PhoCusWright Analysts Identify the Top 10 Travel Technology Trends for 2009

PhoCusWright takes a fresh look at the technologies and innovations that have the potential to drive change in the travel, tourism and hospitality in its annual publication, PhoCusWright’s 2009 Technology Trend Predictions.

Here they are:

1. Despite Market Woes, Pockets of Investment Still Exist
   "During economic downturns, innovation is the single most important condition for transforming the crisis into an opportunity." (Sami Mahroum, Research Director of Britain's National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts and a Visiting Reader at the School of Management, Birkbeck College, University of London) [IN].
   


2. The Entire Trip Experience Will Be "Informationized"
   In the past, the main focus of the travel value chain has been those components that resulted in a booking. Access to further information was a challenge because of limitations of mobile devices, lack of acceptable technology in hotel rooms, language barriers and no clear business model. This is all about to change.
   


3. Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing and Open Source Spawn a New Flock of Innovators
   Open Source has matured to the point that many companies are fully dependent on it. It has become an enabler for startups, allowing them to rapidly accelerate their time to market. At the PhoCusWright's November 2008 Travel Innovation Summit, demonstrator Home and Abroad explained that they would not have been able to bring their product to market if it had not been for Open Source.
   


4. Suppliers (Finally!) Provide Personalized Shopping/Booking Tools
   Today, most OTAs look much the same: Where do you want to go? When? Air only or hotel and/or car? To provide convenience and value to the customer, future learning and shopping screens will adapt to the users' stated profiles, observed profiles and shopping style. Similarly, the content presented will be the most meaningful to the customer.
   


5. Technologies Will Continue to Converge
   Ten years ago, television networks were distinct from the Internet. Video was limited to TV and you went to see a movie at the theater. Now you can make a phone call anywhere to anywhere in the world using your laptop. You can watch movies and TV and browse rich content on your mobile device. You can watch content from the Internet on your TV and wirelessly network your house for all manner of content.
   


6. A Flood of New Mobile Travel and Location-Based Applications Come to Market
   Mobile usage in travel applications has languished for years with a poor technology capability and an even worse business model. The mobile platform finally has interactive capability that makes it the fully functioning "3rd screen" alongside the desktop and laptop. With the growth of 3G (broadband wireless) subscriptions and smartphone adoption, apps will embrace location and context in a new way, enhancing the travel experience.
   


7. Advertising Technology Transforms Travel Distribution
   Pure play booking fee models will become dinosaurs as blended models involving highly targeted ads, referral fees and fees for service establish peaceful coexistence. The technology convergence discussed in Trend 5 will enable the convergence of business models.
   


8. Still Searching…for Better Search
   Last year the trends were "Semantic Technology and the Semantic Web will drive the next wave of Internet technology" and "Search will evolve to become more effective." These are still true. Lack of adoption of the formal semantic Web does not mean that search is not getting better. There are several instances where semantics are being used to improve search. As they begin to show differentiated business value over normal search, they will gain traction.
   


9. Democratization of Supply Levels the Playing Field
   In the beginning when the airlines created travel distribution, the GDSs (they were called CRSs then) controlled the distribution of travel content. This created an oligopoly. But times are changing. The implementation of standards for interconnection, the transparency of the Internet, Web services and mashups, new search tools and SaaS models have all contributed to the development of an open marketplace for travel distribution.
   


10. Business Intelligence and Analytics Move to the Forefront
    In tight times, you need to squeeze as much as possible from your existing operations and capabilities. This involves understanding what your competitors are doing, how efficient and effective your own operations are and what your customers are saying.

Source: Phocuswright

The complete article, is available for purchase at www.phocuswright.com/report/09techtrend

Amadeus Ideas - the innovation website dedicated to the travel industry

Amadeus Ideas website showcases several innovative applications under development which are not yet ready to be released.

Currently there are four applications opened for beta testing (for your own personal, non-commercial use): Mobile Travel Wallet (MTW), Widget Travel Wallet (WTW), Light Travel Wallet (LTW), Wallaby.

The first three applications (MTW, WTW and LTW) have the same goal but they can be used in different environments (mobile and desktop applications). Currently, the applications handle your trip information including the most recent updates (delay, rebookings) for:

• your flight
• your flight status
• your hotel
• your rental car
• weather forecast at the location of your trip;
• a map of the location of your trip.

Book your trip now with an Amadeus travel agent and then check your latest travel status directly from your mobile phone or desktop.

If you own a Blackberry or a Java enabled phone don't miss your chance to download Mobile Travel Wallet and try it for yourself (MTW is a multi-language application and includes also a Romanian version). Of course, the IPhone users are not forgotten and the IPhone version (Light Travel Wallet) can be found here .

Once you have installed these applications on your mobile device you can use them anytime you travel by entering your last name and the Amadeus Reservation Number of your trip into application. Your trip information will be saved on your mobile to be reviewed in offline mode at a later time (no connection cost) but, in any moment, you will be able to connect to Amadeus service to update the travel information.

Widget Travel Wallet is the desktop application to install on your PC or Macintosh to display your trip information. It is also integrated with Google Desktop and iGoogle.

If you enjoyed Amadeus applications or interested to propose new improvements please leave your mark here.


Note: All the above prototypes are still under development and they might be discontinued without early notice and might have some errors.

