Online Travel Agencies 1Q09: Outperforming in a Recession

Innovation Profiles: Learning and Shopping

U.S Online Travel Overview Eighth Edition Update: 2009-2010

Part One: European Hotel Web Site Strategies
All hotels—from large hotel chains to small individual properties—have one thing in common: their brand Web site is normally their lowest-cost distribution channel. Low cost isn’t the only benefit of this channel; brand Web sites also foster consumer confidence(e.g., through best-price guarantees) and build loyalty via customer retention programs.

But improved technology and the experience of users mean that hotel Web sites must now live up to higher standards. New development techniques—such as Ajax, which supports interactive animation—have emerged and are changing the game, in addition to easily implemented Web applications, and more sophisticated search engines and travel Web sites such as Expedia and Kayak.com.

Part Two: Managing European Hotel Online Intermediaries
Hotel chains and individual hotels alike cannot neglect the importance of online intermediaries, an essential component to maximizing revenue and market share. Online intermediaries contribute heavily to the development of the total European online travel market, accounting for about one third of Europe’s total online gross bookings and almost 45% of 2008’s market growth. Online travel agencies (OTAs) specializing in hotel distribution have pulled ahead of the pack and remain the growth leaders among European OTAs.

Despite the continued increase in supplier direct Web site bookings, collaborations with online intermediaries are – and will remain – essential for a hotel’s competitive online performance. The most fundamental benefit of collaborating with online travel agencies is undoubtedly incremental hotel sales, but OTAs also provide improved global reach to a huge traveler audience, supported by refined usability and advanced functionality, as well as sophisticated technological features ranging from videos to avatars. The “billboard effect,” when consumers shop on OTAs but book on hotel Web sites, should be considered an additional benefit for hoteliers.

This is the second part of a two-part report and focuses on providing hoteliers with more insight on how to reap the benefits of partnerships with online travel agencies. The analysis illustrates that an optimal intermediary distribution strategy requires a profitable business model (OTA channels for targeted consumer groups) and efficient technologies and connectivity.

PhoCusWright's 2009 Technology Trend Predictions

With 2009 in full swing, we again look at the technologies that have the potential to drive change through innovation and create business value in the travel industry in the next several years.

These 10 technology trends have been carefully selected by PhoCusWright from the plethora of global business and technology initiatives that dominate the press and the Internet.

A Brutal Quarter, a Glimmer of Hope: Online Travel Agency Review of 4Q08 and Full Year 2008

Innovation Profiles: Shopping and Booking

PhoCusWright's European Consumer Travel Trends Survey

Vacation Rental Marketplace: Poised for Change

A Winning Philosophy for Travel-Related Web Site Design

Web site design has matured substantially over the years as tools and design concepts have become more sophisticated. Some of the early groundbreaking sites that were considered “leading edge” in their day look primitive in today’s world.

Today, complex user interaction and response can be facilitated by the use of broadband with AJAX and Flash technologies – an improvement over the page-based, request-and-reply paradigm that is the signature of HTML-based Web content.

Semantic Web and Semantic Search

The explosive growth of user-generated content, multimedia and vertical data across the Internet has brought a renewed focus to finding new methods of extracting meaningful information. An increasing number of technology companies are looking for ways to add meaning to, or extract understanding from, these vast pools of data. In essence they are aiming to make the Web a meaningful guide rather than a static catalog of information. Over the last several years, this long-term goal has fueled a number of promising approaches to a more meaningful Web, commonly referred to as the semantic Web.

Learning to Think Like a Mobile Traveler

To date, travel industry mobile efforts have largely been limited to creating scaled-down versions of travel Web sites formatted for mobile. While this is a good first step, it fails to take advantage of the unique contexts in which travelers use their mobile devices. Rather than just viewing mobile as a smaller screen for viewing travel Web sites, it’s crucial to recognize the contextual implications of a device that travelers use when they are on the move. Travel companies will not begin to reap the benefits of mobile until they introduce mobile offerings that account for the mobile user’s context and the unique capabilities of their handset.

