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The Travel Marketing Digest
6th June 2013 - Volume II, issue 9
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IN THIS ISSUE.....
Dear Industry Colleagues and Friends,
In this edition of the Travel Marketing Digest we cover:
Best regards,
Duncan Alexander
Director
The Travel Marketing Store
NEW! 
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PATA & The Travel Marketing Store, working together to create a Chapter for the United Arab Emirates and Western Asia
by Duncan Alexander
PATA will be launching a new Chapter to cover the UAE and wider Western Asia in Dubai on 25th September at The Global Travel Marketing Forum.
PATA was established in 1951 to promote travel and tourism, to, from and within Pacific Asia: read more
 At the PATA Annual Summit the concept of "The Complete Visitor Economy" was endorsed by speakers from the private and public sectors including the Secretary General of the UNWTO.
Building on the concept of "The Visitor Economy" we want to develop the value proposition for PATA in the UAE and Western Asia around four themes that support this call to action:
- Advocacy: creating a unified voice around issues such as VISA processing, airport departure taxes and air traffic control efficiency.
- Alliances: facilitating the formation of relationships such as Public Private Partnerships, country to country collaboration and business to business collaboration.
- Analytics: providing data and insights for our sector. PATA have an effective business intelligence tool but there are lots of gaps, particularly from the 17 countries that form Western Asia. Following the UN definition this includes key markets such as Jordan, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the UAE. Over 300 million people live in this region with a GDP over $2.7 trillion. Data is needed for planning and decision making in our highly capital intensive sector.
- Advancement: driving the development of human capital in the travel and tourism sector and with it economies. The travel and tourism sector is now 9% of the world GDP and its share is growing. The "Visitor Economy" is an interdependent network of players that, if well planned and coordinated, can bring substantial benefits. With that growth comes the opportunity for human capital development and in some countries the alleviation of poverty.
The Travel Marketing Store is a Dubai based Management Consulting and Events business. We have been retained by PATA to assist with the early stage formation and growth of the association in the UAE and Western Asia.
Read more about PATA and the creation of a PATA UAE/Western Asia Chapter
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REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN
Without Frontiers 
The Global Travel Marketing Forum
Dubai Madinat Jumeirah
25th September 2013
"the marketplace for travel marketing services"
REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN: get an early booking discount before August 25th
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Upcoming Events
The Global Travel Marketing Summit 2013
Wednesday September 25th, 2013 from 8:00 AM to 7:00 PM GST
"the marketplace for travel marketing services". The Global Travel Marketing Forum is an annual conference and exhibition based in Dubai that brings together Travel Marketing thought leaders. The forum provides a platform for travel marketing suppliers to promote themselves through sponsorships, presentations and dedicated meetings with buyers.
Madinat Jumeirah Conference Centre, Mina A' Salam, Dubai.
The Digital & Social Marketing Summit
Wednesday March 19th, 2014 from 8:00 AM to 5:30 PM GST
The Digital & Social Marketing Summit 2014 is an event aimed at bringing together practitioners and suppliers of digital marketing and social marketing. Our Dubai location is ideal as it is the cross roads of cultures and easily accessible. The event is "both a conference and an education".
The Jumeirah Creekside Hotel - Dubai - UAE
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IATA AGM, some good progress, some not so good
IATA has completed its Annual General Meeting in Cape Town. During his address Tony Tyler, IATA's Director General and CEO gave an update on a number of IATA's initiatives. Included in these is their attempt to create a new airline industry intelligence tool based on airline revenue accounting data. This service is called the Direct Data Service (DDS).
This is a community business intelligence product. Tyler reported that "All legal issues over IATA's rights to use our BSP data have now been closed. And we have data in DDS covering 87% of global agency sales. Additionally and uniquely, DDS also includes a growing amount of direct sales data."
47 airlines have already committed to provide their data. This will create a competitive product to GDS provided sales data.
It would appear that this initiative is gaining momentum unlike the IATA e-freight initiative. Tyler reported "We launched e-freight nine years ago. But, to be frank, progress is way short of what we had hoped". This is largely due to the fact that it requires organisations outside of airlines such as customs and government to align. Airlines are therefore missing out on significant savings and efficiencies.
Again it would appear to be a matter of short sightedness similar to archaic visa processing requirements still in place in some markets. Creating electronic standards facilitates the passage of goods in a more secure way and the same applies to passengers. Sadly the industry cannot act alone like it did with e-tickets for passengers, the benefits of which have been huge, but it once again has to rely on poor government processes that hinder the industry.
At least with DDS they are now able to get control of their booking data and create competitive and much needed business intelligence and decision support tools for airline marketing and commercial staff.
The other significant area covered at the AGM which impacts airline marketing in the New Distribution Capability (NDC). This is setting out to create a industry standard around online shopping for airline products including ancillary services. There seems to have been a great deal of confusion on the subject and Tyler went on record as follows to clarify:
"Frankly, some of our opponents are not telling the truth. Let me clear the air with some facts. NDC will not contravene privacy laws. Nothing in the NDC standard requires passengers to supply personal information to receive an offer. But it does provide the opportunity for customers to identify themselves-if they so choose-to have their loyalty recognized by the airlines.
NDC will not bypass travel agents. It will enable them to sell all of what airlines have on offer.
And, NDC will not eliminate comparison shopping. It will give customers better information on which to make decisions.
NDC will support photographic product descriptions so that people can see what they are buying. And it will enable passengers to compare the base fare as well as the cost of all the options that are available."
Creating a one size fits all approach to online shopping for airline product is an ambitious task. Standards are a good thing but we do believe it will create a two tier grouping; those airlines with the ability to take advantage of the standards and those who do not.
