Travelblather

There was lots of interesting debate about Simonseeks the new travel content site last week, so I decided to pitch some questions at Simon Nixon himself to get some further detail.

Here are my questions and his answers. Some useful responses. A few observations and niggles which I summarise after the interview.

This is a first for Travelblather. So.. welcome Simon and thanks for taking the time to contribute!

1) Why did you decide to launch Simonseeks?
I came up with the idea last Summer. It was really as a result of my own passion for travel and frustration at being unable to find quality free travel guides to suit my personal travel requirements.

2) The URL is quite generic. Could you see Simonseeks branching out into other industry sectors?
Absolutely, there is scope to take this model into other sectors. However at the present time we are focusing on travel as we see there is a global opportunity. This is a relatively new concept and we realise we need to listen to feedback from our visitors, our authors and also our travel partners to ensure the success for all parties.

3) Is there any connection with Travelsupermarket? Will Simonseeks review content for example be made available on TravelSupermarket? I'd always assumed that Simonseeks was about providing a content vehicle to support TravelSupermarket, but it looks like I may be incorrect?
Simonseeks.com is a completely independent company to Travelsupermarket in everyway. We are looking to develop partnerships with aggregators in the future as this will be an useful tool for our visitors to the site. As we are independent we will speak to all the companies out there and partner with the most appropriate ones for each sector of travel.

4) Can you clarify exactly how writers earn from the site. Is it only a percentage of sales from bookings made as a result of reading someone's review or is there a cut of ad revenue as well?
There are two ways you earn money from the site – from an equal share in revenue from sales commissions through people reading guides and clicking through to our recommended partners and making a booking. There is also an equal share in the display advertising revenue.

5) Do you see a finite number of writers for the site? And a finite number of reviews for a particular destination?
Not at all. The most important thing for authors to focus on is writing quality travel guides from first hand experience. Through our editorial team we will ensure that the quality standards we have set out are retained in order to continue to attract visitors to the site who are going to find the information useful and keep coming back for more and recommend us to their friends. We have a target of 1 million visitors per month within a year of launch so there is tremendous scope. In addition, it is important to ensure that the guides are kept as up to date as possible for our visitors. The guides which have been updated or uploaded most recently appear ahead of older guides to ensure we encourage this.

6) If a writer decides they no longer want their content on Simonseeks, am I correct in understanding that Simonseeks will retain copyright and will keep that content live on the site anyway? Or can the writer ask for it to be taken off the site?
If a writer decides they want their copyright back, they can ask for us to transfer this back to them. However, the condition is that the writer will no longer earn revenue from the guide at this point of transfer and they will provide us with a royalty free, worldwide licence to use their guide. So it will stay on the site, though the writer can use it elsewhere.

7) How do you plan to keep content on the site up to date?
As I mentioned above, we will be ranking the guides which have been updated the most recently ahead of older guides to encourage writer to keep the information relevant and fresh for our visitors. Posting your travel guide on simonseeks.com should be seen as a ‘dynamic process’ and as the author you have the ability to edit and update your content to reflect this.

According to James Dunford Wood - comments on my blog - "the value of the content on Simon Seeks has nothing to do with the accuracy or quality of the information, and all to do with the search popularity of the subject and the SEO efforts of the writer/site". Would you agree with this comment? How do you strike a balance between content that ranks well for Search Engines (like top ten lists) etc v. content that is more niche but likely to have more real value for serious holiday research?
We have set up the site to strike a balance between delivering travel guides which people find interesting and useful for their holiday research, as well as encouraging authors to post their travel guides on simonseeks.com and earn revenue. This is why we introduced the concept of the community reviewing and ranking the travel guides so that we can ensure authors who are writing the most relevant content for the simonseeks.com audience will appear ahead. Also, we have a powerful search tool as part of the site itself so that visitors can search for the most relevant guide for their requirements under location or interest, or they can simply let us inspire them with some choices.

