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After sitting through 33 12-minute presentations during the PhoCusWright conference Travel Innovation Summit Tuesday, our minds (those would be the minds of Sean, Jessica and Katie) are still reeling. Some of the ideas presented were pretty close to brilliant. Some were ideas we could swear we’ve seen before…several times. And some were so behind-the-scenes or tech-oriented that we either couldn’t keep up or, though travelers may benefit from them, we’ll really never know we are using them directly. So, out of 33 presentations, we’ve come up with a list of the top ideas that we think will affect travelers or that travelers can use to improve the way they travel and plan trips.
Hipmunk
Across the board, we loved Hipmunk for its new spin on flight search. Flight options are represented with colored bars to make it easy to distinguish each option, and nearly every possibility is shown on one page so you don’t have to flip through endless pages of options. Users can sort by price, stops and duration, or they can sort by “agony” – which combines price with number of stops and duration of the flight. You can open multiple tabs within the same window to compare different dates or airports for the same trip, or compare different trips altogether. The interface is easy (and actually fun!) to use. Plus, the logo is just so darn cute.
TripAlertz
Another unanimous vote for best-in-show went to TripAlertz. The “Groupon of travel,” TripAlertz is based on the concept of viral marketing. The price of a deal goes down as the number of bookings increases, motivating users to share the deal and encourage people in their social network to book. Trips can be as short as two nights, so the odds are better that your friends may be interested in the trip, and starting in January, users who get 3 friends to book any trip on the site (within a specific window of time) will earn a free trip. Those who get 2 friends to book will earn a 50% discount; 1 friend booking equals a 25% discount. TripAlertz believes that “free travel is the ultimate viral marketing incentive” and we think they might be right.
Stash Hotel Rewards
Katie and Jessica both loved the concept of Stash Hotel Rewards, with some caveats. Stash is a hotel rewards program geared towards travelers who prefer to stay at independently-run hotels in the United States. This means travelers can book the unique hotels they love, while still earning rewards points. Hoteliers change the number of points required for a room at different times of year, so there aren’t any blackout dates. The program is only available in the US, and there are only 100 hotels in the program so choice is currently a bit limited compared to other rewards programs. There are 125 more hotels set to be added soon, and we think if they can continue to grow the number of options, this will be a great program for a certain type of traveler.
UsingMiles
UsingMiles was another hit with Katie and Jessica. Users of the site can not only track all their frequent flier miles and programs in one place, and search for flight options that use miles for any of those programs, but they can also see which is a better value for each ticket option – miles or cash? For anyone who belongs to more than one frequent flier program, we think the site could be very helpful for managing those miles, booking reward travel, and making sure you are getting the best value from each program.
Everbread
Sean saw Everbread’s new proprietary fares and pricing engine, called Haystack, as one of the best innovations. He saw it as an ambitious plan to connect everything to everywhere, and though it’s a B2B product that most travelers won’t even know they are using, it could improve the way end-users search for flights. The product is designed to give online airfare booking sites (including airlines and travel agencies) a way to “offer cheaper fares on a greater number of flights.” The company’s product, Haystack, will allow search results to be tailored by a customer’s profile so that results are more relevant for them – things like how old they are, whether they get a military discount, etc, will affect the results shown.
Off & Away
Katie’s pick for one of the best new ideas, Off & Away is an online auction site – with a twist. The site runs auctions for fabulous (and normally very expensive) hotel suites in several cities; users bid and can score deals of up to 99% off (the site says the average is an 80% discount). Users buy bids for $1. Each bid ups the price by 10 cents and adds 20 seconds to the clock. The high bidder when the time runs out pays the final price and wins the auction. The losers, however, aren’t totally out of luck. They can apply the money spent on the auction to a “book now” booking on the site. So if you spent $25 on 25 bids, that’s $25 you can apply to another booking – but, you must spend the credit within 30 days or you lose it. For travelers who love bargain hunting, the deals will be appealing. Those who like to chase lady luck may also like the fun of the online auction.