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Social Media & Internet statistics galore!
We came across an excellent presentation on social media put together by Nicole Elmore. This pulls together a wide range of sources to present a collage of social media statistics. These can be viewed on our web site.
We also found on Slideshare a 117 slide compendium of internet facts and stats which are useful for all those involved in travel marketing. This also can be found on our web site.
Emerging shifts and impacts on hospitality
We also feature a hospitality presentation forwarded to us by Ali Draycott, of The Foundation. Ali presented at The Global Travel marketing Forum in 2012 and this presentation by Tim Jones builds on many of the themes that she covered.
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Travel dominates in social Media Rankings
 Etid American Airlines, Lufthansa, Thomson and Thomas Cook are ranked in the top five of the Social Brands 100 benchmark. Compiled by social brand agency Headstream, the rankings identify 'industry leaders' and provide a snapshot of 'social media's evolution' each year. More than 700 brands were included in this year's research and performance was measured on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube over a six-week period in spring 2013. Top of the table was video game Battlefield, followed by American Airlines, Lufthansa, Thomson and Thomas Cook. Other travel brands in the top 50 include WestJet (18); easyJet (29); First Choice Holidays (30); Virgin Trains (39) and Princess Cruises (50). TUI Travel PLC, Owner of Thomson and First Choice, said: 'These exceptional results prove that TUI Travel's digital strategy of Anytime, Anywhere, Anyway is both right for our customers and our business.' Jeremy Ellis, Marketing Director for Thomson and First Choice, said: "I want to congratulate all the work our social media teams have been doing around the clock. This result really speaks volumes in terms of our commitment to our customers and it's great to get recognition for our brands too. When people engage with us across multiple platforms, we are ready to respond to their needs and wants. We put the customer at the heart of our business and by engaging them in conversations we hope to build on our relationships with them." To see the full rankings, click here. |
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MasterCard reveal visitor arrival City rankings
Dubai continues to climb the ranks as an international travel destination, according to MasterCard's third annual Global Destination Cities Index. The UAE's travel hub has consistently advanced its position since the inception of the Index in 2011, ranking ninth in its launch year, eighth in 2012 and seventh in the 2013 edition.
Dubai is set to be the seventh most popular city globally in terms of inbound international visitors in 2013, outranking cities such as Hong Kong, Barcelona, Milan and Rome. At 10.9 per cent, Dubai (along with Bangkok) shows the strongest growth in arrival numbers among the top ten global markets, with 9.89 million overnight visitors expected this year.
Bangkok has now topped the rankings for the first time. This year is the first that an Asian city has made it to the number one position with Bangkok seeing visitor number growth rates of more than 18 per cent in 2011 and 2012, and 9.8 per cent this year, the report added.
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Google pull back from Airline Reservations
Skift
Skift.com was the first place that we saw the news that Google had decided to pull back from developing an airline reservation system. They pointed to a posting on the ITA Web Site:
"We're discontinuing the Passenger Services System (PSS) for airlines. We're doing this to enable our team to focus on other travel solutions for users and partners such as Google Flight Search and Hotel Finder, and ITA's QPX software suite.
"Cape Air is live on this system and we'll continue to work with them under our agreement. We won't be launching PSS with other clients. Going forward, we're excited to keep developing new, innovative travel solutions for our users."
This announcement comes eight years after signing a deal to power Air Canada's reservations system and two years after Google acquired ITA Software, the company is withdrawing from the airline reservations business. According to Google this does not impact its on-going commitment to Google Flight Search, Google Hotel Finder, and QPX (the system that handles airfare shopping on many airline and travel agency websites).
The airline reservations systems market still remains on the whole with five players, Amadeus, Sabre, Hewlett Packard, SITA and Navitaire. HP's solution is largely US centric. Navitaire has created a very strong reputation in the low/cost/low fare point to point market with a few small niche players filling out "the long tail" of smaller airlines.
This sadly means a scenario where there is little choice and with it competition in the market but it does demonstrate that such systems are not easy to build and operate.
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Expedia launch new "Travel Yourself Interesting" campaign in the UK
Ogilvy & Mather has unveiled a major integrated campaign for leading online travel agent, Expedia. The brand will launch a significant new push with the invitation to 'Travel Yourself Interesting.'
The multi million pound campaign, which plays off the insight that travel enriches life, is running across TV, press, online and social, throughout June and July.
The two TV commercials, one set in an office and one in a yacht club, each feature underdog characters who have suddenly and unexpectedly found themselves to be the centre of attention because they recently 'travelled themselves interesting'. As they share their amazing and funny travel stories, the tables are swiftly turned on their social rivals, who suddenly find they have been replaced by these newcomers.
Gerry Human, Chief Creative Officer for Ogilvy & Mather London said: "I think it's brave and smart of Expedia to avoid clichéd travel advertising in favour of a campaign that's more about what you get out of travel than where you go. Not only that, the world might even be a better place if everyone was a bit more interesting!"
Andrew Warner, Senior Marketing Director EMEA at Expedia said: "Who hasn't come back from a trip having learned something new - either about a place or just about themselves? When we return from our travels, we have gained knowledge and experience which shapes our lives and gives us something new to share with our friends and family.We see travel as an investment, rather than a luxury. Just as with any investment, the value rests on making the right choice and this is where Expedia helps."
Travel Yourself Interesting aims to highlight this reality through a fully integrated campaign. In line with Expedia's People Shaped Travel philosophy, Expedia will be putting people at the heart of their campaign and aiming to show how to 'Travel Yourself Interesting' in a variety of novel and unusual ways, including some exciting social experiments with real people - and of course, travel itself. We wait to see what comes next?
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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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