Travolution Blog

Mashing up hotels with DIY

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:08:00 +0000

This is a nice little idea - and a bit of a travel first as far as we can tell.

When the idea of clever mash-ups first starting appearing on the web a few years back, many people were wowed at the technical prowess (which was actually rather simple once APIs came into vogue) and cooed over the often utterly random things many sites were creating.

In other words: some were often rather pointless once you got over the 'Oh, that's interesting' nature of it.

Crime rates from a local police department on a Google Map? Okay, thanks. Fly-drive routes on Google Earth? Interesting for a little while longer.

So imagine you're a online hotel brand which has the design of its establishments as its raison d'être - providing hotels where Metropolitan arty types like to say they stayed and then fawn about the decor to their Metropolitan arty type friends.

It would then make perfect sense to try and capture some of that groovy enthusiasm, right?

Step forward high-end European boutique brand Design Hotels, which has teamed up with MyDeco - lastminute.com founder Brent Hoberman's latest wheeze - for a neat little tool to tap into this post-trip desire to remember the asthetics of the establishment.

[MyDeco is a community site for budding - leaning towards luxury, to be fair - DIYers]

Paricpating hotel pages on the Design Hotels website - Hotel Sezz in Paris, for example - now carry a button "Buy The Look at MyDeco.com".

Users are then directed to a landing page on the MyDeco site which displays various items of furniture from the hotel which are commercially available - with links out to the re-seller.

Okay, so this is probably not a partnership that is going to blow the socks off the likes of Mashable et al, but it's a clever and no doubt far more valuable collaboration between two parties almost destined to share their USP.

Viral is the latest marketing buzzword

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:20:50 +0000

PING! Email arrives this morning from Thomas Cook brand Direct Holidays to support the launch of its "first viral marketing campaign".

Now is it me or can a campaign only be deemed viral based on its success of word-of-mouth media channels - i.e. long after its launch?

Or maybe not...

Anyway, clip one of three videos was launched this morning on YouTube.

And, is it me or is it not exactly side-splittingly funny. (If that was the intention)

Quote of the Week

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:20:17 +0000

From - you guessed it - Ryanair.

Responding to news that British Airways has created a web calculator for users to compare fares against low cost carriers, Ryanair's Stephen McNamara said:

"It wouldn't matter if BA put pictures of naked women on their website, passengers will always go to ryanair.com to book the lowest fares. That is why Ryanair will carry over 67 million passengers this year - more than double BA's declining figure of less than 30 million".

Lessons and some murkiness from the DialAFlight saga

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:35:52 +0000

Most people first learned that DialAFlight was up to something when the high profile Travel Rants blog suddenly issued an unreserved apology to the online travel firm two weeks ago.

The legalese literally pouring from the post indicated that popular editor Darren Cronian was, as one person put it to us, "up to his neck in it".

A similar retraction has been posted by review forum Grumbletext.

The apology, retraction and removal of the comment appear to - fortunately for Cronian - have kept the libel courts away from his door.

The threat of £50,000 damages is a sum that would cause most mainstream publishers to shift nervously in their leather executive chairs, let alone a part-time yet talented travel blogger from Yorkshire.

But this is not a question of the mighty Goliath winning unfairly against a lowly David.

The identical comments which appeared on seven sites (three of which were removed immediately, four were not - triggering the subsequent legal moves) and which we have since seen as part of the legal writ, ticked almost every box in the libel area.

[Below is a grab from the comment on Ciao.co.uk. We have shaded the potentially libellous areas, some of which would be considered defamatory in the context of the whole post.]

Cronian, in his apology, admitted to not making the necessary checks and has since semi-retired from blogging (though one suspects not for long). We hope he returns...

With laws varying from country to country, DialAFlights litigation flurry highlights the sticky issue of review sites and blogs responsibility not only for their own writings, but also for readers' comments.

In the UK, a BBC libel and defamation guide states: "Almost uniquely in English law, in libel cases the burden of proof lies with the author/publisher and not the complainant and publishers have to be careful about comments others post on your site."

In the US, the Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that blog publishers are not considered liable for statements made by guest bloggers or comment-writers, although several lawsuits have been filed.

Meanwhile, DialAFlight, which said review sites and blogs perform a useful function, hasn't been shy about taking legal action before.

In September last year, we cited a DialAFlight statement that the company had initiated legal proceedings against Flight Centre UK for infringement of its DialAFlight trademark on Google.