9) In a recent interview with TTG it's claimed that you've suggested that 'Travel Agents are being encouraged to contribute to the site as a way of publicising their businesses and driving traffic back to their own sites'. Doesn't this conflict with the idea of having the site as a place to come to for impartial advice and information?
The feature in TTG made reference to the fact that simonseeks.com is also a potential outlet for travel agents to share their knowledge through writing travel guides on their favourite places and earning revenue, in the same way as professional and amateur writers for the site. We don’t see this as a conflict for impartial advice, merely an additional revenue stream for them to exploit.

10) How do you see content on-line evolving more generally? Do you think, as has been mooted by Rupert Murdoch recently, that ultimately readers will have to pay if they want quality content on-line?
The simonseeks.com model shies away from the pay per click strategy which you refer to. We feel that we can deliver quality content to our visitors, free of charge, through clever monetisation of the content. The secret lies in cross-selling advertising that is directly relevant, and closely matched, to editorial.

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Some interesting stuff here.

Volume of content - I think the fact that he sees no ceiling on the number of features about a place makes it clear that this is a volume game that's more about building ad revenues than serving readers in the final assessment. I question quite what role the editor will have in this - it feels more like he will be simply weeding out any really duff copy and subbing stuff that's OK. No sense of editorial direction for the site on a broader level?

Quality control - I also wonder about the idea that voting and recentness of copy will do the job of ensuring the better, more accurate stuff rises to the top of the pile. I could rehash a piece I wrote 5 years ago and post it now... for a while at least it would be billed as 'fresh content' and in theory better...And will people bother to vote/comment etc? I'm not sure.

Conflict of interest - I also really don't think he answered my question about agents and operators being able to contribute too without the danger of bias. Saying 'we don't see this as a conflict for impartial advice' seems genuinely surprising to me. I wonder if they will have a 'tour operator' or 'travel industry professional' mark next to these profiles to make clear that this is the case? Allowing operators to contribute means that the dividing line between advertorial and editorial is totally and utterly erased... once and for all.

The site - very interesting that there's no link with Travelsupermarket. I am really surprised by this. Meta search engines do a great job of finding the lowest price deal... but there's little to distinguish one from another beyond price... I think that ultimately the likes of Travelsupermarket will HAVE to offer unique content and useful tools to make people come back to them rather than go to a competitor. (Indeed they are starting to do this already... with their use of experts) A site like Simonseeks synched with Travelsupermarket could be incredibly powerful... and I really assumed that was the strategy all along.

What do you think? Any surprises here? Good stuff? Bad?

Tomorrow (Thursday 18th June) a new travel content website launches. Simonseeks.com is a new travel website, backed by Simon Nixon, the founder of moneysupermarket.com and
travelsupermarket.com.

There's a hole in the market for quality travel content that works for people who are in the research phase of holiday booking and tour operators have been way too slow to fill it. Simon Nixon reckons he can fill that gap and has deep pockets too. Some say he's worth £295 million.

Similar in approach to thetraveleditor.com, Simonseeks will offer writers who contribute to the site a share of advertising revenue. I was quite involved in thetraveleditor but decided to not participate in the end, feeling that the revenue share wasn't sufficient and that they really didn't know too much about SEO - which is pretty crucial.

I think this is where simonseeks could be different. I've contributed a few articles for the launch and they are using a formatted template that requires writers to add meta-data and makes them tag their features too. Unsurprisingly the team at simonseeks know a thing or two about how to make websites work. They've also signed up Nick Trend, who has a lot of travel writing and editing experience for the likes of Which?, The Telegraph and Conde Nast traveller, to be editor.

The press release talks about a 'new cottage industry' of travel writers working from home earning money by creating content and taking their share of the ad revenue - which as I understand it will be a fairly decent 50%. I've just discovered from Fiona Reece who is doing PR for the launch (and sent me the press release) that 300 writers have contributed 1000 articles already.

Part of me hopes they are successful and that maybe I get to share in that success... but there's concern too. I don't like the idea of being part of a 'cottage industry'. I have a writer profile on the site which has a mark on it saying 'Travel Professional' but the strap line for the site is Travel Guides for you, by you. That for me speaks volumes. Professional travel journalism as those of us in the profession know it is pretty much finished now. Here's some more detail from the 'about' page.

