Interesting read: Burst Online Insights - February 2007
Some quotes:
“One of the greatest impacts the Internet has had on consumer behavior is the planning and purchase of travel. The impact has been so great that researching or purchasing travel outside of the Internet is an unknown (and impossible to fathom) experience for many consumers. The rush of travel consumers to the Internet has led to an online travel marketplace estimated at $68 billion – and that is in the US only. Furthermore, in a new report from PhoCusWright Research, this year for the first time online transactions will account for over half of all U.S. travel bookings. To better understand the Internet’s impact on travel planning and purchasing, Burst recently surveyed over 2,100 web users 18 years and older who plan to travel in the next three months about their use of the web as a travel resource.
The Burst study focused on the use of the web as a travel research tool and a means to purchase travel products. The study found that four out of five (79.0%) respondents will use the Internet to plan their upcoming personal travel. There is no difference in the number of men (79.9%) or women (78.1%) who will use the Internet to plan their travel; and similar numbers of all age as well as income segments will use the Internet for trip planning.”
“Nearly Half Say Internet will be Primary Travel Planning Resource”
“Two Out of Three Will Research and Make a Travel Transaction”
SXSW Interactive (Austin, Texas), I can’t wait.
It appears there are still hotel/hostels/tour operators who do not care about security on the Internet… or ignore the importance of it.
Los Amigos Hostel in Madrid ask people to fill their credit card information in a non-secure form while making their reservation. You can see it by yourself at: http://www.losamigoshostel.com/b/english/reservations_sol.htm. I don’t know where goes the credit card information but it doesn’t make me feel safe about it.
What should they do? They should either:
- Stop asking credit card numbers in this form.
- Buy a security certificate (SSL certificate) from Thawte, Verisign or from another provider. Install it on the server. And change the URL from http:// to https://.
- Ask people to reserve via GOMIO.com, hostelbookers.com, hostels.com or another online booking services company.
- Use PayPal Website Payments Standard to do the transaction for you.
You would not let the waiter in a restaurant tell everyone your credit card number, your online customers neither…
Stéphane from Amomenti wrote an I-guess really interesting book. If you read French, go get it… or buy it online!
More info about Promote.
Travel Web sites clamp down on bogus reviews
Interesting read.
“He estimates that 1 percent to 2 percent of the reviews on SideStep and other travel sites are bogus. But he says the industry and users are aware of the problem and addressing it.”
In my opinion, the problem is that this 1 percent to 2 percent of bogus reviews is not distributed proportionally. I mean when a company decides to cheat and writes bogus reviews, they won’t write one or two… they will try to improve their rating as much as they can. It creates variations of relevance from a hotel (tour company, travel company, …) to another. Who should customers trust? It’s not always easy but most of the time they can find out!
Sometimes it could look like cheating is a fast way to grow your sales but I really think you should take this time to improve the quality of your services by reading the reviews customers wrote about your company instead… and take action!
mytravelbackpack.com is a new blog I’ve started a couple of weeks ago. I post pictures of people and their backpack somewhere cool on the planet. Not that complicated isn’t it?
I’m a backpack travel lover, this site is kind of a continuous backpack trip for me. ; )
With Europe From a Backpack, we’ve launched mytravelbackpack.com Photo Contest (ends March 20th). The “grand prize” is 3 books from Europe From a Backpack. Tell the backpackers you know! ; )
Enter mytravelbackpack.com Photo Contest
Visit mytravelbackpack.com
Feel free to talk about it! ; )
You are running your own bed & breakfast? A little hotel? A tour company? You are the communication director of an important hotel chain?
You probably care about customer satisfaction. If so, I’m sure that you read travel magazines and newspapers searching for reviews and comments about your company. Who’s saying what will help you fix what goes wrong and focus on what makes your company what you want it to be.
You already know that Internet is the largest source of information on earth. People already write about your company. Do you know what they are saying? On what sites could they be talking about you? How can you track this information? What should you do with it?
Where do people talk about the company?
- Blogs
- Forums
- Hotel/Tour/etc. reviews sites
- Travel websites (Wikitravel, Road66)
- Travel agencies website
How can I find people talking about the company?
- When people make links to your website, Google knows it (most of the time). You just have to ask Google by searching for
link:http://www.yourwebsite.com
- Technorati. Technorati helps you tracking the content you want in the blogosphere. Search for your company name, you’ll have an idea of who’s talking about you via blogs. Make sure to add the RSS feed of this search to your aggregator.
- Google News. Google news gathers news from 4500 different “official” sources. Just like technorati, you can search for your company and add the RSS feed to your aggregator.
- Website stats. With your own stats you could track who’s refering to your website. You’ll get almost the same results as with “link:” on Google.
With these 4 easy tricks, you will have a good overview of who said what. By subscribing to strategical RSS feeds, it will keep you up to date.
What should you do with this information?
- Understand what people dislike and improve your services/products consequently.
- Add comments on blog posts and answers on forums when people are expressing their disappointment about your services/products or when the info they said is wrong.
- Take the time to thank those who “support” you and give you free publicity.
Simple and effective.
It looks like The Production Network (TPN) is looking for travel girl bloggers for the upcoming spring break in Mexico.
Marc Allard, Le Soleil, wrote an interesting article about the second life of Internet (published today - pages 12/13). Two weeks ago he gave me a call regarding this article, we had an interesting discussion about the evolution of Internet / Web 2.0 / Web communities / blogs.
I’ve been quoted in the article. I have to say that I don’t really like to be quoted. A couple of sentences taken semi-out-of-context… it doesn’t always deliver the right message.
The last quote is probably the worst ever… Come on Marc! Did I really say that this way? hahaha ummm not sure about that.
40 bloggers from Quebec city (maybe more) and some of Montreal. Thanks to Brem (Martin Breton) for all this. I’ve finally met people I read everyday.
Didn’t talk to everyone, maybe next time!
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Links:
CFD
Patrick
Martine Pagé
Martin Pilote
Tranche de pain
Burp (and Epicure)
Gabriel Rodrigue
Effair
Vanou
YGRECK
Le Coach and Genefille
Mario
JSB
Brem