers tell them stories about data – in language they understand.  And because those stories have a meaning that resonates to their specific role, they will be invested in making decisions that ultimately improve the business.

Too often we look at what is interesting, or we report about web data in vocabulary that means something to us – not to finance or operations.  Shankar makes the point at the heart of their socialization process, which is that “it has to be compelling to someone else as well – and it will be more compelling if the person impacted has been involved.”

I thank Jim Sterne and the eMetrics team for an excellent conference – and I also thank Shankar at Travelocity.  It’s a great return on your time and energy to have your brain so thoroughly stimulated!  Roll on eMetrics San Jose when we get to wrestle with “how to analyse” – because, you know what, I just happen to have a few theories on that

Post by Vicky

What business are you in?

Knowing what business you are in gives you clarity of purpose.  This, in turn, gives you focus and an enhanced ability to understand and meet customer expectations.  But surely we all know what business we’re in, right?

Well, think about Domino’s Pizza for a moment.  Domino’s are not in the catering business, they’re in delivery.  Fast, fresh, reliable delivery.  Customer’s don’t call them for a slice of authentic Italy – they want big, hot pizza and they want it now.

Likewise, people don’t buy a drill because they want a drill – they want a hole.  More important still, they want a hole to make a shelf to put their son’s first football trophy on.

In the same way, people don’t visit a destination because they want a tourism experience – they want any number of things, from privacy, to exhilaration, to a convenient place to break a journey – to complete brain-switch off in the sunshine.

No, what business are you REALLY in?

A simple answer to that might be “the one you’re customers think you’re in.” What is the fix you deliver to their problem?

That might initially sound a little too simple and prescriptive – after all, it seems to suggest that you can only ever be defined by what your customers think you do now and that any strategies or messaging to alter this are doomed to failure.

So it’s probably more constructive to start to answer that question by thinking in terms of: “It’s not about me, it’s about you.”

Those of you that have an awareness of strategic marketing might recognise this in terms of ‘features and benefits’.

In other words, it’s not about whether you have, for example, 30 museums and 100 five star hotels, rather, in this example, it’s about cultural enrichment and pampering. It’s not about a list of products and services, it’s about what these mean to your visitor.

Let me explain what prompted these musings….

The first recent occasion was at a conference in Glasgow launching the Scottish customer feedback initiative.  As well as discussing feedback, there were also destination presentation highlighting approaches that could be take in marketing an area .  I was comparing my notes taken during presentations by  Santiago de Compostela and Prince Edward Island and realised that very different approaches were being taken in how they were portrayed.

Santiago de Compostela seemed to concentrate on its features to define itself of the destination whereas PEI explained how they had done research among their visitors and had then defined itself based on the benefits it had found within this research.

Undoubtedly both approaches work – visitor numbers had risen in both location.  But I had a niggling sense that Santiago de Compostela could have gone a step further as they seemed to lack a distinctive narrative or personality (although Santiago de Compostela  would undoubtedly argue that it does indeed have a personality –  that it’s a culturally vibrant place to visit).  However, While they could come across as being a place with ‘lots of things to do’, they could be just be one culturally rich European location among many.

On the other hand, PEI’s research suggested that it’s visitors thought of it as ‘a gentle island’ and to me this seems a more meaningful and human differentiator.

Or, to put it another way, one was about the products and the other was about the customer.

But in this example, I’m still not sure whether one was was superior to another. From a personal perspective Santiago de Compostela sounds more interesting (I prefer cultural tourism to relaxation) but I’m not sure that I would choose it above many other culturally rich places.

Destinations everywhere – but how many really stand out?

While there is ambiguity in the examples above there was less experienced walking round the exhibition halls at  ITB in Berlin.  The choice of destinations  could be not so much mind-blowing as mind-numbing.

The trouble was that I often struggled to think of a reason why Destination X was better than Destination Y. Golden Beaches? Check. Local Cuisine? Check. Authentic experiences? Check. Compelling reason to visit above competitor destination? Not sure…

“We are in the happiness business”

So, to return to the conference in Glasgow where the last session was delivered by Gregg Patterson who runs the The Beach Club in Santa Monica.

