Travelblather

I've just spent a fantastic weekend in Seville. I lived there for several months last year.

At that point the new EU regulations on the cost of roaming (using
a mobile phone/cellphone abroad) hadn't come into effect. So I bought a
local SIM card. This meant I could receieve calls at no cost and call
other Spanish mobiles for far less. Typically I would have paid around
75p a minute to recieve calls and £1 to make them using my UK mobile in
Spain. With my local SIM card I received calls for free and made calls
to Spanish mobiles at around 30cents a minute. A huge saving. But I had the
inconvenience of having a new Spanish phone number so people calling me
from home using my old number got a voice message from me asking them
to redial my new Spanish number.

When the new legislation was introduced there was all sorts of noise
from the UK mobile operators about how regulating markets was a bad
thing and that competition itself was enough to keep prices low. And
what's more outrageous is that the UK government was completely on the side of the mobile operators
too.

What a load of bunk.

This weekend I made and received calls in
Spain using my UK mobile for a fraction of what it cost a year ago.
And, as per the EU directive I got a text (SMS) message when I turned
on my mobile in Spain telling me the costs I would incur. So I knew exactly how much calls would cost.

And the result?

I used my mobile far more than I would have done. Instead of
spending less, I probably spent more. Regulation can work for all
concerned - even the whinging operators who are desparate to protect
their ridulously high margins at the expense of innovation and genuine customer-centred products and services. Who'd have thought it? Finding something good to say about EU regulation!

There's been some great debate about the use of Video as a medium for selling travel online going on over on Alex Bainbridge's blog. I believe strongly that video is the future for selling holidays on-line... (along with user generated reviews).
Video is such an experiential medium - it's perfect for selling an intangible product like a holiday that has such emotional attachment. But it has to be done well... and people fail to appreciate how much it costs to generate and host really good video content (thanks to the grainy video quality and wobbly camerawork you find most of the time on YouTube).

You need big pockets to do video... and one company that does is Tui. Sandra Leonhard, director web strategy and business development for Tui recently shared some very interesting information on videos on the thomson.co.uk website at the Online Sales and Marketing in Travel conference in Munich. She said over 2,000 videos are embedded in booking and browsing
sections on the Thomson site. "In total, we will see around 30 million video views on thomson.co.uk
this year," she said. Leonhard also shared that more visitors book
after seeing the hotel video (to the example of 200 percent
increase in online conversion on Jetair.be).
That's a serious investment in video. I took a look. Most of the videos are of accommodation - not exactly inspiring, but definitely a far more detailed and useful depiction than words and pics alone. They're using Windows Media Player which is a disappointment... Flash works so much better and gives superior results too. They also offer full screen viewing using Vivadas which offers impressive results... but again, if you know what you're doing, Flash now offers full screen without paying to use someone else's software...
You can really see where they want to go though with this page on New Zealand.... interactive map allows you to click on a location you're interested in... and watch the video. Quite impressive, though small viewing screen for the video box isn't great.
And I'm surprised that given the wealth of video content available, there's little serious signposting of it as yet... I'd have expected a 'Watch videos' link right off the home page.
And... ugh I hate the way the intro video auto-plays every time you come back to the main video page!
All-in-all though Tui/Thomson is clearly on the ball here... pretty impressive stuff. Sandra also made some interesting observations about allowing customers to post reviews on the site too...

I blogged recently about the way increasing numbers of tour operators and hoteliers are using free RSS feeds from Trip Advisor to show user generated reviews of the hotels they offer on their sites. It makes perfect sense... huge numbers of people now use Trip Advisor to help research their holidays. So why let them leave your site to go look at reviews on Trip Advisor? Keep them with you and let them read the reviews right there on your own site. Hayes and Jarvis was the first UK operator to offer this service - customers can now read Trip Advisor reviews of 80% of the hotels they offer. I called Trip Advisor's press office to ask if they had any stats to provide regarding how well the concept worked... and they were very vague. Maybe they were just having a slow day as they did release some results... which I stumbled across (thanks to Rob from Avis marketing) in this report from Reuters.

• 20% of people visiting the hotel descriptions pages on the Hayes and Jarvis site click on the Trip Advisor reviews
• These 20% book at twice the rate of people who don't read the reviews

Some might argue that these people would have converted better anyway - it's a bit chicken and egg. Are the ones who are likely to book, the ones that click on the reviews OR does the fact that they click on the reviews means they become more likely to book as a result of reading them?
One way or another, the reviews are clearly adding to the user experience in a very positive way for 20% of the site's visitors... I wouldn't be surprised if the combination of a trusted brand like H&J with genuinely credible reviews from (usually) unbiassed other holidaymakers seals the deal very nicely.

OK... a small bit of knowledge is dangerous... And now I've been working for an SEO and Social media company for a while I've started to realise how little things can make a big difference to the way Google ranks your website or blog. So I wanted to have a more explicit Page Title... and unfortunately Typepad just takes your blog title and uses that. I've not found a way to change it manually (at least not with my middle of the road subscription package).
If you don't know what I mean about Page Title - look at the blue bar at the top of your browser and you'll see it. This is a key indicator for the google search algorithm... at least I think it is! So I want to get the words travel, online and blog in the page title... wonder if it will make a difference?

Now this is seriously interesting… BA has done a deal with its inflight mag publisher Cedar to publish content online too… So stuff from its inflight mag High Life is reproduced here.
God it looks good.

For me this is the first travel provider to finally get its arse
in gear and take providing rich content seriously… Wonder how the writers feel seeing their stuff
reproduced on-line… wonder if BA/Cedar are paying them extra for web
use?

Not a cheap investment to do all this of course... I'm guessing ultimately BA wants this site to make money - probably from ads. For now most of the ads on the site look like they are for BA partners like Avis and Amex. Maybe the deal is about selling ad space in the print mag at a higher rate if advertisers want to be on the website too?

As a reader, for me what's missing is a 'book this trip' box. The thing that could mean this site doesn't really take off (pardon the pun) is that it's BA... so there's clear bias here. Will you use this site to research your next holiday if the content is so clearly BAs rather than an objective third party's like say a national newspaper or travel magazine? I'm still waiting for that ultimate on-line travel site... one that's run by an unbiassed third party, offering web-only travel content that really inspires, is totally personalised and easy to use, allowing you to book a break if you read about one you really like.

Who do you think will be first to market with that? Well read this... and you'll see what I'm thinking... No prizes for guessing, it's pretty obvious, they own half the web already...