Online travel: Web goes beyond the brochure

In the past, consumers had no choice but to book their trips on the
basis of basic promotional material in a brochure or online, and
whatever photos might be available. But, the web is changing all that.
It is allowing brands to take the travel brochure much further and
provide consumers with a wealth of interactive content - from videos and
podcasts to blogs and online communities - that enables them to make a
genuinely informed choice.

Travel has been one of the biggest-spending sectors online for some time
and the web is now a key sales channel for most operators. The growth in
online travel has largely been down to the fact that it offers more
competitive pricing than the high street, and it's often quicker and
easier to book via the internet.

Early travel sites were simply an extension of the offline brochure,
providing standard content such as pictures and basic text, combined
with a direct-booking facility. However, Graham Donaghue, head of new
media at TUI UK, which owns the Thomson brand, says consumers now demand
much more.

This is driving the creation of a wealth of new multimedia travel
content. "The thing about the web is that it doesn't have any physical
boundaries like shelf space in a retail outlet," says Donaghue. "It's
quite limitless in terms of what you can do. You can't just stick a site
up with a bit of HTML, make it look decent and hope it works. We're way
beyond that now. Customers expect a real, rich experience and to get
stuff online, be it differential pricing or content that they can't get
elsewhere."

Mark Watkins, managing partner at agency Euro RSCG 4D Digital, which
works with travel brands such as airline BMI, agrees there has been a
shift in the way consumers find and book travel online. "The behaviour
behind a travel purchase is now quite complex. It used to be that you
would go to a web site like Expedia and find the best price," says
Watkins. "There's always going to be a volume of the population that's
price sensitive, but travel firms can give people a good deal and
content to enable them to purchase the right travel plan."

With broadband penetration continuing to grow - it accounts for about 55
per cent of all UK internet connections - more people are able to view
high-quality video content. Package holiday giant Thomson has added
about 1,800 videos of its properties to its site over the past 15
months, and now attracts at least 250,000 views per week, peaking at
350,000 in January (see box, p38). Meanwhile, Lastminute.com launched
Travel TV in October last year, in partnership with Holiday TV, and
offers broadcast footage of leading destinations such as Florida, Kenya
and Dubai with voice-over commentary. It can be viewed via the site's
'Holidays' pages.

TUI's Donaghue believes video content is popular because it allows
people to get more of a feel for a place before booking. "A picture says
a thousand words, but a video says many more. It allows people to
experience something different and see what is around that corner," he
explains.

The great thing about multimedia, such as audio and video, is that it
can also be made available for download to portable devices such as MP3
players and games consoles, meaning that consumers can view them on the
move. So, travel operators can provide content that is more akin to a
guidebook, rather than just content on their own properties and
services.

Podcast guides

Virgin Atlantic was one of the first travel brands to create podcast
city guides for all its flight destinations. These include information
such as the top 10 things to see if you're visiting a place for the
first time, and guides to restaurants and bars that users can download
and listen to at their leisure.

"Adopting new technology, such as podcasts, can help to advance our
customers' experiences and enable them to get more out of their trip,"
says Simon Thorne, ad manager at Virgin Atlantic Airways. It appears to
be successful, as more than 100,000 podcasts have been downloaded from
its site since last summer.

Thomson has also added podcasts to its web site in the form of short
audio guides on destinations. It is now planning a major project that
will see it roll out podcasts up to an hour-and-a-half long. "We've
found that, while it has been quite popular, what customers really want
is detailed information," says Donaghue. "An example could be that
you're visiting Paris, and it could be a podcast all about going to the
Louvre and talking about each of the paintings, so it's almost like a
tour guide. It's not the death of the guidebook. It's just another way
of providing this information for travellers."

However, the growth in multimedia content is only a small part of the
shift taking place in the online travel market. The biggest change has
been the explosion of user-generated content, driven by the growing
popularity of review and community web sites. For example, TripAdvisor,
which asks people to review places they've visited, is now the second
most-visited travel site behind Expedia, attracting more than 18 million
visitors a month, according to ComScore Media Metrix.

Michele Perry, director of communications at TripAdvisor, believes the
reason for the site's success is simple: it provides travellers with
unbiased reviews that are written by other like-minded travellers. And,
when it comes to marketing, word-of-mouth has more sway with public
opinion than any multi-million-pound TV campaign. "People want the
inside scoop, not the marketing hype," Perry adds.

This trend is forcing travel operators to experiment with new ways of
adding consumer-generated content to their own sites, such as blogs and
reviews, to meet demand. Lastminute.com has launched a blogging site
that enables customers to post their own blogs and search those of other
users.