For me, the key sentence Gregg used in his session was “we are in the happiness business.” Others might have said, “we operate a high-value members-only hospitality facility” or “The X Group run mid-market hotels aimed at the leisure market.” And they would be right – while also missing the point of why they exist, as they would be defining themselves from a product, not a customer perspective.

They would be emphasising their features, not their benefits.

Yet it is  this recognition of the benefits from a customer perspective that allows a “different” approach  taken.  One that more intelligently communicates with customers, connects with them emotionally and identifies how best to deliver to them at a product level.

It enables you to develop strategically and tactically. In the case of PEI, the local DMO has been liaising with the local authorities to develop facilities that help deliver on the promise of being ‘a gentle island.’

At a tactical level, it has shown The Beach Club how important the ‘dignity’ of customers is. This might sound like a rather odd or old fashioned term but it means recognising the visitor as a person, not as another number.

So how do you start to understand what business you are in?

For me, the starting point would be some form of qualitative research to determine what the area/attraction actually means to your customers. What is their emotional connection? What is the narrative behind their visit?

And there are many ways to pick up this information.  For example, there is user generated content online.  What are people saying about you and how are they saying it?  What images are they posting, how are they branding you?

Also, what terms are people using to find you online? What kind of sites things are they looking at as well as your own?

And there is always the more traditional research method of  destination audits, street research and focus groups which can also really help to drill down and identify what it is that really makes your destination memorable (or infamous!).

Ultimately, whichever research methods you choose – the challenge is to see yourself as others do.  And to react to those perceptions, even if they differ from your own.

Posted by Stephen (26/03/09)

What I took from ITB Berlin Day 2 is that systematic testing and analytic pays.  Haven’t we mentioned that before on the odd occasion?

Testing pay as you go mobile ticketing

It was fascinating to learn about dBahn’s – Germany’s national rail provider – development and testing of  mobile ticketing.  They already have electronic ticketing for book ‘before you travel’ journeys.  Travellers can receive their ticket in the Form of a 2-D-Barcode via MMS (Multi Media Message). The code is scanned like an online-ticket from the telephone screen by the conductor (read more).

But dBahn are also running a highly sophisticated test of pay as you go mobile ticketing, utilising the phone as a wallet.  The ticket and payment is entirely integrated into NFC enabled mobile phones (NFC is a new, short-range wireless connectivity technology – more here).  Users get a monthly bill for travel as with their phone bill.

dBahn have integrated all public transportation between Hannover and Berlin and are using real paying customers to test the service.  If it works then in 2011/2012 it will be rolled out across Germany.  If it doesn’t – or if NFC phone adoption does not reach critical mass – they will “review strategy”, potentially walking away.  Now that’s an efficient test.

Site optimization…. more than middle or side, green or blue

One of the business case examples that most impressed me was Mr & Mrs Smith, the boutique hotel specialists focussing on romantic getaways for couples. (Check out their blog and see if you can resist spending!)

Utterly focussed on their specific target market, meticulous in understanding that market and their needs, testing and analysis seems like the oxygen their business breathes.

They are using multi-variant testing and high end web analytics (Omniture) to test and retest the critical elements of their site.  This is to ensure that every part of the site – from forms, to descriptors – are converting into business at the highest possible rate.  This is a serious approach to online optimisation – something that I fear the industry generally can often lack the knowledge, or perhaps confidence/skills to really attempt.

Every aspect of their marketing campaign activity is measured and its performance judged carefully according to tangible conversion factors such as new membership and revenue per member.  The information gleaned informs their subsequent actions and means that as a relatively small business, they can be as lean and profitable as possible.

Tamara and James, the driving force behind Mr & Mrs Smith, modestly reflected that there has been a huge amount of learning on the job, particularly in terms of developing and bringing in-house the skills they required.  But I strongly believe (well I would, wouldn’t I??) that their efforts in this area demonstrate conclusively how using data intelligently can establish a business as a real market ‘player’ and have a distinct advantage in these difficult economic times. 

And on the subject of measuring Twitter…

PhoCusWright at ITB was twittered with great aplomb (with the bloggers to thank for that I think). In fact, Twitter was used so heavily during the event to share comments and ask questions of the panels that the hashtag #ITB09 ranked as high as the 5th hottest Twitter topic of the day.  Lots of hype for the tool of the moment.

