Travelblather

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...

Ever wondered what it's like being a guidebook writer? If you thought it was about dining at the finest restaurants and sleeping in 5 star luxury, you'd be totally and utterly wrong. It's about working hard collecting information and making judgements about places from dawn to dusk. And when it's the middle of summer in Seville, that's hot work. Here's a 3 minute glimpse of a life in the day of a guidebook writer... please excuse the wonky camerawork!

I just came across a new video-based website called tripr.tv It made me shudder. The idea is that anyone who fancies being an 'independent video author' can dig out their handycam, film a sequence about a hotel and post it. If someone books the hotel as a result of watching the video the 'independent video author' gets a cut of the commission. God, can it get any worse?

Like seriously, is anyone going to book the Ritz Carlton in Miami as a result of Bob's wonky handheld home video and his husky built-in mic voiceover ('The beds are really nice. The bathroom is really.... err nice. The view is really umm... nice)? If anything they'll do the opposite. All the hotel chain's hard efforts to create a brand and product that suggests luxury, attention to detail and quality are completely pole-axed by some random bloke with his holiday movie. It's hosted on YouTube so the compression quality is awful too. It ought to be funny... But there's a very serious point here for anyone who is running a tour company or hotel... 

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