Jeremy Head's travelblather - a blog about online travel

Time for a new kind of travel agent?

 A recent press release set me thinking. It was publicising a Chartered Institute of Marketing debate titled Travel Agents - Are They Past Their Sell-By Date? The debate is on Jan 25th in London. Click the link to find out more. I plan to go and assuming I do (they have kindly offered me a press pass) I will write up my thoughts. It's a very pertinent question in my opinion. 

Just as many commentators reckon the internet means the end for journalists (anyone can be a writer now there are no barriers to publication) others have painted a similarly bleak picture for high street travel agents. (Anyone can book a holiday now every travel brand known to mankind has a web page and a booking engine.) 

The net is indeed challenging a lot of old business models, but I remain convinced that many of the old basic rules for business success remain. If anything some of them are more important now than ever before. 

I’ve blathered plenty already about how hard it is to find the right holiday on-line. Right now hundreds of thousands of people are probably lost in the usual January maze of different travel websites promising similar things, user reviews providing hugely different opinions of the same properties and booking engines that are so slow by the time you come to check out and pay, your holiday has gone up in price. There’s still a huge and immediate need for trustworthy, appropriate advice. Let’s face it, we aren’t talking about blowing a few bucks on a £10 book from Amazon or a £2 download from iTunes. 

For Brits in particular the annual holiday is one of the year’s biggest expenses. Not something you want to take risks with. You want to be sure you’re getting the right holiday for you – at the right price. If, instead of spending literally days lost in the online holiday maze you could sit down with a travel professional who knew your budget and understood your needs – in particular the ‘softer’ stuff like who your neighbours might be if you book at a particular resort or whatever – wouldn’t you happily buy from them? And, if it saved you all that time and frustration... maybe pay a little more? 

So what impact has the net had on the high street travel agent? There’s been consolidation that’s for sure – big names like Lunn Poly and Going Places have disappeared. But where’s the innovation? It all feels incredibly entrenched and backward looking. (Very much like the financial services sector – as if rebranding all the Abbey, B&B and Alliance and Leicester branches as Santander will make a scrap of difference to customers?). 

Ironically, the web is driving a desire it can’t fulfil right now. The huge impact of social media has meant that customers are increasingly demanding ‘real person contact’, service that is customised to them as individuals, service that treats them as real people, not numbers on a spreadsheet. Of course, no travel website is anywhere near offering this kind of service, no matter how empowering this new technology is or how wholeheartedly a web-based travel company embraces it.

In the meantime I see opportunities on the high street. 

What would the ultimate travel agency look like? For me it would offer help with the complete experience. So many internet businesses now make as much of their profit selling the ancillary stuff alongside their main product – travel agents are completely missing the (clue)train here. 

So let’s focus our Travelstore 2.0 on people and activities NOT destinations! How about separate areas for Family Holidays, Student Holidays, Short Breaks, Adventure and Activity Holidays, Cruises and so on; with staff who are passionate about their market sector and really understand it. Make sure they sell a vast range of different brands of holiday – so it’s clear there’s no incentive to sell me one particular trip over another. And offer me all the other stuff that goes with holidays – guidebooks, travel magazines, backpacks, sunglasses, sunscreen, insect repellent, great books to read on the beach, music to drink my sundowner G&T to, travel insurance, airport parking, a funky bikini for my wife. And how about a playzone to keep the kids quiet whilst I’m chatting to an advisor? 

Guess what? You’ll get me coming in months before I buy a holiday... I’ll end up buying guidebooks and gear and who knows what else long before I book my break. And, suddenly buying a holiday will be fun... like browsing in other retail sectors... dreaming of awesome trips to amazing places. What could be better for brightening up a dull Saturday afternoon? Wouldn’t it be nice if buying a holiday could be inspiring? 

Would this idea work in practice? Well clearly there are risks, and it requires some serious investment... but stop a moment and think about the fact that it's already happening. 

