HyperTech Travel Blog

In this section we discuss some topics and issues which face the Travel Industry, with a particular focus on travel technology.

Total Cost of Ownership in Travel Technology

Personally, I am a big Brian Tracy fan and have been ‘Eating that Frog’ for my entire career [Read the book and you will know what I mean]. Part of Tracy’s vast mantra is Total Cost of Ownership and consultative selling. Well we all say that we do this, but do we? Or do we just list our features and benefits and hope that they align to that of our customers?

In the past, I must confess to having adopted the former approach, and why not? I sincerely believe that PleX is stronger on paper than our competitors.

In recent times, we have focused on Total Cost of Ownership or TCO for short, to demonstrate the value and quality of our software solution. Higher prices often comes at a cost that can be easily overcome when considering the TCO. Often, in order to increase the reliability of the product, the design and development costs increase, causing the initial cost of the product to be higher.

However, over the lifespan of the product, the total cost spent may be lower. TCO requires consideration of support costs, rework, project failure, vendor management (administrative time, travel, conference calls etc), and loss of future business (opportunity cost). By investing in a higher quality product in the beginning, total cost decreases as supporting costs become less necessary. The price of a software project is not measured when the initial quotation is provided; it is a continuous calculation of expenses added up over the lifespan of the project. This is called total cost ownership.
The factors which make up TCO can be tangible and intangible. Where these are intangible, we try to quantify them with a real $ value, in order to assist with calculating a Return on Investment (ROI).

Examples of these may be:

• Service – For example, PleX is a reliable platform with 99.9% uptime. This means that our clients are always open to do business. The impact of downtown can easily be quantified by calculating the median average business done within that period of the year and multiplying it by the loss of revenue made.
• Quality – Is the solution really made for your needs? PleX has evolved from a Dynamic Packaging and F.I.T tool (in the early days) to a solution which can now cater for Escorted Tours and other types of search. If you choose a solution which hasn’t proven this in the market which it is being sold, you will likely incur more risk and Customization. Customization= Risk = time + delay = frustration + opportunity cost = loss of revenue.
• Staffing - By staffing, I mean the training, maintenance, support, administration and other personnel costs necessary to run the software package efficiently. These costs can add up to as much as 50% to 70% of a software system's TCO over its life.
• Cost of acquisition – Although this should not be the determining factor, this should be considered when you are doing a budgeting exercise to calculate the payback of investment. This should not be done as a siloed exercise. Good technology can lead to a reallocation of resources and an increase in sales and sales efficiency.
• Cost of delay – Delay could be that processing a booking takes longer than it should. We pride ourselves on being able to process a dynamic package (multi center, multi product, multiple choices, from multiple sources, all packaged) in under 90 seconds. We often find that technology is unable to facilitate this in an expedited manner (taking upwards of 30 mins).
• Cost of Frustration - Poor technology can lead to exactly the opposite (to Cost of Acquisition), with user fatigue often resulting in a decrease in TCO, thus defeating the initial objectives
• Cost of Repair / Convenience – How quickly is my call picked up? Are my service levels met? Are we working in the same timezone? Can I make a personal call to management? PleX is developed and maintained in New York but has another office in India. This means that the sun never sets on our client base. We take care of you.
• Payment Terms – This can often make or break a deal. Flexible payment terms can often mean that payback on a project can begin sooner rather than later. Can I have lower upfront costs or higher upfront costs and less commitment annually?
• Opportunity Costs – This is perhaps the most overlooked factor in buying decisions today. PleX is able to automate a number of the business processes which are in place in most travel operations. By streamlining these, we decrease the cost of acquisition, minimize the cost of delay / frustration and redirect our clients’ attentions to what they do best, sell vacations. To often these days, we see the sales people having to looking at multiple systems / resources to calculate a price, promotion, amendment, deposit, exchange rate [and the list goes on] when this can be all automated in advance and they can concentrate on selling.
• Impact of lost bookings – I had to insert this point as ‘lost bookings’ are often the most painful to explain away. You have enticed someone to your booking channel and they have not booked as you haven’t got the product, service or promotion which they needed. BUT YOU HAVE. A proper technology solution will allow you to showcase all of your product and more. It should allow you to build new and exciting product lines and distribute through new channels.
• Loss of waitlisted bookings – Frequently we see that systems cannot automatically hold / option or waitlist a travel product. This has a massive potential opportunity cost.

A Famous quotation which you may hear spoken by a fashionista is:

"When buying clothes, spend twice as much money for half as many clothes"

The meaning by this is that, rather than buying a bunch of cheap clothes, buy half as many and select high quality items. In long run this decreases spending because expensive clothes wear out less easily and stay in style longer than cheap clothes. Buying less also helps reduce the clutter in your closet.

John Ruskin once said something along the lines of the fact that if you buy something cheap you should always add a 'fudge factor' to compensate:

"It's unwise to pay too much, but it is worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run. And if you do that, you will have enough to pay for something better."

A lower risk, higher value product will usually show a lower TCO and have a higher rate of satisfaction than one with a lower initial price.

When analyzing TCO, in most cases, the price of software proved to be less than the total cost of ownership. Lower acquisition costs, a decrease in maintenance, reduced staff time, streamlined and automated processes, and simplified systems management all lead to a lower TCO. This type of cost benefit decision making really does work in the long run. It results in clients having a lower TCO and a better solution, which ultimately drives their business.

Product performance (over the part’s entire lifespan), quality (number of software bugs) and risk (on-time delivery) are all factors. When purchasing a product with the greatest reliability, total cost is at its lowest, even though initial cost may be at its highest. Taking ownership of the product is important for evaluating what type of investment to make. A combination of strategic planning and vendor communication will most likely lead to the conclusion that maximizes the likelihood for project success.

These variables may need to be weighted depending upon the requirements of the project, for example late delivery may mean that resources are idle and costing $$$s. Late delivery may mean complete failure of the project – e.g. missing peak season.

At HyperTech we will always consult with a client and highlight the relevant TCO. This will show our potential prospect what the real costs of ownership are over time. We will always configure the application (and pricing model) to ensure that you are being provided the correct solution to suit your array of needs and requirements.

We have found that the most productive business relationship comes from a partner who values what you sell and what kind of company you are.

How I buy stuff nowadays

Research -->Look at Content-->Review Ratings-->Rough Pricing-->Determine Value-->Revise my pricing estimates to maximize my value-->Price comparison-->Search for value-->Add to Basket -->Apply Promo code-->Buy and have delivered

The reason I think that this is interesting is that, I, like most consumers, am trying to maximize the value in my purchase, at the lowest possible price. Please note that I didn’t say the cheapest.

But how do you sell value?

This is difficult as you are really interested in how much money the client has and how you can maximize your product sale to the client, whilst garnering goodwill and giving them a feeling of value.

So how does the seller create their value proposition and ensure that they are being compared with the right products in the right space?

In a world of meta-search (see my price comparison step above), this is difficult. The travel provider needs to create value, without affecting their ‘bottom-line’.  You need to be able to get across the benefits of utilizing your software, e.g. an increase in automating, sales channels and (hopefully) sales vs. always trying to look for the cheapest price.

I find that I naturally do this nowadays when I shop for anything. It will usually start with an idea of need and will quickly snowball from there. In fact, I often think that I have developed an aversion to shopping in a mall as I don’t feel comfortable parting with my money unless I have been validated by a string of (honest) reviews. In fact, this has gotten so bad that I have personally reviewed every item online for the wedding registry which we have just created.

