TravelMole eWire Comment

It’s all very well holding hands with your travel partners whilst extolling the virtues of everyone selling everyone else’s product online but what happens when one party runs off with the PNR?

This was the question being hotly debated at an Eye for Travel summit this month in London. Amidst much debate about whether Ryanair’s 100% direct distribution model was the way forward or whether adopting the multi-channel approach was the future of selling, the keynote seemed to be that it was crucial to own your customer’s shopping journey.

Technology supplier Datalex’s CEO Cormac Whelan insisted companies should “control the PNR whilst leveraging the third party’s infrastructure”.

He added that it was crucial to maintain control over distribution, content and price while simultaneously selling through not one but all the GDSs as well as online travel agents (“The age,” he said, “of the single GDS is dead”).

A tough call but one that companies need to think hard about because these days, despite what Micheal O’Leary’s lot would have you believe, it’s all about selling your product through as many different channels as possible. And that means, of course, you selling other company’s products too.

There have been rumblings for years now about the advent of the supplier as agent, delivering a more complete travel offering, and that time does seem to be approaching.

Taking a leaf out of the low-cost carrier model which makes a tidy sum from selling car hire and accommodation, Travelodge has this month announced its “one-stop shop” approach on its relaunched website (see eWire news). It will now sell tickets to the theatre alongside its £19 rooms (and even show you exactly how to get from the lobby to your seat via Google maps).

Eurostar and VisitBritain also used the one-stop shop phrase this month (see eWire news again), describing their join venture that will see eurostar.com visitors able to plan their trip online right down to buying an Oyster card and booking a table at The Ivy.

The industry might be savvy when it comes to old issues like distribution methods but newer marketing and selling opportunities are still proving a challenge to sum. I hate to bang the social networking drum too often but it’s hard not be impressed with the figures being bandied about by the likes of Facebook, which has now been voted the fifth “most-loved” brand in the UK by Marketing Week magazine.

The site has 10.5million UK users now (and these are defined by people who visit at least twice a mont) and 52% of all 25-34-year-olds (you know – that demographic with all the disposable income) in this country use it.

But despite this a report by search conversion agency Tamar recently concluded that travel brands are not capitalising on the social networking phenomenon, failing to have an official brand presence even where their product is being discussed online. Talk about looking a marketing gift horse in the mouth.

The report goes on to say that the travel industry should look at what the retail sector has been up to – applications on Facebook, Bebo and the like show that industry is listening and engaging with consumers – getting the sort of priceless feedback that would cost millions using a market research company.

As a visiting American I met recently remarked at an online travel convention, “Social networking IS the web. It’s not going away, it is becoming intrinsic to how we use the internet.”

by Dinah Hatch