I’m hoping that companies are going to have the foresight to also put in some planning to see how their London employees can work from home. This should minimise the strain that will be put on our public transport system and enable visitors to enjoy our city. We could also follow the example of our Olympic role model Victoria Pendleton and get on our bikes as urged by the Sunday Times[1]. According to a recent study The British Cycling Economy[2]  we did half a billion more miles than we did in 2007 on our bikes but fewer than we cycled in the 1940s with 1.3m new cyclists in the UK last year. A good way to keep us fit and I’ve found it one of the best ways to get around the capital. 

I’ve been playing host to some friends from Nepal over the last week and I have to say how proud I was to show them the sights of London as we walked along the river bank near Tower Bridge from The Tate.  

Sometimes as a Londoner I get a bit blasé and it takes the awe of my visitors to make me realise how lucky I am to live here. I took them along the river in one of the fast Thames Clippers and on the tube at lightening speed from the impressive cavernous Canary Wharf station back to Southwark.  Image: Cycling near Thames at Bermondsey
 

 I realised how fast the city has developed and how good its public transport can be. We enjoyed the fantastic outdoor photo exhibition “Rites of Life” from Anders Ryman and the free open air Scoop theatre near City Hall and then went on to enjoy an open air jazz concert at Canary Wharf, gazing up at the skyscrapers and the stars. 

Image: Scoop open air theatre K Bullock

 
Talking of stars I thought I’d share some thoughts about some rising stars in the travel industry which I noticed on browsing some recent IMRG Hitwise statistics on the top 100 UK retail websites. The figures show you the traffic in May 2011 versus May 2010 and the change in their ranking over this 12 month period. What struck me when I viewed the figures was how the industry has been hit overall as the majority of travel sites have seen a decline in their traffic.

 

The extraordinary number of disasters such as the ash cloud, Fukishima and the Arab spring all took their toll on the airline industry. Those sites catering to domestic travel have fared better. The companies that caught my attention were the nimble low key players which have not spent lots on advertising but have slowly and stealthily built up sizeable online businesses without any retail shops.

Despite the battering that Travel Republic suffered from the CAA court case it has still managed to see a good increase in traffic together with On the Beach. What was interesting when viewing their social presence was that both companies have a sizeable number of Facebook fans (both over 60,000) which may have helped with their increase in traffic as Hitwise was reporting as early as May 2010 that social traffic was exceeding Google search traffic. In analysing the Facebook stats for these top websites I was struck with how some players like Jet2, Monarch and BMI are starting out late on their learning journey into social and will have a lot of catching up to do with the likes of Virgin Atlantic who are considered by many to be one of the social pioneers. In addition the fan base for traditional operators such as Thomson, First Choice, Hoseasons, The Trainline and National Express shows that they have not yet fully understood the power of social media.

 

Interestingly Thomas Cook shows that it managed to maintain its position in the Hitwise top 100 sites. The figures demonstrate to me the importance of consolidation for tour operators in this tough market as consumers have changed behaviour and are doing their own packages. As the blog showed last week any recovery in travel patterns is still weak and the main increase in outbound has been with VFR (visiting friends and relatives) only. We are still not out of the woods.

Long haul travel has taken a hit with the double whammy of high air passenger departure taxes and the squeeze on our household incomes. All the conversations I had with the trade at the ITT show that operators are feeling the fragility of the market. With concerns over the collapse of the euro and the recent stock market dive some would argue that 2012 will be tougher still but as I’m the eternal optimist I see some glimmers of hope in the Hitwise stats.

 

The key is to stay close to your customers, focus on a niche and differentiate through service. An interesting fact that demonstrates the power of mobile was the staggering 216% year on year increase reported by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) on the use of mobile browsing in the UK.

This is testament to the importance of making sure customers can use your website on their smartphones. In addition the BRC stats show a promising 34% increase on the previous quarter on overseas visitors using UK retail websites.

 

If the London transport chaos resembles what we saw last weekend there will be plenty of Londoners looking to rent out their property and take an overseas break. Where are all the Olympic getaway operators?

 

Do share what you are doing to celebrate the Olympics. Are you one of the lucky ones who got Olympic tickets or have you already planned your escape? Do share your thoughts with us.

 

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It’s been a real rollercoaster of a week for the travel industry as we see pictures of disappointed children at the airport deprived of their holiday due to the collapse of Holidays4u. Travel Weekly claims that this has affected more than 60,000 holidaymakers.

 

 

To make matters worse shares in Thomas Cook dipped to an all time low of 59p from a high of £3.20 during the merger with Airtours, as one of the most famous brands in travel loses its CEO Manny Fontenla-Novoa as shareholder discontent increased this week.