I do this as it helps me build and attach a sense of value to a product. Don’t get me wrong, from that point, I quickly concentrate on finding myself the best deal as I don’t just want to spend money for the sake of it.
So essentially, I get sold in two places. One is my ‘need’ and convincing me of value and the second is converting that into my eventual sale.

In terms of travel (this is a travel blog after all), the former is done by many different sites in terms of some fabulous CMS and imagery to create a fulfillment for the need. This is aspiration. This is one of travel’s major selling points. However, do these sites often go on to convert from here? It hardly seems fair if someone does all of the work exciting someone, and they buy elsewhere. This is like going into a shop, taking all of the shop assistants’ time, and then going to buy online. The reality is that we all do this and I for one never feel great about doing so. Working in sales, I know the time and emotional effort which I dedicate to my clients (potential or existing) in trying to match their needs and requirements to something tangible which we do.

So what about the buying part?

I thought it was interesting to hear the Priceline CEO talk at the PhocusWright Conference in 2011. He mentioned that they try to concentrate on ensuring that the actual booking experience is as slick as possible and inferred that they weren’t too bothered about the inspirational aspects which others do as long as they were the booking portal of choice.

This means that they were happy to offer that price, but someone else could have been fulfilling those other aspects of the sale. Before everyone feels that there is any injustice here, I for one use booking.com for this very reason. I do my research elsewhere and book there due to the ease of use and price.

However, I could be persuaded to book elsewhere as I have no loyalty to the brand, as it just provides me a confirmation portal.

I feel packaging can be an effective strategy here. By combining complementary products, the travel provider is able to create value and spread the discount across two products (or even bury it in one). This means that there are more components being sold and everyone is happy. This is the beginning of the merchandising process which can often be so lucrative in terms of margin.

You will be able to inspire and hook the client based on a unique offering to the client. There will be some instances of commoditization (a flight only booking), but this is where the loyalty strategy, e.g. a future travel voucher or a promo code, can help.

In the mid and back office you will need a tool which can accrue for these types of payments and allow you to create complex packages to suit individual requirements and / or the requirements of a certain booking channel or market. PleX has invested heavily in this area of functionality; we feel that by adding value to the original need through packaging, a travel provider is more likely to fulfill the booking and get the money. This is, after all, the need of the travel supplier.

Travel Packaging in the Cloud

I was having a conversation the other day with a former colleague,  discussing what we felt the big trends and likely growth areas were to be in the travel industry over the next 5 years or so.

The usual topics came up:

• Merchandising
• Online Travel Alliance
• Packaging
• Content Management Systems
• Personalization

Then we moved onto the topic of connectivity. I have stated on many occasions that I find it amazing that is so hard to book these days, yet there is so much product and content (not always unique content) in the market. The conversation moved to the fact that if we had more connectivity, then we would be able to sell more…”someone will finally (properly) crack it”.

This is only partially true though.

My personal view is that the engineering should be done the other way around (I’ll explain what I mean shortly). Rather than trying to integrate more suppliers (and saturate the product selection), I believe that the engineering should be to try and empower the hotels to manage their own product and distribution.

The GDS model is being challenged now by direct-connects (and the airlines controlling their own product), so why not the individual or chain hotels? Usually dis-intermediation is achieved through progress in technology and, ipso facto, intermediaries exist as technology or a lack of ROI for investment in innovation isn’t there to provide an incentive to build these new technologies. This has never been truer than in travel. So many processes, and systems exist due to this, and it is holding the industry back from its true potential.

Channel Managers and Extranets now exist for hoteliers to update their inventory and pricing. However, they still need to be connected into a technology platform, unless they are used as a siloed application, thus eradicating a lot of the efficiency benefits.

I believe that with the proliferation of the Online Travel Alliance (OTA) and other standards in the industry, that inoperability will become easier and integration time will decrease. However, this doesn’t fit with my point that I make earlier. The engineering should be the other way around.

So, imagine there is a packaging ‘cloud’ where rates are maintained and managed, much in the same way that they are in an extranet or channel manager (by the hotelier), and these rates being packaged or combined with other products being maintained in their environment as well. What this would offer is a lot of flexibility in the types or packages you could create. You would be able to sell new products instantly without worrying about development or integration times, and you would always have the correct inventory levels for your business. Of course, you may wish to take a block or an allocation and agree a set price to mark up. Essentially, you would be limiting the amount of setup and configuration which goes into getting product to point of sale.

This would mean that marketers can concentrate on negotiating pricing, supplementing content and building their brands and can then use their technology solutions to directionally sell more.
Ironically, these systems have been in place (of sorts) for years. In the UK, a centralized system such as Viewdata has proven so popular, the UK industry has struggled to replace it, and thus it has become one of ‘those’ legacy technology pieces.

But wouldn’t a centralized solution make everything too transparent and difficult to differentiate?

I don’t think so.

Basically, a virtual stock market approach will mean that different vendors can work together or be virtually accessed (via the cloud) when someone is building an FIT package from scratch. This would be a sort of central stock control facility for all to use.

PleX Connect offers a variant of this functionality to our existing customers. Basically, you can share inventory (if commercial arrangements are in place) and make pre-built or custom packages using the PleX Travel Distributor.

If you take a car as the analogy, the complexity of technology will all exist under the bonnet. Travel providers can concentrate on the chassis, knowing that the engine is strong, future proof and has all of the latest mod-cons being added and managed for them.

What this means is that there are massive efficiency gains in terms of the product load, the distribution costs, new product at point of sale, more packages available, quicker technology (not going between systems) and the onus is on the supplier to ensure that the content and pricing is up-to-date and competitive.

A win-win in my book.

Searching for something: The frustrations of online travel search

I am getting married this year and I find myself always being asked “Where can I get the best deal for your wedding?” I find myself delivering an overly-complicated answer about the where’s and whys of the travel industry pricing. For example;

“Well International Flights are priced on a roundtrip fare but domestic ones aren’t”

“January is often the best time to book flights, but not always”

“We need to get a room allocation at a hotel, as this will get us the best rate, but he best rates are always on the major OTAs”

In a time of vast amounts of travel technology and integration, why is navigating all of this still difficult? Ideally, I’d like to book a multi-center flight but I need to be cognoscente about the pricing restrictions which I mentioned above. How is anyone meant to know all of this?

The worst part is when you find a ‘special offer’, click on it and it isn’t available. I have stopped clicking on banner ads due to this. The other ‘bait-and-switch’ method of the price jump also finds its way into my search.

I know that the UK faced these issues about 5 years ago, with no company wanted to include taxes and pricing which wasn’t based upon maximum occupancy, but they were forced to do so by the Office of Fair Trading. This made Tour Operators and Flight providers offer ‘real’ pricing to their clients and allow them to make more informed buying decisions.

The way around this is to offer a solution which is constantly updating the offers through a dynamic CMS-led pricing mechanism, ensuring that you are able to match content with an accurate price. HyperTech’s PleX solution has always been built and modeled around ‘real-time’ pricing and improving the client journey and conversion.

We are always looking to help our clients with their search and booking capabilities. We have many different user experiences which interface with our core technologies. Our PleX Travel search allows calendar-based searching, intelligent caching to trend based pricing I.e. dynamically pricing according to market competition. This allows you to intelligently advertise a tour price (inclusive of air) which will update itself according to the latest pricing.