Anyone can do it, and make money out of it. You write your own
articles, or guides, post them up on the site, and we will do the rest.
Although we will always check that any guides submitted are up to our
high standards of accuracy before we publish them, the site is open to
all - whether you are a professional journalist, an expert in a
particular field of travel, a student, publisher, or simply someone who
loves travelling and wants to share your experiences with others.

Let's face it, I'm a bit of a snob. I don't know that I want my writing alongside that of wannabetravelwriterbackpacker or whoever. This is the market at its most aggressive and brutal and its scary. I know a thing or two about SEO so maybe I can manipulate features that I contribute to be more visible and hence attract more ad revenue? But there's a limit to the number of features they'll need on Seville for example - I wrote a guidebook to the city so I know it well - but there are 10 features on the site already about Seville that are written by other people.

I wonder too if there's a finite number of features that you can have about a place before there are just too many? Will there come a point where there are too many features about Seville and the mass of information becomes a bit overwhelming?

One thing that I'm not so sure about is the fact that along with all the other UGC sites like TripAdvisor etc there's no attempt at niche here. The intention is to cover the complete universe of travel opportunities. How doable is that? I'd love to know how many days a week Nick Trend is working on the project... it could be a 24 hour editing job. I'd also love to know more about his web experience... I don't know if he has that much of it... I can't find a personal website or a blog for him. But does that matter? (Maybe not.)

So.. do I throw my lot in with them and hope that my years of experience will mean I become one of their most read and valuable travel writers or do I create a small niche site of my own about stuff I'm a real expert on and try and build something myself... and keep all the ad revenue for myself too? I don't know that much yet about monetization, but if Simonseeks has thousands and thousands of pages the value of the ads on each page will be very small I'd imagine, so to make it work it will be a volume game.

What would you do?

Nextstop is a rather smart user review website that's been developed using Google's application protocol by two ex-googlers.
It's garnering a lot of interest and I can see why.

It's really really smart.

Let's say you want to review somewhere, it finds all the basic info for you so you don't need to spend time doing it. For example, you want to review a nice little restaurant you happen to know. Type in the name of the restaurant and the city and Nextstop offers suggestions for the address, pulls in a bunch of photos, plots it on a map and gives you some simple tick boxes to classify your review.

And... it's amazingly fast. Google worked out very quickly that speed was really important for keeping searchers using their search engine... and these guys clearly took that learning with them.

And... you can sign up using your Facebook ID so for millions of people it's just a case of entering your Facebook password and you're off. It even pulls in your profile pic from Facebook.

And... you can follow others on the site - just as you do with Twitter and Facebook.

And... you can create widgets of your reviews to stick on other sites.

Functionally it really is brilliant. Better by a mile than anything else I've seen. All sorts of clever other elements like suggesting other places based on people who've recommended like you and nearby places too. Faultless.

But for me as a content creator and owner there's a problem... Look at this. Pic number 8 there is clearly a copyrighted pic... and pic number 7? Who took that shot and does Nextstop have permission to use it?

I can see this issue becoming bigger and bigger. The site scrapes pics from all over the place... and to cover themselves they just credit the site they've taken the pic from.

In the 'share-all' world of the web that might seem fine, but it's nicking other people's content at the end of the day. Photo sites like Flickr do allow you to designate whether a photo can be used by others, but Nextstop just credits Flickr, not the photographer which flies in the face of the way Creative Commons licence is supposed to work.

And it takes pics from all over the place. I can't imagine that say Beerintheevening.com from where lots of pub shots for Brighton (my home town) are taken would willing give copyright consent for the use of their images.

The new generation (ie not old hacks like me) don't really 'get' copyright do they?

I for one will never ever put my shots on Flickr for this very reason. It would be nice to share with people who just want to look at my shots and comment, but if there's a risk someone will try and profit from them, I'm not taking it.

What do you think?