There will be literally thousands of people visiting travel shows like Destinations and the Adventure Travel Show over the next month or so. (Not to mention the Ski Shows back in the autumn.) Here they will find all manner of brands offering all sorts of holidays, face to face advice, in-depth presentations, kit for sale, talks from travel presenters, gear demonstrations, photography competitions and more. 

And, get this... a significant number of these customers are paying to get in!

What would your ultimate travel agent store look like? And would this concept work in practice?

A new breed of travel writer?

2010 will I think be a pretty interesting year for travel writers. Printed travel media continues to decline but, slowly,the web is taking up some of the slack. A trend that has really struck me here in the UK is that major travel brands are finally getting serious about social media. (US readers we're most definitely behind you guys - some of this may seem a bit *obvious* - does it?)

I can't name names, but I've seen a really definite shift - from travel companies just talking about social media to actively looking to spend serious money doing it. And I mean big players - not small niche operators. These travel companies see an opportunity in social media to participate in the holiday-purchasing process far earlier than in the past and as a result to sell more holidays. Some of them have a far better handle on what they need to do than others - but that's a discussion I'll leave for another time.

What I wanted to highlight is that I think this is offering up opportunities for travel writers to carve themselves niches and maybe earn proper cash online(at last).

The problems for brands

1) Social media spaces are not big-brand friendly
Major travel brands might be looking to start really engaging with customers on a more personal level online, but customers for the most part won't relate to them in this way. People relate best to people (no real surprise there). What some brands are doing - with definite positive results - is allowing the people that work for them to step out from behind their corporate brand-speak and be real. To talk in their own voices. This has seen serious success for say Jetblue in the USA and easyJet in the UK who both use Twitter really effectively to help customers in far more personal and useful ways than of old.

2) Customers are looking for credible, trustworthy, unbaissed information
But worse still for brands, people want to deal with other people that they feel they can trust. In a direct customer services environment - like the twitter examples above - then direct contact with someone clearly working for the company works just fine. But for finding holiday ideas, getting inspiration for trips, any message that has a brand associated with it will tend to come across as a hardcore sales message. People will smell an ulterior motive and will lose interest. 

3) Brands are now publishers - but they don't know how to do it
Back in the old off-line era, travel companies might have published the odd customer magazine or whatever, but this kind of stuff was all very promotional. Generally people working in marketing departments don't really 'get' unbiassed content. Their job is to sell more product - so the messages they create usually feel very sales-like. Nowadays on the web - particularly the social web - people are looking for unbiassed, credible information to help them choose their holidays. And believe me they sure aren't finding much that's of any real use. Some commentators have gone so far to suggest that 'search is broken'.

A solution

It's obvious really. Why not use credible, experienced writers to write content for you for anything related to the inspiration phase of holiday booking? In particular content that sits in a more social media style environment? Using an expert travel writer offers the following advantages:

1) Credibility
If I'm reading stuff on a blog hosted by a travel company about say, great ideas for family holidays in Spain I'm highly unlikely to take much notice of recommendations that seem to come directly from the company itself - these messages will feel like someone is trying to sell me something. If however there's a family travel expert offering ideas and advice - with a profile that I can read and links to other stuff they have written about family travel elsewhere - then the content immediately feels more genuine. And by association the company wins too. They've taken the trouble to pay for someone who really knows their stuff to write about it to help me choose the right holiday for me.

2) Personality
People relate to people - I'm far more likely to engage with content (and potentially go on and make a purchase at some point) if I can get a feel for a real person writing it. Someone a bit like me; someone who clearly understands my needs and concerns

3) Great ideas
It's a bit of a scary uncharted place for marketers this online publishing world. But for journalists, it's home. A great travel writer can work with a marketer to come up with great ideas that will really work for their users. Great ideas that are developed primarily with the user in mind rather than a sales target.

Want to see an example of this in practice? Have a look at the way VisitFlorida uses expert writers. I love it! http://www.visitflorida.com/all_experts

How do travel writers make the best of these new opportunities? (I have a few ideas of my own which I will share in a follow-up post.)

A free holiday... or a job with no salary?