15 benefits of being more efficient in travel

Like many, I believe that new technologies and innovations are at the forefront of industry these days. By effectively implementing technology, companies are able to present their products in new ways to their clients and operationally they are able to process things in a quicker fashion. We have discussed the different ways in which a product can be marketed and sold in other blogs but often the biggest return on investment (for a business case) is on the savings which can be realized through an IT project.

The PhocusWright Conference in November 2011 was a great showcase for new innovations, but none of these really addressed the operational (mid- office) processes of a business. These may not be as visually appealing as a mobile app but these are usually where the majority of staff are employed and where the costly errors can occur.

I have visited businesses whereby automating a specific operation has saved thousands of man hours from Day One. Examples of this may be the bi- synchronisation of a ticketing / schedule robot with the GDS or the effective management of an on-request booking. Without human intervention, PleX will get this information from the GDS or Hotelier, and can automatically send the relevant information to inform the client.

Automation within a travel organization can often involve a great deal of complexity. HyperTech has detailed knowledge of the travel industry and will always map out existing processes and see where PleX will be able to automate.

Opportunities often arise in being able to utilize ‘best of breed’ services for its travel providers and (where possible) try to gain efficiencies via using a common platform. I have listed some of these below:

1. 1.            Leverage existing technologies - The ability to gain additional business benefits for existing applications already in place. For example, if the telephone system is CTI enabled. Integration with a reservation system would enable the client record to be opened upon answering the call. This will lead to an improvement in customer service

2. 2.            Product Loading – We have integrated into 3rd party XMLs and allow you to load and manage your net rates. We do this via a simple (one screen) excel sheet to upload our product. This requires minimal training and it can be uploaded instantly or via an overnight batch process. Versioning of the contract means that product loading need not be an onerous task

3. 3.            Reservations – As the product is loaded into the PleX Database – this means that the reservation screens are extremely quick and a complex itinerary can be built in 10 clicks and under a minute. This means a time saving across the entire reservation process. The flexibility in PleX to support the adding of new product and changing of existing product without the need to change systems gives you the ability to alter the business mix, maximize opportunities and adopt market and industry changes as they happen

4. 4.            Management Information – As there are silos of data, PleX could enable a concentration of reports (either in the system) or to be outputted to BI reporting tools.This saves time and money by virtue of a consistent approach and that certain information doesn’t need to be double-counted or reconciled. It also leads to more informed management decisions

5. 5.            CRM – The customer and agent quote/booking record is built and can be maintained within the system.  This can quickly build a picture and allow you to target and incentivize successful agents and build brand loyalty. The ability to capture individual passenger details, travel preferences and requirements (past booking history, contact history, interests, personal preferences, Frequent Flyer details, passport details, mobility requirements (SSRs) etc.) leads to improved customer services and the removal of duplication of data in multiple systems. You are able to view any booking and quote activity which has happened within the system.

6. 6.            Link to CMS – As F.I.T is a dynamic product build, you are able to store and link images and information to product and therefore output this electronically to the client at point of sale and build a richer booking experience. Our CMS integration allows you to store information and dictate where you would like it to be displayed. Some clients use the PleX CMS to power their entire website.

7. 7.            Agent self-management – Allowing agents to access and manage their booking records in order to make certain amendments will save call center staff time and effort. A benefit of this is that it gives the agent a sense of empowerment and instant access to the solution.

8. 8.            Partitioning – Through creating multiple partitions in PleX, you can segment your markets, geographies, currencies, brands and promotions and only load the product once. This means multiple rules can be applied and managed without having to have different technology solutions or loading product more than once.

9. 9.            Customer / Agent Care – As the booking record is stored in one place, everything which is done to it is stored within one system [PleX] and an audit trail assists with accountability and remuneration.

10. 10.          Mailing and Fulfillment – PleX allows you to be able to build a voucher and electronically distribute this to your clients and therefore realize a saving on postage and stationary.

11. 11.          Credit Card Payments - Payments and deposits can be taken at point of sale. This cuts down on the amount of mid and back office processing and debt chasing. Agents can also go in and add payments before departure.

12. 12.          Distribution – PleX can allow product distribution via its XML interface to agents to search, cost and book. HyperTech is able to therefore support a multi distribution strategy. This leads to increased passenger numbers and lower cost of sale.

13. 13.          Multi-Center Dynamic Packaging – The ability to instantly package and price a (potentially) complex itinerary saves time and translates well onto the web.

14. 14.          Product at Point of Sale – The ability to cross-sell other products at point of sale and offer free nights and any other supplements which may be applicable.

15. 15.          Sample Itineraries – Directionally sell by putting together sample itineraries which may be de-packaged and tailored to the agents’ exact wants and needs.

Ultimately, a combination of efficiencies and an increase in sales should form the basis of the desire to implement a new solution. HyperTech usually implements PleX as a core application in a travel business, and it has also been adopted as a way of ensuring maximum efficiency in a business.

You will save money in the long term with a solid foundation – The benefits of a good, complex product loading capability

When you are discussing a major software implementation the Return on Investment criterion is vital to any business case’s viability as a project. A major factor in this ROI is time saving and hence cost saving. With most tour operations this saving of time can be enormous and result in a large monetary saving to put towards the business case (before you factor in an increase in sales).

There is usually an amount of wastage within any Tour Operation. This can be remedied via automation of certain processes and by looking at more efficient workflow processes.   At HyperTech, we have seen very successful operations which may take over a day to produce a complex custom quote for a client and which, through automation, have been reduced to a mere 9 clicks of a mouse, resulting in a saving multiple man-years of time in the process.

So why doesn’t everyone automate everything?

In truth, because in travel, it is hard. There are so many dynamic and every changing rules and systems in play, that you need an inter-connected solution to ensure that validation and re-validation is occurring on a real-time basis.

I’ll often state to our clients that by adopting PleX, they will be able to get their sales people selling again and not having to be the highly trained operational whizz-kids which they have needed to become. The modern travel seller often needs to go into multiple places to source product, remember promotions, restrictions, combinables, and deposit rules amongst many, many other things. By getting this information into the reservation system, you are able to alleviate this burden and reduce errors. From a sales point of view, the reservations agent can concentrate on selling the vacation safe in the knowledge that all of the complex calculations have been done behind the scenes and are validated by each click of a mouse.

So if it is this easy, why isn’t everyone doing it?

Whilst the time (and money) saving is being made operationally through the front office (and mid office ‘checking’) there is still work to be done. This is where the product load comes in.

Simply put, the product load is where the rates from a supplier are loaded into a system, inventory, restrictions and promotions are applied and then it is put on sale. The issues often come about as the supplier contracts are inconsistent and different rules and restrictions need to be accounted for on a case by case basis.

Certain solutions handle this well, certain ones don’t. The ones which do not handle the load well are because they are unable to offer a simple one-screen method of uploading information to be put on sale.
If this information is not entered, then you cannot guarantee that accurate information is going to be in front of the sales person or end client.

Some systems require months of input (and often recommend outsourcing) to achieve the requisite display. Others require data to be entered multiple times on multiple screens. The PleX Travel System has an easy one screen upload process and is able to handle all of the complexities which face a modern tour operator. For example;

• What days are defined as the weekend?
• Selling different prices on different days?
• First and Second Extra Person in Room Charges?             
• Child ages and costs (amount / percentage)
• Rate display priorities
• Different promotional types e.g stay x days get y days free
• Whether or not to tax a supplement and at what rate
• How should those taxes be applied
• Varying Deposit rules
• Future Travel Credits
• Whether a supplement is mandatory or optional

These are just a minor snippet of the complexity that the tour wholesaling application must be able to handle when having the product loaded into it. It is only then that the tour operator can devise some brilliant marketing strategies to entice agents and customers to buy their product.