But – are your Twitterings generating results or wasting time?  Are you influencing or invisible? Well at last you can find out.

Eric Peterson has come up with a great tool  – Twitalyzer – specifically for Tracking Influence and Measuring Success in Twitter.  You can even combine your own exported data from Google Analytics with Twitalyzer.   Twitter addicts and sceptics alike should check out the Twitalyzer blog – you’ll be able to judge whether its worth your business’ attention based on hard evidence!

So what might PhoCusWright at ITB in 2010 bring?

Well I hope it will bring a lot more tangible examples like this.  Businesses using tools and technologies – not for technologies sake and not because of the hype – but to systematically improve customer experience and business profitability.  Those firms that will best emerge from these challenging conditions are those who know where to cut and where to spend – and that requires data and smart analysis.

Posted by Vicky

Opportunity, Apocalypse and Twitter

The Tracking Tourism team is currently in Berlin attending ITB and, courtesy of PhoCusWright, the conference organizers, attending the PhoCusWright@ITB conference and Bloggers Summit. All in all, a fantastic chance to meet with the great and good of travel and analyse where the industry is, where it is going and what the heck can be done about it.

And what a day one it has been – social media optimism, mobile as critical to business strategy, a new word “moxie” for the vocabulary – oh, and a dash of economic apocalypse.

We’ll have a series of posts over the next few days looking in detail at some of these themes, but we thought we would kick off with a quick report from the opening day, including the Bloggers Summit part of the conference.

Wise words from Philip C Wolf

The briefing from PhoCusWright’s CEO, Philip C Wolf, is always a highlight for me, and this year was no exception. With a self-confessed “keen sense of what’s hot and what’s not” he proclaimed 2009 as the year of 4 Ms:

• Money - not just lack of it, but also in terms of low interest rates and “bottom feeding” investors

• Media - “its all rough and tumble right now” with pay per click and user generated media really impacting travel distribution models.

• Mobile - “2009 is the year when mobile platforms become a strategic business imperative” (quote of the day in my opinion!)

• Moxie - (for readers outside of North America: verve, pep, know how and guts). The business acumen to “be comfortable swimming against the tide”

As Philip explained, it takes lots of moxie to control costs in the operating plan, while simultaneously investing in capital expenditures/innovation. For if companies only play defence then at best they may preserve their business entity – “but what if you work really hard to preserve something that is out of sync when the tide starts rising?”

Philip was careful not to dwell on bleak economic scenarios. His focus was primarily on identifying opportunity and “the big rewards for gutsy innovation”. He explained the signals of recovery that his analysts are looking out for.

The views at the ITB Convention Future Day was both more apocalyptic while actually reinforcing some of Philip’s sentiments.

You don’t even want to hear the worst case scenario…

I guess “Tourism in Times of the Global Financial Crisis” was never going to be uplifting. In the course of his introduction, Professor Max Otte, author of “The Crash Comes” managed to depress the audience into shell-shocked wide-eyedness with promises that “there are lots of bombs still to go off”, that the global banking system is technically insolvent and that in the worst case scenario of global depression “all bets are off“.

Professor Lipman of the UNWTO tried to raise spirits but somehow “as the economy goes so goes tourism” didn’t achieve the desired bounce. He did however express the goal to get tourism on the table as part of the G20 stimulus package discussions, due to its critical role in two way trade.

Some good news to be had the fact that a lot of the fundamental shifts in responding to the customer in travel have already been underway for some time. Meaning those who have already invested in understanding what the customer wants and building business models that enable them to deliver on that are in a stronger position. But as Dr Auliana Poon of Tourism Intelligence International warned:

“Customers have long memories… destinations and companies not on track with what the customer wants will fall by the wayside… customers are deciding”.

People still want to travel – I loved Dr Dieter Semnelrioth of the TUI’s analogy that “25 million Germans are sitting on their packed luggage.” But the early bird offers are not working, bookings are down – operators may move straight to last minute deals, eroding margins. As we have heard previously, customers are not trading out completely, but they are trading typically down (though it is the middle ground, 3 stars, feeling the most pain).

