How do I begin to describe the Travelcom Travel Technology summit I attended this past April 08 - 10, 2008 in Chicago? I guess like the city; windy, cold, overcast and raining!Chicago is as unpredictable as the technology that everyone was hawking last week.
The summit started out with Forrester Research's outlook on travel, while I expected to hear a rosy prediction of the future of travel as is normal during these events. I was surprised to hear them paint it as bleak as they did. In retrospect it is fitting, since this conference is designed to sell us on solutions to our everyday travel distribution problems and not trying to sell our destinations or services through the trade such as at International Pow Wow .
I spent two and a half days exhibiting for USATravelspace.com I was trying to figure out to whom I was trying to promote my services to, or any other exhibitor for that matter. Attendance was Destination heavy and there were a handful of suppliers that were interested in technology solutions for their businesses. There were only a handful of solution providers most were SEO and Internet marketing firms.
Sponsors were well represented by the major travel distribution company's while I did not see much for Tour Operators or other logistical companies, and since becoming a fan of David Meerman Scott I find that SEO's and Internet marketing companies have become redundant by Mr. Scott's free eBooks on viral marketing and public relations with the crown being "The new rules of Marketing and PR". My biggest gripe is the lack of vision that is shown by the tech community. I know this will get everyone riled up, but hear me out.
All of today's efforts are on the distribution of travel and how to engage the traveler to hold their loyalty to your product or brand. As a Tour Operator I am well aware that regardless of my so called brand the client is buying an experience albeit the travel experience and that is where the laws of marketing differ for our industry and all others. Travel is a unique experience for each one of us, our experiences differ widely between familial, cultural, gender and ethnic expectations of why, where and for how long we choose to go to a destination.
Travel brings joy, peace, cache, bragging rights, sex, freedom and enlightenment to those same people, if not then why is "What is done on the road, stays on the road" such a familiar and inviting destination tagline.
Travel is Freedom. IBM presented us with a video on travel in the future and walked us through "the life of the traveler" and I could not hold myself still, wondering why we would give up the very reasons why we "get away from it all" and allow for a company to share our information from our corporate experiences all the way down to the pool person at the resort during our family vacation. The part on homeland security lasted 3 minutes and was enough to make you want to stay home!
Travel is an intangible it needs to be presented through visual aids and suggestion to a point.
Once we exceed the limits of exploitation of a destination you minimize the desire to go by creating too much familiarity, the experience of travel is multi-faceted which is why the existence of "Tour Operators" came about. Each component of travel believes to be the key element, but in effect is an ingredient in the overall experience. Just like in a dish you can have a little too much of one thing and immediately it is brought to light "this has too much salt, paprika, rosemary", and like food, travel is about the main dish "the destination" and how we prepare that experience is what the chef "Travel Professional", Tour Operator, Receptive does.While hotels, destinations and maybe some airlines can claim brand loyalty among the traveling public, distributers can't, since they do not own what they distribute and only facilitate the sale of a component this is the difference between selling and distributing. One is price driven while the other is experience driven.
Some travel distributers have been touting how they will help you in any dispute with a supplier should you have a problem, while as a Tour Operator we are the responsible selling party. NO ifs, buts or I don't know we packaged it, we sold it, we service it, and the keyword is service. You cannot automate service, as we all know from the commercial having a poor guy screaming out his ridiculous password to an automated customer service agent.
This is travel, someone's vacation for which they saved up and decided to come to our country, state, city, stay in our hotels, visiting our attractions, using our airlines, roads and transportation systems while eating in our establishments and shopping in our stores.
The least we can do is provide them with service commensurate to the experience and loyalty we are trying to establish. This is an issue for all service providers to address, just try to imagine how all the ingredients must coexist in order to serve the USA as a signature dish this is why we need to not only engage the customer, but also the industry.
I can't sign off without plugging USATravelspace as the culinary institute for those of us wishing to blend our ingredients to serve up signature dishes, it's easy and it's free. Someone told me that the best way to promote my service is to stress that not only is this a great way to collaborate, but also to reconnect with our colleagues and friends.
Eric