I am no expert on the product loading process, but can reliably inform you that if this is done correctly, then the business benefits which will flow through your business will be massive. The house analogy is probably a correct one e.g. if you have a good foundation, then you are more likely to be a solid house.

As clients are taking multiple product sources (all with different rules and restrictions), putting together more and more complex customer itineraries, it is important that the technology validates the packaged components and displays all of the requisite rules along the way in a simple enough format for the client and reservation user to enjoy booking that vacation.

I have often struggled with how to describe this element of the PleX Travel Suite but it essentially manages complex travel arrangements without being complicated…Now make that into an advertising slogan!upply (via peering PleX systems) different parts of the itinerary!

Content is King (it always will be)

I am usually the first not to indulge in phraseology which has been overcooked, overplayed, overused. I always found myself liking The Beatles B sides and lesser known hits as tracks like ‘Let it Be’ we always old hat to me [although I will acknowledge the genius which went into creating them].

In a world of Steve Jobs quotes, this is one made famous by Bill Gates. So why do a blog on ‘Content is King’? Surely everything which can be said about the importance of content has been? You may be correct, but maybe there is no harm is re-emphasizing the importance of not only having a broad selection of content, but ensuring that it is linked up to the rest of your site.

David Callan says that “With the Internet content is king and always will be. This is because the Internet is the information superhighway and most people use it for information of some sort.”

“The information on a website is its content. Generally the more useful and interesting content a website has the more successful it will be. This is because more people will want to visit it again and again, this is especially true if a website is constantly adding more and more content on a regular basis be it articles, tutorials, news and opinion or whatever.”

“It's true there are millions and millions of products available to buy on the web but only the odd surfer goes online to specifically look for a product so if you gear your site to simply sell your product and do nothing else you won't be very successful.”

This is because nobody will even visit your site unless they're looking specifically for your product and they just so happen to find it via a search engine.

Content is now available from multiple sources via XML (and unfortunately in the travel industry) and a number of legacy systems. To get access to this content can be costly and may not be in keeping with the consistent flow of the rest of your site.

You see it is not just about content, but what you do with it. Sure, you can get access to lots of different suppliers, but the skill is to rank the suppliers who pay you the most, give you the best incentives and offer the best product for your clients.

To do this you need technology which can enable the following:

1. De-duplication – Too often, sites feature the same property multiple times, with multiple rates and this can be confusing for your clients. Also, different suppliers call hotels different things. PleX is able to do this by using a mixture of parameters including geo-coordinates.

2. Geo-Coordinates  - Make sure that the content is plotted onto a map and that your customers can see whether the property IS by a beach or if it is by a nuclear facility

3. Package the best offer – This doesn’t mean the cheapest (always). This may mean putting the right components together to maximize revenues, hit overrides  or fulfill a niche

4. Fulfill a market niche – A lot of product is often very similar. Differentiate your market offering by adding value through rich content or product

5. Blend content – Use a mix of negotiated content and that of 3rd party suppliers to offer a bredth of product

6. Upsell and cross-sell – Whilst the client is in the mood to buy, offer other product at point of sale which they may be interested in BUT ensure that this is relevant to the initial travel product which they are buying

7. Avoid No Availabilities – Either through ensuring that stock alternatives are found, by moving a product to ‘on-request’ or by fulfilling the request through an intermediary. You are working hard to get clients to your site, do not lose them by not offering them some content

8. Ensure consistency – When pulling through rich content from 3rd party suppliers, sometimes the description and layout can be inconsistent. Ensure that this data is normalized for the user

9. Click-throughs – If you have a static banner advert offering a particular deal, ensure that this is linked through to the applicable package without the need to reenter the search criteria. This can be done via a deep-link being created to a CMS key

10. Real-time availability and confirmation – Customers expect this as a matter of course. No longer is a quote submission acceptable for a client

PleX Connect is able to offer all of this functionality and coupled with PleX Travel Distributor, can provide a powerful content driven product offering which is broad, applicable and commercially viable for your business. It allows you to be able to sell multiple travel products (air, car hire, hotel, transfers etc) alongside your own negotiated rates. This content will make your product inherently more attractive, easy to distribute and will result in significantly higher sales numbers.

The benefit of this application is it facilitates more content for the customer / consumer and also enables the suppliers to have a real-time link with their customers (a real-time technological handshake), therefore cutting down on the time to get product to market. It also always them to turn a component into a package or be part of a complex itinerary. At HyperTech we even customers the opportunity to supply (via peering PleX systems) different parts of the itinerary!

Which activities are downstream?

This sounds like a rather boring topic but I assure you that it isn’t. Activity streams are being consumed by us on a daily basis as a primary source of information. They are essentially a format which allows social media content to be syndicated.

The stream which jumps to mind instantly is the News Feed on Facebook which collates all of the daily ‘goings on’ and delivers them to us (on sign-in) in an easy and digestible fashion. In fact, that is the only screen which I ever look at on the social networking site now. It is instant, relevant and easy to use.

So why write about it?

• Well people are defined by the services which they subscribe to and use. Examples of this may be:
• Who we are friends with e.g. LinkedIn, MySpace etc
• Where we have gone e.g.Whereivebeen, Trip Adviser etc
• What do we think e.g. Blogspot, Twitter, Facebook etc
• What images we share e.g. Picassa, Facebook etc
• What music we are listening to at the moment e.g Pandora
• What we have bought in the past e.g Amazon
• Who you follow e.g. Twitter

It got me thinking about how this could answer both the personalization and inspiration questions which I posed in my previous blog “Let’s make it personal”

This type of information stream will allow travel providers to expand on existing networks which are in place and utilize them to provide value added rich content which will assist in the consumer buying process. Image, you are thinking about booking a certain destination, you have searched your certain parameters and then you can see a friend who has gone, posted pictures, offered opinion and fits a similar profile to you in terms of likes and dislikes. This will no doubt enhance your decision making capabilities.

The PleX Travel Suite offers this type of real-time technology in the form of PleX Calendar Search and PleX Connect. Both products facilitate product at point of sale in terms of a standalone component, a cross-sell or a package. The activity stream will direct the consumer and inspire them; PleX Connect will interpret that search request and translate it into a tangible sale.

These words really jump off the page

I was doing my usual look through the ‘must have’ gadgets of 2011 the other day and one thing (pardon the pun) really jumped off the page at me…3D Printers.

I started thinking to myself that in travel, could 3D Printing be the next wave of rich content to supplement brochure or have we finally moved to electronic distribution e.g brochures and videos once and for all?

To do this, I have looked at emerging technologies trends and tried to decipher what is hype and what is not. Ulf Lindhe 2010 blog was particularly useful. He remarks:
“Gartner's Hype Cycle Special Report is an annual maturity assessment of more than 1,800 technologies and trends.

Since 1995, Gartner has used hype cycles to characterize the "hype" and subsequent disappointment with the introduction of new technologies. Hype cycles show how and when technologies move beyond the hype, offer practical benefits and become widely accepted.