Monitor your electricity consumption

Remember the ad "Petrom - resurse pentru viitor"?... Well, Andrei has got a chance now and its name is Google Power Meter.

According to Google, PowerMeter is a tool which will show consumers their electricity consumption in near real-time in a secure iGoogle Gadget. The purpose is to help everyone save money and combat global warming by reducing the electricity consumption.

For now, Google PowerMeter is a closed beta program but you can find out further information here.

Search for going out by mood

Last month I discovered Ifeellondon, a nice website with a catchy idea. Ifeellondon suggets different places for going out in London (restaurants, clubs and activities) based on your mood, all mashed-up in Google Maps.

Do you feel broke? Try this... Naughty?....then you should definitely try this...

Apart from London, there are New York and Toronto ready for your moods (perhaps other major cities will follow soon). As you probably imagined you can also mark your favorite places on the map and share other people's moods.

I believe Ifeellondon is just the beginning of a new type of search which will open the boundaries of new web experiences. I find the idea very useful for the travel websites, especially the ones specialized in destination management.

New flight results display launched in Amadeus Agency Internet Engine (e-Power)

Amadeus has recently launched the new layout of the flight results in the e-Power Internet Booking Engine. The new feature is in beta-testing on Paravion website and more customers will follow soon.

It’s a fact that consumers will always want a simple and quick tool to help them find the proper travel services. This enhancement will allow the users to narrow the search results through intuitive filters and pick-up the right flight recommendation from the list.

The new display includes:

Combined filters

- number of stops;

- multiple airline-selection tool;

- outbound / inbound airports;

- outbound / return departure times filters;

- price range sliding bar.

All the filters are very fast as they are updating on the client side without refreshing the page.

Even the user is scrolling vertically through the flight recommendations, the results filter box is always kept at the eyes level in order to ease the filtering of the various options.

Fare matrix view

- displays a nice summary table showing fares by number of stops and airline

- one can also sort the results by Price, Duration and Outbound departure time

Quick search form

It allows the user to change the current flight search directly from the results page without going back to the detailed search form.

Additionally, the quick search form is keeping the previous search data.

One fare to many flights display

The previous version of the flight search results was quite limited having in view that the user was not able to select a specific flight schedule for the lowest price. All the flight recommendations were offered as such, starting from the lowest fare.

The new layout is grouping several flight schedules for the same fare thus offering the user the possibility to select the right flight times.

Expedia to run Google Sponsored Links

Google and Expedia have entered into a partnership where the online travel agency will display Google’s Sponsored Links on some of its international domains (UK and Italy according to Travolution).

This is a surprising move for a big OLTA which usually keeps the website traffic within its own pages (booking, fulfillment, etc.). But this is not Expedia’s first action in this area. Coming back last year, in Nov2007, Expedia has signed a deal with InterContinental Hotels Group and introduced a media-based pricing model which combined transaction pricing with clicks on specific IHG properties within expedia.com.

The real fact with OLTAs is that a significant slice of the users are using the OLTA website to search for the services and then choose to book directly with the supplier. This was one of the reasons for the Expedia - IHG agreement. According to Paul Brown, president, Expedia North America and Expedia Partner Services Group, “Expedia brings partners two sources of value in terms of transactions and exposure like a media company does. We display those hotels billions of times a year but that does not always turns into transactions on our sites.” (via Travelmole).

According to a Comcore study, the supplier websites account for 72 percent of online hotel spend as of first quarter 2008, a 3-percentage increase from the previous year. Hotel market share through online travel agency sites (e.g. Expedia and Orbitz) is now 28 percent, 3-percentage points down from a year ago.

The media model in online travel has been first introduced by meta-search companies which redirect the audience to the direct travel suppliers. Their main revenues are generated by the referrals sent to the suppliers and the use of sponsored links.

Interesting to see if other big OLTAs will follow Expedia’s step in the near future.

Kall Out - A new way to search using only your mouse

Recently I discovered a new application for web search which just makes your life easier.

The Kall Out service allows you to search the Web without minimizing the screen and going to the Web by highliting in any web page the term your’re interested in and clicking the small icon which brings the search menu right to your face.

Kall Out is able to search by Reference (Wikipedia, Thesaurus, Google Translate, etc.), Shopping (Amazon. Craiglist, etc.), News (Google News, New York TImes, etc.), Images (Flickr, Google Images), Video (YouTube), People (Facebook, Linkedin) and more.

Most of the search results are displayed within a floating information palette inside the browser (IE and FF) while still letting you work online. Seeing your results in context, instead of opening a new window, avoids the disruption of constantly switching between applications. According to Kall Out’s website selection-based search allows you to get results up to 10-times faster than traditional browser-based search.

Kall Out does not stop here. It even brings the web search in your Office documents. Kall Out works with most of the MS Office applications (Outlook, Word, Excel, Power Point) and PDF documents.

Kall Out has also a customizable feature for the context menu (”My Kall Outs”) which allows the users to set their own websites where to search. For instance, I set IgoUgo website as My Kall Out in order to directly search for any future travel reviews I might be interested in whenever I surf the web. The bad thing with “My Kall Outs” is that the search results are opened in a new browser window instead of the discrete window.

Kall Out is a very useful tool in web searching I definitely recommend it to everyone.