PhoCusWright's German Online Travel Overview Fourth Edition

PhoCusWright's Scandinavian Online Travel Overview Fourth Edition

Scandinavia, which includes Denmark, Norway and Sweden, is one of the most important travel markets in Europe. Scandinavia’s market size is in the range of Italy’s – one of the five key European destinations.

In 2007, Scandinavia continued to lead the world in Internet penetration. Throughout the year, more than two thirds of the Scandinavian population used the Internet at least once a week, according to the European Statistics Office Database (Eurostat).

PhoCusWright's Indian Online Travel Overview

The last three years have seen an unprecedented shift in the supply-side dynamics of the travel industry in India. Deregulation of the airline industry – and the absence of government regulation on the distribution side – have unleashed an entrepreneurial energy that strikes at the root of how consumers shop for, research and buy travel.

Packaging Update: Weak Economy Gives Packaging a Lift

The Internet has forever changed the shopping and buying patterns of U.S. travelers. By 2000 it became clear that online travel booking would eventually become mainstream – it was just a matter of time as the “next generation” quickly adopted new technologies and behaviors. By 2007, the market reached a tipping point when roughly half of all travel was purchased online in the United States. How much can the “next generation”, or the NEXTgen traveler, continue to tip the scales?

To ascertain the next wave of online travel development in the U.S., Ypartership and PhoCusWright joined forces to understand the characteristics of the NEXTgen traveler. The purpose of The NEXTgen Traveler™ study was to learn about their preferences, ownership and use related to: entertainment and computer hardware and software; the Internet, social networks and Web 2.0 features; lifestyle and media habits. In particular, the survey probed consumers’ travel behaviors, intentions, aspirations and budget, thus allowing overall technology savviness to be intersected with travel-related characteristics. This resulted in a thorough view of the NEXTgen traveler across all aspects of the travel value chain, including searching, shopping and buying.

This report presents key findings from this research. It identifies important aspects of the NEXTgen traveler such as:

• Channels used for shopping and purchasing travel
• Influences affecting travel purchase decisions
• Activities performed through the Internet, mobile devices and other technology
• Social media Web sites – and functionalities - used
• Media choices

Purchase The NEXTgen Traveler™ today – get to know this important demographic and stay ahead of your competition.

The PhoCusWright Consumer Travel Trends Survey Tenth Edition

For the past ten years, PhoCusWright Inc. has conducted a nationally representative Consumer Travel Trends Survey among U.S. online travelers to ascertain data on travel shopping and purchase behavior. Commencing in 2002, this research was constructed as an Omnibus study to afford client companies the opportunity to investigate and quantify pertinent issues relevant to their own businesses without commissioning nationwide studies of their own.

In addition to understanding the dynamics of the online traveler, PhoCusWright also probed the travel buying behavior of frequent business travelers.

Behind the Firewall: Social Networking for the Corporate Travel Industry

Many corporate travel managers and buyers view the growth of sites such as MySpace or Facebook as an Internet phenomenon that has little impact on their day-to-day jobs. This is not only a naïve view, but it also represents a significant missed opportunity for the corporate travel industry. The offline influence of these corporate communities has always had an impact on employee behavior. Finding a way to capture the effects of this community electronically can have an impact on corporate traveler behavior.

Technology is driving changes in the way business travel is booked and managed. As the mainstream market embraces techniques such as self-booking and interactive dashboards, emerging technology under the broad umbrella of Web 2.0 promises to integrate user-generated content and transform interfaces to become more user-centric.

The primary purpose of this report is to educate the reader on the major trends in corporate travel technology. This study provides detail into specific features and functionality within various corporate travel technology categories. The information contained in this study was derived from comprehensive interviews with over 20 travel software vendors, travel management companies (TMCs), as well as of hundreds of corporate travel managers and buyers in 2006 and 2007.

This research report reviews functionality for the major vendor categories, but does not equate specific features with vendors. Instead, the study discusses emerging, unique and standard features within each category. By adopting this approach, the reader can use this study as a reference for evaluating suppliers, recognizing that any given feature that is emerging or unique to a limited number of suppliers will shortly become standard.