The 2010 Report consists of 75 individual reports, each of which gives a snapshot of a key area of IT or business. In the Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle 2010, 3D Printing is positioned as “Early Adopters Investigate” and close to “Mass Media Hype Begins”. 3D Printing has not yet reached what Gartner refers to as Peak of inflated Expectations but we are getting close.”

For a better understanding of the Hype Cycle please visit Neville Hobson’s excellent blog post here http://www.nevillehobson.com/2010/10/11/better-understanding-gartners-hype-cycles/

By Gartner’s reckoning, mass media hype is beginning to surround 3D printing and it could very well be a great differentiators when providing documents to new clients.

The Z Corporation lists some of the key selling features of 3D printing below:
• Increase Innovation
• Print prototypes in hours, obtain feedback, refine designs and repeat the cycle until designs are perfect e.g. Airport maps, resort guides and destination advice
• Improve Communication
• Hold a full color, realistic 3D model in your hands to impart infinitely more information than a computer image e.g. A room / hotel overview
• Speed Time To Market
• Compress design cycles by 3D printing multiple prototypes on demand, right in your office e.g. On demand documentation
• Reduce Development Costs
• Reduce travel to production facilities e.g. See on paper what you will see at the destination
• Win Business
• Bring realistic 3D production to prospective accounts and customers alike e.g. inspire more with a quote, than your competitor

Imagine…Being able to have one of the seven wonders of the world jump off the page at you in a brochure, ticket or voucher? This is a truly inspirational idea, and the notion a vacation is often suspending the notion of disbelief. Frequently, travel suppliers are being told to inspire and educate their clients…What better way than 3D printing as a visual aid? This could be seen as a static version of a video clip.

PleX has an in-built document management solution which allows you to configure, design and choose which documents you want to go to which clients. We also have a document XML which can be integrated into a 3rd party brochure / document management system, leaving the travel supplier which different methods of communicating with their customers.

Like is for Losers

Like most I am a consumer of social media and like most I am a lazy one at that. I’d prefer to read others thoughts and share the ones which I think are the most humorous or academically relevant to me. But surely this is what social media is about? I do not ‘stalk’ people via their Facebook page and I very rarely use it as much more of a tool than wishing someone happy birthday (a lazy, half-hearted sentiment in itself). I rely on my virtual ‘Facebook’ friends to entertain me, I am a consumer.

Consuming media is essentially why smartphones and Ipads work so well. They do not require you to need to wordprocess much or to generate content, someone has done that for us already.

The one curious phenomenon in travel is that of the ‘like’ button. Personally, I do not care if my friends ‘like’ Two and a Half Men or if they think a status update is good but I am in the minority. ‘Like’ is now the most popular feature on Facebook and Google Plus has followed suit with their +1 functionality. Does this really influence the way which we (and others) think? Is it viral marketing at its purest? Or is it just a way for unimaginative people to show a mild, half hearted sentiment without effort?

Chompon (http://www.chompon.com/chompon_social_action_value.pdf) anticipates that like is worth around $8 in revenue to their clients. I personally think that this is a little egregious but their methodology does show that it is worth something.

So should we all go out and get people to like our business or our statuses?

I believe that any Marcom strategy has to have a tangible output. If we really are asking our clients to interact with us in this way, then we need to ensure that this information isn’t a dead-end and that we are using the information to build a more personalized view of our clients. The issue with this is that ‘like’ could be for lazy people who simply like everything!

Syncapse has addressed this in their article ‘Value of a Facebook Fan’. They argue that you need to do the following:

• Score the fan base
• Understand Performance Of Social Channels
• Execute Strategies Against Key Factors
• Manage And Build Off The Trends

Syncapse concludes that:

‘As growing audiences migrate to social networks like Facebook, a brand’s ability to connect and influence these customers must shift from traditional marketing strategies. Facebook fans represent a significant opportunity to drive revenue enhancement, brand, and loyalty without incurring the considerable cost-per-person of conventional marketing. More importantly, such Facebook strategies allow for a discernable ROI that is not allowed by most other approaches.’

Within the Travel Industry it is simply not enough to get people to ‘like’ you. You need to make this a parameter of search. For example, someone who ‘likes’ you on Facebook get a preferential deal.

Within PleX we are able to offer this ability to combine different elements to build a price. Why not foster some brand loyalty by making ‘like’ one of these elements and getting the client to really like you.

Deal or No Deal

Groupon and its very public and recent successes have created an industry overnight. Famously, they were also subject to failed $6 billion dollar bid from Google and are purported to be the fasted growing business ever.

Competitors such as LivingSocial, Buywithme, Google Local Deals and other industry specific deals-based companies have sprung up almost overnight, giving consumers increased choice in the deals which they receive.

The actual marketing behind this simple idea is quite brilliant. This is an extension of ‘clipping coupons’ which housewives have been doing for decades to save money for their families on items such as groceries.

Where Groupon et al have succeeded, is that they have taken this notion of ‘coupon-clipping’ for everyday items and extended it to leisure and other goods. Personally, I find it a great way of getting daily inspiration about ‘something new’ or ‘somewhere new’ and the best part about it, is that I can try it at a reduced rate. This has similarities to the way in which supermarkets offer promotions on various goods, I may find myself trying (and in some cases liking) a new brand or product and then buying it at full price subsequently.

So why is it an brilliant form of marketing?

There are arguments for both sides on this debate. One thing which is for sure is that ‘deals’ do increase sales. Not many tools can guarantee that (although, often many do state that this is the case). In fact, most business cases’ are approved on a reduction of costs, coupled with (or powered by) an increase in business efficiencies.

Personally, I find it fascinating that my significant other can buy a coupon [females are more likely to embrace this marketing channel] and then suggest going out for dinner on a Tuesday night as she has a ‘deal’ for it.

Let’s break down her logic…
• Groupon offers $20 for $40 worth of food
• Our food bill may come to an overall total of $50 [if no wine was consumed and we were trying our best to stick to the value outlined on the Groupon]
• Tip (on full amount) is $10
• Total amount is $20 plus taxes e.g. $25

The reason I broke down the pricing like this was that we have spent $45 for $50 worth of food on a day which we would normally have cooked at home for significantly less.

The restaurateur had a chance to impress us with their culinary skills and upsell us accordingly, Groupon successfully marketed to us on a night where we’re not looking to be a consumer, my partner got a night out and I saved money….Or did I?

It could be argued that the restaurateur lost money to both Groupon and the customer (a loss leader), I spent money which I wasn’t thinking of spending (an inspirational / impulse buy) and Groupon made money.
This is a great business model for only one of the three parties in every scenario.

So how does this relate to the travel industry? Living Social has  their Escapes deals and Groupon and Expedia have ‘teamed’ up to offer their deals. The travel industry has always struggled when adopting commercial models from other industries for a number of reasons.

One of the primary reasons is that the product is so dynamic and trying to tie down this ‘moving-target’ for a one day ‘firesale’ deal can be difficult. Tour Operators have managed to do this in the past with allocations, blocks and guarantees which means a keen eye on yield, load and pricing mechanisms, but a truly dynamic model would be hard to control. Especially if the ‘deal of the day’ proves to be successful as they invariably are.

The other point to make is that often there isn’t the margin to extend to a deal and by offering a ‘loss leader’, you will not enjoy the same level of consumer loyalty as other industries do. With this in mind, why should your business strategy incorporate this?

