The PhoCusWright perfect mini storm session was facinating, and featured a great panel of industry titans. Doug Quinby hosted Tina Fitch (EZRez), Rod Cuthbert (Viator Inc), Kenneth Purcell (Iseatz.com), and Ranjan Singh (Isango!).

Here is a summary of the session with some thoughts at the end. These are not quotes, but I tried to capture the main points:

The point was brought up that there are thousands of varied suppliers, what is it that they want?

RS: Differentiation

TF: Sexy representation and and easy to implement system.

KP: Multi Payment options, ie reward miles etc. Also are looking for priority placement.

What do consumers want from these sites?

TF: Consumers want alternatives during the buying process, early packaging options and multiple paths to the booking. The business should have the capabilities to upsell during and after the initial booking. (Email followup/rewards)

RC: Consumers treat destination product differently than other ingredients of the travel picture. Flights, hotels and cars are like bugers, fries and drinks, while activities are purchased after, and are like the dessert. There is not a large opportunity to bundle with other travel products.

RS: I agree and disagree. There are ‘Why not’ products like hop-on hop-off tours that can be bundled well with other products, and the ‘Why’ products which are often the reason WHY people are traveling to these destinations.

KP: Things like groud transport/parking are the most relevant to bundle with other travel products. 80% of the sales we see are in the transfer/parking market.

Will you look to develop Mobile apps?

RC: It is a great opportunity, however we would need an infrastructure upgrade to accommodate our vouchure confirmation model.

RS: Technology maturity will need 3-5 years.

Will these transaction based sites eventually change over to an ad based revenue model?

TF: We give our customers the tools to decide. They can combine onsite booking as well as ads.

Thoughts

This is a developing market that really lacks an underlying infrastucture. The lack of standardization is a barrier to further innovation. There are underlying issues such as the lack of consolidated availability means that consumers are often given bookings that can not be confirmed, and in certain cases, have to wait for a confirmation email. Free sell products represent the minority of destination suppliers, and there is a massive opportunity to bring these long tail suppliers online, well that is probably why I work with Rezgo ;)

PhoCusWright has again packed a lot of amazing networking, workshops and presentations into one conference. Well the morning of the main center stage conference is in full swing and the trending is looking interesting. We have heard from the VC community; William Carroll, Cornell, Jeff Clarke, Travelport Inc, Sophie Frost, Brightspark Ventures, Jake Fuller, Thomas Weisel Partners.

While there were strong references to economic trending with Philip C Wolf saying that “it didn’t look like a economy in recession at the bar last night”. Jeff Clarke was confident that there will be an upswing eventually. Jake Fuller on the other hand pointed out that there was no denying the current economic climate and how there was an inevitable loss of competition with smaller innovators being pressured out of the game. Sophie was talking about the drying up of investment capital for the next 18 months. She stated that that they are going to tighten their belts, cut expenses where ever possible, and then also lower their level of investment by an additional 10%. With Brightspark having a notable portfolio, this could be indicitive of a far reaching down swing in travel technology investment. Lets hope not..

Photo back: Tim Hughes, Kevin May, Phil Caines and Stephen Joyce. Front: Jaime Horwitz, Claude Benard, Sean Keener (Thanks Jamie for the great photo!)

Well the bloggers are joining forces once again at PhoCusWright. It was good to meet some old blogging associates after Stephen and I prepared for the Travel Innovation Summit. We are excited and ready to go as we are presenting at 12:08 on the dot today.

I am currently in the TIS showcase surrounded by some great companies. It seems like we are the only ones in our space for this competition, and there are many opportunities to network/partner with these innovators.

More info to come!

A recent comment by Stephen Budd raised my awareness about how involved the Internet is becoming in our day to day lives. I use Google services everyday in my life, from email, search, maps and public transit. I like the company and I feel that they have profoundly altered the way that humans access and interpret information. Some people however, are starting to feel that Google has gone too far. If you search ‘Google’ the quoted term “Google Overlord” for instance, it will bring up over 8700 instances.