Anyway, the main point here is that a travel company has taken the most extreme measure it can in order to remove unsavoury comments on blogs and forums, regardless of the profile of the 'publisher'.

Those that thought bloggers were 'protected' from the legal might of corporations must take note - you are not free of legal responsibility for what is published on your website.

Unfortunately, on countless occasions over the past few years the conversation at events (including, ironically, one memorable exchange at Cronian's TravelBlogCamp last November) has often turned to how bloggers are immune because of their size or lack of overall influence.

Some might argue DialAFlight's recent actions are aggressive - that the comments were buried in ageing posts, where they are unlikely to be found again.

Excellent SEOed sites, which the four in question undoubtedly are, do not have that luxury.

Nevertheless, DialAFlight parent company, Lotus Group, has defended its recent actions.

In comments not used on our original story, but certainly worth publishing here, MD Peter Stephens told Travolution:

"In our business there will always be grumbles and every travel company will get a few brickbats as well as a few bouquets.

"However we draw the line at allowing a competitor to paste highly defamatory material about us on the internet."

"In this case we tried very hard over a period of time to get the issue sorted out including posting an invitation on each of the sites for the poster to contact us if it was a genuine complaint so that we could investigate.

"It then became pretty clear that this was not the action of a disgruntled holidaymaker at all. But simply a disingenuous attempt to smear a competitor.

"We would prefer not to have taken this action but the websites involved, as they have admitted, did not respond to our polite requests for the issue to be sorted out."

Fair enough. Lessons learned all-round. Story complete.

But is that end of the tale?

In the midst of researching the story this week we came across some other interesting information.

It turns out that in the past, DialAFlight has been involved with a service in the US known as PayPerPost.

PayPerPost, according to its website, allows bloggers to do the following: "Get paid for blogging. Write about web sites, products, services, and companies and earn cash for providing your opinion and valuable feedback to advertisers. Disclosure required".

DialAFlight has admitted to Travolution to using the service for a short while. It no longer does so.

[Some examples - and even a comment on Travel Rants!]

Stephens again: "A couple of years ago companies were getting bloggers to write articles about them to help with search engine positioning which is really just another form of PR . We tried it briefly but it never worked particularly well for us."

Someone this week suggested to us that this was, in the light of recent legal moves by DialAFlight, tantamount to a word beginning with 'H' and having nine letters.

And this is where it gets murky for some people.

In general terms, when a company pays bloggers to write positive posts about them, does it have the right to kick up a fuss when negative comments appear elsewhere?

We'll leave that question to be answered by you lot...

[Comments will, of course, be moderated ;-) ]

[Additional material from Dennis Schaal]

Changes to Travolution on Twitter

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:49:11 +0000

Observing how the likes of Techcrunch et al are using Twitter, we have made some changes this week.

The existing @travolution profile will now carry our regular news and blog feeds and other Travolution brand announcements.

Staffers will Tweet from their own personal accounts:

Editor Kevin May can now be found at @kevinlukemay. [Early morning Blips included!]

Lead reporter Linda Fox - @foxychops

Chief writer Martin Cowen - @beachboyintown

Sales and sponsorship manager Charlotte Davies - @lottemus

Cheers!

Lastminute.com does a Reef Island

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 08:05:39 +0000

It was obvious that the PR-busting success of the Reef Island campaign earlier this year would spawn a round of similar efforts within a relatively short space of time.

Perhaps the first one out of the blocks is this wheeze from lastminute.com, which today launched a campaign to offer a "the ultimate career break".

The new employee will become LM's new 'official reviewer' of the best holidays and experiences on sale via the site.

The press release says over the course of the next three months, once a panel of industry experts have selected a candidate, the lucky winner will:

* Travel over 32,000 miles
* Spend over 60 nights away
* Visit eight cities across three continents - in three months - which could include Dubai, New York, Egypt, Paris, Barcelona, and Las Vegas.
* Experience a 5* lifestyle - equivalent to £20,000.

Etc, etc.

Nevertheless, PR is clearly at the centre of all this.

Lastminute.com has not only tried to tap into the psyche of credit crunched members of the public by espousing how the job is the "ultimate 'silver lining' to unemployed Brits", but a spokesperson admitted that the campaign was "a mixture" of a serious job and PR, Reef Island-style.

