Interview with Richard Noon, chairman, Amplify

When it comes to search, the key for advertisers is to make sure the consumer is not disappointed once you get them to the website, feels Richard Noon, chairman, Amplify.

“A lot of money can be wasted, especially in travel, if you don’t provide what the consumer is looking for or make it difficult for them to book. Whether it be online help or just making it easy for them to call, can mean the difference between getting the sale or having the consumer leave in disgust,” says Noon. “Online businesses need to realise that the experience is as important as the adverting and they need to ensure that it meets the expectations of the consumer. If you get it right, they’ll come back again and tell their friends. If you get it wrong, you can kiss their business goodbye.”

Noon shared more information in an interview with EyeforTravel.com’s Ritesh Gupta. Excerpts:

How do you assess growth of meta-travel search in Asia? What lessons do you thinks can be learnt from markets like the US and Europe? 

For meta search to work there has to be a complexity of price and supply. For a virtual airline duopoly like Australia one has to question whether it will work. Similarly for hotels one has to ask what the hotel brokers like wotif are not doing for meta search to catch on. Providing sophisticated search is one thing but passing off the consumer to a site for booking versus travel sites that take the booking is something I think the jury is still out on. My understanding is that whilst meta search has grown quiet fast in the US it currently accounts for about 7% of travel traffic.

Meta search is appealing as it replicates GDS functionality online - that is price and supply appear on the one screen. But different from the GDS, meta search doesn't act as principle to make a booking. I think the real interest will be if Google or Yahoo take on the GDS's in searching and booking functionality.

Which according to you are the most cost effective search engine promotion strategies?

The most important issue is to align your message with the way consumers search for your products and secondly implement an analytics and tracking system to measure visitors and conversions. If you mess up on the message almost anything you do online will fail. Equally if you can't measure you can’t manage, so tracking the various search media, email and affiliate marketing campaigns is essential. There is enormous intellectual property in getting this right and its why the pure online companies are streets ahead of the rest.

At Amplify we refer to the big five techniques  - paid search; natural or optimised search; email marketing; conversion analysis;  and affiliate networks.

The trick is to use these strategies in the right order and to closely monitor tracking results. A cycle of testing, learning, modifying and then testing again is very important and key to the online intellectual property being acquired.

How fast is search growing as an online distribution channel for travel? How is it likely to develop in the next 12 months? 

Search overall is growing enormously. Search spend has now passed Radio advertising spend in the US and UK. Travel and hotels is one of the top 4 categories online. Paid search alone in Australian accounted for over $150 million (up from $70 million in 2004) according to Frost and Sullivan.

How do customers distinguish between search engines, meta-search engines and online intermediaries in Asia?

Consumers use the search engines to research extensively. They also use search engines to find booking sites especially for broad product choice categories such as hotels where 'cheap Sydney hotels' or 'Melbourne hotels' are typical searches. For flights they will tend to collapse the supplier with destination especially as many airline brands have a destinational naming component  eg Air France, Singapore Airlines etc

With meta-search yet to gain a foothold in this market it’s too early to tell whether consumers can actually distinguish between them and a Flight Centre or Webjet or whether they’ll take to them in the future. Who know, this may be the year they get noticed.

How do you think meta-search engines are trying to establish themselves in Asia? What are going to be the major considerations going ahead?

In order for meta-search to take off in this market they are going to have to offer the consumer a better product (or least help them find a deal) and/or make the experience better than it already is. And they’re also going to have to be willing to spend to get the word out.


What trends have you seen from consumer’s perspective (in Asia) as far usage of search engines (from travel perspective is concerned?

One clear trend is that consumers are using more words in their search query. Three and four word searches are quite commonplace now as consumers find that the more specific they are the more relevant the results.