“Transformative” was used a little too much for comfort – the point being that there remain opportunities and that to quote Dr Poon “this recession will force us to live differently and travel differently and travel differently.” But transformative sounds kind of apocalyptic to me – after all, isn’t transformative what they said about the Black Death?

However, the themes mentioned at the PhoCusWright session earlier – particularly Moxie and Money – also made an appearance at an earlier presentation by Rolf Frietag, delivering the results of the largest worldwide travel survey in the form of the ITB World Travel Trends Report.

Put simply, if you have the guts to invest in the present climate, then there are great opportunities – construction costs and interest rates are low but you’ve got to be able to ride out a recession potentially lasting until late 2012.

I (Vicky) have lots more notes from this session, with each sound bite more depressing than the last – but for all our sakes I will handover to Stephen and the cheerier travel bloggers and their discussions on social media in tourism and travel.

The Top Social Media Trends for Travel and Tourism

The bloggers workshop sessions explored what blogging folk from within the industry believe are the top social media trends for travel and tourism.

Asked to choose a main theme for the coming year, the panelists opted for:

* More Twitter
* Better understanding how to use social media
* Increased use of social media as a PR tool
* More Twitter
* Employing a social media guy

These issues were then put before the audience to vote on what they thought of these prognostications. Despite the endorsement of Twitter from the panel, I seemed to detect a degree of skepticism in the hall and Twitter got lowest audience votes on key trends – suggesting perhaps that people feel the need to drive philosophy change and strategies, rather than simply focus on specific applications.

The discussions moved onto practical applications of social media within travel organisations. Klaus Hildebrandt reminded the audience that businesses didn’t used to be able to see how the web could deliver revenue – they finally saw that it comes with investment and effort. To get buy in to social media is to highlight the business cases, the good examples of how to add this to strategy.

Kevin May of Travolution cited the Queensland Dream Job as the perfect example of an integrated destination campaign using both traditional PR and social media marketing.

Stephen Joyce summarized the workshops with the sensible conclusion that “your customers are talking about you anyway. How are you, as leaders in your organisation, going to step into the conversation in the most meaningful way?”

However, while PhoCusWright is following a deliberate policy here of focusing on the can-do in the programming of the conference on the basis that wallowing in gloom isn’t really going to help any of us, I think there is still a world represented here at this conference that is a) frightened at what’s to come and b) has bigger fish to fry than considering the best way to use Twitter.

As a Twittersceptic (note not a Twitter-phobe!), I thought the more practical suggestions from the panel included:

• The role of mobiles will increase (more on this in a coming post)

• Using 2.0 for PR in a more savvy way and integrating this messaging with traditional forms of PR will grow

• Feedback 2.0 – tourism providers might start to listen to what their customers are saying across multiple channels.

• Context rather than content will become important – you need to get to the real info you want, not wade through interminable irrelevant guff.

• ‘We must do our homework’ – Companies must take a hard look to define what goals they want to reach, what target groups do we want to reach?

• Traditional metrics for online activity are inadequate for measuring social media.
• New metrics such as ‘volume of mentions’ will become important in judging success.

We look forward to tomorrow’s PhoCusWright@ITB09 conference.

“Tough times call for creative ideas”

There was an audible gasp at Canada eConnect a few weeks back, when Tourisme Montréal, Montréal’s destination marketing organisation, announced that they were spending their 2009 budget entirely online.

Rather than indulgent risk taking, Tourisme Montréal’s decision was the result of a reduced budget forcing tough choices – where would they get best results from a more modest spend?   It also reflects a strategic decision to target traveller motives, tap into emotions and intrigues – and do that in a very granular way that is both relevant and touches at travellers in multiple online places and in multiple formats.

“It is about interacting with the consumer….If we are choosing to be only on the web, we have to be everywhere”
Tourisme Montréal

Much of that spend will be going into online direct response, such as paid search marketing.  However 20% will be allocated to awareness/social media meaning a very different measurement and marketing environment.  Social media may involve litte in terms of media buy cost, but it certainly requires significant time to service and a new way of thinking about return on that investment.

As Carmen Ciotola, Vice President, Communication and Marketing of  Tourisme Montréal explained to the CEC audience:

“What is freaking us out the most is that the 20% will be 80% of the work”

She’s right of course, but Tourisme Montréal seem well placed to lead the way to the 100% online budget leap.  They appear to have a culture of online analytics running back to 1994 that has evolved in line with the sophistication of their efforts.

