Guest comment: The Great Online Holiday Hijack?

Sunday, 14 Apr, 2005 0

Guest comment by Peter Matthews, managing director of Nucleus the brand experience consultancy, and online travel specialist.

The internet and the travel business are now, without doubt, inextricably bound together. But as the strands continue to intertwine some threads appear to bind more tightly than others.

Our recent research into travel companies use of search engine pay-per-click advertising and search engine optimisation techniques clearly shows a polarisation in the market place between web-savvy travel operators, some with apparently few scruples, and those less familiar with the medium.

We found that 54% of our sample of 125 travel agents, tour operators and portals have their brand names used by others, including direct competitors.

Perhaps more surprising still is the number of companies or their agencies who are at it: 30 of the companies surveyed were bidding for other companies brand names.

Noel Josephides, managing director of Sunvil, was outraged when I informed him that four competitors were bidding for his brand name without his knowledge. He now knows who is bidding for his brand name, but do you know who’s bidding for yours?

There are wide-ranging questions raised by this research, but one of the most interesting is online intellectual property rights. If your brand is a registered trade mark, is brand name interception or metatag abuse an infringement your trade mark rights?

Well, the answer to this question isn’t straight-forward (what legal questions ever are?) as current UK trade mark rulings are peppered with technicalities that make interpretation difficult.

However, with brand name interception becoming recognised as a serious problem we expect the current rulings to be tested in the courts during the course of this year.

In the meantime, I’d strongly suggest you test your brand name in all the popular search engines to see who is paying to benefit from your brand’s goodwill and if you are not sufficiently familiar with the workings of the web, it’s definitely in your interest to start paying it more attention.

*The full report ‘The Great Online Holiday Hijack?’ is available from www.nucleus.co.uk for £199 + VAT

Ginny McGrath

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