working together
Welcome to TTI Europe’s leading travel technology initiatives and standards organisation.
A word from the chairman
As I write this month’s newsletter article, I am touring the highlands of Scotland in my motorhome; something I have always wanted to do. It reminds me that there are some truly beautiful places that we have all yet to discover and often right on our own doorstep. When the sun shines the UK truly has it all! Whilst away from the hubbub of normal working life, it gives me time to reflect on what I think is important and key to all of us in the travel industry. It strikes me that each and every one of us is going through our own digital revolution in all that we do, both in our professional and social lives. After all, although I am in one of the remotest parts of Scotland I am still able to connect to the Internet (albeit on a fairly slow connection) where I am then able to speak to both of my sons via free web applications such as Skype and WhatsApp, via a lap-top or even a mobile device whilst they, as well as I, travel the world. For example my eldest son is in Canada at the moment and yesterday we had a very clear WhatsApp call between us, with me in Oban in the Western part of the Highlands and him in Calgary. We were also able to share all of our pictures and videos in real-time. I am also, of course, able to research all of the nice places to visit each day in my locality via my smart phone as I travel around and even, if needed, able to access all of my work documents via the cloud as well as
read all of my e-mails on the go. But the best bit is that I can now store all of those pictures and videos back to the cloud as I take them for easy access, sharing with friends and family via social media applications such as Facebook and, of course, safe storage. Remarkable when one stops to think of it compared to how we used to do these things and not that long ago really, but this type of activity is how we all now work and play and they are each in their own way digitally transforming our lives. In terms of TTI’s activities over the past few months: on Tuesday 2 June this year we held our Summer Forum once again in conjunction with our partners at ETOA. The subject discussed was “The Hotel Distribution Revolution” a hot subject that many of you will know is close to my heart! We heard from some excellent speakers and had some lively debate on issues such as ‘Is meta-search seen as an opportunity for hotels to once again sell direct or is it just another channel that needs its own commission?’ Also, ‘How is the recent judgement on best rate guarantees affecting the marketplace and are intermediaries the hotel’s friend or enemy?’ My thanks go out to all of the speakers for making the day both lively and informative for all that attended. As usual, presentations from the day are now available via
the website. Looking ahead to TTI’s programme of events for the rest of this year, our TTI autumn conference will be held on Monday 21 September and will focus on the subject that I started this month’s newsletter with, the digital transformation of travel and how Cloud and Digital Asset Management are subjects that are now “Top-of-Mind” with travel industry executives and leading travel brands today. And then finally, our Winter Forum which once again will be held in conjunction with World Travel Market – entitled the WTM Travel Innovation Summit in Association with TTI which will be held on Monday 2 November. Details of these events and venues will as usual be posted on our website and will follow in due course. In the meantime, I trust that you are all, like me, enjoying your summer holidays with friends and family and that business is looking good for you all. I very much look forward to catching up with each and every one of you at one of our events as detailed above later this year. Happy holidays to one and all!
Digital Transformation
Joerg Esser, Head of Long Tail and Managing
Director Hotels4U, Thomas Cook
Giles Rhys Jones, Director of Marketing
what3words
Mark Holt, CTO, thetrainline.com
Steve Dobson, IT Security Director, ATCORE
Julia Stent, Commercial Director, Top10
Steve Keenan, co-Founder, travelperspective
Michael Gwilliam, Marketing Manager, EMEA
Thunderhead
Andreas Nau, Managing Director Central Europe
Expedia
The quarterly TTI newsletter Issue 59 August 2015
TTI Shareholders:
by Peter Dennis, Chairman
full details & registration at www.tti.org/conference
Autumn Conference Monday 21 September - London
Our customers are undergoing a paradigm shift in
the way that they conduct business with us. Digital
transformation has become the new imperative.
Customers use multiple devices to interface with
our businesses and their shopping habits are
changing as they take advantage of shared
information about our products across social media
and review sites.
Travel companies are realising that to meet the
demands of the evolving consumer and competitive
environment they must undergo a digital
transformation. Organisations may need to be
streamlined, marketing and business strategies
need to be evolved that take into account the new
realities, current technology may need to be
replaced.