WHSmith (WHS) which has a virtual monopoly on airport and ralilway station book retailing is rumoured to have signed a deal with Penguin (publisher of DK Eyewitness & Top 10 Guides and Rough Guides) to only stock Penguin travel guides in its travel sector bookstores. That's around 450 of its outlets in airports and rail stations across the UK.

The report in book publishing industry magazine The Bookseller suggests that in return WHS is getting a whopping 72% discount and a cash bung up front.

I love the justification from a WHS spokesman. If it wasn't such a serious issue I'd find it hilarious:

(Clearly he or she has never spent time waiting for a delayed flight or connecting between flights.)

But let's face it, it's a totally transparent attempt to put a positive spin on a clearly anti-competitive, anti-customer move.The market is being carved up.

According to the Bookseller report, Penguin titles account for 18% of travel guides sold. So folks, because you're 'extremely time pressed' your choice of travel guides will be restricted by over 80%.

Given that WHS is getting such a clonking discount, I wonder if they will pass any of these savings on to customers in the form of reduced prices. Somehow I don't think so.

The message? Buy your guidebooks before you travel... from somewhere other than Smiths.

[Disclosure: I am the author of the Frommer's Day by Day Guide to Seville. Last time I was passing through Gatwick Airport there were 4 copies on the shelf in WHSmith, clearly that won't be the case much longer.]

User Generated Content (UGC) continues to be a
hot topic for big chunks of the on-line travel industry. I posted recently
about Visit Britain's recent decision to launch a reviews site for people to
post reviews and comments about places they've visited, hotels they've stayed
in and more.

UGC has a seriously important role to play - witness the amazing reach of Trip Advisor - and the impact that incorporating Trip Advisor reviews into a website can have on conversions. It doubles conversion rates in some cases.

But there's a slew of content-focussed sites based around the idea of 'community' which seem to think that they can get people to do the content for them - words, pics and video - and create a site that travellers and holiday purchasers will really value. Just a few include Tripwolf, Tripsay, Travelpost, Addictedtotravel, Travellerspoint, Travbuddy, Driftr, Dodo and of course WAYN

I don't think UGC alone is the final solution. Specifically sites like this tend to lack...

Structure: Reviews in particular are meant to act as
comparison tools. To easily compare reviews for one hotel with those for
another, the reviews need to be in similar formats. It's not enough to just let
people ramble and rant. A few key
elements: limit the number of characters; give people
categories to work with; use tick boxes; make it possible to see other reviews
by the same reviewer. The same goes for images and videos - particularly in the way they are tagged. People use all sorts of different ways to tag stuff like this which makes it really hard to search successfully.

Moderation: Most professional journalists know when a
line has been crossed. They write all the time - they have perspective. They
are used to thinking about their audience and appreciate that different
attributes are appreciated by different people in different ways. Most UGC reviewers
absolutely don't. Read any review site and you'll see that reviews tend
to be at extremes. A place is either the best in the world or it's absolutely
awful. There needs to be an overall editorial voice to adminster balance and objectivity.

Consolidation: Guess what? Lots of people will probably say the same thing over and again about some places and some activities. That in itself is very significant - the more people saying the same thing the more likely it is to be correct. (Well you'd imagine that... but see my previous post about the Truthification cycle and you might think otherwise). Anyway, I'd rather know that 30 out of 45 people loved the food at this restaurant than to have wade through tons of reviews to work that out for myself.

Stimulation: And for any community site to succeed people need to be encouraged to contribute. So stimulating debate and interaction makes a lot of sense: setting up polls, asking questions, creating competitions with prizes are just a few examples.

Some of the examples above are doing some of these already. Tripwolf has done a deal in the UK with Footprints guides for English pro content. So clearly they see a need for more than just UGC.

I think community management (ie the stimulation and moderation bits) could be another element of the future online travel editor's skillset. I also think that the vast majority of these sites that are just based on wiki architecture - hoping people will gladly participate and add reviews and information - will disappear leaving just a few biggies at the top of the pile. And undoubtedly the winners will have invested in pro-editorial elements to compliment the UGC elements. 

Do you think I've lumped together all the sites I mention above unfairly? Do some have distinguishing features that make them better than the others?