Travel is the largest category of eCommerce there is, and consumers are taking it into their own hands… and voices. Consumer-Generated-Content already influences $10 Billion a year in online travel purchases. Among the early innovators in taking advantage of this trend are Sheraton Hotels, Southwest Airlines, and TripAdvisor.

Sheraton transformed its website into a social platform, pushing aside standard hotel booking functionality in favor of creating a “Global Neighborhood.” Southwest launched a promotion to involve its customers in the marketing of its brand, with a contest for creating the best “Wanna Get Away” commercial. TripAdvisor has become the single largest source of consumer-generated travel reviews online, with over 5 million consumers sharing in an ongoing dialogue.

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Near the end of December 2006, Lonely Planet launched ‘Haystack’, an online booking engine featuring exclusive author-approved accomodations. . Unlike many travel accommodation engines, 50% of the featured properties on ‘Haystack’ were not previously bookable online. Each property is visited and reviewed by a Lonely Planet author. These reviews include additions from independent travellers and are recommended to Lonely Planet travel prospects.

In January, Haystack’s first full month of operation, less than 30K U.S. consumers used the site, accounting for approximately 4.5% of Lonely Planet’s U.S. audience.

Not only did the site attract a small portion of Lonely Planet’s audience, but visitors to Haystack were also less engaged with the site’s offerings. Only 11% of Haystack’s audience (3K) viewed information pages for various accommodations. Subsequent property searches and bookings declined significantly.

Continue reading “Are Travelers Finding Needles in ‘Haystack’?” »

At the end of October, Travelistic.com launched as a new travel community site featuring user generated videos, media sharing, travel blogging, and social networking.

With Google’s success in the search market, a new class of specialized, vertical-focused search engines emerged in an attempt to carve out their own slice of the search pie. Similarly, in the wake of video-sharing site YouTube.com getting acquired for $1.6 billion, it is no surprise that entrepreneurs are looking to create specialized video-sharing sites as well. Hence, the birth of “Travelistic”….

The question facing Travelistic is whether consumers will take the time to create and share videos of their travel experiences - and if Travelistic can generate the awareness needed to draw consumers to its site in the first place. Since launching in October, the site has not yet been able to attract a sizeable audience. In November 2006, Travelistic.com was visited by about 2,700 unique individuals.

Moreover, these unique visitors have spent less time on the site and viewed less content than visitors to YouTube, the biggest video sharing site, and TripAdvisor, the biggest consumer-generated travel content site.

A large part of YouTube’s success was the viral nature of consumers sending each other links to funny, entertaining, or shocking videos, which led to an exponential growth in audience.

Will consumers feel the same way about peer-generated travel videos to create this viral growth effect? People are passionate about travel, but it still seems like a leap. To grow, Travelistic may be faced with the costly alternative of buying traffic through search engine marketing and other online media.

Get SnapShots of sites mentioned in this post:

• travelistic.com
• google.com
• youtube.com
• tripadvisor.com

Online travel is big: Seventy million consumers researched travel on the Internet in July 2006 alone. While this activity remains dominated by Online Travel Agencies such as Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz (the “OTA’s” attracted 48.5 million consumers in July), there is a new type of travel site emerging that is drawing attention. Travel “Meta Search” sites, which are sites that scan hundreds of other travel sites and pull all of the results together into an easy-to-use interface, are attracting a rapidly increasing user base. The largest sites in this category - Kayak.com, Sidestep.com, and Yahoo’s Farechase - attract up to 3 million users each.

Combined, the Meta Search category attracted an audience of 6.2 million users in July, for a 9% reach among all online travel researchers. Growth has been rapid: in January 2005, the reach of the Meta Search category was a mere 3%. Meanwhile, consumers have felt less of a need to visit an Online Travel Agency like Expedia or Orbitz; the reach of the OTA category has dropped from 77% in January 2005 to 69% in July 2006.

How large can Meta Search grow? Driven in large part by Kayak (300% growth in the past year) the category is becoming mainstream among travelers. If current growth rates continue, Meta Search will eclipse 10 million monthly users by the summer of 2007.

Why would the average person want to use one of these sites? First, by scanning for results across hundreds of other travel sites, Meta Search engines are able to pull together perhaps the most comprehensive view of travel listings and pricing information available online. Second, the sites offer excellent sorting, filtering, and navigation tools to sift through travel options quickly and easily. Tools such as a Google Maps-powered hotel finder on Kayak.com make the process of finding a flight or hotel a snap. This has helped lead to rapid growth in usage among travelers, with even more growth forecasted for 2007.