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Håkan Ericsson appointed as President CWT North America and Latin America

Carlson Wagonlit Travel (CWT) has shared that Håkan Ericsson, currently president Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA) and Latin America, has been appointed president CWT North America and Latin America, effective 1 January 2012.

Ericsson, in his new role, will continue to serve on the global executive team and to report to Douglas Anderson.

Until a replacement is announced, Ericsson will remain president of the EMEA region and Global Partners Network.

In North America, he will succeed Jack O’Neill, who will retire at the end of this year.

Under O’Neill’s leadership, CWT’s North America business has more than tripled since 2004, thanks in part to the acquisition and integration of Navigant International.

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Baidu to invest US$306m in Qunar

Chinese language Internet search provider Baidu and travel search engine Qunar have signed a definitive agreement under which Baidu has committed to make a US$306 million strategic investment in Qunar.

The investment will make Baidu the majority shareholder of Qunar.

Founded in 2005 by Fritz Demopoulos, Chenchao Zhuang and Douglas Koo, Qunar offers Chinese consumers real-time searches for air and rail tickets, hotels, and tour packages, and also provides travel-related resources such as group-buying deals and user discussion forums. It has been venture-backed by GSR Ventures, Mayfield Fund, Tenaya Capital and GGV Capital.

The parties currently expect that the transaction will close in the third quarter of 2011.

After the investment, Qunar will continue to operate as an independent company, while both companies will cooperate in certain areas of online travel search. Baidu plans to finance the investment through obtaining a third-party loan facility.

According to CNNIC’s 27th China Internet Report issued in January 2011, among China’s 457 million Internet users, search ranked as the most popular application, used by 81.9 percent of Internet users in China. However, only 7.9 percent of Internet users in China reported having used online travel booking services. By contrast, in the US, 66 percent of Internet users have booked travel services online. As a result, growth opportunities in China’s online travel industry remain largely untapped, highlighted the two companies.

New CEO

Qunar also shared that it has appointed its new chief executive officer in Chenchao Zhuang.

Demopoulos will step down as chief executive officer to pursue entrepreneurial business opportunities, while continuing to serve as strategy advisor to Qunar.

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Offering access of one hotel Facebook Page to numerous administrators

Managing a Facebook presence can be a lot of work. Many companies give administrative access to their professional Facebook Page to employees. A hotel owner, for example, could make a number of employees, or even partners, administrators of their hotel Facebook Page, to spread around the work or to help install new applications.

Here’s how to make someone else an administrator of your Facebook Page.

WARNING: Adding another administrator to your Facebook Page will give the person full and complete control of your Page. They can make edits, upload pictures, install apps and everything else that you can do. They can even remove you as an administrator. Be very sure that you trust the person before granting administrator privileges. Note that a new administrator can only manage your Page. They can NEVER manage, edit or modify your personal Profile.

1) After logging into your personal Facebook Profile, click on the “Pages” link in the left-hand column (you will see this column ONLY if you are on your Facebook “Home” page—not your “Profile” page). You may have to click a small “more” link in order to reveal it.

2) Select your Page from the list. If you administrate only one Page, then only one will display here.

3) Now that you are on your Page, click “edit page” in the top right.

4) Next, click “Manage Admins” from the list to the left.

 

5) On the resulting page, you will see a list of all the people who are administrators of your Page. To add a new one, start typing in the name of the person in the vacant type field. Note that the new admin MUST have a Facebook account and MUST be your personal Facebook friend.

6) As you are typing, you will see the name of your person appear. Select the name and click “Save Changes”.

 

7) Facebook will next ask you to type in your password. This is your personal Facebook Profile password—the one you used to log-in to Facebook. Type it in and click “Confirm”.

All done! You have now added a new administrator to your Page.

(This article appeared as a posting on buuteeq.com’s blog).

 

 

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Zuji Australia to utilise Twitter’s new sponsored tweet functionality

Online travel agency Zuji Australia has become the first Australian travel group to utilise Twitter’s new sponsored tweet functionality.