When questioned about the overall credibility of the position, given that lastminute.com clearly has more than 60 hotels on its books, we were told:

"We understand one person's reviews over a three month period may not be enough on their own to justify the role. We see our reviewer acting as a catalyst and start a social networking community on the blog around the destinations that he visits thus reaching out to 1,000s of 'reviewers'. We will be starting a dialogue on the blog where others can feed in and we will be using the 'chosen one' outside the summer period."

So lastminute.com will not only have TripAdvisor reviews on its site, but posts from its official reviewer, plus a blog, plus its Twitter feed.

Too much or too little of the social networking Good Stuff (the name of LM's recent ad campaign)?

UPDATE:

The judges will be:

Dan Bladon - Philias Blog
Chris Moss, Travel Editor - Time Out
Patrick Hoffstetter, New UK B2C MD
Mark Bower, Lifestyle Sales Director
Andy Washington, Travel Sales Director
Mark Fells, Marketing Director
Nichola Sharpe, Head of PR

Room for more reviews?

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 11:41:36 +0000

Today sees the launch of Simonseeks, a service aiming to provide all the information anyone would need, via travel guides, to make that booking.

It has grown out of Simon Nixon's (Moneysupermarket founder) frustration at not being able to get to reliable, relevant information fast.

In a year's time we'll look back to see if it has fulfilled its ambitions - a million unique visitors a month and within the top 10 travel companies.

Bullish - yes, achievable, who knows?

It has things going for it, the founder has deep pockets and a track record in start-ups. Search engine marketing expertise has been brought in from McCann Erickson and there are already 1,000 destination guides on the site.

The revenue share model is interesting - a 50:50 split with writers based on consumers booking a hotel, car-hire, holiday...

It's a crowded although messy space and the onus is completely on the writers to make the guides inspirational and leave the consumer with no reason to go anywhere else.

It could be a vicious circle - to keep the content fresh and interesting the writer will want to see the regular paycheck but to see the money they will have to keep their reviews at the top.

Is it cynical to think that after the initial hype many will get bored, leaving a few to cash in?

But, then if you believe Tripadvisor's stats (20 new reviews added every minute) people's desire to share their experience knows no bounds.

Consumer Protection - problem solved

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 10:07:30 +0000

One of the questions from the floor during the Barclays Travel Forum in London this week was about the CAA's plans to increase the ATOL Protection Contribution to £3.

Moderator Michael East passed the question over to Mark Tanzer, president of ABTA, who gave a detailed answer about how ABTA plans to respond the latest consultation

But haven't we been here before? How many times has a panel at a conference agreed that the protection issue needs to be sorted out, how the situation is so complicated that the business itself struggles with the issue, never mind consumers, how it creates an uneven playing field, how the strong end up funding the weak, etc, etc, blah, blah.

Has anyone given any serious thought to this idea - no consumer protection. None whatsoever. Caveat emptor. That would clear up any confusion over what is and isn't covered, for both consumers and the industry, while creating a level playing field.

Problem solved.

Martin Cowen

Why Bing must bling and splash out

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 08:19:41 +0000

The following post was written by Warren Cowan, CEO of Greenlight Search, following the launch of Bing earlier this week and its use of Farecast for the travel channel.......:

I've always liked the Farecast interface. It gives that feeling of true flexibility of refining your choices without having to keep going back and endlessly redo your searches.

It is one of those few great examples of professional and expert power, put in the hands of the consumer by new web technologies.

The fact that it also lets you compare your results with other agent sites like Expedia is a boon too, because the consumer always wants to know what they could be getting elsewhere, and showing them, which no doubt will lead to a commission should they take that route, works out for everyone involved.

Integrating it into Bing's search results is a very nice touch, too, and puts it squarely ahead of Google on travel integration, and makes the Google SERPS seems almost vanilla by comparison.

This will increase the reach of these powerful, yet underused services dramatically, and if Bing captures serious market share then I think larger travel sites on the agent and direct side who have historically abhorred these services, will have to fall in and integrate with them to maintain their slice of the action.

One thing which has cheesed me off already though, is the lack of customisation for geography.

Prices in dollars, deals from US departure points are not going to help a UK consumer, and is likely to make those tempted to experiment early, nervous that 'here's another big global American company thinking the world = The United States'.

Clearly it's a gap in the Farecast offering, and hopefully it will be bridged soon either by expanding or maybe by a tie up with someone like Kayak or Travelsupermarket who would be best able to satisfy the core functions.