A strong focus on analytics, complete with an understanding of what is driving conversions and buzz means they are not making risky marketing decisions in the dark.  It is how they have the data and evidence base to know that their limited resources will deliver maximum results spent only online.

They may be breaking ground, but I suspect we will soon be hearing other destinations describing TV & print as “nice to do if we had the budget.”  It acknowledges the reality that travel research and purchase decisions are to a staggering degree made online.

Consumer research based on social values

Another of the reasons, at least as it seems to me, that we see a major destination from Canada tapping in so completely to social media and online marketing is that Canada has built a national strategy based on profiling and segmentation according to social values, not demographics.

One of the things that holds true online is that communities and networks of people online share common values and outlook characteristics, but may have little in common in terms of demographic factors such as age, location and income. People who share a postcode or zip code do not behave the same online.

“Brand Canada” has tried to build a solid online marketing strategy by tapping into the fact that social media allows us to tell stories and that at the heart of stories are shared experiences, personal emotions and excitement. By engaging with this, they are serving up tailored experiences that inspire action – ie conversions/a commitment to purchase – in the visitor.

Canada of course is hardly alone by trying to focus on visitor experiences and emotional factors.  Many of the DMOs and national tourism bodies I speak to are taking exactly the same approach and I have featured examples from Washington DC and several others.

But what the Canadian Tourism Commission has done is build a systematic research tool , now being rolled out across the DMOs and major tourism partners like Parks Canada (an example at the Tourism VC blog here) , that offers a new way to match visitors with experiences tailored to what they are seeking.

This Explorer Quotient tool is a method of identifying visitor needs, interests, expectations and desires based on their values about travel.  As Greg Klassen, vice-president of marketing with the Canadian Tourism Commission explains:

“The EQ model is unique to the industry in that it recognises and operates on social values, not demographics. Commonly held social values are in fact, much better indicators of consumer preferences – including travel consumption preferences – than demographics.” Read more in this DMO World interview with Greg Klassen.

The EQ model is based on a solid research foundation. Through adaptations of Environics Social Values model, the CTC can develop a user profile based on the reasons why people travel, including qualities of someone’s personality.

The CTC can then suggest Canadian experiences that are relevant to the traveller and consistent with the traveller’s EQ. The tool feeds back into segmentation activity and allows CTC to build a profile of travellers, and offer experiences, that are not just region based.

To create a profile travellers complete a 25 statement questionnaire dealing with travel habits and motivations. The tool includes an accuracy checker “does this sound like you?” Apparently 95% of EQ travellers say that the EQ groups partly or completely describe them.

Mine was certainly bang on!

Marketing activity then feeds into the visitor EQ type, presumably further building the visitor profle, and allowing for an ever more customised and granular marketing approach.

Tesco’s Clubcard meets travel?

So is it print on the bonfire and goodbye TV?

IF, and it’s a big if, you’re ready – then just possibly yes. Particularly if shrinking budgets force your hand.

But, I think a perquisite is a serious use of analytics and research to understand the visitor, their motivations and their online conversion behaviour.

Marketing must always be relevant – not to ourselves – but to the consumer. If your analytics data and your customer is telling you that online is the primary travel research and planning channel, then your customer is actually already giving you the answer to where should I spend?

The tourism and hospitality industry of Canada has been on impressive form this week and offer, I believe,  some lessons for the sector worldwide.

I started this week at the University of Guelph, one of Canada’s most prestigious Schools of Hospitality & Tourism Management.  It was a privilege to meet with and teach the next generation of industry professionals, ranging from hospitality MBAs to first year undergraduate students. In an industry where staff recruitment and retention can be so challenging, it was wonderful to observe both the job fair and alumni/student evening as well as the very practical approach to bringing the hospitality and tourism businesses together with its bright young future employees.  This is something which must surely enhance Canada’s future competitiveness as a tourism destination.

Also contributing to Canada’s strong future focus is Canada e-connect, the e-tourism strategy conference running in Toronto this week.