Vacation Relation
Jessica thought Vacation Relation offered a great way to get involved with people who are going on a similar trip and to engage with people who care about your trip (because, let’s face it, a lot of people in your social network don’t). Vacation Relation allows users to connect with people who are going to the same place that they are going, and it does it using the social media platforms everyone is already using (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn). When you enter information about your upcoming trip, you’ll see the the other people who have also added themselves to a similar trip, based on destination and month of travel. Your profile into gets pulled into Vacation Relation, so you can socialize with other travelers and trade travel tips on Vacation Relation even if you aren’t already connected to them on other social media.
AFAR Connect
One of Jessica’s picks was AFAR Connect, a program (currently in beta) that helps travelers connect with other similar travelers. Rather than limiting your trip planning resources on social media to the people you already know, AFAR Connect connects you to people who travel in a similar way as you. How do they know? Each user fills out a profile that puts them into one of 30 traveler types and then introduces them to other travelers in that category. Whether travelers want to add another social media site to their collection remains to be seen, but we like the overall idea and are excited to see where it goes.
GroundLink
As Sean (who picked this idea) put it, GroundLink isn’t sexy, but the product is needed, the site is profitable and the company was the first to market in the niche of online booking for ground transportation. The site is an aggregator of more than 45,000 independent ground transportation vendors – including limos, taxis, vans, shuttles, buses, car rental, and ride-sharing. Customers can read company reviews, compare prices, select the best option and then book transport in 172 countries with as little as an hour’s notice. Travelers who want to organize everything in advance or avoid the hassle of haggling will love the service, while travelers of a different sort may never find themselves needing to use it.
Which innovations and new ideas did you find the most intriguing?
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Company Name: Inntopia
Official Website: http://www.inntopia.com/
What do they do? Inntopia processes reservations for “Resorts, Destination Marketing Organizations, Central Reservation Agencies, Activity Providers, Web Portals and other Travel Suppliers, Aggregators, and Resellers.” It’s a reservation system for both online and phone-based booking.
Are they a business-to-business (B2B) company, or business-to-consumer (B2C)? B2B
Founder(s): Sterling Valley Systems, Inc. is the owner and operator of Inntopia, and is based in Stowe, Vermont.
Date Founded: 1997
Presentation Notes: Inntopia provides a way to incorporate so-called “non-traditional” or “long-tail” travel products into an existing online travel search tool – things like vacation rentals and activities. The goal is to provide these non-traditional products alongside existing traditional products (such as hotels, flights, and car rentals) so that travelers could more easily book everything in one place. Inntopia believes that the vacation rentals market is already huge, and that tours/activities is the next big thing.
Why should/shouldn’t travelers care? This is a system that the end user may benefit from, especially if they want a bit more flexibility over the individual components of a package trip – it would allow travelers to book each item of a package instead of just going with the travel provider had chosen. Some providers that are already using the system, however, are just using it to provide new packages with no ability to customize them. That doesn’t seem as appealing, since it just feels like yet another package trip option. Customization here would be key to whether travelers would find this different and useful.
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Company Name: Amadeus IT Group
Official Website: http://www.amadeus.com/
What do they do? Amadeus is a travel “transaction processor;” its software runs behind the scenes of many major booking websites and is the software many travel agencies use to search for, price, book, and ticket all kinds of travel purchases.
Are they a business-to-business (B2B) company, or business-to-consumer (B2C)? B2B
Founder(s): Founded by a coalition of European airlines (Air France, Iberia, Lufthansa, & SAS) as a European alternative to the American company Sabre, Amadeus remains owned in part by Air France, Iberia, and Lufthansa and headquartered in Madrid.