Welcome Tom Power for a guest blog post. Tom runs a rather nice boutique tour company called Pura Aventura which specialises in tours to Latin America and Spain. It's on a theme I've touched on before... but, coming from an operator rather than a journalist the perspective is different. Would anyone take him up on his offer? I know he'd love to know your thoughts and, of course, so would I...

What if, rather than asking travel journalists to take a trip with us, commission a story and write about it, we simply offered free holidays to travel bloggers?

I’m polling opinion here and would really appreciate your thoughts. I can’t help thinking that there’s a potentially great idea here with potentially great vulnerabilities. Where do you think it falls?

This is where I’ve got to:

1) Selective: we’d have to be picky about the blogs we select, that’s hardly controversial. We would want to associate ourselves with blogs that have decent reputations and rankings.

2) Prescriptive: we would want to define the number of posts and links back to our site. Probably in the order of 4 posts pre-trip, 1 per day on the trip and another 4 on return. Presumably it is reasonable that we expect an output in return for our investment. Anyone see any issues with this?

3) Controlling: what are the acceptable limits of editorial control? What if the blogger just hates the trip and is relentlessly nasty? (I should say that I have full faith in what we do and I can’t think of a time that it has happened to a customer so am not by nature worried.) However, what if a blogger is the only one in a group to dislike the trip? Do we retain editorial control? What would be the acceptable limits and lines?

4) Profiling: our holidays are generally taken by people later in life, median would be in the 50s I guess. If we were to send a blogger on this walking holiday to Chile for instance, would that work? Are there bloggers who would broadly match the profile of our existing customers? Does it matter? Are travel bloggers generally outdoors types or do they sit in still rooms lit only by the glow of computer screens?

5) Boring: is this an offer which regularly drops into the laps of travel bloggers? This isn’t my idea, I’ve nicked it from a Springwise newsletter (cool business ideas from around the world), I think they saw it being done in New Zealand. Is anyone else offering similar here?

6) Toe treading: and this is one for the TravelBlather and Travel Lists and many, many others I’m sure. Professional travel writers. How does this idea sit with you guys?

7) Fine print: the trip would usually not be 100% free as we don’t tend to include international flights. If you had to buy a flight to, say, South America, in order to claim/earn your trip, would it still appeal?

Is Web 2.0 killing travel brands?

I've been doing quite a lot of research around social media in the last few weeks - in particular because I was presenting at WTM. If you're interested, my presentation Social Media for Travel Marketers: Unpicking the 2.0 hype is available to view on Slideshare with detailed notes too.

One of the issues that I find particularly interesting is the way that whilst brands are desparate to engage with social media - social media is making brands increasingly redundant.

Marketers see social media as the next great opportunity to grow their businesses. And it's not hard to see why when you consider that Facebook now has 350 million accounts worldwide and Twitter is growing exponentially too. Some 40% of online sales are influenced by social media already (McKinsey stats -  more of this kind of stuff in the presentation).

But these very tools that travel marketers want to embrace are in some ways killing the brands they sought to build up - with vast expenditure and effort - over previous decades. Back in the old days pre the social web, big companies couldn't communicate with all their customers on an individual basis. So they sought to create 'personalities' - to put a friendly face on the front of their products and companies so people could 'relate' to them. Sounds weirdly ridiculous doesn't it? But it kind of worked. The whole discipline of brand marketing was born - humanising a faceless company. Often they'd use 'brand personalities' - so Michael Jackson endorsed Pepsi, Rutger Hauer came to personify Guinness and Nicole Kidman is the face of Channel No.5. Here were real people - people like us (remember the Bisto family?) or else people we'd like to be like. Absolutely tons of cash was pumped into this kind of marketing. (Interestingly I can think of no examples of travel brands that did this. Can you?)

But it was all broadcast. "This is what we want you to believe about our company and its products" was the message. And your could control the medium so it was no problem - TV, print ads, advertising billboards. But social media isn't one-way... customers can talk back, customers can broadcast for themselves. It's a multi-channel conversation and anyone can join in.

