EyeforTravel Blog

Back in 2016 we released a free white paper that extensively profiled the US outbound traveller and looked at the state of the market. We noted that there was a distinct possibility that the number of outbound journeys in the year could reach our upper forecast range of 8-9%. Well I am pleased to say that it seems to have very much gone that way with journeys growing by 8% over the first 11 months of 2016 according to the most recently available figures from the US National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO) at the time of writing.
However, is 2017 looking just as rosy? We might have to temper our expectations somewhat, as the Trump presidency has seen a reverse in the dollar’s recent gains against a basket of currencies, inflation has increased and his bellicose rhetoric might make many destinations less favourable in their view of US citizens. For example, Mexico is comfortably the number one destination for US tourists but talk of the border wall isn’t exactly going down well there. This isn’t even to mention the travel ban, which is already affecting travel plans. One of the few certainties we can have for US tourism in 2017 is that the outlook is going to be a lot harder to predict than 2016.
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Alex Hadwick
Head of Research, EyeforTravel
alex@eyefortravel.com 
Source: EyeforTravel, U.S. Department of Commerce, International Trade Administration, National Travel and Tourism Office (NTTO)        

It wasn’t long ago we traveled with physical maps, no smart phones and a lot of help from travel agents and books. Today personalized travel is the internet, machine learning and mobile devices!Research predicts that by 2020, digital travel outlays will top $817 billion globally. With worldwide travel rising 13.8% in 2016 to reach 564.87 billion. Now that is staggering! EyeforTravel are excited about this growth and have positioned our next EyeForTravel San Francisco Summit (April 24-25) to focus on ‘Making sure your digital strategy stacks up!’ The event will bring together 350+ of the best brands in travel to focus on how to develop digital plans, marketing and content strategies, apps and data and personalized experiences to make sure the customer has the best travel experience. With 6 weeks to the event, the team have released the attendee list of over 200 attendees. With limited branding, exhibition and thought leadership opportunities available this could be your final chance to get on stage and meet the industry elite.  Take the chance to network with decision makers from Cathay Pacific, Hilton, Booking.com, Marriott, Virgin America, Hopper, Google, Facebook, Wyndham, Southwest Airlines and more, join us today. To learn more aboutwho is attending the event – click here:To talk sponsorship, you can reach us directly – henry@eyefortravel.com
EyeforTravel is a community where the world's top online travel brands – from hotels to airlines, online travel agents, cruise, car hire firms and more – come to meet to drive forward growth and innovation in the industry. We aim to provide you with industry focused news, events, reports, updates and information. EyeforTravel Limited is a registered company. The Company Registration number is 06286442. It is also registered in England & Wales. Registered office is 7-9 Fashion Street, London E1 6PX, United Kingdom.

EyeforTravel’s Startup & Innovation in Travel Awards taking place at the EyeforTravel San Francisco Summit (April 24-25) now has several start-ups signed up including Wyndow, Pablow, Splitty, Triposo and 8 more. Applications are currently still open and being reviewed. The deadline for applications is March 31st. The start-ups will pitch their businesses in front of a panel of experienced investors on conference day 1, who will be judging their financial potential. The two best pitches will be chosen to present in front of the 300+ summit attendees, with the winner chosen through a live audience poll with the summit attendees.
 “Start-ups represents a fundamental shift in innovation in travel.  At EyeforTravel we believe that the brands investing and innovating in mobile and new offerings deserve to be recognised”, says Tim Gunstone, MD, EyeforTravel Ltd.
As Charles Ralston from TripStreak said on the previous EyeforTravel Awards “The Start-up Village is a really great value for money, especially for start-ups that can’t typically afford to spend thousands on conference. Bravo to EyeforTravel for pioneering this!”
Travel is being changed by mobile, the sharing economy social media and that constant drive to deliver the best customer experience.  Technology is transforming the way travel is sold – providing exciting opportunities to enhance the customer experience, grow loyalty and ancillary revenues.
EyeforTravel’s Start-Up Awards seek to recognize the young brands who are making significant progress for travel – trailblazing the way for others to follow. Here’s your chance to shout about it!
The judges for the 2017 awards include, with more to come…

