Chaired the Online Marketing Track at the Travel Distribution Summit that took place in London 23-24 May 2007

I was delighted to work again with Gina, Simon Carkeek and Tim Gunstone for their Travel Distribution Summit that took place in London 23-24 May 2007. I was honoured to chair the Online Marketing Track and was very impressed with the vastness of the event and the quality of the debate. It has now become the top place to meet industry people that work on eCommerce and Tourism. It was also a great pleasure to meet many old friends and make some new ones too.

Some of the key things I learned from the event:

• 83% of all searches in Europe are in Google


• Rod Cuthbert of Viator.com said that products and experience with high customer recommendation achieve 60% more conversion rates


• He also said that customer reviews is the cheapest way to do marketing research and select who to work with and who not.


• Glocalisation and translation of web sites is one of the most challenging aspects for the future as it determines the image and brand of a company and also the cost aspects. That was was emphasised by Dan O'Sullivan of Translations.com and Max Yousaf of OctopusTravel.com


• Alun Williams the eCommerce manager of First Choice (and one of my first students!) told me that they are selling 35% of their packages online to consumers - trully B2C. They also sell 50% of their flight only product B2C.


• Ties Rheinsberg of TUI (pictured) said that last year it was a "tsunami" as far as online bookings in the UK are concerned. Most tour operators were unprepared for that but they enjoyed the growth. Germany is still behind but it will catch up in the near future. Interestingly Scandinavian customers who are much more advanced experienced customers going away from tour operators to dynamic packaging. Then tour operators reacted with much more dynamic offerings and they managed to get customers back to benefit from the familiar brands and security but also from the new products and online functionality.


• Antonio Batanero of Sol Melia said that 30% of the online bookings and about 5% of total bookings are direct B2C bookinges.


• Chris Loughlin from travelzoo said that brand building should not be an expensive process but should be based on product attributes and superiority of offering


• Jonty Kelt of DoubleClick said that 75% of the clicks are generated from Organic results in search engines whilst only 25% from the paid for clicks. Yet 89% of search budget is spent on the paid side of search engines.


• www.archive.org has saved all versions of web sites from the 1990s up to date and it is a great source of information to see how the Internet has progressed in the last 10 years

All in all this was a great conference, enjoyable, friendly with plenty of content and networking. Slides will be available on www.eyefortravel.com Thorougly enjoyed. Thanks guys.