The company not only intends to build its growing social media presence, but it is also looking at ways to interact more candidly with its existing and potential customers via this initiative.

Zuji’s tweets will provide travellers with insider trip information, hot tips and the latest flight, holiday and hotel deals.

According to a report filed by campaignbrief.com, Reprise Media recommended Zuji to go ahead with this campaign.

Reprise Media social marketing strategist reportedly Maura Tuohy said: “The nature of online travel demands two key things from Zuji; they need to be able to listen to their customers in real time and they also need to be able to release special travel offers at record speed.  This partnership will allow the company to broaden its follower group and better communicate to them.”

“Additionally, with technology as a core pillar for Zuji, we felt it was appropriate for the organisation to be among the very first companies to trial the new functionality in Australia.”


Zuji is forecasting the biggest year in the company’s nine-year Australian history.

Only few days ago the company shared its new approach, Travel Your Way. It is focused on putting the power back into the hands of the individual traveller. With this move, the company is forecasting to yield 200 percent growth on last year. 

The company also referred to recent Roy Morgan Single Source Data (December 2010) figures. It shows up to 75 percent of 18 - 55 year old Australians saying that the Internet is the most useful media channel for booking travel and 80 percent of Australians in this age bracket use the Internet for booking travel. The Travel Your Way campaign will be supported by Zuji’s biggest ever marketing investment in Australia through a multi-platform media strategy, which includes television, outdoor, print, social media and digital marketing.

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Optimising Your Checkout Process from Check In to Check Out

One important part of optimising an ecommerce site is making sure you are losing as few people as possible during the checkout process.

If you haven’t analysed the performance of your checkout process you could be missing out on tons of potential revenue.

If you have a high abandonment rate, it’s in your best interest to check out the areas of your checkout process that could do with an overhaul. Even if you think your abandonment rate is pretty good, there may be some easily implemented chances to give your conversions an added boost.

Before you think about moving forward with changes to your checkout process however, make sure you have adequate funnel tracking enabled within your analytics software. You’ll want to be able to glean a clear “before and after” picture of performance.

1. Don’t require an account.

Requiring users to sign up for an account just to buy a product on your site is a great way to ensure you’ll lose a lot of customers before they even see a subtotal for their cart.

We live in an age where we have account logins for everything from social networks to doctor’s offices. As a online retailer it’s important to realise that some people simply don’t want to remember another account login. Provide users a “Continue as a Guest” option to avoid losing them before the process has begun in earnest.


2. Be transparent.

Let users know exactly where they are in the checkout process by showing a progress bar on every page. Doing this helps eliminate ambiguity and doesn’t allow a customer to feel “lost” in the checkout process. Clearly call out the last step of the checkout with button text.

3. Kill site navigation.

Amazon kills all site navigation during the checkout process. This might be a bit drastic for your own site, but if you have any side navigation you should definitely eliminate them on checkout pages. However, you may choose to experiment with keeping top and super navs present throughout the process.



4. Show subtotals.

Let users know early on what their estimated totals are. People want to know exactly how much money they are about to spend. Don’t let that number be a surprise at the last step!


5. Make edits simple.

Allow customers to edit their orders without having to backtrack to the cart.

6. Make yourself available.

Prominently display your contact information on every page of your checkout process. If customers need a question answered before they complete the purchase process, they will definitely abandon if they can’t find a way to contact customer service.

7. Answer questions.

Aim to answer a customer’s questions before he or she needs to ask them. Kate Spade’s checkout page answers a lot of potential questions from the very first step of the checkout process:

• How much is shipping? Oh, I see, it’s free!
• Can I call someone? Oh, I see, they have a customer service number!
• What’s my total going to be? Oh, I see, it’s estimated on the bottom right!
• How much info do I have to give? Oh, I see, required fields are marked with a pink asterisk!

