The start of a new year seems like a good time to try and predict the future!

I was recently asked by a student my thoughts on the future of travel and tourism online. Good question. Although I find it difficult to predict the future (difficult, but not impossible), this is a topic I have a lot of interest in so I’ll give it a shot.

As described in our recent whitepaper ‘Web 2.0 for the Travel and Tourism industry’, as more Web site operators provide their functionality as Open API’s, the opportunities for interesting new mash-ups grows exponentially. Currently it’s hard to find a mash-up that doesn’t include either Google Maps or Flickr, this will change!

I believe this will start to overlap into hardware (it is already), providing interesting combinations of software, hardware and data. In my opinion, one big opportunity for Web travel is the ability for a traveller to find any information in any format on any device they choose.

For example, if Apple released an API for some of the cool aspects of the new iPhone interface, you could then use this on other devices (like my XDA Orbit Windows mobile). Then imagine having an iPhone interface on my Orbit displaying data from Kayak to search flights… this might be someone’s idea of the perfect flight-finding interface. Instead, Apple is sending Cease & Desist letters to anyone even putting a screen-grab of potential iPhone mash-ups on their site!

A more practical example is an online flight booking. Currently you are restricted to the search and display interface provided by the Web site operator (e.g. Kayak, STA Travel, Flight Centre etc), and you can only personalise this to a certain extent. It might be possible in the future to say “I prefer the Kayak flight search interface, but want to display flight data from STA Travel, and bundle it with Hotel listings from Expedia”. And I want it on my TV. I could choose this as a user, rather than needing a Web developer to create a mash-up of this particular combination.

This will be extremely complicated to achieve, and would require great strides in the standardisation and interoperability of systems (such is the goal of the OpenTravel Alliance).

Naturally this is only one aspect of what the future of online travel might hold, but as someone who books travel online frequently, I hope it becomes reality.

Tim O'Neill, Managing Director UK

Labels: Technology, Web Culture and Trends

Our popular whitepaper "Web 2.0 for the Travel and Tourism Industry" has had a 2007 refresh, and now includes a foreword from Craig Hepburn, Global Webmaster of STA Travel Group.

There is no ignoring, and certainly no denying, the current hype around Web 2.0, in particular here in the UK. Recently, The Guardian (a mainstream UK newspaper) published an interesting feature on Web 2.0 with interviews (and podcasts naturally) with the founders of Wikipedia, Flickr, Technorati, Blogger and other Web 2.0 rock-stars.

Reactive work with a lot of clients in the tourism and travel industries, a sector which has always been at the forefront of Internet technology, and so it is no surprise to see Web 2.0 features rapidly appearing in travel Web sites of well-known brands such as Contiki, STA Travel, Starwood, Lonely Planet and Eurostar.

However, many travel and tourism marketers don’t have the time to sit down and consider how these new horizons relate to their brand, so we thought we’d give you some help!

Our popular whitepaper (or is guidebook a better word?) titled “Web 2.0 for the Travel and Tourism Industry”. With it we aim to demystify some of the more common elements of Web 2.0, and show practical examples of how travel and tourism brands are using these to attract new customers, improve customer loyalty, and drive sales.

The whitepaper covers the following topics (with real-world examples):

• Blogging (Starwood, Eurostar and STA Travel)
  
• Podcasting (Lonely Planet, Orbitz, Virgin Atlantic, The Independent and Heartbeat guides)
  
• Social networking and user generated content (TripAdvisor, Yahoo, Contiki and Sheraton)
  
• Online video (YouTube, Travelistic and MGM Grand Las Vegas)
  
• RSS (Expedia, STA Travel, Virgin Holidays, Orbitz, and Conde Nast)
  
• Tagging (del.icio.us, Flickr and Travbuddy)
  
• Mash-ups and Open API’s (Locale, Virtual Tourism, Blogabond, 43 Places and TripAdvisor)
  
• Wikis (Wikitravel, World66 and TripAdvisor)
  
• AJAX (Kayak, Sidestep, Farecast and Google Maps)

If you are responsible for a tourism Web site or travel Web site, and interested in learning more about how 'Travel 2.0' could relate to you, please complete this form. The whitepaper is 15 pages, and will be emailed to you in PDF format.

Tim O'Neill, Managing Director UK

Labels: Technology, Web Culture and Trends