 

So what can we learn from all this turmoil in the travel industry? As I read the verdict in Tnooz about Thomas Cook I remember back to my time at Thomas Cook and the hard job I faced in convincing my colleagues back in 1995 that the internet would change everything. So many were convinced that the retail shops would always be the mainstay of the company and would never be replaced, however times and consumer behaviour have changed. Whilst there are still those that are happy to walk into a high street travel agent, more of us are becoming travel planners as we trawl the internet for the best travel deal and experience and seek the advice of our friends and family.

 

Dynamic packaging has become the norm as we want the flexibility to leave and return when we want and the traditional two week summer break has become the exception rather than the norm. Those travelling abroad no longer want to pay the premium for Saturday departures so the trade has slowly woken up to the realisation that they have to change their business to be more flexible. This has been hardest for the goliaths in the industry although there is no doubt that TUI has fared better than Thomas Cook.

Key learnings
We have to look for the unmet needs in a market and strive to be one step ahead of the curve and listen hard to the early adopters in the market. These are for example the people who are the first to buy the smart phone, the first to discover new destinations and the first to try new things. Yes it means that we need to get closer to our customers, especially the younger generations X and Y which recent IBM research showed have different usage of social channels. One size fits all has not worked for quite a while and heavy discounting is a treacherous path as we have seen so many travel companies fail this year.

Social opportunities

As we launch our social media channels, we have an excellent opportunity to use these channels to get closer to understanding where people want to travel next, what they are looking for and how they use their new mobile devices.

 

We have an ideal platform to test new ideas, product concepts and yet I see little evidence of companies harnessing the creative talents of their fans and followers. I talked in a previous blog about “crowdsourcing” and companies using the creativity of their fans to design new products like Tshirts but I have yet to see any travel companies using these channels to design new holidays.

 

We need to be looking at the unserved segments of the market where there is little competition and getting closer to these customers can deliver big returns when the business is scaled up to meet the needs of these customers on a global scale. Hence the interesting acquisition reported in TTG on 27^th July 2011 of specialist niche players such as Holidaybreak by Cox and Kings for £312million which will expand these niche offerings into fast growing markets such as India.

 

If you look at the growth of volunteer tourism, gap year travel, solo traveller programmes, adventure and special interest tourism we see a raft of niche players who are not suffering the same fate as the providers of traditional package holidays struggling to differentiate themselves. Those players selling non differentiated holidays on price alone are competing fiercely with the bed banks to secure hotel bookings on price differences as slim as 50 pence per night.

 

Some Facebook users have discovered the new Facebook Marketplace application which enables you to feature your house or apartment to rent. A handy application if you want to see if your friends around the world have somewhere interesting to stay. I’ve just loaded my spare August week in my Italian villa and I’ll keep you posted if I get a customer. You can load anything from a car to a holiday for sale as you will see from the listing categories.

 

If the paint companies had not listened carefully to the small minority of customers who complained that they did not like the fact that paint dripped too much we would not have the raft of new non drip paint products that now make up so much of the paint market today. We have to listen to those consumers who now want a different type of holiday. My view is that we would not have seen the raft of new concierge type travel companies such as Mr and Mrs Smith and Quintessentially if the main travel players had been listening carefully. These new players are now providing very tailored travel services over the internet.  

 

I was responding today to a request for some advice on the Social Media Travel Group from a travel company in India and noted that they had implemented live chat on their site. As soon as I visited their website the screen gave me a friendly message asking if they could help with my booking. I had to congratulate the company on offering such help and yet as noted in a recent blog we see from the L2 think tank research that a mere 17% of top 100 travel companies are using this technology that has been on offer for several years, to get closer to their customers.

 

The classic lessons of segmentation and customising your products and services to meet the needs of your different customer types are essential to stay alive in travel. We have the intelligence on our fans and followers to build the different offerings to meet their needs. As we capture the social IDs and interests of our customers and build these insights into our customer database we have the opportunity to start to cater to their interests.

 

If we know they love, for example, rock music and cycling then we can be listing the rock concerts and cycling trips that may be of interest to them. As we constantly seek feedback on the options offered and hone the selection we are better able to grow the lifetime value of our customer relationships. If we witness the successful SAGA strategy it focused on growing a range of services in response to the needs of a specific aged 50+ customer profile. There’s no doubt that predicting where your customers want to go next is extremely tough but tailoring offerings to their interests is possible with the raft of new social CRM platforms now available. The key issue is still organising ourselves to collaborate with our customers and partners to create the right new products, something that large companies have always struggled with.

 

It seems that many companies choose instead to keep hammering out the same discount message on our social channels and fail to tailor any of their messaging to their fan profile. Facebook enables us to tailor messages by geography but how many companies are tailoring their messaging to ensure that the right gateways are featured in offers to their customer base? Anyone given it a try yet?

 

As promised the beach photo in last week’s blog was Playa Grande, near Puerto Columbia on the Caribbean coast of Venezuela. Happy holidays wherever you are!!

 

I look forward to hearing from you and please share your comments below or “tweet” this. I always enjoy reading your feedback.