8. Always follow up.

Don’t hang the customer out to dry as soon as she’s entered her payment information. Send an email outlining all order details and send another email when the customer’s order has shipped. Doing so reinforces your credibility as a retailer and keeps your customer happy, and hopefully loyal.

(This article appeared as a posting on Blue Fountain Media blog)

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Google works on new flight schedule feature

Google has started incorporating airline flight schedules in its search results.

“With the close of our ITA acquisition last month, we’re eager to begin developing new flight search tools to make it easier for you to plan a trip. While this flight schedule feature does not currently use ITA’s search technology, this is just a small step towards making richer travel information easier to find, and we hope to make finding flights online feel so easy,” Petter Wedum, Software Engineer, Google, wrote on a company blog.

Explaining how users can see the flight schedule on a route, Wedum wrote if you have a particular destination in mind, you can now quickly find out which airlines serve that specific route and when they fly.

For example, if you search for [flights from San Francisco to Minneapolis], you’ll see a selection of non-stop flights and the airlines that offer them. To see a full timetable, one has to click on “Schedule of non-stop flights.”


 
One can also see all the destinations with non-stop flights from a particular airport.

“If you’re in Buffalo, New York and need ideas for a weekend getaway, search for [flights from buffalo] to see popular travel destinations from Buffalo. By clicking “Show all non-stop routes”, you can get the full list of destinations and from there, you can click to get more flight details,” wrote Wedum.

This is currently available in 10 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Turkish, and Catalan.

Competition for travel meta-search

Last month Google entered into a consent decree agreeing to conditions on Google’s acquisition of ITA, and Google subsequently completed its acquisition of ITA.

Travel meta-search engines have acknowledged the emerging threat from general search engines. For example, if Google chooses to provide comprehensive travel search results such as flight and hotel pricing and availability, and further chooses to integrate such offerings with other Google services such as Google maps and weather information, then the number of users that visit travel meta-search websites and their ability to attract advertising dollars could be negatively impacted.

According to Experian Hitwise, in September 2010, approximately 30 percent of traffic to travel-related websites began with Google.

Kayak says it uses Internet search engines, principally through the purchase of travel-related keywords, to generate traffic to its websites.

Approximately five percent of its user queries during the three months ended March 31, 2011 resulted from searches initially entered on general search engine websites. Search engines, such as Google, frequently update and change the logic which determines the placement and ordering of results of a user’s search, which may reduce the effectiveness of the keywords purchased, according to Kayak.

“If a major search engine, such as Google, changes its algorithms in a manner that negatively affects the search engine ranking of our websites, or changes its pricing, operating or competitive dynamics to our disadvantage, our business, results of operations and financial condition could be adversely affected,” stated Kayak in the new version of its S-1, with updated financials.

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Bing Travel works on new features

Microsoft has added social functionality to Bing Travel to ensure users’ friends are part of their travel planning experience.

Other features are as follows:

• Updated Places Pages

The company says it has continuously improved its Bing places pages, which pull together everything one needs to know about a destination or one’s very own home. Bing has improved the page layout and updated parts for weather, flights, related destinations, and local listings. It is being described as “one-stop-shop for cities, states, countries, and islands around the world”.


In addition, Bing has added new ways to get to the places pages from Bing.com. Its new instant answer even shows your friends who live in or near a city you’ve searched for.  As with other social features, you will need to be logged into Facebook and have allowed Instant Personalisation.


Bing Travel Wish List

“Another exciting way to use our places pages is to add them to your Bing Travel Wish List in Facebook. Once you’ve chosen your dream destination in Bing, just click on the “Add this destination to your Bing Travel Wish List on Facebook” link to share it with your friends,” said David Lindheimer, director, Bing Travel.

Flight Deals in Facebook

“Sometimes the best updates on deals come from your friends. Now Bing Travel can provide a similar level of help by sending you great deals right in your Facebook feed. Just “like” a flight search result and we’ll send you the best deals from your city as they become available,” added Lindheimer.