Hosted by the Tourism Industry Association of Canada and organised by fellow T List blogger Jaime Horwitz, I feel e-connect day one successfully delivered attendees three critical things:

1. A dose of digital reality

Not only has the world has changed -  “deal with it” – but here are some strategies to help you deal. (Strategies, note, not just tactics as is so often the case  at tourism industry events).  This was about a grown-up approach to e-tourism and emarketing – not just a bunch of cool stuff you can do, regardless of how relevant to your business and customer.  This included:

The 4 ps of digital marketing.  Because this conference was about so much more than tactics, it was interesting to hear Dr Ian Fenwick talk both accessibly and inspiringly about the shift in marketing fundamentals that lie behind digital marketing strategy.  The traditional 4ps of marketing (price, product, promotion, place) take a shifted focus in a digital environment, a theme reiterated through the day.  The principals of digital marketing, whether we’re talking mobile devices or email communications, come down to:

• Permission (opt in, easy opt out, non interruptive/invasive, frequency as agreed by customer)
• Participation  (customer participation in content creation, what the brand stands for etc)
• Particulars (collecting customer data drop by drop)
• Personalisation (relevant, timely, valuable to customer)

What I found interesting about many of the speakers in the course of the day was that they didn’t simply focus on the 2nd P – participation – and managed to avoid getting fixated on  promotion/user generated content at the cost of everything else.  Exactly the lesson I was teaching to the marketing students at the University of Guelph earlier in the week.

Message before  medium. In one of the best analogies of the day, Adam Keats of Weber Shandwick explained that when Moses chiselled out the 10 commandments from God, it wasn’t because he had some really neat stone tablets that he wanted to fill with content – it was because he had these messages to get across and the stone tablets were the best medium to hand.

He concluded by saying let’s not ask “how do I blog successfully?” but instead ask “what stories can I tell?”In both the mobile strategies session and the blogging session, it was illuminating to hear panellists say “this may not be for you.”

Likewise, in the mobile strategies session panelists urged businesses to think about what your customer does when out and about on their phone (and other mobile devices such as in car gps) – and define where in that process you can bring them extra value that is highly relevant and timely.  If you don’t deliver extra value in that customer’s personal context – then maybe you don’t need a mobile strategy.  And if of course you do, then contextual is a word you’re going to be uttering a whole lot more in future!

2. An enhanced view of customer centricity

The travelling customer was not invisible at this conference.  Instead of being entirely supply-side or product focussed, there was talk of permission, personalisation, customer centricity etc.  But it was Diane Clarkson of Forrester that really delivered a powerful reminder of the customer’s importance in her lunchtime address on delivering the valued customer’s experience in a web 2.0 world.  Because economic conditions are meaning travellers are spending less, taking fewer trips and are reducing accommodation spend (either downscaling rooms or establishments).

“Travelers don’t care that the economy is tough on you too”  Diane Clarkson, Forrester

Diane highlighted that critical to embedding the valued customer’s experience across the organisation are the principals that the customer must feel:

• Fulfilment of their needs, both in terms of the product delivery, but also their emotional expectations
• Respect – for their time, for their money, for their experience
• Communicated with – by name, authentically, personally

Right now, 3 out of 4 people do not feel valued in the email communications they receive – they are product/supplier centric, rather than centred on delivering value to the customer as an individual.  She warned that based on the evidence of their research, it was clear that the current strategies of many tourism businesses focus inwards on the company, rather than outwards on the customer.

Fortunately, the conference content offered businesses strategies to address that!

3. A clear view forward, not a glance behind in the rear view mirror

I found, judging from day one, that e-connect was suitably forward looking and pitched very appropriately.  It didn’t take the line of “you must get into web 2.0 or be left behind.”  In many ways it took for granted that businesses were already in that space, or at least wrestling with the questions provoked by the 4 new ps listed above.  Instead the conference looked intelligently ahead – based not just in terms of technologies, but more importantly in terms of customer needs, expectations and digital usage.

While not at the bleeding edge of travel innovation in the way that the PhoCusWright conference is, it nevertheless featured the thinking of those innovators and translated it into relevant terms for the mainstream Canada tourism industry, without (in my opinion) being either too basic or too backward looking. And that is critical to getting any form of innovation embedded into the wider market place.

Good job Jaime and TIAC – I think Canada is leading the way in e-tourism in so many ways.