Such a deal would certainly help the likes of Kayak, who despite being an impressive first mover and industry consolidator have achieved relatively poor growth.

Either way, Bing needs to sort it. Google has their geo strategy worked down to a fine art, and if you're going to go head to head in search, on a global stage, then you should have the global thing worked out or cut out where needs be.

A tie up is probably better. If I were Microsoft, my biggest problem is that I've got pots of cash but no search audience.

I can't buy one because there isn't one, at least not for one sale or of any magnitude to make a difference. But maybe... I can buy a vertical search audience, of which there are more, and which are of decent size, and perhaps are more willing as sellers, and so I could buy that, giving me the asset I'm after, and hope I can cross leverage that to grow loyalty in Bing as a search destination.

Or they could just spend alot of time and money launching a nice, but not so well known UK travel site, into nice not so well known or used UK search engine.

Just take a look at Gogole trends for searches for Kayak, TS, Farecast etc

Why would you even bother if you had MS's pockets.

Google is weak in vertical search. Trying to hit it head on where its most dug in and fortified, even if you are an 800lb well armoured cash rich gorilla is going to end in tears, and will just prompt them to get their 800lb gorilla out of its box too.

Go round the flanks.

Is the travel sector stuck in Web 1.0?

Wed, 27 May 2009 10:45:00 +0000

[The following post was written by Mark Seall of MapVivo. Mark previously worked for GreenOptions, an environmental, web-based media start-up...]

My interest in online travel was sparked after realising that one third of the cost of my expensive Christmas skiing holiday had been spent by the agency on marketing.

I'd blindly assumed that the internet revolution in the travel industry had increased efficiency. Far from it.

Now having been involved in the travel industry for a few months, I think I can see what's wrong.

Travel has basically had an easy life on the Internet.

Although one of the first industries to take advantage of the web - effectively disintermediating agents whose phones went quiet while sites like Expedia and Travelocity glowed red hot - it did nothing other than automate some very simple processes.

Online travel agents are no more innovative than an ATM.

Elsewhere on the web people have had to work harder for the dollar, which has led to an Internet full of innovation, culminating in the social web that has emerged in recent years.

The web is no longer a simple information resource, it is at once a library, a conversation, a market, a social gathering and a lifestyle.

Users exist in groups, networks and crowds, filling it with personal information and searching it passively through friends and not just actively through Google.

And it's not just the younger generation - the fastest growing group of Facebook users is in the 35+ age group.

Emerging from this is a breed of web service that gets close to a customer in contrast to one that bombards them from a distance.

While the travel industry tries to divert then convert customers, the future lays in steering them by knowing them better, understanding their needs and offering them travel suggestions with value instead of managed search results.

This is the key to social media, which is far more and offers farm more than allowing simple user interactions through ratings and links to Facebook - which is pretty much where the leading edge in travel is right now.

Many of the books I buy have been cleverly recommended to me by Amazon based on an understanding of what I like to read.

Yet despite having given the web intimate details of my travel habits I've never received a useful suggestion, let alone a relevant deal.

Web 2.0 users reveal a lot of information about themselves, including where they have been, where they are going, who with, what activities they enjoy, and what they rate highly and poorly.

This behavioral information allows filtering of travel information and precise targeting that provides value to customers tired of the information overload that a travel related Google search brings.

Web 2.0 not only enables genuine personal recommendations, but it has the potential to spread them virally.

If you can win one social customer then you have a good chance of winning their friends over at the same time.

Considering my click-behaviour I'm about 500 times more likely to follow a link from a friend than from a paid search result.

The obvious gap is starting to be filled by sites like WAYN and WhereI'veBeen who are developing travel focused social networks, but you don't need to build your own community. Just as people are connecting, the web is connecting.

APIs and widgets allow close integration with and within social networks enabling travel providers to provide intimate customer services in the form of trip planners, destination guides and travel journals which provide value for customers and sales opportunities for providers.

But...

The trouble is that all this is difficult to conceive and hard to implement in an industry that still has deep roots in past paradigms.

In much the same way that the electrification of factories took decades to bring about real productivity benefits, the same may be true for the Internet in travel.

The most likely outcome is that Facebook or similar services will end up owning travel customer relationships and neatly fit itself into the part of the value chain that travel agents vacated whilst the rest of the industry races to the bottom with spiraling acquisition costs through SEO and contextual ads.

That's where a third of my ski holiday costs went.