After all, these daily deals offer a massive subscriber base and give you the opportunity to upsell other items when the client becomes yours. You may see the opportunity to gain a customer for your database as a revenue-neutral amount and then sell to them in the future. It could even be argued that there could be a reduction in the need for direct front-line sales and marketing spend as the ‘deal’ is shouldering a level of this burden for you.

If we are really paying attention to what business owners are saying about the financial metrics of using a Groupon promotion - they don't work. The merchant reduces the price by 50%, then Groupon takes 50% of the remaining amount, then the merchant gets something like 25% of their original price minus transaction fees - it basically a liquidation sale.

Well, the newest innovation from these deals based businesses is the instant deals e.g. buy me in the next hour and enjoy me straight away. This is an all together exciting opportunity for travel companies. They can offer distressed stock through these channels and the increased brand recognition may even result in a substitute sale (at a higher rate) from the full season stock. This way, travel companies can benefit from these guaranteed sales without needing to worry too much about the fulfillment [normal caveats to be inserted here].
Managing this sort of yield and aggregation of pricing requires a tool which is able to model pricing against yield and load factors, whilst maintaining allocations and blocks. HyperTech’s PleX product can do this, with the added benefit of being able to interface with 3rd party systems for additional or freesale inventory.

Our world of instant gratification may now be able to be automated through a powerful marketing tool, coupled with an intelligent tour operating pricing and yield management system which will allow these deals to flourish and brand recognition to rise.

"Do you want fries with that?"

For years we have attracted people to our stores and they have gone away having bought goods, services and one or two things which they hadn’t considered buying. These ‘impulse’ purchases may be a result of attractive marketing, a discount or a complementary sale e.g. buying some tennis balls to go with your new racket or some good old product placement. If you can combine these factors you are likely to increase the amount of sales which you make and improve your company’s profitability.

It is simply a case of “Do you want fries with that?” By mearly asking for the sale, you are drastically improving the likelihood of getting the sale. McDonald's do this, every time a Big Mac is sold.

Within the travel industry, consumers are attracted to the product because of what it represents e.g. a break from the normal, a chance to get away and do something else and all of those other multiple other reasons for purchasing a vacation. The hard work often comes in trying to get the consumer to think about your brand in the first place, then pricing the product correctly and getting the service factors in place to make them feel comfortable to pull out their credit card and buy. The issue is that some businesses stop there when this is the easiest time to make a supplementary sale.

The supplementary sale is made when the lead (in this case, the customer) is warm (in this case, hot) and it represents a higher percentage chance of a sale.

So why aren’t all travel companies offering this as a matter of top business priority?

In Forrester’s Report ‘Cross-Sell Your Way To Profit’ they state that:

“Travel insurance, a hotel room cross-sold on an airline Web site, and a shore excursion operated by a local tour operator but sold by a cruise line to its passengers are different examples of third-party ancillary services. Many travel providers in these segments have built their business on third-party ancillary services. The revenue upside for travel suppliers from third-party ancillary services is significant, with commissions ranging from 5% to 10% for ferry bookings, 10% to 15% for car rental and hotel bookings, 10% to 16% for cruise bookings, and 30% to 50% for travel insurance”.

Win-win seems to be the phrase which springs to mind. By offering more services, the travel provider is providing a total travel experience in that they are able to offer more services and get paid for doing so. The client will be safe in the knowledge that more of their requests are being fulfilled in one place, meaning that changes to one part of the itinerary should be reflected in the rest of it. Non travel products may also form a part of this sales approach. For example, why not offer a free Lonely Planet guide for the location which is being booked? This will differentiate your quotation / proposal and will demonstrate a level of personalization for the client.

HyperTech has developed PleX which is able to act as this one-stop shop repository and aggregate several components in one shopping basket [a super-PNR]. From here, advanced functionality such as land amends can occur. This is where you are able to change some or all of the components and PleX will ensure that the validity of the PNR remains intact. This advanced basket management allows sales people to concentrate on selling and not worry about operational aspects of the business.

These cross-sales translate very well onto new technologies. Most companies are now offering an app or a ‘My Account’ type of service to check booking status, pay balances or reprint invoices. We are now able to ‘commercialize’ this by offering them excursions, transfers etc post booking, without the need of manual intervention to follow up. This personalization of the booking journey means that your clients are not being bombarded with offers which are not representative of what they would like to do on vacation. Cross-selling should be making things easier for them and offering them a discount for buying it all in one place.

PleX is able to offer these services as 'combinables'. What we mean by this is that a clever marketer can package these cross-sell item into a booking and only allow a discount (or whatever incentive the company wishes) if certain criteria are fulfilled. This allows the travel provider to offset the cost of the discount across one or more components. Reporting can be done and tracked via PleX’s business intelligence and this will be reflected in a more representative CRM profile of the client.

As the travel industry landscape becomes more competitive, there is a need to seek new revenue streams which will benefit and foster new loyalties with your clients.

To buy or build?

Often travel companies have to decide about whether they want to invest in buying a new technology solution for the business or to build it themselves.

The first question which needs to be answered is whether the business has the time, expertise or inclination to do this internally and (as often is the case) an internal mandate that this project is more important than another. Managing a project development team is a very different set of challenges to managing a supplier project.

In Polly S Traylor’s article in Infoworld here she states that:

“Decades of trial, error, and egghead analysis have yielded a consensus conclusion: Buy when you need to automate commodity business processes; build when you’re dealing with the core processes that differentiate your company”.

What this essentially means is that you should to standardize as much as you can as this is a more cost effective method in terms of ongoing maintenance. If it is all that simple, then why legacy systems are still commonplace in the travel industry? For example, Viewdata in the UK?!?! These legacy solutions mean that the travel companies are often faced with a need to work with, work around, or develop ‘on-top’ of these inefficient systems.

There will always be idealists who wish to remove these dependencies and build a bold new industry but the truth is that there is not always a return on investment for such a move.

Traylor’s goes onto to comment that:

“Build-versus-buy decision points remain the same: cost, time to market, politics, architecture, skill sets, and strategic value. Additionally, vendor consolidation has led to new pricing models and bundling options that give customers much greater leverage. And finally, open source is delivering the best of both worlds, with hybrid approaches that combine purchased and custom-built components. Pop the hood on any large IT organization, and you’ll likely find a wild mix of all these approaches.”

If maturity, time-to-market and the security of knowing that the code is constantly being developed, updated and re-factored to cater for to the dynamic nature of the travel industry, then PleX is the solution for you. HyperTech developed PleX over ten years ago and this maturity has served our many customers expertly over the years. The fact that the system doesn’t need re-engineering to cater for those existing legacy systems is a plus as we have already integrated to them and advanced the travel technology paradigm for all our clients.

Our aim is to try and facilitate what our clients can do with technology and not limit what they would like to do with their business because of technology. After all, we are the experts on travel technology and our clients specialize in selling travel and their company. This means that they can work on some of the differentiating factors such as the ‘look and feel’ of their website and we can ensure that the processes and technology is in place to support this channel and others.

There will always be a debate on the best approach, but we feel that PleX offers the industry most functionally advanced solution and the best part is…It has already been built!

Has Dynamic Packaging really delivered for the Travel Industry?

In the year 2000, HyperTech proudly proclaimed that we had successfully implemented Dynamic Packaging in the North American market. What is often surprising is that more companies haven’t embraced this technology with vim and vigor.

Dynamic Packaging (DP) means something different to everyone. Our definition is a broad one; essentially is a quick and easy way of aggregating a travel search request and allowing for the changing nature of travel component pricing.