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Kayak acknowledges threat from leading Internet search engines

Travel search engine Kayak processed more than 214 million user queries for travel information in the first quarter of this year.

This represented growth of 48 percent over the three months ended March 31, 2010, according to Kayak. This performance was shared in the new version of Kayak’s S-1, with updated financials.

The financial results, disclosed in the company’s latest IPO prospectus, shared that Kayak generated $53 million of revenues, representing growth of 43 percent over the three months ended March 31, 2010.

Kayak had a net loss of $6.9 million in the quarter, up from $854,000 in the year-ago period. The company took a $15 million charge for dropping its Sidestep.com URL.

The company’s mobile applications have been downloaded over seven million times since their introduction in March 2009. For the first three months, Kayak had over one million downloads, representing growth of 226 percent. 

Kayak operates websites in 14 countries outside of the US, including Germany, the UK, France, Spain, Italy and India.

“We believe that the international opportunity for our services is sizable and we intend to invest in both head count and marketing in 2011 and 2012,” stated the company.



Dependence of ITA

For its part, Kayak highlighted that it licenses faring engine software from ITA Software under an agreement which expires on December 31, 2013. This faring engine software directly provided approximately 56 percent of its overall airfare query results for the three months ended March 31, 2011. Additionally, 29 percent of its overall airfare query results during such period were obtained from other sources which, in turn, utilised the ITA faring engine software.

“We have invested significant time and resources to develop proprietary software and practices to optimise the output from ITA’s software for our websites and mobile applications. In addition, we believe that alternative faring engine solutions currently do not provide the level of comprehensiveness and accuracy that ITA’s software provides,” according to the company. 

Airline travel queries accounted for approximately 86 percent of the queries performed on its websites and mobile applications for the three months ended March 31, 2011, and distribution revenues from airline queries represented approximately 25 percent of its revenues for the three months ended March 31, 2011.

The company expects the domestic airfare queries to represent a significant portion of its overall queries for the foreseeable future. Thus, a loss of access to ITA’s software or enhancements or improvements to the software, or an adverse change in its costs associated with use of the ITA software, could have a significant negative effect on the comprehensiveness and/or speed of its query results, and on its revenues and operating results.

It added that a loss, disruption or other negative impact on its airfare query results could also result in a significant decline in the use of, and financial performance of, its query services for non-air travel queries.

According to Experian Hitwise, in September 2010, approximately 30% of traffic to travel-related websites began with Google. The consent decree stated Google’s intent to offer an online travel search product. Google may also create other flight search tools and services that directly compete with the services Kayak offers.

As a result, this number could substantially increase, and people may be able to find comparable flight information on the internet without using Kayak’s services.

“Although the consent decree requires Google to renew our existing ITA agreement on the same terms, if ITA or Google limit our access to the ITA software or any improvements to the software, separately develop replacement software to which they claim we are not entitled or increase the price we pay for any improvements of replacement software and we are unable to replace ITA’s software with a comparable technology, we may be unable to operate our business effectively and our financial performance may suffer,” acknowledged the company.

Competition from general search engine companies 

Large, established Internet search engines with substantial resources and expertise in developing online commerce and facilitating Internet traffic are creating, and are expected to create further, inroads into online travel, both in the US and internationally.

Citing an example, the company added: in addition to its acquisition of ITA, Google has stated that it intends to offer an online travel search product and is already actively testing a travel search engine that displays hotel information and rates to travellers.

Moreover, Microsoft acquired one of Kayak’s competitors, Farecast.com, in 2008 and re-launched it as Bing Travel, a travel search engine which not only allows users to search for airfare and hotel reservations but also purports to predict the best time to purchase.

Kayak said these initiatives appear to represent a clear intention by Google and Microsoft to appeal more directly to travel consumers and travel suppliers by providing more specific travel-related search results, which could lead to more travellers using services offered by Google or Bing instead of those offered on its websites and mobile applications.