Penny for the thoughts of easyJet

Fri, 22 May 2009 13:15:27 +0000

EasyJet has a distribution dilemma.

About 18 months ago the budget airline made concessions to the business travel market opening up access to its inventory via an API to Amadeus and Travelport. Sabre joined the pair earlier this year.

Then, last year, came distribution deals with Multicom and Comtec, again on the face of it targeting the corporate marketing. But, those two companies are known for their distribution in the leisure space and more importantly including the UK's big two operators.

Was the airline testing the water with the leisure market to see whether the four Euros per segment would add up to significant enough volume to keep a link open?

With players such as Co-op Travel, TUI and Thomas Cook potentially involved and sources saying the API accounts for 9% of all bookings (and predominantly leisure) it sounds like a sizeable chunk of business.

EasyJet is now believed to be reviewing those leisure bookings. Could it get them to go direct to the website? - Possibly not, if they haven't so far.

The carrier needs the revenue from ancillary accommodation sales and so deals with accommodation providers in the past two weeks would suggest it is widening its consumer offering to cover all bases.

That might attract a few more people direct but this year consumers are shopping around a lot more, tapping into traditional agents and the internet - direct websites, online agents and meta search sites.

If, as insiders suggest, easyJet switches off its leisure agents from September, do all those players go back to screen-scraping?

If that's the case then no one has learnt a thing and easyJet may as well have adopted the Ryanair stance.

Other factors to watch are easyJet's legal proceedings against InteRes in Germany and Multicom's complaint to Brussels over Ryanair and screen-scraping.

Oh and by the way, according to a slot on the BBC's Working Lunch this week, MPs believe the whole principle of cheapest fares online is unfair - so they could wade in at any time!

Anyone for a summer of closed doors and intense meetings?

Driving a change of opinion?

Wed, 20 May 2009 11:30:10 +0000

Car hire is the ugly duckling of online travel, waddling alongside trains, coaches and ferries.

Quite often the importance of car hire as an ancillary revenue opportunity is overlooked. Bobby Healy, chief technology officer for CarTrawler, told the EyeForTravel summit that car hire was the most lucrative of easyJet's ancillary revenues.

The key message from his presentation was that airlines need their car-hire partner to offer more than one car-hire firm.

Its experience from working with Hawaiian Airlines showed that the more car hire firms available, the more bookings are made. "You're leaving money on the table if you limit the number of providers you make available."

And interestingly, inserting the car hire option directly into the booking path didn't have any noticeable impact on drop-out rates. A sign that airline dot-com shoppers are used to upselling and don't penalise an airline for trying to do?

Sharon Lee, product development manager for Avis Europe, revealed some stats which suggested that car hire companies could sell ancillaries rather than just be sold as an ancillary.

She asked people who booked with Avis Europe online whether they would be interested in buying other products from the web site. More than 40% of them would consider buying flights, hotels or parking at the same time.

The figures were such as surprise that Lee's boss made her go and do the research again to double-check! The findings came back the same.

With around two-thirds of car hire sold supplier direct rather than through intermediaries, this could be a revenue opportunity for the car hire firms, or a partnership opportunity for third parties.

Lee also deserves a mention for raising a laugh in the room with what could be the industry's first-ever ancillary revenue and car hire gag.

"I wish we could charge our customers extra for putting luggage in the boot, but we can't!" she said.

Martin Cowen

Why Twitter is in danger of becoming the next spam tool for travel companies

Wed, 20 May 2009 07:56:05 +0000

Twitter has become so omnipresent in conversations involving marketing execs that it is now quite refreshing to hear when people foresee the problems its use can cause.

Such is the pace in which the 'microblogging' phenomenon has grown and the way people have used it that problems are already beginning to surface - remember, this is just months after many introduced it the mainstream as a brand new and innovative marketing channel.

[Indeed, with remarkable timing, Troy on the Travel 2.0 Blog posts today: "How the travel industry should use Twitter"]

No-one can doubt that as a one-way distribution channel it works. Followers make a conscious decision to see what you're saying - simple.

[Though one seriously doubts whether the "I'm having a bagel" or "I'm on the bus"-type tweets will stand the test of time, unless you're Stephen Fry, of course]

As a two-way distribution channel it gets slightly trickier for travel companies, but the conversational element of Twitter still remains one of its finest attributes.

