Laffitte Conseil

Online Travel Up, Customers Down

The number of North American consumers who take leisure trips is falling even as online travel revenue continues to climb, according to Forrester Research data cited in The New York Times. Forrester found that 9% fewer people will book travel online in 2007 compared to 2005.

eMarketer senior analyst Jeffrey Grau said that the drop in online travel customers could prompt change in the industry.

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Priceline.com Acquires Asian Online Hotel Reservation Service Agoda Company

Priceline.com® (NASDAQ: PCLN) announced today that it has acquired Bangkok- and Singapore-based Agoda Company, an online travel company specializing in hotel discount bookings throughout Asia, in a transaction that includes an initial cash payment and a multi-year, performance-based earn-out. Priceline.com said it intends to retain Agoda’s current management team, who will continue to manage Agoda’s operations independently as part of priceline.com’s international business.

In the Asia Pacific region, Agoda offers hotel properties in Australia, China, Japan, India, Thailand, South Korea, Singapore, Indonesia, the Phillippines, New Zealand and several other countries. In addition, Agoda offers hotels in Europe, the Americas, the Middle East and Africa. Agoda’s services are offered in 12 languages. In addition to its transactional offerings, Agoda maintains a broad suite of content features, including customer hotel reviews, travel tips, journals and other user-generated content.

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Consumer Trends in Social Networking

Recently, I spoke at the Forrester Consumer Forum here in Chicago, titled “Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies.” I’d like to share with you some of the findings from my presentation, which focused on consumer trends in social networking.

I personally find the worldwide expansion of social networking sites fascinating. For example, it’s commonly thought that with the success of sites like MySpace and Facebook, the U.S. is the hub of social networking activity. However, Asia is not only the fastest-growing region for social networking, it is also the largest:

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Online Holiday Sales Not Slipping

Gas prices are going through the roof and the value of the dollar is dropping through the floor. As a result, many economic forecasters are predicting doom and gloom for the all-important 2007 holiday shopping season.

Not eMarketer.

eMarketer predicts that online holiday sales will reach $31 billion this season, up 18.5% over last year.

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Best Practices in Developing the 2008 Hotel Internet Marketing Budget

Hoteliers are in the height of the budget planning season for 2008. Understandably, there is a great level of anxiety in the industry. Are you allocating the right budget for hotel marketing? What are your peers doing with their budgets? What are the best practices for 2008? Web 2.0, social media, consumer generated media—what should I do about these new media formats? What are the latest trends in Internet marketing and how should I account for them in the new budget? For a second year in a row, Hospitality eBusiness Strategies  takes a closer look at some important aspects of Internet marketing in hospitality and what marketing activities and line items should comprise the 2008 Internet marketing budget.

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Standing Dog Interactive has launched ReviewAnalyst, an online dashboard for tracking consumer-generated hotel reviews, videos and images on popular travel and social sites

Offered for $99 a month, ReviewAnalyst has already signed up over 100 properties from Omni Hotels, Rydges Hotels & Resorts and Ocean Properties Limited.

ReviewAnalyst pulls information from sites like TripAdvisor, TravelPost, YouTube, flickr and Google, among others. The tool not only provides reports of information posted to sites, but it also tracks trends through an analysis of the comments made by consumers and facilitates a management response.

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Online travel company Orbitz Worldwide has appointed more than 20 EMEA and Asia Pacific-based market managers and senior staff in order to support the company's hotel supplier relations team

Orbitz Worldwide is focused on continued growth through increased hotel bookings, especially in Europe and Asia Pacific, said Peggy Bianco, Vice President, Global Hotel Supplier Relations, Orbitz Worldwide.

"The addition of experienced staff to our supplier relations team is an important step in building out improved inventory and long term partnerships in these markets," said Bianco.

Reporting to Bianco includes the following global team: Garry Wilson, Regional Director, sourcing EMEA (London); Andrew Cox, Regional Director, sourcing Asia (Singapore); Melanie Ryan, Senior Director, Global Strategic Accounts, (Chicago); Jeff Eckerling, Senior Director, Global Hotel Strategy, (Chicago)

The company also opened a new office in Singapore.

Travel sites in the US get 33% of their upstream traffic from search engines

Google accounted for 63.55% of all US searches in the four weeks ending September 29, 2007. Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 22.55%, 7.83% and 4.32% respectively. The remaining 49 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.75% of US searches.

Search engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Comparing September 2007 to September 2006, the Travel, Entertainment and Business and Finance categories received double digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.

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10 things you can do in response to travellers' reviews

Traveller reviews have become part of the daily dialogue of web travel shoppers. The architecture of participation that is a basic hallmark of web 2.0 has resulted in users adding value to a site each time they write a review or upload a photo. Up to 84% of people visiting a site hosting consumer generated content (CGC) have their hotel choices affected by what they see. Millions of travellers log on daily and may experience a property through hotel generated photos and written text, but they find reviews and candid photography much more believable.

Many in the industry feel review sites are not objective and may be manipulated. They feel the content is not controllable or actionable and reject the opportunity to manage these sites by saying the comments might be inaccurate. However, what matters in the issue of web 2.0 sites is whether guests perceive them to be accurate. So far, customer research indicates they do. Furthermore, the research shows increasing numbers of possible clients are researching on third party sites, even if they are booking on brand sites.

The model has changed from a brand or property image that was controlled by the supplier, to one that is forged in dialogue with consumers. And this image is being debated at the virtual point of purchase. The combination of increasing numbers of web-savvy consumers, the web 2.0 frenzy focusing on social media, and increased travel site volume, have created a 'wild-west' environment where hotels' traditional comment card programs and advertising dollars are being trumped at the point of decision by dialogue in the public square.

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European Internet landscape in 2007

nSites provided an overview of the European Internet Landscape as per September 2007 in its eScape Reports.

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