23 Musings

Tripadvisor have released their figures from a survey called their Traveller Trends Survey. Out of the survey comes some predicitions for 2008 trends that we should all expect to see.

One of the aspects of this (the link above has much more detail) is the TripAdvisor TravelCast. It's a barometer of what’s hot in travel destinations. TripAdvisor engineers have developed a proprietary algorithm that looks at several criteria, including changes in search activity and postings throughout the TripAdvisor site. The TravelCast then predicts the rising stars in travel.

The destinations that are showing as increasing in popularity and expected to be the biggest next year are:

TripAdvisor TravelCast Top Ten World Destinations for 2008
1. Jerba, Tunisia
2. Makandi Bay, Egypt
3. Phangnga, Thailand
4. Kovalam, India
5. Sabaudia, Italy
6. Asilah, Morocco
7. Ko Phangan, Thailand
8. La Plagne, France
9. Yangshuo, China
10. Kotor, Montenegro

TripAdvisor TravelCast Top Ten U.S. Destinations for 2008
1. Sunny Isles Beach, Florida
2. Kitty Hawk (Outer Banks), North Carolina
3. Seward, Alaska
4. Kailua, Hawaii
5. Blue Ridge, Georgia
6. Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania
7. San Marcos, Texas
8. Paso Robles, California
9. Rockport, Texas
10. Copper Mountain, Colorado

Now, this is great insight for online (and offline) travel providers who bid on keywords on search engines. If you are active in pay per click and these destinations match some of your offerings then you should seriously consider looking at the data (clickthroughs, bid positions, bid amounts etc) to see if you can do anything else to get more clicks on these terms. If they are going to be so hot next year it may be worth diverting some of your paid search budget into these destinations over those that don't perform for you currently. Insight like this is highly valuable, especially when it comes from such a big community as TripAdvisor.

I got a bit confused when I hit the Expedia homepage this morning...

I don't visit Expedia very often, I usually find better prices elsewhere and book my flights on industry rates so don't find a great deal of use for the online travel agent. However, it is a great site and one which all in online travel could learn something from. They merchandise products like no-one else and have some great usability features that make it easy to find good prices and products.

Over a year ago they built the Inspirator, a tool which allowed users a more human friendly way to get some inspiration into their holiday research process. It allowed users to choose two themes (eg. romantic, beaches, nightlife) and then choose a desired type of weather (warm, hot or 'I don't mind) and then how far they want to fly and where from. The Inspirator then presents the user with some information on matching destinations along with some relevant offers. It's not the most inspiring piece of functionality and anyone with a good command of a Google search will find they can research better there, but for the majority of web users it serves a good purpose.

Now, Expedia have launched another take on this kind of guided navigation/research, the Inspiroscope. The Inspiroscope is similar but it's basically a homage to Web 2.0, travel style. This is essentially a tag cloud presented in Flash format which users can click on a word from and be presented with five matching destinations. It works, it looks quite nice and again, for someone not proficient in using the internet or really inexperienced at travel it's probably fine. But for anyone more experienced it's really limiting! Google presents far better results if you have any skill in web searching at all, or maybe try Tripadvisor...

Maybe I'm being a little harsh, theses types of functionality serve a purpose for Expedia. They're more engaging than a normal availability search, provide insight into destinations and are a value add for users. They also provide opportunities to build the brand and engage users while acquiring new CRM opportunities. So it's not all bad!

They could be done better though! For example, merge this functionality with Opodo's Escape Map and you make it even more engaging, allow users to explore as well as guiding them and you will engage them further. Link the results to Google Earth to allow users to view the area more closely. Allow users to add in restrictions on price & dates and they become much more valuable. Integrate hotel ratings and allow the process to proceed beyond the destinations to the selection of a property and you will really turn these tools into conversion enhancers (rather than just nice features).

As an aside, it's been brought to my attention that Expedia and Opodo have left some of this functionality rather open. Expedia have left access open to an XML file which contains all the tag words in their Inspiroscope and also contains the number of votes for each word. Great if you want to get an idea of how to tag your own content... Opodo meanwhile have left a backdoor in their Escape Map which allows users to pass a query string which will return XML data of the offers that can be displayed on the map. Great for anybody wanting to scrape a load of offers from their site (or compare prices)...

Edit: To link to Alex Bainbridge's original article...

Amazingly, Tripadvisor have paid $3M for the Facebook app 'Where I've Been'. It's a map that users can add to their Facebook profile and display all the destinations they've visited.

Mashable has an interesting take on this (saying it's insanity) and make some good points such as how do Tripadvisor intend to monetise it.

My opinion is that as 'Where I've Been' already has 2.3 million users, it's better than creating a new one and trying to gain their own user base. I'm sure TripAdvisor will find a way to monetise this anyway, they now have access to the user base and if they update the app to include new features then they will automatically get propagated to the user base.

Online travel certainly is getting interesting!

Edit: Mashable is now carrying a story which denies this deal has happened.

TripAdvisor, the hugely successful travel review community site has launched some new features which take it into the realms of the social network and moves it further away from simply being a site made up of forum posts and reviews (although the e-commerce aspect is also strong).

They've released a feature allowing you to import a network of travellers from all the major email services (Gmail, Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo and Outlook contacts import). This allows you to create a network of travellers who can help you plan your trips with advice and reviews, link up with people you are travelling with or who may be going to your destination and prioritises content from your network in your search results.

This could be really powerful! Especially since they have launched the travel map application for Facebook, perhaps the next step is to allow you to connect automatically across the TripAdvisor and Facebook networks, create Facebook groups and import TripAdvisor content??