Consumers are able to ask questions of travel firms in a quick and easy way, sometimes getting assistance quicker than they would via email (but probably not by Old School telephone methods).

Twitter, regardless of what the refuseniks say, should be explored simply because it is the social network of the moment...

However, some elements of Twitter are showing similar signs to email, which went quickly from the great new disruptor to simply being a vehicle for uninspired and lazy marketers.

Speaking at the EyeForTravel conference in London yesterday, the always fantastically honest Viator boss Rod Cuthbert explained how his people were using Twitter in an interesting way.

It goes something like this:

Random Twitter User X posts the following update: "Heading to Paris with the girlfriend. Anyone know what we can for a dreamy evening out?"

Using Twitter Search to track mentions of cities in which it operates tours and excursions, Viator's staff would then @reply the user with a friendly message: "Try a romantic boat ride along the Seine. Lovely views. [Some kind of TINYURL here]. Have a great trip!"

The TINYURL link would land the user on the Viator page for a supplier which happens to sell trips along the gloriously romantic river across Paris.

Hats off to Viator. This is a great and extremely simple idea, probably taking just a minute or two to arrange at Viator's end.

The process - shock, horror - may lead to a product sale, but if nothing else it plants the idea that Viator sells tours of all kinds around Paris.

But what happens if every travel company starts doing the same thing? Random Twitter User X might suddenly find 20 or more @replies peddling similar things. Ggrrrrr...

In the Q&A following the presentation, Cuthbert admitted the practice - generally - could become "spammy" very quickly.

Despite it being a clever idea, this particular practice could be a problem for travel firms using Twitter when trying to proactively engage with potential consumers.

Not only will users quickly become fed up with the reams of @replies (especially if the messages are not helpful in the slightest), meaning they will not bother clicking on the links (wasting the travel firm's time), but users will perhaps avoid mentioning travel plans at all if the message triggers such a response every time.

And that would be a shame...

Would be keen to hear your thoughts on this.

Size matters

Tue, 19 May 2009 14:03:50 +0000

The three panellists for the session at EyeForTravel about new business models in travel represent companies whose existing models are responsible for around ten billion dollars-worth of travel transactions.

So it's little surprise that they deviated from the topic and talked instead about how they make their current model work.

Europe's biggest travel business, TUI Travel, was represented by Sandra Leonhard, director of web strategy and business development.

The key take-away from her twenty minutes was that TUI Travel is very much active online - the segmentation of its SEO based around yield and selling price is a sign of how one of the old vertically integrated travel companies is very much on top of its online presence.

She said that its own video content has been seen 30m times over the past year, on its sites and those to whom the content is syndicated.

It has 700K customer reviews, which is small change compared with Trip Advisor but a sign that user generated content is now an industry norm rather than a Trip Advisor USP.

Talking of TripAdvisor, Martin Verdon-Roe shared some observations about how the hotel review site is branching out into flight reviews, in the US at least. It has developed a metasearch engine for flights to monetize this interest, and is integrating related sister businesses such as seat guru to add value to the customers.

"Nobody saw the customer review model coming", claimed Ed Kamm from lastminute.com.

His slant of business models is that customers ultimately are in charge, and you can't shoehorn a model onto a behaviour that doesn't exist. He is a big advocate of testing things out, and suggested that you can learn more from your failures than your successes.

Six principles of better travel search

Tue, 19 May 2009 13:17:23 +0000

In the middle of a decent enough session to kick things off this morning at the EyeForTravel conference in London were these wise words from Brian Clark, SVP of fly.com, Travelzoo's new meta search engine.

Fly.com is getting a fair amount of attention following its launch in the US a few weeks back and plans for a UK roll-out later this year.

There was, understandably, a captive audience to hear what he had to say about the new engine, etc.

No new details emerged there, but he explained what could be seen as six principles of better travel search - relating especially to the plethora of meta search engines out there on the market and what fly.com is trying to do.

1 - Communicate the 'value' of a product in a more transparent and helpful way.

2 - Merchandise better.

3 - Create context for search results and additional information on the site.

4 - Aim for the elusive 1:1 relationship with the user.

5 - Stimulate demand (don't just re-arrange the deckchairs!).

6 - Inspire consumers to travel in the first place.

Now some of these aims are easier to do than others.

Indeed, number six is perhaps the Holy Grail for meta search engines. How to become a player and an important part of the research>purchase journey much further forward thanthey are currently are.

Let us know what you think...