Four speakers that caught my attention at Travolution Summit
By Darren Cronian on Sunday, April 26th, 2009

Earlier this week I attended the Travolution Summit in London, a day full of talks about the future of travel. While all of the speakers had interesting things to say, they were four speakers that stood out to me as a travel consumer. Oh, and here are a few photos from the event that I uploaded.

Four speakers that caught my attention at Travolution Summit

Dennis Turner, HSBC

When I looked at the line-up of speakers, I thought an economist would surely depress us all, but it was the complete opposite. The talk was in your face, humorous, he was rather frank about the economy and how we got into the recession.

Marko Ahtisaari, Dopplr

I have often ranted that the travel industry has a tendency to over complicate, so when I heard Marko say keep innovation simple he instantly caught my attention. I often feel that I have to jump over hurdles, when all I want to do is find a flight or a hotel.

The Dopplr user survey highlighted that a fifth of travellers say recommendations from Twitter, Dopplr or Facebook influence their choice. I think this is further proof that companies need to start to get to grips, quickly and interact with consumers in these channels.

Brian Sharples, Home Away

Very interesting speech and the caution of using free rental sites, due to potential fraud, legal issues, caught my attention. Home Away turned over approximately $140m in 2008, so you can understand why they’re so many rental startups out there.

Joel Brandon-Bravo, Frommer’s

This presentation focused on the recent Frommer’s customer survey which highlighted worst user experiences; from sites that do not have up-to-date information to misleading descriptions, broken links, and no one to communicate with.

Research highlighted that consumers want destination maps, weather and destination information. Important content when booking is airport information, how to get from the airport to the destination. In my opinion a lot of websites lack this type of content.

Your thoughts

Please feel free to add your thoughts and opinions to any of the points raised.


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4 responses to “Four speakers that caught my attention at Travolution Summit”

Max Forlani | 26 April, 2009 at 9:00 am

While I do agree with the need for up-to-date information on a travel site, including destination maps and information, I think that having daily weather forecasts on your site is a bit overkill. On the other hand, a weather page explaining the average weather for a certain month can be helpful for preparing your trip and luggage. All in all, I think it’s better to focus on your core activity: travel sites focus on travel info, weather site (such as weather.com) focus on the weather.

I used to have a small weather.com widget on my site, but since it often didn’t work, I decided to remove it.

Cheers,
Max

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Pete Meyers | 27 April, 2009 at 2:57 pm

I’ve noticed a lot of buzz regarding the Frommers presentation and their survey feedback sounds spot on. They’ve made huge leaps forward in their site functionality over the past year, particularly with their Pluck-powered community launch.

But I sure wish they’d redesign their site. They have such a wealth of information and established brand equity, but their UI is running the risk of overwhelming site visitors.

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Arnaud Bertrand | 30 April, 2009 at 5:20 pm

Concerning what you write about Brian Schaples, I wasn’t at the presentation but I guess it depends what he means by “free rental site”. If he means something like Craigslist: fully agree. If he means sites with a commission model: fully disagree. I would even argue that HomeAway has a potential for more frauds than sites with a commission model since the payment is handled most often between individuals (not through HomeAway) BEFORE the rental happens (meaning property owners receive money before the guest has received a service or at least been able to confirm that the property he booked even exists). Most often, commission websites handle payments and hosts do only get paid once the guest has seen the property and tacitly confirmed that it wasn’t deceiving to him.

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Clive | 8 May, 2009 at 1:20 pm

Iteresting point about social media affecting choice. I would like to delve deeper. I wonder if most people usie it as an openener into their decision making, or if they use it merely to confirm their opinions. I suspect more of the latter.

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