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The Travel Marketing Digest
9th October 2012 - Volume 1, issue 6 |
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IN THIS ISSUE.....
Dear Industry Colleagues and Friends,
In this issue we have a short review of our launch event.
Without Frontiers - The Global Travel Marketing Forum received excellent feedback from all the participants. We had over 25 companies attend who between them held over 100 1-2-1 meetings. The conference content was excellent and in this issue we link to the recording of Google's Mohamad Mourad's presentation on the Power of Travel Search. We will feature other presentations in forthcoming issues of The Travel Marketing Digest.
Also in this issue we also cover five top travel marketing stories from the last two weeks:
- Qatar Airways joins the oneworld alliance
- Egencia's 2013 Corporate Travel Forecast for air fares and hotel rates
- eMarketer's digital advertising spend forecast for the US market
- Travelzoo selects Qubit to improve customer engagement
- eMarketer's report on eCommerce growth rates in developing markets
Best regards,
Duncan Alexander
Director
The Travel Marketing Store
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 Without Frontiers
The Global Travel Marketing Forum
The Review
We were delighted with the results of the conference. Over 25 companies attended and the rich content of the conference was well received. The Travel Marketing Market Place was equally praised with over 100 meetings taking place between buyers and sellers of travel maarketing services. Our aim is to build on this over the next few years with increased participation levels and an event that lasts over 2 days. If you are interested in speaking, sponsoring or attending the 2013 Forum then please express your interest via our web site. Will be issuing conference dates and sponsorship packs soon and look forward to welcoming this years participants back to the Forum and increasing the attendance across a variety of travel brands and marketing services suppliers.
 In this edition we are featuring the presentation given by Mohamad Mourad from Google. His subject was The Power of Travel Search. Mohamad provided interesting insights into Google and travel search patterns today. Please link to and enjoy his presentation which is provided in 3 parts.
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Google @ The Global Travel Marketing Forum 2012, Mohamad Mourad, Part 1 |
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Google @ The Global Travel Marketing Forum 2012, Mohamad Mourad, Google, Part 2 |
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Google @ The Global Travel Marketing Forum 2012, Mohamad Mourad, Part 3 |
To view our conference picture gallery on YouTube please activate this video:
 | | Without Frontiers The Global Travel Marketing Forum 2012 |
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Qatar Airways accept the invitation to join oneworld®  TTMS - oneworld press release
Qatar Airways and oneworld®, have now formally announced their new partnership. At a press conference in New York American Airlines' Chairman and Chief Executive Tom Horton, and Chief Executive of IAG, parent of British Airways and Iberia Willie Walsh welcomed Qatar Airways Chief Executive Officer Akbar Al Baker to their airline alliance.
Qatar will join a wide range of airlines who are already in the alliance including airberlin, American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific, Finnair, Iberia, Japan Airlines, LAN, Qantas, Royal Jordanian and S7 Airlines, and around 20 affiliates including Austria's NIKI, American Eagle, Dragonair, LAN Argentina, LAN Ecuador and LAN Peru. Malaysia Airlines is on track to join at around the turn of the year, with SriLankan to follow in 2013.
Bringing into the alliance one of the three major Gulf carries is a big win for oneworld. Travellers benefit from alliances through a co-ordinated approach to route network planning enabling better international connections, opportunities to earn and redeem frequent flyer miles and points across the combined oneworld network and access to more airport lounges. oneworld also offers more alliance fares than any of its competitors.
 Qatar Airways' network serves 120 destinations in 70 countries in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, North and South America, Asia and Australasia, including oneworld hubs Amman, Berlin Tegel, Buenos Aires Ezeiza, Hong Kong, London Heathrow, Madrid, Melbourne, Moscow Domodedovo, New York JFK, Osaka Kansai, Sydney, Tokyo Narita, and the Kuala Lumpur home of oneworld member elect Malaysia Airlines.
Fifteen of its destinations and three countries - Iran, Rwanda and the Seychelles - will be new to the oneworld map. More significantly, Qatar Airways will substantially strengthen oneworld's customer offering by providing superior routing alternatives across many hundreds of city pairs. For example, passengers flying between Asia and Southern Europe or between Asia and Africa will now have convenient one-stop connections not previously available within the oneworld network.
The development may also provide an attractive and competing offer on the "Kangaroo Route" along which Emirates and Qantas recently announced a ground breaking partnership.
The Doha-based airline's implementation into oneworld is expected to take between 12 and 18 months. The carrier is set to move into a brand new home in 2013 with the opening of the New Doha International Airport, designed to strengthen its position as a premium global hub with an eventual capacity for 50 million passengers a year. |
EGENCIA: 2013 Global Corporate Travel Forecast 
TTMS-Egencia press release
Egencia, an Expedia, Inc. company, unveiled its 2013 Global Corporate Travel Forecast for air fares and hotel rates. Egencia found, based on improving from 2012, albeit still sluggish market conditions going into 2013, Average Ticket Prices (ATPs) and hotel Average Daily Rates (ADRs) for top corporate travel destinations will be slightly up overall in Europe, North America, and Asia-Pacific.
