Voyage.tv, Mark Travel Go After the High-Hanging Fruit

Voyage.tv, in collaboration with wholesaler Mark Travel, is leveraging video on demand, dedicated cable channels and its website to target the luxury travel market.

I interviewed some of the executives and wrote about their media/transaction model in Travel Weekly.

There was an extensive industry-wide discussion in this blog several months ago about the inspiration phase of travel planning, and how the online travel agencies largely target consumers ready to book -- the low-hanging fruit.

Voyage.tv, in contrast, is taking a page from the likes of TravelMuse, UpTake and NileGuide, among others, and is focusing on the inspiration phase of the travel-planning process. Through its videos, Voyage.tv is targeting urban dwellers with visions of grand vacations and a cushy lifestyle experience at Caribbean resorts and other destinations.

This is believed to be one of the first attempts in travel to blend video on demand with website bookings, in this case facilitated by Mark Travel sister company Trisept Solutions.

For now, the videos prompt viewers to book the featured vacations online or to phone a call center to complete their transactions.

But, Trisept Solutions also is working on functionality that would enable consumers to book travel through their cable set-top boxes.

Will consumers want to book vacation packages -- a relatively complex product compared with ordering a movie or buying a book -- through their cable remotes?

It's an interesting experiment and maybe the moment indeed is approaching when video on demand makes its Mark (Travel) in travel. Mobile is said to be getting there, so why not video on demand, too.

In 2002, Worldspan stormed similar barricades when it launched the first interactive TV travel application with a U.S. cable company.

But, nothing much ever came of Worldspan's pioneering.

Well, like Worldspan and Star Trek, Voyage.tv is attempting to navigate, "Where no man has gone before."

Beam us up, Voyage.tv. Let's hope your chances are more than remote.

Legacy Carrier American Airlines Gets Downright Inspirational -- Who Knew?

In recent weeks, this blog has fielded some pretty great discussions on innovation -- or lack thereof -- in the planning, or the inspirational phase, of the travel-booking continuum.

In a recent post , "Travel's Best and Brightest on 'Legacy OTAs' and State of Online Travel 2009," and several related posts, the following execs and analysts, among others, commented on inspiration and other issues in the travel-planning lifecycle: Kevin Fliess, Henry Harteveldt, Gregg Brockway, Joe Buhler, Lorraine Sileo, Valyn Perini, Elliott Ng, Robert K. Cole, Rick Seaney, Tom Lewis Katie Deines, Douglas Quinby, Jeff DeKorte, Josh Steinitz ,and Sarah Kennedy.

So, it took me by surprise when an American Airlines AAdvantage Program e-mail, with this video link, featuring travel to Madrid, popped into my in-box.

An image of Madrid, with the video link embedded, was prominently displayed on the top of the e-mail, running across its entire width. The image highlighted "New DFW to Madrid" service, and "Destination Madrid. Tapas, Flamenco, The Prado -- come see what makes Spain's capital city such an intriguing destination."

I have received plenty of AAdvantage promotional e-mails before and many of them have touted various destinations, but I don't recall such effective use of video in them.

When you follow the link to the American Airlines AAdvantage Milestones page, you can access additional Madrid videos on nightlife and off-the-beaten path locales, as well as videos about American Airlines' new One-Way Flex Awards in English and Spanish.

The Milestones page has social-media features, too, including a link to view and share your photos, and some forums, which look a little old-school for my tastes.

I am not a great fan of American Airlines' service and would much rather fly Continental or JetBlue out of my home airport, Newark.

But, I have to give American Airlines credit for going beyond an all-consuming transaction focus, and getting out there and trying to inspire some travel for AAdvantage members, who may have some miles to burn, but may not know up-front what destination they'd like to visit.

Speaking of 'Legacy OTAs,' it's a great sign for the travel industry that a legacy airline puts some energy into the inspiration phase of travel planning.

You can even say it is stimulating.

Google, Amex, UpTake Point To An Opportunity for Travel Agents

Research from Google, Uptake.com and TIA/American Express makes me feel that traditional travel agencies, namely those we sometimes refer to as off-line agencies, can seize an opportunity in all of the complexity in online trip-planning.

Sure, airline commissions are gone, the Web and the marketing clout of online travel agencies have helped put traditional agencies under tremendous pressure, but there are business opportunities for agencies that engage consumers in new ways and take advantage of the pain-in-the butt that online-travel planning has become.

Consider this:

In a presentation at the recent TravelCom conference in Atlanta, Rob Torres, Google's managing director for travel, said Google research found that travelers spend 6.7 weeks searching for trips and they visit 8.1 websites on average before booking.

And trip-planning site TravelMuse recently cited statistics from UpTake.com that consumers visit 25 websites on average "when planning a single vacation."

TravelMuse also cited an August 2008 study by TIA and American Express which found that 20 percent of travelers put in more than 10 hours of online-travel planning in researching their trips.

Who has that kind of time?

It's a jungle out there, whether it is researching a safari vacation or any other kind of getaway.

When researching a trip, consumers looking for deals have to wade through search engines, metasearch sites, supplier-direct websites, consolidators' offerings, opaque auction sites, online travel agency sites, trip-planning sites and hotel-review sites in a prolonged and confusing trip-research process.

It all reminds me of Priceline CEO Jeffery Boyd's appearance at a PhoCusWright conference in
2004 when he facetiously called for the formation of a new website, which he dubbed FarePile.com, to aggregate the offerings of metasearch aggregators like Kayak, SideStep, FareChase and Mobissimo.

And, the complexity of the trip-planning process isn't getting any easier with the advent of ancillary services and sometimes-hidden fees for checked bags, premium seats and lounge access.

In contrast, I emailed a traditional travel agency the other day about a trip to Israel, and the agency emailed me back letting me know that I could fly out of Newark and return to JFK for $897 on El Al, or I could take Austrian Airlines out of JFK with a stop in Vienna for around $777.

Simple as that. It probably would have taken me hours of frustrating searches and price comparisons to find these fares on my own. And, that's even before considering lodging choices and a car rental.

So travel agents have an opportunity if they can better market themselves as experts, traveler advocates and simplifiers of the trip-planning process.

Will they do it in new and creative ways?

Most probably won't, but the smart ones will. I see plenty of travel agencies promoting themselves and getting involved with consumers on Twitter and Facebook.

For example, here's an unofficial list, managed by Matt Parsons in London, of "the travel industry on Twitter."

I wrote about one way that travel companies might get involved in social media through A Twitter Summer Travel Stimulus Package.

That's the key. If travel agents want to tap into new audiences, then they have to frequent social media sites where the online bookers are.

Otherwise, with the trip-planning process getting more complex by the minute, we'll have to renew Boyd's call for the ultimate aggregation site, FarePile.com.