Companies do not have visibility into where and what travel products consumers are researching and booking at competitor sites. This viewpoint came from Gregory Saks, travel analyst, Compete almost a year back.
On where things stand as of today, Saks said, "Many companies
in the industry have become more sophisticated in their understanding
of web-wide behaviour and analytics. Almost all major websites have
good insight into "local analytics" through companies like Webtrends
and Omniture. Now, more and more are connecting the dots between this
information and what consumers are doing web-wide, once they leave your
site."
Saks, a speaker during EyeforTravel's Travel Distribution Executive Conference 2007 being held in Las Vegas,
said the biggest trend is that major travel marketers are embracing
user generated content, whereas not too long ago there were few
companies beyond the UGC sites themselves that played in the space.
"Today, brands like Starwood, Southwest, and La Quinta are using UGC as part of innovative new campaigns," he says.
In an interview with EyeforTravel.com's Ritesh Gupta, Saks spoke about UGC roadmap. Excerpts from an interview:
Do consumers trust bloggers views more than traditional marketing? What is the key differentiator?
An example I can share is that 82 percent of TripAdvisor users
prefer consumer-generated reviews and opinions over a hotel's own
marketing of itself. At the same time, 49 percent of these same
TripAdvisor users think that consumer-generated content is biased. The
takeaway is that consumers like to receive validation from multiple
sources of information, even if no single source is perfect.
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