Is there a Google backlash? A little.

Are they still making money? Over $4 Billion a year in profit.

They have just launched their first mobile OS equipped phone, their first satellite, their own browser, and basically own online video, free email, online advertising, and oh yeah, the search world. So now they know what you are looking for, they know where you are, who you are talking to, and can take a photo of you where ever you are. This brother is getting bigger! Andrew Keen, a British-born author and entrepreneur in California’s Silicon Valley said, “‘They have amassed more information about people in 10 years than all the governments of the world put together.”

Look no further then Kevin May and company’s Travolution blog to see how the travel industry is taking to Google’s recent changes to their advertising model. Seems like travel folks are starting to feel peeved.

Well it turns out that the travel folks are not alone, the Guardian released this article highlighting some of the Pros and Cons of a Google world.

This is not to say that I am against Google, but that I am starting to be aware of its impact in my life, could you go a day/week/month with out it? I don’t think I could, and that is mildly concerning.

The list of competitors is complete, the first ever Travel Innovation Summit will now feature 28 travel technology competitors that range from small bootstrapping startup (Stephen and I…) to large multi-nationals (Sabre Rattling??).

Bruce Rosard (VP at PhoCusWright) just sent me some of the trends that have surfaced for the competition:

1. The growth of pure Travel 2.0 businesses is slowing—dramatically.
The Travel Innovation Summit demonstrators, along with applicants who were not selected for this year’s event, described very few applications involving new social networks or pure social networking.

2. Travelers will enjoy easy access to rich subjective, objective and experiential content for trip planning.
Look for the pairing of trip planning and established social network brands and other sources of objective and subjective content. To facilitate the learning and shopping process, first movers are emerging in semantic search. Tools that facilitate an easier trip planning experience by narrowing alternatives based on profiles, stated preferences and observed behaviors are coming.

3. Abundant, varied mobile applications are beginning to emerge.
Interestingly, many of the emerging mobile application innovations focus not simply on shopping and purchasing, but on a variety of content, including day-of-travel and concierge applications. Creative approaches to the mobile business model challenge also are arising.

4. The Long Tail is coming of age.
With low cost computers and more pervasive Internet access than ever, the Long Tail of travel is poised to spread beyond the traditional air, car and hotel market. Unique approaches, including Software as a Service (SaaS), are on the horizon for the effective, efficient distribution of additional content and services.

5. Air shopping is still a work in progress.
Innovators like Air Canada are redefining the airline seat as a product—think of a world where every seat is a SKU with unique characteristics and services—rather than a mere commodity. The complexities of air shopping mean new approaches are still in their infancy—with ample room to grow and mature.

6. Attention shifts from “learn, shop, book” in the travel value chain.
Innovators are recognizing that elements beyond “learn, shop, book” in the travel value chain can be monetized. Expect pre-trip, trip experience, and post-trip technology models to arise.

7. Building supporting business applications loses its luster.
Innovators are focused on the customer-facing applications in the travel value chain, with much less emphasis on the infrastructure services that support content development, content distribution, financial accounting and settlement, and even provisioning of Internet access.

I originally did a brief review of the original competitors and this post will finish with some of the latest entries into the arena. I have also added two new indicators, funding, to let readers know who owns the company and how much has been invested (I may need your help) and target: b2c, b2b, b2b&c.

I am biased in my reviews (maybe a little) because Rezgo is one of the competitors in this competition, so feel free to let me know if you think I am crazy off base.

Adventure Link

URL: http://www.adventurelink.com

Overview: Aim to be a GDS for the adventure travel segment. They claim to be “the 21st century equivalent to the ancient Roman Forum (minus the toga’s, of course)”. I am not exactly sure who powers who, but it seems that their back end in run by Trisept Solutions, and their product is fed by VaxVacation Access.