DP has many forms, and some companies have embraced it thoroughly while others have dabbled with it thinking that by offering air + hotel they have a comprehensive DP offering, of course we say it is more pervasive than that and it can run an entire business.

There is no doubt that DP is built for the web, just ask Expedia, Orbitz et al. It allows the searcher to build an itinerary without fear and with little expertise. It prevents booking errors, such as an airport transfer from the wrong airport. DP calculates this all real-time (inclusive of pricing and rules) and presents the client the option to book, within a few clicks.

DP allows the holiday maker to build with components which they want, and have these items form an itinerary which truly suits their own needs. Surely this is more appealing that going from a going from a pre-defined airport gateway at an inconvenient time on an inconvenient date? Nowadays, low cost airlines can often lead to a transparent discount within the flight component of the search as well. Clients can now chose which part of their package they want to spend the bigger portion of their monies on.

Dynamic packaging improves search matching, conversions and motivates website visitors to revisit your web site time and time again. After all, if you have spent monies attracting customers to your site, the last thing you want is to not be able to service their search request. You can often build a business case by looking into these ‘no-availabilities’ and turning them into search results which can be booked.

The traditional tour package can be quickly and easily constructed now via dynamic content and therefore this enables tour operators to switch-sell and manages their yield more effectively. For example, if you note that a certain destination is not selling and another is; you can now get access to multiple 3rd party content feeds to build these itineraries ‘on the fly’ and display the pricing alongside the original pricing. The notion of brochure pricing doesn’t need to be a rigid one. PleX enables you to build suggested packages and have them flexible enough to offer alternatives for certain components or completely dynamically package a whole new vacation.

With the advent of new Application Programming Interfaces (API) in the travel industry, DP is able to automatically package more and more imaginative itineraries with little or no input from the agent and this means that the travel company can concentrate on the content and allow the technology to provide the intelligence to package the vacation, promote and combine components and offer discounts and mark-ups.

The very word dynamic means that its contents need to be refreshed on a regular basis. We have already discussed some of the issues with caching data here and the inherent client frustrations which accompany this. So why hasn’t everyone embraced real-time search?

At HyperTech we have embraced this method of booking and have expanded on the functionality by going ‘multi’. We have examples of clients doing searches which are multi-stop, multi-itinerary, with multiple components, all in one shopping basket (PNR). This often leads to our clients enabling the best prices for their clients as they are travelling more efficiently between city pairs. For example, it may be cheaper to get the Eurostar between London and Paris, than flying and then a train to Nice may be more favorable than a domestic flight?

So has Dynamic Packaging delivered?

Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity have been aggressive in how they have offered this as a primary reservation journey and they occupy the top B2C worldwide booking searches at the moment.

If these companies have convinced the traveling public that buying products packaged is financially beneficial for them and that they save money, then why do so many vacation travelers still buy the flights directly from the airline, the hotel separately and the car rental separately. Therefore, we put forward the argument that the travel companies have not all delivered the promise of dynamic packaging to the traveling public and in the process have not maximized business gains for themselves.

Traveling in the cloud?

Up in the cloud; take it to the cloud…cloud, cloud, cloud. Well this is the current industry buzz word which everyone feels compelled to understand and in terms implement.

So what does this mean in terms of travel? Firstly, let’s define quickly what cloud computing is and where it has come from…

Cloud computing is essentially a method of managing the capacity within your current capacity on the fly without the need to invest in new infrastructure, new people or licenses, extending your departments existing IT capabilities.

This means that in essence you can run your existing applications or license a SaaS (software as a service) application [discussed in my previous blog here] via the Internet.

Travel Research Online states:

“It is practical, affordable, and scalable and most, importantly, accessible. Cloud Computing is most definitely the wave of the future for the travel industry. The potential for removing all dependency on GDS systems and proprietary accounting and marketing software is quickly becoming a reality, and especially in today’s economy, it presents an opportunity for savvy travel professionals to take charge of their office rather than being dependent on others.”

Linking Planed outlines that that Cloud services allow Travel companies to:

• Be able to increase customer base due to higher availability, low congestion, and additional sales channels

• Competitive advantage to the small and mid-sized enterprise in the form of lower fixed or upfront capital cost

• Improved operational efficiency due to low marginal cost

• Ability to manage risks better by reducing fixed investment on any new initiative

At HyperTech we are conscious of trying to deliver our solutions in a manner which are delivered to budget and prove a return on investment. Typically we have implemented over an .ASP model but we recognize that offering a cloud based solution means that we are able to adapt to our clients various capacity differentials. For example, capacity needs to flex and expand over peak periods but isn’t needed once these subside. This can mean significant hosting and infrastructure savings for our clients.

Travel companies need to monitor their costs and revenues. A cloud based model allows or a flexible and on demand approach to solution management. Essentially, allowing a business to start small and grow in accordance to success.

Let’s make it personal?

Personalization is a concept which has been used online for a while now. A cookie is as much a baked treat as a way of capturing what you do and what you are looking for.

Initially, this feels a little intrusive, as someone or something is deciding what we should be offered and from where.

However, in the truest sense, we are refining this method of search and suggestion, as personalization is a learning entity [please note: this does conjure up immediate thoughts of the T-1000 developed by Cyberdyne Systems Corporation in the hit movie Terminator 2: Judgement Day] and not a static or pre-ordained one. In fact, Amazon.com have often ‘suggested things which I may like’ through their search and checkout booking process.

This has been adopted in part by travel, but does need to evolve somewhat. If we personalize our offering we can start to understand what people have been searching for and supplement this with some of their CRM data [discussed in my other blog here]. We should now be able to offer to them alternative and inspiration choices which will mean a better return on investment than just sponsoring the same old key words.

A recent CNN article states that:

“…personalization isn't just shaping what we buy. For a quickly rising percentage of us, personalized news feeds like Facebook are becoming a primary news source. Thirty-six percent of Americans under 30 get their news through social networking sites.”

Travel needs to be part of this discussion. Unique content is key and there is enough knowledge within the industry to create this and become part of the news cycle. Then utilize personalization to get to know you clients better and market to them accordingly.

Within PleX, this can be achieved through cross-selling product throughout the search journey and enabling an F.I.T booking to be built, when initially only a single component was being considered. Technology is needed to do this, but also a little imagination. Why not, set out to configure a CMS solution to match various content items and offer another, especially if one is out of stock or doesn’t carry the same amount of commission from the supplier or within the booking.

It is still important to inspire our customers, after all how do we know what we like if we are only getting offered the items which meet our criteria? Just because you have always dated blondes, it doesn’t mean that a brunette cannot be the person of your dreams!

One for the little guys

Travel technology is a phenomenon. The reason I say this is that it is able to facilitate so many things which were once manual and improve them immeasurably.

A lot of time and money is now invested in looking at a travel business and seeing where it can realize some of these savings. After all, it is far easier to justify a business case on a saving that trying to prove or illustrate a sales increase. I would always argue that a combination of these factors should be realized through any technology deployment as (the theory goes) technology is always getting stronger and not standing still, so neither should you or your business.

So there is a need for technology and there are plenty of companies which now offer it. The established order seems to be that everyone tries to win ‘the big sale’ and some of the little guys get left behind as their budget does match. Trying to deliver a complex solution should never be underestimated; it takes a commitment from both the vendor and the travel company who is implementing it. Sometimes, this may take the form of a project team and the smaller companies do not have the time and resources to invest.