For this conference, TTI has assembled a team of
expert speakers who will examine the subject from
a variety of aspects. If you interested in your
business surviving well into the future, it is essential
that you attend this conference and learn more
about digital transformation.
Speakers:
Event kindly sponsored by:
The Hotel Distribution Revolution
Forum Report
First there were hotels. Guests phoned
to make a reservation or walked in
through the door. Then came the
internet and a new way of marketing
and distributing rooms and everything
began to change.
Setting the scene at TTIs recent forum
entitled the 'Hotel Distribution
Revolution' was Yahya Fetchati, chief
operating officer of Bookassist. He
moved from the period when hotels
walked away with 90% of their profit
with 10% going to a
handful of travel agents
to today's complex
distribution landscape.
Fetchati took the
audience through four
defining developments in
travel, specifically the
hotel industry, in the
past 20 years that
illustrated how
distribution works.
The rapid pace of
technology
development, the birth of
ecommerce, the ongoing
fight for market share
and changing
customer behaviour
have all contributed to the current
landscape.
The first development needs little
further explanation, except to say the
web has changed the way consumers
search for and buy travel and the
advent of social media and mobile
devices have all contributed to a
'perfect storm.'
"There were those companies that saw
the importance of investing in
technology and those that did not are
lagging behind."
The development of the transactional
web has led to the emergence of three
groups - early innovators such as
online travel agencies, aggregators and
more recently disruptors.
The innovators invested in new
technology while existing players
struggled to keep up with change. They
also understood the importance of
content. However, as more and more
content became available, yet
fragmented, there was a need for
aggregators and so metasearch was
born.
Finally, as the proliferation of social
media and smartphones has increased
we have seen the emergence of
disruptors such as peer-to-peer
accommodation providers and mobile-
only companies.
"Hotels did not
react to any of
these three
groups. That's a
massive
problem. How
will people find
you as a business and why book on
your website?"
Fetchati went on to explain the
importance of being visible, maximising
conversion and controlling distribution
which has also added to
complexity with new
players such as revenue
management
companies, online
marketing specialists
and channel managers
having sprung up.
All of these
developments, he said,
have turned distribution
into a 'battlefield' with a
constant fight for market
share.
Consolidation in the past
couple of years is also
about gaining power and
control and while the
value of hotel companies
shrunk that of online travel giants has
been increasing.
The OTAs are also investing in hotel
booking technology so as to complete
the circle in terms of acting as third
party suppliers as well as access to
technology services for hotels to take
business direct. The final defining
development, according to Fetchati,
has been the change in consumer
behaviour. Guests form and publicise
(Continued on page 3)
by Linda Fox
The fire alarm was activated. We all had to wait outside whilst the firemen checked that the Strand Palace Hotel was not actually burning down..
opinions without the knowledge of the
hotel.
"They act differently, buy differently,
think differently. They are using
multiple devices and interacting with
your business through multiple touch-
points."
With the impact of digital
developments front of mind, Jutta
Moore, managing
director of the Moore
Hotel Consultancy,
stepped in to bring
things right up to date
with the latest rate
parity rulings.
She said that in some
countries best rate
guarantees are
starting to fall away,
while others are
awaiting further
rulings. However, it's
time for hotels to
decide how to best
offer their services so
that ideally guests
book direct.
Moore said that the
independent hotel sector had been
more daring and creative in terms of
what it offers while chains are still
driving rate parity and remain too
dependent on OTAs.
"OTAs make it so easy to make the
booking in three/four clicks whereas
hotels try to add every eventuality into
the booking and have not invested in
this area."
Moore predicted that the market would
stick with rate parity for the
foreseeable future because that is
what the technology has been set up
to do. She added, however, that
hotels would start to experiment with
different scenarios in terms of which
OTAs to work with.
Speaking from the coalface of hotel
distribution, CitizenM commercial
director Lennert de Yong compared
how hotels did business in 1999 with
2015.