Funding: Not Sure

Target: B2B

Site look: 7/10

Potential to Shake Industry: 7/10

Innovation: 6/10

Success: 7/10

Clairvoyix

URL:http://www.clairvoyix.com

Overview:This is not my area of specialty, however their easy to understand design allows the common man to understand the process of Database marketing and the value it can have for any business. They give clear examples of this and it looks pretty good. They do need to update their Legal information on the bottom of the page though…

Funding: Seed/Early stage funding from goffventures.biz

Target: B2B

Site look: 7/10 (Update Legal)

Potential to Shake Industry: 6/10

Innovation: 5/10

Success: 8/10

Deal Base

URL: http://www.dealbase.com

Overview:A user generated hotel deal website that accepts deals from any source. They currently host over 7000 deals across multiple sites. Site guests can link directly to the hotel or booking site to complete the booking. I wonder if they have referral agreements in place or if they have an advertising based business model. Their Alexa ranking is quite low considering they are B2C.

Funding: Not Sure - Any Ideas?

Target: B2C

Site look: 7/10

Potential to Shake Industry: 5/10

Innovation: 6/10

Success: 6/10

escapia.com

URL: http://www.escapia.com

Overview: I think Bill Furlong (CEO) has been listening to some of Rezgo’s meetings, his model is very near to ours, except it is for a completely different market, vacation rentals. His system gives property owners a booking system (front and back end) that allows them to accept bookings through their website as well as through 3rd part marketing sites. (Not a bad idea;)

Funding: Venture Capital - At least 2 different rounds equaling over 2.8 million

Target: B2C

Site look: 8/10

Potential to Shake Industry: 7/10

Innovation: 8/10

Success: 8/10

17 More reviews to come. Look for them in the following days.

“The issue is no longer distribution; rather, it’s relevance.”

Brad Feld
Managing Director
Foundry Group

I couldn’t of said it better myself; the publishing landscape has changed for ever, the democritization of information and the proliferation of tools to distribute this information is impacting society as we know it. traditional news media has responded with over 95% of the top 100 newspapers all have blogs.

Technorati, the online blog catelog, has just released its 2008 State of the Blogosphere which highlights trends and themes from the blogging public, definately worth a read.

Some interesting highlights about corporate/professional bloggers:

• There is a strong differentiation between a ‘corporate blogger’ and a blogger who writes about their industry. With only 12% identifying themselves as truly corporate, while 46% are ‘professional’ (this is what I identify myself as)
• Corporate bloggers are pretty homogeneous (Male-70%, in relationship-75%, college grad-74%)
• The blogs are not making much money, of those that advertise, the median annual revenue was between $200-$300… better hope that added brand exposure can be justified ;)

The future of blogging

The article also asks senior analysts about their thoughts about blogging, and what lies ahead. I found an interesting comment from Jeremiah Owyang:

“The future of blogging will be an auto-synching of our lives directly to the web —often a quiet recording in the background”

I hope this comment was taken out of context, because I feel this 1984, Big Brother view of the future of blogging is kind of bleak. I find that blogs are most effective when they are not simple ‘reporting’ but add a human editorial view that sparks thought and conversation.

I have been out of the blogosphere lately, and for good reason (read excuse ;). I have been working to promote the latest edition of Rezgo.com, the online tour and activity booking solution, and I have had some success! We were recently notified that we were selected for PhoCusWright’s Travel Innovation Summit and in B.C. we are one of 30 companies to make it to the third round of the  New Ventures B.C. innovation competition. So great news all around! Being thrown to the mercy of of lawyers,  VCs and CEOs can be a tad intimidating, so a bit of research into VCs, Angel Investors and the like was needed, and here are some of my favorite resources:

• http://www.vcfodder.com/
  • A straightforward look at the world of entrepreneurship and venture capital.
• http://www.sfentrepreneur.com/how-to-guides/
  • Great how-to guides on legal, marketing, presenting etc
• http://www.thefunded.com/
  • An online community of entrepreneurs to research, rate, and review funding sources worldwide.
• http://fundfindr.com/
  • The elevator speech meets YouTube, also a NVBC competitor.

If you know of any others, let me kow, but I hope this list can help all of you out there that are in a similar situation.