• ·         Matt Zito, Managing Partner, Travel Startups Incubator LLC
• ·         Brian Harniman, Managing Director, Brand New Matter, Inc
• ·         Tim Gunstone, Managing Director, Eyefortravel
• ·         Bruce Rosenberg, Chief Operating Officer, HotelPlanner
• ·         Jeena James, Global Head for Travel & Local, Food, Drink Apps, Business Dev, Google Play
• ·         Nancy Hayes, Managing Director, Golden Seeds ( Principal - NKH Group)
• ·         Seth Rosenfield, Managing Director, Petsky Prunier
• ·         Amir Amidi, Managing Partner - Travel and Hopsitality Centre of Innovation, Plug and Play Tech Center (TBC)

If you would like to pitch at the event or just attend the boot camp, meet the judges and watch the pitches – 
Check out the awards site here: http://events.eyefortravel.com/san-francisco-summit/startup-village.php
For all awards enquires contact: -
Shreya Ganapathy Project and Content Director | EyefortravelW:  +44 20 7375 7150 shreya@eyefortravel.com

Ctrip’s recent acquisition of Skyscanner sent waves through the travel industry and marked another big deal by a Chinese firm investing in leisure and hospitality outside the country. It was also a demonstration of the ambition of Ctrip, which has grown dramatically over the last few years, also acquiring metasearch company Qunar in 2015.  
The figures suggest that this is already an Online Travel Agent (OTA) giant just on the basis of Chinese sales, let alone its ambitions further afield. One estimate from 2015 projected that the company already oversaw 70-80% of the country’s OTA market and another from that same year reckoned that Qunar controlled around 32% of air ticket sales and Ctrip 39% of hotel bookings.
EyeforTravel has also found that Chinese consumers are heavily mobile- and OTA-focused when it comes to researching and buying travel, giving a further advantage to Ctrip. It seems that the rest of the world might need to look out.
Keep an eye out for our upcoming Chinese Travel Consumer report, which is coming soon.
For more insights like these, why not sign up to our newsletter? Or you can get the best opinions first hand by attending one of our events.
Alex Hadwick
Head of Research, EyeforTravel
alex@eyefortravel.com 
Source: Bloomberg

EyeforTravel’s Startup & Innovation in Travel Awards taking place at the Europe Summit 2017 (London, May 3-4) now has a number of start-ups signed up including What3Words (www.what3words.com/),Daytrip (www.ondaytrip.com/) , Transfer Travel (www.transfertravel.com/) and Stay Planner (www.stayplanner.com/)   
Applications are currently still open and will close on April 20. The start-ups will pitch their businesses in front of a panel of experienced investors on conference day 1, who will be judging their financial potential. The two best pitches will be chosen to present in front of the 400+ summit attendees, with the winner chosen through a live audience poll of more than 400 attendees.
This year, EyeforTravel Europe will see attendees from all sectors within the travel industry. Some of the confirmed brands in attendance include Priceline, Momondo, TUI, Odigeo, NH Hotels, Eurail, Lufthansa, BMI, Lonely Planet, Starwood Hotels, Eurostar, Heathrow Airport, Gatwick Airport, Wyndham Worldwide, Accor, Aegean Airlines and more.
"EyeforTravel exceeded all expectations in helping us meet key decision makers from some of the biggest travel organisations globally” says Andy Peck, CEO and Founder of Trustedhousesitters, a participant at the 2016 awards. He added “We’ve attended events both in the EU and US and the connections made and insights gleaned have been invaluable. We’d definitely recommend anyone looking to drive commercial exposure to get involved with Eye for Travel. It's really helped us progress business development forwards and we really enjoyed attending the well-organised and informative events."
The judges for the 2017 awards include:

•         Timothy Hentschel co-founder and CEO, HotelPlanner.com
•         Callum Lee, Investment Analyst, Angel Capital Group (tbc)
•        Clive Jacobs, Chairman, Jacobs Media Group
•         Charlie Woolnough, Hedgefund professional, Quorum (tbc)
•         Christopher Persson, General Partner, Recapex (tbc)
•         Dick Porter, Portfolio Chairman and Investor (founder and former CEO, STA Travel)
•          Brian Harniman, Managing Director, Brand New Matter Inc

  “I honestly believe that the disruptors in the travel scene will be those who can really tap into the latent needs that the market has and deliver a service that beats the traditional suppliers” said Tim Gunstone, MD of EyeforTravel, “For the past 20 years, we have consistently tried to make EyeforTravel Europe the nexus of innovation in the travel industry and 2017 is no different, we expect to see the disruptive technologies and business models that are in the pipeline”.
For more information about the awards and to find out how start-ups can enter, please visit http://events.eyefortravel.com/travel-distribution-summit-europe/awards.php

Feel free to get in touch with Tim directly at tim@eyefortravel (please use 'EU startup awards' in the subject)

Terrorism is one of the great blights of the world but particularly for tourism. Attacks can have severe effects on how destinations are perceived and leave long lasting scars that take time to heal. Over the last year it has been Europe that has felt the pain resulting from terrorist attacks.
It is estimated that international arrivals in France during 2016 have fallen by around 5% to 7%, according to the French tourism board. The Louvre reported that it had received 15% less visitors and occupancy rates have been hit hard in Paris during 2016. Turkey has had an even rougher year, seeing arrivals fall by 31% year-on-year in the first 11 months of 2016.
Turkey is suffering more because of it has a combination of issues. Multiple attacks from different groups, mass refugee inflows, political instability and a major war on its southern border are all weighing down tourists’ perceptions of the country. Academic research has largely concluded that it is the frequency of incidents that causes the most reduction in arrivals, with recovery usually experienced within six months to a year if there aren’t further incidents. So, if France can continue to avoid major attacks in the immediate future, then it should already be on the way up. However, for Turkey it looks like the road back to the tourism numbers of three years ago is going to be a much harder, and longer, process.  
For more insights like these, why not sign up to our newsletter? Or you can get the best opinions first hand by attending one of our events.
Alex Hadwick
Head of Research, EyeforTravel
alex@eyefortravel.com 
Sources: Tourism-Review.com, Republic of Turkey Ministry of Culture and Tourism

Top speakers to be at the EyeforTravel Summit in May joined the table at the European Group Travel Awards last week
On the 9th March, an evening of entertainment and celebration took place at HotelPlanner’s annual European Group Travel Awards. The awards saw 25 award categories recognise the operators that service and deliver the most outstanding group travel services and experiences.
EyeforTravel sponsored and hosted a table at the event in recognition that the group travel industry is a $45 billion a year market.
EyeforTravel’s guests were a diverse representation from the travel industry, spanning from traditional hotels and resorts, multi-modal metasearch companies, a vacation rental firm, a data management platform, start-ups with huge recent success to the largest global airline trade association. 
Attendees at the EyeforTraveltable included:

• Daniel Wishnia – Digital Marketing Consultant – GCH Hotels
• Andrei Grintchenko – Head of Business Intelligence Projects – IATA
• Roman Sucharzewski – EU Director of Hotel Distribution & Marketing – Diamond Resorts International
• Marc Hoffman – CEO – CheckMyBus
• Yann Raoul – CEO – Gopili
• Zdenek Komenda - Chief Business Development Officer - Kiwi.com
• Jasmin Arbesser – Brand Manager – HomeAway.com
• Florent Coudyser – Industry Director – Relay42
• Leo Langford – Conference Director – EyeforTravel 