Kayak further added: For example, if Google chooses to provide comprehensive travel search results such as flight and hotel pricing and availability, and further chooses to integrate such offerings with other Google services such as Google maps and weather information, then the number of users that visit its websites and its ability to attract advertising dollars could be negatively impacted.

Google or other leading search engines could choose to direct general searches on their respective websites to their own travel search service and/or materially improve search speed through hardware investments, which also could negatively impact the number of users that visit Kayak’s websites and its ability to attract advertising dollars.

“If Google or other leading search engines are successful in offering services that directly compete with ours, we could lose traffic to our websites and mobile applications, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, results of operations and financial condition,” according to Kayak.

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“The biggest opportunity to increase engagement and loyalty is in customer experience management”

IN-DEPTH: Mark Simpson, Founder and President, Maxymiser on developing customer experiences based on objective, data-driven decisions and continuous digital optimization

By Ritesh Gupta

It is imperative for travel companies to make the most of website personalization solutions.

Overall, ecommerce businesses are increasingly recognizing that conversion rate optimization and personalization are critical to online marketing success. These companies need to make individual user experiences more relevant and boost engagement, conversion rates and repeat visits.

In order to understand the latest trends in the travel sector, EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta spoke to Mark Simpson, Founder and President, Maxymiser.

“The biggest opportunity to increase engagement and loyalty is in customer experience management – empowering customers to give direct opinion on how your digital sites should look through A/B and multivariate testing (which sets the base line) and personalizing the customer experience – so you become the most relevant travel brand for that individual,” says Simpson, who is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Online Marketing Strategies for Travel 2011 Conference , to be held in Miami (June 7-8).Simpson spoke about travel personalization, developing customer experiences and other emerging trends. Excerpts:

Which according to you has been the most striking or potentially path-breaking development in the travel sector in the last six months or so? Would you call it a real innovation at this stage?

Mark Simpson: 

With the shift of owning the customer moving back towards suppliers the need for competitive sites which relate to each individual visitor is more than ever. This focus will create innovation. However, the biggest innovations are actually happening outside the travel industry, but have a dramatic affect on the way in which travel businesses need to operate in order to compete and be successful.

Social, Mobile, Coupons, Group Buying and Customer Experience Management all hold massive potential upside for travel businesses who get their strategies right.

It is considered that travel personalization is still in its infancy. Considering the myriad of options available for planning and booking, what do you think are the major challenges that travel suppliers and intermediaries are facing today? How can their websites enable them to overcome challenges pertaining to optimizing relationships with their audience?

Mark Simpson: 

There is no doubt that the travel market is more competitive than ever with suppliers competing with intermediaries and OTAs, as well as each other.

The biggest opportunity to increase engagement and loyalty is in customer experience management – empowering customers to give direct opinion on how your digital sites should look through A/B and multivariate testing (which sets the base line) and personalizing the customer experience – so you become the most relevant travel brand for that individual.

There are now solutions on the market that drive content in real-time based upon a visitor’s online behavior to be more directed to the needs of each individual at that point in time. For example, if a traveler returns after starting a reservation, the experience could be more targeted to enable that visitor to complete the reservation.

Content decisions may also be driven by a traveler’s loyalty status and reinforce their loyalty status and importance during the online interaction. 

What do you recommend when it comes to developing customer experiences based on objective, data-driven decisions and continuous website optimization?

Mark Simpson: 

The leaders in the online space – Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc - have one thing in common: they have never gone through a major website redesign. Instead these brands have continually iterated their sites, testing every change before rolling it out to all visitors. This daily, weekly and monthly iteration allows customers to "tell" companies what they like (and don't like) through real interaction. The data driven results are uncontestable. This is available to every company now, and in recent developments pioneered by Maxymiser, the control of content testing and personalization sits with the business, rather than IT, so the speed required for true iteration is now a reality.