Average Ticket Prices for airlines are expected to be slightly up (3%) in Europe, slightly up (5%) in North America, and slightly up (5%) in Asia-Pacific in 2013. Average Daily Rates for hotels are expected to be slightly up (2%) in Europe, slightly up (3%) in North America, and slightly up or flat (1%) in Asia-Pacific. "The global economy is volatile, and we've seen some deterioration in CEO sentiment in recent months. But suppliers have carefully managed capacity this year so we expect, even with moderating demand, some slight pricing increases in most regions," said Rob Greyber, President, Egencia." Even with the potential for higher costs, we believe there are a number of opportunities to save and we are working closely with clients to ensure they achieve their goals." Egencia is the fifth largest travel management company in the world. Egencia examined the supply environment at a market level for over 50 destinations in Europe, North America and Asia Pacific. Egencia used a variety of industry sources of data, statistical analysis of past and present industry trends, macroeconomic factors and market research into vendor's capacity forecasts for 2013. To review the report in more detail go to: |
Digital marketing spend in the US Travel sector set to double
TTMS - eMarketer
According to eMarketer's digital advertising spending forecast, which encompasses both online and mobile advertising, travel a dvertisers in the US market will dedicate $4.7 billion to digital in 2016, nearly double the $2.4 billion they spent in 2011. With continued recessionary pressure the battle for market share amongst airlines, hotels and resorts, car rental companies, cruise lines and all forms of travel agencies is even tougher.
Paid and organic search remains the key tactic and area of spend for many travel companies. Social media is now another fast rising area of investment. It is no surprise that the spend on digital advertising in this sector is forecast to outstrip others US industries.
During eMarketer's forecast period, travel will steadily gain market share, rising from 7% of all US digital advertising in 2010 to 8.5% by 2014, when it will level off as the market shows its first signs of maturity. Travel's 8.5% share puts it squarely in the middle of US digital ad spending by industry, but aside from media, whose share of all digital advertising will increase 1.9 percentage points during the forecast period, travel leads all other industries in market share growth.
Travel's 14.4% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) between 2010 and 2016 also reflects the industry's dedication to digital. According to eMarketer's estimates, travel will have the third-highest CAGR of all US industries during the forecast period. |
Travelzoo selects Qubit to improve customer engagement 
TTMS - Qubit press release
Travel deals publisher Travelzoo has appointed web analytics specialist QuBit to help it improve its customer engagement.
Described as "Big Data marketing", the tie-up will see Travelzoo deploy QuBit's tools to measure the effectiveness of its marketing campaigns while optimising the site for customers.
Richard Singer, managing director of Travelzoo Europe, said: "We are really excited to be working with QuBit to help us gain a deeper actionable insight into the behaviour of our audience of three million UK subscribers. We believe this will enable us to optimise both our marketing channels and web properties. Moving to a more personalised experience is what we believe our audience is looking for and it is of paramount importance to aid user experience and drive lifetime value."
Graham Cooke, QuBit chief executive added: "Travelzoo is one of the UK's leading travel sites and, like others in their sector, are facing a hugely competitive market. It's therefore vital that they and others in their space focus on maximising the ROI from their marketing and revenue potential from their site. Working with QuBit they will have access to a new level of customer data that will help them to optimise their spend and site in a new way."
Software developed by QuBit, which was founded by former Google executives, collects data for statistical insight into websites to help owners better personalise the experience.
Travelzoo will be implementing QuBit's OpenTag management software, behavioural attribution and customer analytics. |
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Brazil, Russia, India & China (BRIC countries) constitute 4 out of 5 fastest growing travel eCommerce markets
In another of their reports, "BRIC Travel Markets in Transition: Trends Influence Overall eCommerce," eMarketer highlights that the BRIC countries will have four of the five fastest-growing online travel sales markets during the 2011 to 2016 period. India's five-year compound annual growth rate of 30.6% puts it at the top of the group.
The report highlights some of the key different trends within these markets:
In Brazil, there is a narrow choice of travel products, which has limited consumers to primarily domestic travel.
Russia has by far the lowest online travel sales of the emerging countries, despite high GDP. Consumers there do extensive online market research prior to procurement.
In India, consumers have been slow to adopt eCommerce generally, but travel is the exception. Online travel purchasing makes up more than three-quarters of overall eCommerce sales in India.
The number of online travel bookers in China still pales in comparison to the number of overall eCommerce buyers. But at $48 billion, according to eMarketer estimates, consumers in China will spend more on online travel in 2016 than the rest of BRIC combined.
The report concludes that whilst it's clear that the BRIC countries share key characteristics as emerging markets, each has disparate digital and demographic trends affecting increases in online travel purchasing. Travel marketers expecting to capitalize on expanding sales volumes must therefore understand the specific nature and nuances of each targeted consumer set. |
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The Travel Marketing Store
Nicky Baxter
Editor
The Travel Marketing Digest |
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Images courtesy of Shutterstock
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