And to give the final quote to Sean Shannon of Expedia Canada, who talked about balancing the intelligent use of information with respect for customer sensibilities:

“It’s not always what technology can do, but what you decide to do with it”.

Looking at the next big things in travel innovation and what they mean downstream.

Well, a week or so ago I was in London for World Travel Market. The following week I was supposed to be in Los Angeles as a guest of PhoCusWright for their 2008 Conference. Unfortunately, work here got in the way and so, instead of the sunny streets of Hollywood, I have been in Scotland instead.

However, from all accounts, the PhoCusWright Conference delivered its usual insight and I thought I would use this blog to highlight some posts from fellow bloggers and other online reports from the conference that caught my eye.

Before I do so, I should mention that I was fortunate to be a guest blogger at the Phocuswright Conference in Berlin earlier this year and so I’ll say a quick word about their conferences as background. For those of you who have been to one, you know what they’re like. But for those of you who haven’t and feel that the conferences that you are currently going to seem to have the same old people with the same of things to say, then I think the PCW conferences might be a nice surprise. I found the level of discussion there much higher and it struck me that this is the place to go to hear from the most senior people in the industry how the travel and tourism sector is progressing.

So, I’ll start with my impressions (second hand) of their Travel Innovation Summit which showcased before the main event solutions and innovations “that significantly impact travel planning, purchasing and trending.” The presentations can be found here and an overview (also second hand!) can be found on William Bakker of Tourism BC’s blog here.

I sense in William’s post a slight sense of being underwhelmed by what was on offer and that’s a sense I share (William, if I’ve got you wrong, let me know!). But, on reflection, I think that being underwhelmed is possibly not the appropriate description – most of the innovations are solid if unshowy examples of how people are exploring niches and looking for new opportunities. So instead of looking for something revolutionary, it is perhaps more appropriate to look at these products as evolutionary.

That said, some of the themes I picked up from the presentations were:

• Consumer interfaces are increasingly trying to become more human – think visuals (TV especially)
• User generated content continues to be key
• Aggregation also remains key – whether that’s of UGC, fare data or a combination of the two and more.
• There are niches to be explored – whether its for the smaller end of the market like Rezgo or for train travel, adventure holidays, or vacation rentals.

A first-hand overview of the ‘winners’ of the summit can be found in Jaime’s post here.

The Uptake Travel industry Blog has an excellent overview of the themes of the conference ‘proper’ here and they seem to reflect notions that I have come upon in different places on them same theme. In summary:

• Look east for new customers (’cos it’s going to get a bit grim if you just rely on your usual markets…)
• Travel is seems to be increasingly embracing TV images as part of the pre-booking experience
• Mobiles really are finally becoming more significant to travel.

Interestingly on mobiles, a session I went to at WTM recently suggested that although mobiles are rising in importance, they are not yet being used for financial transactions in the travel industry but mostly in making the process of travel less painful (more destination info, barcode check-in, that kind of thing).

So, what do I make of all this? It seems that there is a greater air of caution for obvious reasons among travel innovators at the moment. The industry seems to be still changing quickly but it it seems more of a period of organic ‘natural’ evolution rather than left-field innovations suddenly seizing centre stage.

However, despite only experiencing PhoCusWright virtually, it seems to me that the innovators are still miles ahead of many of the players in markets closer to my home in Europe (I know, I know, there are exceptions, especially in London). What this surge of innovation says to me is that, even in this dark economic period, there are people out there thinking really creatively about how technology can make customers’ experiences better.

But I fear this is a spark that is still more conspicuous by its absence than presence in many areas. Despite the low and free cost of many of these technology services, I suspect too many people in the more local tourism sector will miss out.

I think the reason for this is that without exposure to the evolving technology in the context of its creators’ objectives – such as improved user experience, improved travel research processes, better customer experience through ease of booking – the ripple-out from the source gets more and more focussed on “must have” technology for the sake of it. In other words, the its reason for being gets forgotten and it moves from something that intelligently serves the customer to something that a site feels it ought to have but isn’t too sure why.

That risks leaving local tourism businesses continuing to try to play technology catch-up in the difficult years to come, rather than understanding the fundamental customer experience issues that technology was supposed to solve.