"How did we sell rooms, how did the
organisational structure work, what
kind of people did we need, what was
the sentiment?"
From the hotel side, little has changed
but in the outside world everything has
changed in terms of how people buy
and hoteliers and managers need to
know a huge amount more than they
did.
"We're heading for trouble because a
couple of companies have collected
all the knowledge and filled in the
knowledge gap and we're frustrated
as hoteliers. Somehow we expected
business to be the same."
De Yong added that there's
competition for guests coming from all
angles and the only loyalty customers
now have is to their phone.
While the debate over rate parity and
price control rages on, he said that it
will come down to the experience
provided by the hotel during the stay
and that is where the industry should
be investing. "We have to follow the
guest and what they want, what they
buy and what they download. They
will not want us to discriminate on
channel."
While the hotel distribution picture
might seem gloomy, there are reasons
for optimism. Overall, the sector
continues to grow, according to
Sharon Doyle, and there is plenty of
opportunity out there. She agreed that
the technology that drives hotel
distribution has changed and the
market becomes more complex every
day. But, there is still
opportunity.
She talked of the multi-
billion dollar value of the
hotel industry and yet
companies such as
Expedia and Priceline
are only involved in
about 5% of the sector.
"There is a huge portion
that is not with the OTAs
and while we definitely
want to keep an eye on
them, there is still a lot
of opportunity."
To tap into it, she said,
the industry needs to be
digitally focused. Doyle
went on to advise the
audience on the need to understand
the complexities of the market and the
importance of having the right skills on
board.
She also talked about the need to be
truly global in terms of understanding
other countries and how they are
dealing with rapid technological
development in areas such as mobile,
digital payments and new channels to
market such as WeChat.
Doyle concluded with some thoughts
on big data and the importance of
considering what data to share to
provide customers with the best
experience.
"The industry is changing and it
seems scary. There's lots happening,
it's growing and remains strong and
we can take advantage of that but we
really need to consider digital
premises."
(Continued from page 2)
Our four speaker (from left to right): Yahya Fetchati—Bookassist, Jutta Moore—Moore Hotel Consulting, Sharon Doyle—GTA, Lennert de Jong—citizenM Hotels
Social Media Corner
Social Media Advertising
Facebook currently demonstrates the future revenue model for every network. With all major brands actively building communities on the network, Facebook has progressively closed down organic audience reach “to reduce user’s timeline clutter” with brand content and now generally speaking, businesses need to pay to engage.
That’s going to mean an increasingly costly investment to stay engaged, but stopping social due to future media costs isn’t a serious option for brands.
We’ve put together this quick guide to social media advertising in the main social networks to help clarify what works best, in which channel to deliver what objective.
Facebook Top line: The network has the most comprehensive offering for ads, feeding on the interactions of 890m daily users to enable business to accurately target practically any audience to achieve many objectives.
Key Benefits: The most effective ads you can buy in social media for driving convertible traffic – in volume. Well targeted, contextualised promoted posts can deliver exceptional click through rates. Combined with a good campaign mechanic they’re excellent for gathering data from genuine prospects and growing your community too.
Ad types: There are 3 principle ad placements available on Facebook; Desktop Newsfeed, Mobile Newsfeed and Right Hand ads. There are a wide range of ad units that work within these placements. The look and functionality of these varies based on your chosen objective. Ads targeting video plays or website clicks look different from like ads targeting community growth, or app installs.
Targeting: Facebook has comprehensive demographic and contextual ad targeting options, which are its greatest strengths. The network also enables advertisers to set up powerful custom audiences using their brand’s own email data. Once loaded, you can use the same data to create lookalike audiences who match your existing customer’s Facebook profile.
Twitter Top line: Despite recent poor sales figures and an initial resistance to commercialisation from its user base, Twitter’s 500m daily interactions give the
network prime position for real time marketers with a sophisticated range of advertising products.
Key Benefits: Consistently one of the best ways to drive leads more cost effectively than other networks, especially if you have a Twitter audience already engaged with your brand. Twitter cards are an excellent way to collect good quality data direct from the network and use it to drive highly targeted traffic to your website.
