Online travel in 2009: The Perfect Storm?

Cape Town – So you’ve finally come to grips with Web 2.0, SEO and PPC. You know which portals work for you. Thinking about your website no longer sends you into hysterics. Well, don’t flush the tranquilizers just yet.

The online travel landscape continues to change rapidly. Driven by continued technological innovation, broader adoption of open standards, and hybrid business models sustained by the ever lower cost of bandwidth, what seemed to work online last year is unlikely to make the grade in the year to come.

Perplexed about Pipes? Mixed up by mashups? You’re not alone. There’s always more to learn, and the change will be relentless.

• Over and above user-generated content like  meta-search and comparison engines are changing how customers find and select products. There is no SEO for improving your results on Kayak. (and Facebook is so 2007…)
• Ubiquitous broadband is changing the demand for online video and richer media. Faster, smaller, cheaper handsets with better battery life are blurring the lines between laptops and cell phones, meaning users can consume – and produce – content nearly anywhere (you do Twitter don’t you?)
• And with GPS built into more and more handsets, location-specific data and services are increasingly in demand. So now, the more universal the internet becomes, the more particular and local your business needs to be to differentiate itself – a typical online travel paradox. This will really hit home once Google releases their updated (and hopefully accurate!) Google Maps data for South Africa, supposedly some time in November.
• And – you knew it wasn’t far away – yes, Web 3.0 is on the horizon.  I won’t even try to explain here what the semantic web will mean, but the internet will seem more and more ‘intelligent.’ If you think your PC makes you feel dumb now, just wait…

One of the leading analyst groups for travel technology, PhoCusWright, calls our current situation “The Perfect Storm“. The various forces driving online travel each contributing in unprecedented ways to amplify and accelerate change. Each step of the search – shop – buy process is changing rapidly, obscuring the point of sale, altering the decision-making process and reworking who pays who in the travel channel.

What makes this a particular concern for the industry in South Africa is that our customers, the channel and many of our long-haul competitor destinations are far more experienced than we are at grappling with these issues and working with these technologies. There’s little national leadership on this front and the major industry players are busy looking after their own business interests. Recent conferences like e-Tourism Africa are helpful, but we have a long way to go before our industry comes to grips with the dynamics of online travel.

I also have to add that the recent global financial crisis and related economic downturn may be a factor here, as some of the technology start-ups and trailblazers find their venture capital needs unmet, angel investors fleeing for the exits, and more traditional bank loans unavailable. If we’re dependent on everyone else’s innovation, we’ll never play in the premier leagues. I’ve heard rumours from well-positioned sources that one of the major national booking engines is in real trouble (the one backed by the big national bank that is also a 2010 World Cup sponsor – you heard it here first). Not a good sign.

Now, about those tranquilizers…

About Blogger
KURT ACKERMANN writes, researches and consults on strategy, business models and brands for organisations adapting to globalisation and technological change. He is the proprietor of the Afrikatourism blog for responsible travel at afrikatourism.blogspot.com.

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