But if Web 2.0 has meant anything, it is that the technology exists to enable us to share and learn from each other, meaning that ignorance becomes more of a personal choice rather than an enforced state of affairs. The links in the post to PhoCusWright and associated commentary mean that you can experience these innovations in context and apply their insights and attitudes to your business.

At an event as large as WTM, I find that a degree of mental fatigue can sometimes set in even to the most open-minded of souls. Yeah, I know that Country A is different from Country B in many important and significant ways and that the inhabitants of both would be very upset if I got them confused.

But the time can come when a man tires of stands offering similar offerings and needs to go in search of something else. Perhaps a walk on the wild side.

So, with that in mind, I decided to venture (within the safe confines of WTM) into the ‘axis of evil’ – in other words, I decided that I would visit the stands of countries that draw a fair amount of opprobrium and see how just how they were marketing themselves from a…errr…negative brand position.

The end result? In some cases, ‘ethical’ concerns might matter but I suspect that this can successfully be got round by some nifty marketing that addresses the emotional fears that unethical actions are a proxy for.

What do I mean by it being a proxy? Well, for example, if I believe that a government ready to imprison and torture its citizens seemingly on a whim, then I fear that there might be a chance that I might be subject to the same treatment, equally on a whim. But, there are ways and means around these unconscious fears that can help present destinations in a more favourable light. And the stands here are WTM might well be interesting insights into how to deal with these perceptions.

Take Cuba for example.

Cuba is not officially a paid up member of the axis of evil but Human Rights Watch (hardly a US stooge) notes that it is still a repressive country but the international public perception of it (outside the US) is that it is, at worst, almost a slightly wayward social democrat country that it is important to visit before it is ruined by nasty commercialism. I suspect that Cuba is well aware of this and, as such, its stand here at WTM is big, brash and confident. Ironically for a communist country, it is is a well marketed and professional destination marketed with considerable commercial nouce.

And it is fun.

As such, Cuba would appear to have listened to research and market forces and responded to consumer demands in improving and diversifying its product.

On the other hand, the Iranian stand (representing a country that is officially a member of the ‘axis of evil’) lacks this confidence. Like many of the Middle Eastern countries, it seems to rely on old images and on a slightly worth line of products. Their product appeals to a bookish person like myself but I think it communicates at the level of the head, not the heart. By this, I mean I need to be reassured that Iran, for example , is a safe place to visit where I won’t be stopped for a cultural misunderstanding. This doesn’t seem to happen and so, despite the attractions, there is still some nagging doubt. Overall, there doesn’t seem to be a suggestion of fun and the emphasis seemed to be on the historic, not the living.

However, fun seemed to be on the minds of the fellow evil-ites in the Syrian stand. Although the cliches undoubtedly abounded here as well, they were living cliches with people enjoying themselves – people laughing, people eating and people chatting. All of which are reassuring images common to all humanity.

While not an official ‘axis of evil’ country, China is nevertheless working hard to improve its image as a destination to visit. They’re not at the Iran level but neither are they are the Cuba level. I think their game is a longer one that will slowly build their brand to the point that they are perceived as a super-charged Singapore – no better or worse but certainly not grounds to avoid.

Finally, I went in search of the really evil Hermit Kingdom of North Korea. However, if they are here, their reputation for secrecy is intact as I couldn’t find them.

So, what can we learn from this slightly silly excuse of a post? Well, I think it is the lesson that destinations need to market to the heart as well as the head. As we noted a while ago, many of us carry conscious and unconscious prejudices and destinations need to address these in order to position themselves effectively. And although I have been using perhaps extreme examples, this lesson applies also to mainstream destinations – I don’t care if somewhere has a spectacular castle if it is an area where I’m likely to be mugged, for example.

Right, I’m off to find the Zimbabwean and Guantanamo Bay stands.

Update 1700: Well, after my mention of the Zimbabwe stand, I did go to and it struck me as traditional (safaris and all that) but…actually good. Despite the situation in the country, the stand suggested safety and fun. Not sure what that means for my theory.

External Links:

GoCuba (Canadian official site)

Iran Tourism

Syria Tourism (actually not a great site in contrast to the stand – you need to come and talk to us, guys)

China Tourism

Tourism in North Korea

Axis of Evil