Ad types: Similar to Facebook. The prime ad units offered amplify native Twitter functionality with promoted tweets and ads that drive post engagement. But ads that drive follower growth, app installs and video views are also a prominent offering.
Promoted Tweets are set up either as posts you have already made that you want to boost in a way that seems organic, or they can be set up especially as ads that don’t appear in your feed or search results, and carry website conversion tracking – in a very similar to the Facebook Promoted post option.
Follower Ads are set up and automatically optimised to drive users back to your own profile with a “follow us now” message to encourage new followers.
Apps & Video Ads are set up to drive specific objectives such as video play and app installs and can both be highly effective, especially on mobile.
Targeting: There’s a wide range of targeting options including location by country and area, broad and narrow matched keywords, @user profile names, your own data, languages and gender, along with platforms & devices.
User experience is a key to the targeting decision you make on devices and platforms. For instance, only serve mobile ads if the content is really optimised for it. Stick to desktop ads if you have big long forms or detailed campaign copy on landing pages.
LinkedIn Top line: With its substantial ownership of professional networking in most Western market places, LinkedIn provides a solid base for B2B awareness and recruitment advertising, though lead generation is still most successfully delivered by genuine organic networking and engagement.
Key Benefits: Quality traffic to your website and the most engaged users of any of the “Big 3″ social networks when they arrive. Conversion isn’t as strong from paid media as it is from earned, but sponsored updates drive good brand engagement with organic posts and standard ad units can deliver excellent returns for recruitment.
Ad types: There are two main types of ads available to book on LinkedIn.
Sponsored Updates are set up very similarly to Twitter’s promoted tweets and are posts you have already made to your timeline boosted to deliver impact that feels organic. Direct Sponsored updates only appear in the timeline of your target audience when they are logged in and active on the network.
Adverts, like Facebook’s Right Hand ad placements, are similar to standard website banner and button ads. Similar to those on Facebook, these ads generally deliver lower click through rates than sponsored newsfeed ads.
Targeting: You can target by a good range of standard demographics, but also extensively by company, role, skills, education and membership of LinkedIn Groups. Like Facebook’s lookalike targeting, audience expansion enables the targeting of audiences similar to those.
Conclusion Advertising for engagement and traffic in these networks isn’t going away either, but the right approach isn’t as complex as it might seem.
By creating the right content to attract and maintain customer’s attention and developing the right campaigns that drive results against more commercial business-wide objectives, brands can thrive in social.
As a final thought – adopting a test & learn culture with all advertising is essential. This is certainly the case for social media; the networks themselves are all still discovering what ads will work for their growing and maturing audiences.
Eleven years since Facebook was launched, social networks are finally reaching maturity in many markets and with maturity comes some serious earning potential.
by Anthony Rawlins, Digital Visitor
TTI on Twitter
You can keep up with all the latest news from TTI by following us on Twitter.
Follow @TTI_org
TTIcodes Summer Update
TTIcodes is continually breaking new ground and this summer has seen TTIcodes expand its UK Tour Operator Suppliers as both TravelSupermarket and Ice Lolly roll out products designed around holiday offers. Whist it is still a work in progress, it is anticipated that by the end of the summer the majority of UK based Tour Operators will be mapped on TTIcodes ranging from the large operators such as Thomson (TUI UK) and Thomas Cook to specialist operators such as Olympic Holidays, Caribbean Classics, Red Sea Holidays etc. The UK late holiday market is interesting in that it also brings into play numerous tech providers such as Sunshine
Technology (Formerly Kwik Holidays), JHL (Juana Hortorum), and TTS et al, each of whom seamlessly append the appropriate TTIcode to holiday offers for numerous travel agencies throughout the UK to promote and sell. This enables TTIcodes clients such as Ice Lolly and Travelsupermarket to make it easier for consumers to compare holiday offers for the same hotel. The illustration below shows TTIcodes being used within the Ice Lolly Application.
by Peter Hazel
Breaking New Ground
Six new departure/arrival locations have been added to FerryXML to cater for services to and from the Isle of Wight. They are: Portsmouth (Gunwharf Road) Portsmouth Harbour Station Ryde Pier Head Fishbourne Yarmouth
Lymington Version 1.2 of FerryXML encompassing these enhancements is now available for members to download from the TTI website.
by Tony Williams
Enhancements to FerryXML
TTI is associated with a number of trade organisations. Here is a round-up of their news.
