April 26, 2007
Add The PhoCusWright Conference dates to your calendar.
The PhoCusWright Conference (November 12-15, 2007, Orlando, Florida USA) will once again challenge the status quo for travel industry executives and bring the most important topics impacting this industry into focus.
By Philip C. Wolf, President and CEO, PhoCusWright Inc.
If you are responsible for setting strategy in the travel industry, your job is increasingly challenging. Why?
Lots of reasons.
Overview
At the last PhoCusWright Conference, we cast a Hollywood-size spotlight on Travel 2.0 in the wake of Travel 1.0�s swan song. Since then, the Travel 2.0 floodgates have opened. We asserted that a positive force was advancing, holding great promise for travel, tourism and hospitality. And that�s exactly what transpired.
Travel 2.0 - the travel industry's collective application of Web 2.0 - embodies how companies can differentiate themselves in a vast, dynamic travel distribution marketplace. It challenges status quo travel planning behavior.
Planning and purchasing behavior is undergoing significant change, evidenced by travelers who are now taking control and finding/creating the perfect trip, not just the cheapest trip. Customers communicating with customers has triggered an unprecedented social networking phenomenon and a resurgence in the Long Tail economy.
The Long Tail debunks the old 80/20 rule or Pareto principle. Defending an 80/20 strategy is getting risky; so is automatically dismissing the value of low volume products, under-the-radar channels, small customer groups and obscure key words. In the Long Tail, embracing niches wins because they cumulatively outnumber or outweigh higher frequency plays. Big companies are successfully harvesting lots of little things while "Davids" are beating "Goliaths" because the size of a reputation matters more than the size of a marketing budget. The alleged "leveling of the playing field" that was supposed to have occurred in the 1.0 world has finally come into its own. Little guys compete on the merits of the products and services, not the size of their marketing budgets. Big guys are all of a sudden at increased risk if they ignore too many little things.
Wired Magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson, coiner of the term "the Long Tail," reset the stage when he said, "The Long Tail is about selling less of more."
The PhoCusWright Conference is dedicated to unlocking potential by recognizing the interplay of new forces in the marketplace such as the Long Tail. This conference embodies how all types of travel, tourism and hospitality companies - young and old, large and small - can differentiate themselves in our vast, dynamic space.
To continue reading, view the full article on our Web site.
Find out more about The PhoCusWright Conference, the Travel Industry Event of the Year.
We look forward to seeing you in Orlando!
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860 350-4084
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