Rich Internet Applications Deliver Fidelity at Your Fingers
The penetration of broadband has largely been attributed as the major driver of online travel growth (i.e., as consumers came online, they bought). However, as this demand and behavioral shift have occurred, consumers have fired up their lightning-fast connections only to be generally disappointed (ergo the general slowing of online travel growth). Lost somewhat in a sea of travel shopping experiences, haggard by the mind-numbing sameness of it all, consumers appear tired of shopping in travel "bazaars." Time-challenged, attention-starved and perhaps a little over-caffeinated, the online generation that was raised on video games and is enamored with YouTube needs sites that deliver experience fidelity to keep customers "there."
Like the express checkout line at a retail shop, first and second-generation online travel sites (including suppliers) were all about minimizing the number of clicks between "shop" and "buy." For example, through continuous innovation hotel sites migrated from 12 to nine to four clicks (if you got what you wanted on the first try), and like those big-city towns that offer both "country and western" radio stations, airline sites now support both search by price and by schedule.
Emerging from this malaise, a set of new technologies called rich Internet applications (RIAs) offer the promise of "why click through a set of screens at all?" to meet one's travel planning needs.
Certainly TravelClick (www.travelclick.net) deserves much kudos for being an early adopter in this space. Their iHotelier product allows independent hotels to compete with and sometimes exceed the deep pockets of major chains by delivering a "OneScreen" booking experience.
iHotelier is based upon Flash technology, as is the Epic Trip (www.epictrip.com) site. In early beta release, Epic Trip enables travelers to know what their destinations and their hotels are all about, by connecting them with videos, virtual tours, reviews and traveler experiences, in an interactive experience that goes way beyond that of most hotel Web sites. Clearly targeted at inspiring versus just selling travel, the site sparks people's desire to discover their own "epic trip." Other examples of Flash are AirTreks (www.airtreks.com), and LaQuinta (www.lq.com).
For non-technical folks, a good rule of thumb of whether an emerging technology is ready for prime time is when there is more than one competitor offering similar functionality or capabilities. In this case, the counterpart to Flash is Ajax. A great way to contrast these two technologies is to review the mapping features of the two largest search players (Google maps are driven by Ajax, while Yahoo! maps are Flash-based). An early travel site that took advantage of Ajax was Kayak. With their so-called 'sliders', consumers are able to filter search results (e.g., time of day, carrier) without requiring a page refresh back to the Web server. This technology is so ubiquitous with metasearch sites, that consumers probably perceive this as a key advantage.
A showcase for the power of Ajax to simplify travel planning is Paguna (www.paguna.com). Powered by the same team that built the mashable social travel site Plazes, Paguna fits the entire hotel booking process into a single page Ajax application. With the tagline of "simple booking," Paguna supports search, filtering, images and tabular property information pages, in a compelling online shopping experience.
Certainly, like the churlish husband who hates shopping and wants to get back to the game on TV, gratuitous use of RIA's could mean that consumers that "know what they want and just want to buy it" might be turned off. Similarly to the ATM, where motivational factors (i.e., show me the money) meant that we didn't have to read a manual to overcome technology barriers, many consumers are very comfortable with the existing state of travel shopping. Technologically, there are many implementation pitfalls that need to be considered as well*.
However, one of the primary characteristics of Travel 2.0 is the customer desire to take control of travel planning and purchasing online, and this desire is becoming an increasing reality every day. Sites leveraging RIA appropriately will enjoy competitive advantage, those that don't risk being left in the dust.
+1 860 350-4084
All rights reserved.
Bruce Rosard
860-350-4084 x 375