This is a failure on both the vendor and the smaller travel company as the potential to grow and save money is vast as I have already mentioned. So what is the solution?

Well there are some more SaaS [Software as a Service] solutions in the market. This is where you can sign up relatively quickly and a solution can be delivered with very little training and infrastructure needed. Some of the failings of these solutions are that they do not cater for the complexities and the different processes undertaken on a daily basis by a travel company. PleX can be delivered as an out of the box solution but still requires a commitment in terms of product management and training.

HyperTech offers different flavors of PleX [Lite, Pro and Enterprise] to cater for the different amounts of functionality and budgets within the industry. This means that we are able to deliver to the larger businesses within the industry and also automate some of the smaller, more niche players in the market. This puts HyperTech in a position in terms of offering distribution of some unique product in the industry. In our experience, this leads to an increase in sales, the ability to offer more product at point of sale and be able to present your brand in more imaginative and innovate ways and benefit for the 10+ years of HyperTech research and development.

Let’s get social?

As I mentioned in my last blog, CRM information is critical to getting a better understanding of who your customer is. Surely this is just Marketing 101?

Well, I am sure that there have been a few new books written over the past couple of years due to the rise of social media. Everyone is involved in it but does anyone (other than the social networks) really know how to make money from it?

It was mooted that one of the major factor in President Obama’s successful election campaign was that he embraced this channel and was able to rally his support in different voting demographics. The same has been said about some of the revolts within the Middle East and North Africa for regime change.

So if a channel can get a President elected, dictator ousted and long lost friends back in touch, then why do we find it so hard to come up with any good ideas for using it within Travel?

We need to be on Twitter, Facebook et al…

I have found myself uttering these words to our President in the past. Is this a case of ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ or is this a major opportunity? As with many of these debates, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

As I mentioned earlier, CRM is the key. Social media offers us a massive opportunity to get to know our customer better.  I am far more likely to be receptive if I get a special offer to see my favorite sports team, rather than the ballet. This information exists within different interfaces, we just need to ensure that we have a product, price and promotion (3 of the 4 Ps) to reflect it. I did this in Marketing 101.

My point is that we can embrace all of these channels of data, aggregate them and offer a great proposal to our clients. For example, Facebook tells us where our friends or ‘Facebook Friends’ live, why not offer a widget to calculate the total price of a flight, a hotel, or a package to go and visit them. It will encompass various travelling methods, but the data is all available and it just needs to be aggregated. A large percentage of people travel to see family and friends, I should know because I use the majority of my vacation every year seeing my friends.

There are lots of examples of this; PleX enables you to choose a mixed mode of transport and allows you to build a package either dynamically or in advance. In the scenario above, the Facebook API would be telling us the departure and arrival points and PleX is able to build a mix of transport options (air, train, bus etc) to get there and calculate the time and costs. Of course, you are then able to offer cross-sell items such as hotels, attraction tickets etc.

The point is that we know a lot about our customers socially now and the technology exists to offer them product which they are more than likely to purchase.

When will travel finally embrace CRM?

There is an old saying in Marketing that “Half of marketing dollars are wasted but marketers don’t know which half”.

I find this shocking!

After all, the majority of marketing monies is spent on search, and if we don’t really know what our customers want, then how can we adequately cater to their needs. For the most part, data is being captured by Tour Operators and is still being used in a very generic way.

For example, if you are a skier who books your annual trip to the Alps every September, why are you being sent a special offer for a winter-sun trip? Sure, there are occasions where you may be open to new ideas and a bit of inspiration. For the most part, you are more likely to elicit more money from the customer, if you incentive them to book earlier (using a promo code) and offer them more ‘in-resort services’ as part of this package, rather than waiting for them to purchase them when they arrive.

After all, you have (hopefully) captured various form of CRM information such e.g. their shoe size…Why not offer my ski boot hire? Additional revenue will be realized and you will be able to foster more customer loyalty by offering a promotion which they will actually benefit your client rather than bombarding them with ‘just another promotion’.

PleX offers the functionality to achieve everything which is outlined above. Customers can capture CRM information about their agents or end-users. They can then incentivize them to make more bookings, to increase the value of current bookings or to switch sell to a more lucrative vacation package. Targeted promotions using promotional codes and offering loyalty points to be redeemed against travel booking are a must in terms of CRM.

In terms of measuring spend, campaign management can be used and source codes captured in a number of ways. This is all tracked and reported to see how much ‘bang you got for your buck’.

There is more and more (CRM) data available to companies now and mining it successfully can both save marketing dollars and increases sales revenues. The companies which exploit this in the most systematic and imaginative ways, will be the ones which succeed in growing their businesses.

Social media is just one of these channels and my next blog will demonstrate some ways of how this can be achieved.

To cache or not to cache- that is the question?

Wikipedia defines caching as:

“A component that transparently stores data so that future requests for that data can be served faster. The data that is stored within a cache might be values that have been computed earlier or duplicates of original values that are stored elsewhere. If requested data is contained in the cache (cache hit), this request can be served by simply reading the cache, which is comparatively faster. Otherwise (cache miss), the data has to be recomputed or fetched from its original storage location, which is comparatively slower. Hence, the more requests can be served from the cache the faster the overall system performance is.”

In the travel industry, the notion of caching data has been used extensively for the past decade or so.  By caching data you enable a faster mechanism for the end user [the customer] to get to the price, so often the major purchasing factor.

Is this dangerous though? Caching has to assume various factors in order to derive a price in travel. For example, how many people are sharing a room, what supplements are being taken, are any free nights to be applied and the list goes on. Some travel companies will make these assumptions on behalf of their customer, so that the booking journey is shorter and not full of as many booking prompts or questions. The issue is that the price can often jump prior to purchase. This is often cited as an issue when taxes, card charges and under-occupancy fees are factored into an advertised rate.

This got me thinking about comparisons in everyday life. I find myself never really knowing the price of a purchase in North America as I have the sales tax to add, hence I find that my pockets are full of more coins that in my native country of England.

Survey after survey tells us that speed is vital on a website. Travel Intelligence chief executive Alan Josephs told Travolution that:

“Speed is underrated. One of the reasons Google is so successful is not necessarily because it brings back relevant results but because it brings back results super quickly.”

The issue is that pricing and the systems which ultimately hold these prices are constantly changing. A travel platform such as PleX interacts real-time with all of these systems and will return a price to the client inclusive of any mark-ups, commission, packaging rules etc. But what if the price was cached? This is a very useful tool in the initial search as it gives the agent or the end-user an indication of price and the differences / savings which may be able to be realized by traveling on a different day. PleX uses a shopping calendar to show the price of tours (inclusive of flight costs) departing on different days but does all of its search, cost and booking real-time to avoid those nasty price-hikes and end up with all of those coins in your pocket.

Caching can be setup in a number of ways. There are caches which can be configured to timeout and refresh at certain points of the day. Usually more often for volatile priced travel products, e.g. low cost flights, there are other caches which can intelligently update depending on what the last live search of the particular route or room option showed. For example, if the caching said that the hotel was $250 and the live search returned a rate of $262, the caching would be updated accordingly.

This leaves us with the title of this blog, which asks “to cache or not to cache, that is the question.” In my opinion, cache has a very important role to play in the researching of a travel deal but can be an annoyance if it is not configured correctly and if it is part of the everyday search, cost and book process of the consultant or website.