News from our Associations
AITO has recently completed its first Travel Insights survey in conjunction with Spike Marketing. Just on 40 AITO members took part and sent
the survey to their own databases which provided a collective result as well as company specific reports for the participating companies. Just over 28,000 responses were received which provided a very solid base of information covering demographics, customers holiday buying habits and preferences. It was no surprise when customers were asked: ‘Which was the most important source of information in helping customers to decide on their holiday’, that browsing travel websites
came in at top position (52%), advice from friends/family second (35.4%), Google or other search tool third (32.4%) and reading customer feedback online fourth (32.1%). This is great news for AITO members as their main consumer marketing thrust at present is customer reviews on AITO.com. With over 3,500 impartial comments on the site and growing daily, AITOs customer reviews have been the real success story of the Associations new website. Kate Kenward, AITOs Executive Director said: ‘It’s a natural fit. Special interest travellers love to research their holidays in detail – it’s part of the holiday experience. Third party feedback is also a very important part of the decision
making process as the 2015 AITO Travel Insights has revealed. AITO members’ reviews have been very well picked up by Google which even shows their AITO star rating on specific searches.’ ‘AITO HQ has just developed a review widget for members to use on their own websites which reflects their customers comments on AITO.com. This adds extra validity to their own websites along with impartial authentication from their Association which many are saying is worth its weight in gold.’ AITO.com has been nominated in the British Travel Awards ‘Best Travel Review/Ratings Website’ category for the first time this year.
In June and July ETOA welcomed members to three events including
seminars on hotel distribution and customer ratings and reviews and three days of networking, business meetings and conference sessions at the 5th annual City Fair. Registrations are now open for the forthcoming edition of Showcase Digital taking place in London on Tuesday 29th September. TTI members can attend for free.
Registrations are now being taken for the Global European Marketplace (GEM) taking place in London on Friday 30th October. Contact ETOA today to secure your place as spaces are limited. Travel sentiment in Europe’s key long-haul travel markets is upbeat for the peak summer travel period as shown by the latest results of the Long-Haul Travel Sentiment Survey, a joint initiative of the European Travel Commission (ETC), the European Tourism Association (ETOA), and Eurail Group.
The survey provides the European tourism sector with early indications on travel demand developments from non-European markets. The latest results indicate strong growth potential from long-haul markets for Europe in the peak summer holiday season (May-August 2015). Despite continuing volatile economic conditions and political tensions, survey data collected in the five key markets of Brazil, China, Japan, Russian Federation and the United States of America highlight the enduring position of European destinations in travellers’ minds.
IFITT Hangouts on air Throughout the year leading up to ENTER2016 eTourism conference, IFITT is hosting a series of discussions with experts from academia, industry, and/or destinations on various hot topics in ICT and tourism. They are organized bimonthly and are broadcasted live on IFITT’s Google+ and YouTube Channels. IFITT’s seventh hangout on air will be held on August 13, 2015, at 7.15 pm ECT. The topic of
the discussion will be “Sharing Economy“. Join our discussion on the sharing economy in tourism and get to know how it will transform travel and tourism from our panel, which will be Dzmitry Bazkho (Airbnb), Courtney Ries (Travel Portland), Dianne Dredge (Aalborg University), Szilvia Gyimothy (Aalborg University), and Marianna Sigala (University of South Australia). Iis Tussyadiah, IFITT Vice president will be the moderator of the talk. Follow IFITT Hangouts here: http://www.ifitt.org/events/hangouts-on-air . IFITT ICT4D Scholarship IFITT has an open call for application for its ICT4D Scholarship. IFITT will fund young
talents coming from developing/ emerging countries, to provide a positive impact onto their respective communities through the application of ICT. Submission should be connected with a Master or PhD thesis, having a clear orientation to electronic tourism and local development. Submission Deadline is the September 1, 2015. For more information on the ICT4D Scholarship, please, visit: http://www.ifitt.org/ict4d-scholarship
A new parliament brings with it new agendas and refreshed perspectives. Ensuring that the interests of the youth, student and educational
travel sector are heard, BETA held its latest evening on the Terrace of the House of Lords
and welcomed over 160 members, industry stakeholders, MP’s and Peers. Our next event is a Youth Industry Seminar on Big Data. Is it just a big hype or does it represent real change in technology and business? An expert panel will debate this issue and use range of case studies to offer some tangible advice and information to
attending delegates. We will shortly be inviting entries for the 2015 British Youth Travel Awards, with categories from Best Use of Social Media, Best Marketing, we look forward to celebrating the crème de la crème of the British youth, student and educational travel industry.