I often think of social media (blogs, Facebook, Twitter) as being a bit like the pub. There's chat going on about all kinds of stuff. It's between like minded people and friends usually, it's relaxed and informal. They could well be discussing how cheap their new mortgage deal is or where the best resort for family holidays in Spain is. But can you imagine some bloke in a suit from say Halifax suddenly intervening with a sales pitch for his mortgages or a travel agent jumping into the conversation to suggest their latest deals for family holidays to Mallorca? (Despite the fact that the information they have to offer could actually be of genuine interest.)

Absolutely not. And that's the problem.

The old days of broadcast marketing, building a brand and pumping out your message could well be over.

So how does say First Choice or Thomas Cook get themselves into that chat in the pub about everyone's next family holiday? Could you ever see a place for a big travel brand to engage in these far more conversational and personal on-line environments?

(I have a few ideas which I'll share... but I'd be fascinated to hear what other people think!)

The cake and the cockroach

I'm in the stunning city of Seville updating my Frommer’s Day by Day guide to the city. As you know, this is the first time I’ve updated a guidebook, so there’s a bit of a learning curve. But something happened yesterday I hadn’t expected.

On one of my Seville walking tours I've included a traditional coffee shop called La Campana. All my walking tours need to include at least one spot to take the weight off your feet and have a drink and a bite. This place is Seville’s oldest coffee and cake shop, full of ornate chiller cabinets filled with beautifully arranged rows of colourful cakes and sugary sweets. It trades on its reputation a bit and is pricey compared to several other places, but the location is picture perfect – on a bustling street corner in the shade. You can sit at your table on the pavement and watch the world go by as waistcoated waiters pour you a coffee or a fresh juice and bring you your yummy cake. And it’s exactly halfway round my walking tour too. So... a bit touristy, but actually pretty perfect for what I need.

Except, I and my wife (who has been here with me for a couple of days) bought some cakes there yesterday. We brought them back to my apartment. And Karen found a COCKROACH! in her cake. (‘Look on the bright side’ I told her – ‘at least it wasn’t half a cockroach!’)

But joking aside it presents me with serious issues. What should I do?

1) Drop the place completely?
As a rule with a guidebook where space is at an absolute premium, you don’t give a place a bad review. If it’s not good, you just don’t include it – there’s simply not room to write about the bad places.

2) Mention it, but give it a bad review
Despite this, it is Seville’s most famous coffee shop – it will be in every other guidebook to the city. Leaving it out could look like a glaring omission. I absolutely can’t keep it in my walking tour as a recommended refreshment stop if I am not 100% sure it’s good. These stops are supposed to be places I have carefully selected as special. An added problem is that, due to the way the format of the guidebook works, the only place I can easily include a coffee shop in the book is as a walking tour refreshment stop. There are listings chapters for Bars, Restaurants, Shops and Hotels, but this place doesn’t really fit into any of these sections very easily. (Perhaps I could put it in 'Shops'? That might work.)

3) Mention it without discussing the cockroach
Maybe this was just a one-off? After all, they have been making and serving cakes here for literally centuries. Plenty of other satisfied customers - many of them regular locals. Perhaps I should give them the benefit of the doubt? Keep it in the walking tour.

4) Mention it but say something opaque
So, they were having an off day maybe – perhaps I mention La Campana but make it clear I’m not mad keen on the place. Say something about ‘lovely location, but the cakes are a bit sweet and overpriced in my opinion’ or similar. But can I keep it in the walking tour if I do this? I’m not at all sure.

5) Give them a chance to resolve the problem
You might well be saying I should tell the manager of the place about the problem and give him an opportunity to resolve it. I probably would do in the UK – but my Spanish is awful and (more important) there is no proof the cockroach came from their cake. I could just be saying this to make life difficult for them. (It’s a big shame we didn’t eat the cake at the shop!) I have plenty of friends here who are Spanish, so I could get them to help me explain the problem. And I might.

So – what would you do? How do you strike a balance between a one-off unfortunate experience and needing a certain type of place to fit a particular kind of guidebook format?

Scroll down to comment #21 to see my update on what happened when I went to confront the manager - cockroach in hand (well in a bag actually)