Real experiences

"Sharing our customers' experiences of holidays is important as it
builds their confidence in us," says John Bevan, director of holiday and
flights at Lastminute.com. "The public wants to hear about other
people's real-life experiences and have access to a community where they
can find specifics about certain countries or resorts. Creating a blog
seemed the most natural way of allowing customers to do this."

Other brands look certain to follow in Lastminute's footsteps. Thomson
has launched a 'review' section and now offers a company blog and web
chats, while Virgin Atlantic says it is considering new web services
around communities and blogging. But, those going down this route will
have to be willing to lose a certain amount of brand control. As Matt
Rooke, senior manager of e-business and direct marketing at long-haul
operator Kuoni, points out: "Customer reviews and blogs are easy to
doctor, if you wanted to, and are intensive to control."

Therein lies the dilemma for brands, says Watkins. If brands try to
control what people are saying about them, it could have a negative
impact on the business. But, if they give into consumer demand and give
their customers free rein to say whatever they want about a brand, they
have to be willing to accept that not all the reviews will be
positive.

Donaghue argues: "The internet has given consumers so much power and
freedom, and we pretty much have to embrace it. Anyone can easily write
something about our brand or properties and post in anywhere on the web,
so it's probably better for it to be on our web site than
elsewhere."

Rooke says that, in his experience, most people will visit a number of
sites when booking and planning a holiday. "The brand itself doesn't
have to provide all the information. Just because a site has got reviews
and blogs and so on, doesn't make me trust it any more or choose it over
another site," he says.

But, Lastminute's Bevan believes that adding consumergenerated content
helps to build customers' confidence in booking a holiday with your
brand and, in turn, increases conversion. There is also, according to
Thorne, a brand benefit from being seen to be innovative and an early
adopter of new technologies. "There's a halo effect to the activity," he
explains. "Even if customers don't download our podcasts, if they hear
about them, they know we're a forward-thinking company."

So, does this new technology help to drive bookings? "We've seen an
uplift in sales for properties that have video content associated with
them," says Kuoni's Rooke.

Thorne says he doesn't see podcasts necessarily driving traffic to the
booking engine. "Are people booking the fares and then getting the
podcasts or are they downloading the podcasts and then getting the
fares? We think it's likely to be the former," he says. He believes it's
more about brand experience and loyalty; providing consumers with
content that will improve their experience. Of course, if they have a
good experience, it's more likely that they'll book with Virgin
again.

Inspire people

Donaghue believes such content can also help to inspire people. So
rather than visiting the Thomson web site with their chosen destination
already in mind, users can browse the customer reviews and videos to
help them choose.

"We're finding videos are quite influential from an inspirational point
of view. You may not necessarily know where you want to go, but watching
a video can inspire you," he says. "You can get that inspiration from a
brochure, but not to the same degree as a video."

With the focus on expanding content and innovation, it could easily
create new barriers to entry and make web sites more complicated to use
at a time when more first-timers are experimenting with online travel.
Peter Matthews, chief executive at Nucleus, a web design and brand
consultancy that works with a number of travel firms, including Orient
Express, explains: "There's a trend towards too much content and being
too clever. It's right in some parts of the market and, in other parts,
it's purely about convenience."

He adds: "At the end of the day, there's still an awful lot of travel
sites out there that don't do the basics right. All the bells and
whistles are a waste of money if you can't complete the minimum
requirement, which is to find what you're looking for, see whether there
is availability and book it."

The trick is to not over-complicate things. Travel sites need to be able
to provide rich content on a destination, along with a simple process
for enquiring about availability or booking. But, with the amount of
multimedia and user-generated content almost certain to keep expanding,
the successful sites could well be those that manage to do both.

THOMSON VIDEO LIFTS SALES FIGURES

TUI UK started adding video content to its Thomson.co.uk site about 15
months ago, but according to Graham Donaghue, head of new media at
TUI-owned brand Thomson, the company didn't really "take it seriously"
until eight months ago.

"We realised customers really like it and that a lot of people were
watching the videos, so we embarked on a programme last year to get as
many of our properties on video as we could, which has been a massive
project," he explains.

When the company started promoting the videos in the offline brochure,
the number of people watching them "went through the roof", says
Donaghue.

"In January, we were getting up to 350,000 people a week viewing videos,
and we are still getting 250,000 views a week at this time of year," he
adds.

"It's safe to say that conversion of those units with video is
significantly better than units without."

Thomson now has about 1,800 videos on its site, which Donaghue claims is
the largest library of travel videos online in Europe. The company has
also made all its videos searchable through Google video and Yahoo!.

The next step for Thomson is to make video content available for
download on video iPods. "We are doing a lot of work with video iPods at
the moment, so customers will be able to download a whole collection of
clips," he says.

"They might not know where they want to go on holiday and could download
a collection of videos on the top 10 destinations to their iPod, and
then watch them on the train or wherever, and this could give them
inspiration on where to go."