Can you elaborate on how new travel sites are setting benchmarks for the industry to follow?

Mark Simpson: 

Gone are the days where markets are slow moving. If you're not innovating and continually improving how you interact with your customers you will fall behind. If your competitors don't overtake you can bet your bottom dollar that there is someone in their bedroom focusing on doing what you are, but in a different way. Recent research has shown that 1 in 5 travelers encounter problems when booking their travel. These people are young and tech-savvy, and a third of these people's first port of call when problems arise is to find a solution with a different company.

In your opinion, how can travel sites go about utilizing features such as videos, blogs etc and set specific, measurable goals related to business metrics, and then track them regularly and measure the ROI? 

Mark Simpson: 

The only way to accurately measure the performance of new content, whatever that content may be, is to test it in a live environment against a default, and measure the change in desired response(s).

Every site change needs to be measured by its impact on conversion rates, revenue, lifetime value and overall success of the visitor completing the objective, no excuses. The biggest failing is not to try. If you aren’t trying, you aren’t moving forward. It’s easier than ever to safely try new and innovative content using a dynamic testing platform.

Travel sites are connecting more with their customers through social media and interactive website features, including mobile applications or offering a Live Help feature. How do you think sites are starting to move beyond the traditional price/ date/ destination search criteria to provide more flexibility to customers?

Mark Simpson: 

Companies have had to move beyond traditional search methods. Customers are looking in many areas and through other channels for travel ideas, advice, research, information and booking methods. This breeds opportunity, particularly for travel companies to touch the customer with targeting and personalized messaging as more is known about their preferences and behavior .

Can you elaborate on the latest trends pertaining to conversion management? How do you assess the maturity level of A/B and multivariate testing solutions in the travel sector?

Mark Simpson: 

Content testing has become mainstream thanks to significant innovations in the market coming from Maxymiser. The ability to test without touching IT is the single biggest leap as it empowers marketers - truly allowing testing anywhere, anytime with a low total cost of ownership. Some of the claims of incumbents in the market are only now playing out due to these advanced solutions.

Automating the use of learning algorithms is another major step forward allowing for faster testing, less risk and substantially increased flexibility, which in turn enables companies to be able to test without encroaching on day-to-day business practices. 

How do you think the travel industry is going about machine learning and is leveraging semantics dynamically to understand what people might like at the moment they search, creating a unique personalized filter through which they can see what’s most relevant to them? What do you think have been major breakthroughs for machine learning considering that its still early stages for the same?
Mark Simpson: 

I see very few travel companies doing this successfully right now, However, for the first time it is easy to achieve this with SaaS-based solutions. So the good news is there is no reason not to try it.

Online Marketing Strategies for Travel 2011 Conference 

Mark Simpson , Founder and President, maxymiser is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Online Marketing Strategies for Travel 2011  Conference, to be held in Miami (June 7-8).

For more information, click here

Or  Contact:

Gina Baillie
VP, Marketing,
EyeforTravel
E: gina@eyefortravel.com
T: UK +44 (0)207 375 7197

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Google tests new travel search results: report

It is being highlighted that Google has started testing a new type of search result that offers direct answers to travel search queries on the results page.

According to a report filed by brafton.com, the UK-based search engine optimisation agency SEO Gadget has spotted these results, which depict the “answer-on-the-results-page” approach to queries. Excerpts from the report:

“A search for “flights to Barcelona” offers instant answers via the first organic result on the page. A non-linked headline indicates the result is a list of relevant flights, organized according to departing city and flight time, with links to airlines that service those flights.”

“Notably, the flight view pushes other organic results down below the fold, limiting the number of sites that gain visibility on the first page of results. SEO Gadget reports that expanding Google’s list to “show all nonstop flights” virtually eliminates every other organic listing.”


According to SEO Gadget, here’s how the result looks when the “Show all non-stop routes” link is clicked:


It has been mentioned that this test doesn’t seem to have hit the US yet.

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