Date Founded: 1987 (went public in 1999)
Presentation Notes: Amadeus is an established provider of software, but it’s software that’s used by travel agents and therefore something the average traveler will never see. They presented on a new software product, Amadeus One, that they called an “integration solution” for corporate travel. Despite the number of travelers who research and book trips online, travel agents aren’t going away – there are 79,000 in the US alone, and 49% of trips are still booked offline. 30% of tickets are exchanged, which is significantly easier with a travel agent. So this software is very targeted at corporate travel and travel agents, but it’s not a small market.
Why should/shouldn’t travelers care? This is a product the end user traveler will never see, and many of them will never even benefit from.
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Company Name: TrustYou
Official Website: http://www.trustyou.com/
What do they do? Search tool designed to sift through “10 million reviews on over 200,000 hotels” to deliver results on hotels that are most relevant to your search criteria, based on other customer reviews
Are they a business-to-business (B2B) company, or business-to-consumer (B2C)? B2C
Founder(s): Founded by Prof. Dr. Franz Guenthner in cooperation with the Center for Information and Language Processing of the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, of which he is the head
Date Founded: March 2008
Presentation Notes: TrustYou believes the current landscape of user-generated content (especially, in this case, user-generated reviews) is “information chaos” and that their software is how this content will be filtered in the future. The three questions related to user-generated reviews that the software answers are: what reviews and information are relevant to me? what’s the best way to guide users to the information best suited to them? how can you as a provider know what people have written about you in reviews? TrustYou’s so-called “magic box” pulls content from user-generated reviews and filters blocks of text based on keywords and their “evaluative process” to create categorized information. It can even tag comments as either positive, negative, or neutral. This allows users to search the reviews for relevant information, and find specific feedback within reviews quickly. TrustYou is available in several languages, and can translate into your language – so if you see hotel reviews that are only written in German, you’ll still know roughly what they say. From the hotelier’s perspective, it’s easier to see what people are writing about you in a structured way. The software sends alerts when there’s new feedback written, allows hotel’s to compare themselves to the competition, and then use the information for marketing purposes – not to mention making changes to things that generate negative feedback. TrustYou “wants to be the Intel Inside” for the hotel industry.
Why should/shouldn’t travelers care? Travelers who do try to research user-generated reviews for hotels (among other things) before they book often get overwhelmed by the information, so it’s easy to see why this could be a useful tool. If the existing reviews could be codified (which then makes them more searchable) that not only saves the traveler time, but also saves them from potential frustration. It’s not immediately clear to me if the software also makes it easier to weed out questionable reviews (like the ones that appear to be written by a hotel), but that would be another helpful aspect of the software.
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Company Name: gogobot
Official Website: www.gogobot.com
What do they do? Amalgamates personalized recommendations from friends in an easy to read, linked up format, creating a unique guidebook for each user.
Are they a business-to-business (B2B) company, or business-to-consumer (B2C)? B2C
Founders:
Travis Katz ran the international business for MySpace, as well as IGN, Rotten Tomatoes and other Fox Interactive Media properties prior to founding gogbot. Ori Zaltzman was the chief architect of Yahoo! BOSS, and one of the lead technologists for Yahoo! Answers, in charge of content quality for one of the largest social platforms on the web.
Date Founded: 2010 (in beta)
Presentation Notes:
gogobot operates on the premise that people want travel advice from people they know, not strangers. So gogobot allows users to get personalized recommendations from friends and take all those recommendations and put them in one place, where they can link out to attraction websites, create maps, and browse hotel prices (and then click through to booking engines). Users can also browse things to do, and see which of their friends have been there. Users then end up with a custom guidebook, curated by friends, which they can print in pdf form or take on their mobile.
Why should/shouldn’t travelers care?
Other sites offer the ability to browse hotels and attractions and see which of your friends have been there (TripAdvisor friends is one) and many, many others allow you put all of your trip planning info in one spot. My concern with this app is that it seems to rely too much on the ability to ask your friends for input on your trip as its differentiating point. What happens then, if your friends aren’t as well-traveled or simply haven’t been to your next destination?
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