Travel Trends - Consumer Satisfaction, Video, Internet Usage

Consumer Satisfaction Declines For Major OTAs - Consumer satisfaction with major online travel players has dipped to an all-time low, while satisfaction with the e-commerce sector overall has risen, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index. For the third straight year, satisfaction has risen, this year by 2%, reaching an all-time high of 81.6 on the 100-point scale. However, satisfaction with online travel e-commerce has gone in the opposite direction. For the second year in a row, satisfaction has dipped to an all-time low of 75. Only four online travel companies are tracked: Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity and Priceline. In addition, a category of "All Others," representing hotel sites, airlines and travel search engines, is tracked.
http://www.theacsi.org/
From Travel Advance and traveltrade.com

That's A Lot of Video - A recently released comScore Video Metrix service report, revealed that U.S. Internet users watched more than 10 billion videos online during the month of December, 2007, representing the single heaviest month for online video consumption since comScore initiated its tracking service. Google Sites saw substantial growth and extended its video market share gains, now accounting for nearly one out of every three videos viewed online.
http://blogs.mediapost.com/

Going Online To Purchase Travel - According to the latest Nielsen Global Online Survey on internet shopping habits, more than 85% of the world's online population has used the internet to make a purchase, increasing the market for online shopping by 40% in the past two years.

And, take a look at what those consumers were purchasing:

Popular Online Purchases
(Global Average, % of Online Purchasers in Past Three Months)

Purchase / % of Online Purchasers

Books / 41%
Clothing, Accessories, Shoes / 36%
Video, DVD, Games / 24%
Airline ticket, reservations / 24%
Electronic equipment / 23%
Music / 19%
Cosmetics, nutrition supplies / 19%
Tours, hotel reservations / 16%
Event tickets / 15%
Computer software / 14%
Groceries / 14%
Toys, dolls / 9%
Sporting goods / 8%
Automobiles & parts / 4%
Sports memorabilia / 3%
Other / 20%

Source: The Nielsen Company, 2007/Marketing Charts, January 2008

http://blogs.mediapost.com/

(Photo Credit: http://www.crucialminutiae.com/)

Travel Trends - Eygpt, Google Gas, Eye-Fi, Thanksgiving Blogging

Eygpt and Google Earth - The Egyptian Tourism office teamed up with Google Earth to provide a new layer on the popular 3D mapping program that allows visitors to view the countries famous landmarks from above. In this case the Egyptian Tourism office went on step beyond simply adding a point on the map by creating 3D models of famous landmarks such as the Giza plateau and the Temple of Ramses II.
http://www.earth.egypt.travel/

Eye-Fi - The new eye-fi memory card puts consumers one step closer to truly instant photos. The new memory card, which contains a (very) small wireless chip, allows users to take photos with a digital camera and select the folder or website they would to download to. Then, when the camera comes in range of the user's home network, the memory card automatically downloads the photos. No cables, no clicking. We are not too far away from a completely wireless world where your photos, regardless of your location, will be transmitted instantly to a computer or website for your entire family to see...and you don't even have to visit them.
http://www.eye.fi/


Google Gas Pumps - Men are no longer lost. (Yes, an old joke, but hey, it works) Google announced earlier this month that it is partnering with pump manufacturer Gilbarco Veeder-Root to develop a gas pump complete with internet connection and access to Google's Maps offering (see photo above). To quote the article, 'Motorists will be able to scroll through several categories to find local landmarks, hotels, restaurants and hospitals selected by the gas station's owner.' Finally, no more asking for directions.
http://www.google.com

Thanksgiving Day Blogging - Nope, not at the mall or your local Best Buy, but at the airport. Travelocity's blog, the Window Seat, sent 10 bloggers to airports around the nation on Tuesday and Wednesday to monitor and report on the holiday traffic. The bloggers were stationed at several famously busy airports like LAX, Denver and Chicago. A good and helpful idea, but why pay your team to do the work when you can get Joe Traveler to do it for you? The Traveler Update section from Orbitz was busy over the Thanksgiving holiday as well, with more than 100 tips posted for Chicago O'Hare International Airport alone last Wednesday.
http://windowseat.travelocity.com/

Travel Trends - AMEX Travel, Experience Finder

Members Know Travel - Earlier this week American Express jumped into the very deep social networking / UGC / recommendation pool with a new, card-member only travel site. The site, Members Know Travel is designed to be an 'online community where Cardmembers share their collective wisdom and experiences about travel.' Interestingly, the site also promotes that AMEX members know more about travel because:

• 94% more likely to travel frequently
• 90% more likely to travel abroad
• 73% more likely to take long trips within the U.S.

Overall, a nice looking site with some nice features...the question is are you a loyal enough member to join the official AMEX social network?
https://membersknow.com/

Travelocity ExperienceFinder - Travelocity allows users to experience 'the fun' of planning a trip with the ExperienceFinder Planning Tool from the Travelocity Labs. The site, which features several destinations such as Hawaii, New Orleans and Orlando (among others) provides users the option of selecting one of four themes to bring planning a trip. The site, which relies heavily on Flash, provides videos, photos and reviews in, what Travelocity calls, an inspirational way.
http://labs.travelocity.com/experiencefinder/

Travel Trends - JetBlue, Wayback Machine, Online Video Ads

The Wayback Machine - An established (possibly old) site for some people, however the Internet Archives' Wayback Machine still proves to be a great resource...especially for those who missed the initial launch and have not heard of it (I forget that not everyone knows about this site). The concept is pretty simple, type in a domain name and browse through the previous versions of the site...for example, Travelocity.com a la 1996 (pictured...and yes, it really did look like that). A great way to understand the evolution of web site design.
http://www.archive.org/

JetBlue Point of View Photo Contest - As mentioned in a previous post, JetBlue has been holding a photo contest to promote the collaboration of the airline and Google. To host the images from the contest, JetBlue is using Google's Picasa photo sharing service (naturally). Although it appears that the entire contest was not completed via Picasa, the use of a photo sharing site (Picasa or Flickr) to promote and run a photo contest is an interesting approach...if the consumers are already using Flickr or Picasa, take the photo contest to them, rather than making them come to you (your site). Take a look at the finalists and vote for your favorite.
http://jetblue.com/google/

Online Video Advertising - A recent TNS study in partnership with AOL and Google presents some key findings for online video advertising. While these results are specifically speaking about advertising on other online videos (such as advertising before a YouTube video), they do provide good insight into some general online video factors.
http://adage.com/