Project Management Committee Discussions
TTIcodes There have been a few customers issues in terms of mapping. The meeting concluded that the best course of action was for Peter Dennis to meet with Andreas and sit down and resolve any outstanding matters. There are now over 200 suppliers using GIATA so more mapping issues are expected due to the high volumes generated. RESCON2 We have put a lot of time and resource into this project but unfortunately there has been very little interest from members. Tony Williams has prepared a document which we have put online for download. The solution is currently only viable for viewdata customers hence the probable lack of interest. So the project will be shelved for now unless there is renewed interest.
Locale Codes This has been on the back burner due to the focus on TTIcodes. We are scheduling a meeting and will press ahead with this opportunity. A speaker from mapping app what3words will be at the Autumn conference and what they are doing may well be relevant to our Locale Codes initiative. Conference & Forums We have decided to contact all non-members that attend the conferences about joining TTI. We have also decided to advertise the events in the online press. Autumn Conference—21 Sept The event is now organised with excellent speakers and sponsorship. Winter Forum– 2 November We will once again be running the WTM Travel
Innovation Summit in Association with TTI. WTM Tech Café TTI is sponsoring the Café this year. For more information see the following article. Project Management Committee Team We are looking for new projects not only to attract new members to the management team but also to comply with one of our main objectives. Possibly a standard for activities data interchange? Any other ideas? Please contact us.
by Tim Wright, Codegen
A Warm Welcome to New Members
Top10
TTI Events 2015
Project Management Meetings (All members welcome, contact Liz if you would like to take part) Wednesday 16 September- by conference call Thursday 10 December - by conference call
Conferences & Forums Monday 21 September - Autumn Conference Monday 2 November - Travel Innovation Summit at WTM
Travel Technology Initiative Ltd, Registered office: Victoria House, 51 Victoria Street, Bristol, BS1 6AD Company Registration Number: England 2398368
Published on behalf of TTI by Genesys - The Travel Technology Consultancy - www.genesys.net
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Our last project meeting took place on 2 June following the Summer Forum.
TTI Tech Café
The Travel Tech Show at WTM offers Travel & Hospitality Technology Suppliers the platform to promote their product to a unique audience. In partnership with TTI, WTM is offering the TTI Tech Café a much needed facility opposite the Travel Tech Theatre and at the heart of the New Exhibitor Pavilion, a popular feature to The Travel Tech Show at WTM. The TTI Tech Café will be open to all the exhibition visitors, exhibitors and press, selling
hot drinks and light snacks. In 2014 this was the busiest in-hall Café. There is potential for 4 sponsors who will benefit from their branding in and around the Café, pre and post show branding via the WTM website, email communication and PR exposure. Each Sponsor will have a 5sqm fully fitted ‘pod’ within the Café and be classed as Exhibitors. As an Exhibitor, the Sponsors will have all the benefits of Exhibiting, i.e. 3 Exhibitor Badges,
access to the Speed Networking Sessions, MyInvitation process, mobile app and website listings, etc. Plus Sponsors can pre-purchase vouchers for their clients to use in the TTI Tech Café. Please call Jo Marshall to discuss details of price and availability – 020 8910 7982, [email protected]