·    The evening boasted a night of gratitude towards industry excellence as well as entertainment, good food, drink and laughter.
The industry professionals listed above as well as 350 more travel elites and decision makers will be in attendance at the EyeforTravel Summit (London, May 3-4th2017).
The two-day event is the European travel market’s premier opportunity to meet, network and be part of ground-breaking discussions on how the industry is changing forever in digital, data, marketing, RM and distribution. It is also the summit that will host the sealing of the deals that will change company structures and the industry as we know it.
Just a sample of the EyeforTravel Summit’s 70 speakers include:

• Glenn D. Fogel – CEO - Priceline Group
• Roland Schütz - EVP and Head of Information Management & CIO Group Airlines - Deutsche Lufthansa
• Lennert De Jong – CCO - Citizen M Hotels
• Alessandra di Lorenzo - CCO – Partnerships and Advertising - Lastminute.com
• Dan Christian – CDO - The Travel Corporation
• John Whitley - Senior Director Ancillary Sales, International - Hertz
• Brenda van Leeuwen – CEO - Eurail.com
• Tero Valkiala - Head of Digital – Finnair
• Jonathan Liu - VP Pricing and Revenue Management – Accor

Full speaker line-up, agenda and a live attendee list of the event, simply follow this link: http://events.eyefortravel.com/travel-distribution-summit-europe/

On May 3-4, C-level executives from Priceline, Momondo, eDreams ODIGEO & Lufthansa will come together at EyeforTravel Europe 2017, Europe’s leading conference for senior travel industry executives.They will be joined by over 70 senior-level expert speakers over 2 days for 30+ sessions covering travel distribution, data & analytics, marketing & personalisation, revenue management, mobile strategy and much more.The 2017 meeting will attract over 350 senior travel executives from across Europe, North America and Asia Pacific and will discuss the leading issues facing the travel industry today.Some of the key issues being discussed at the summit include:

• The state of the travel industry: Where are we now? [Priceline]
• How to produce a digital experience that enhances the physical experience [Lufthansa, Gatwick Airport]
• Who is best placed to own the customer: The supplier, intermediary or Google? [Trove / Expedia]
• Driving Direct Distribution [Starwood, Citizen M]
• Conversational Commerce, AI & Machine Learning to engage, sell and drive loyalty [Edwardian Hotels, Travelaer, Icelandair]
• How Loyalty is changing in travel [Hotelplanner, Trivago, Travelzoo]

For more information about the full speaker line-up, who is attending and the detailed agenda topics being discussed visit www.eyefortravel.com/europe.

We worked with data company Jumpshot to understand where travel purchasers were going on their journey to the booking, analyzing more than a quarter of a million users and found that UK consumers came top for comparing the price of flights late in the purchase funnel.
Just under a quarter (24%) clicked on a metasearch domain in the 15 sites visited immediately before making a purchase directly with an airline brand, compared to 14% of German consumers and just 10% of US consumers. UK consumers were also the marginally more likely to visit a competitor airline brand to compare their flight before they made their booking than peers in the US and Germany.
You can download the full white paper here and find out more about the booking habits of Brazilian, German, Indian, UK and US consumers.
For more insights like these, why not sign up to our newsletter? Or you can get the best opinions first hand by attending one of our events.
Kind regards,Alex

Alex Hadwick
Head of Research, EyeforTravel
alex@eyefortravel.com  

[View the story "The best insights from #eftusa Atlanta" on Storify]

When we gathered the top travel data professionals in Europe and asked them what they thought would change the face of our industry, they overwhelmingly answered that data-driven personalization would be the game changer.


Some 78% of the attendees at our Smart Travel Data Summit 2016 believed that personalization would be critical in the future, far ahead of any other category, and it was a topic that came up time and again at the conference.
You can download the full conference report here, which covers all the major themes, surveys and presentations from the conference.
For more insights like these, why not sign up to our newsletter? Or you can get the best opinions first hand by attending one of our events.

Alex Hadwick
Head of Research, EyeforTravel
alex@eyefortravel.com  

EyeforTravel have just released their attendee list for the San Francisco Summit 2017 (April 24-25). Don’t miss your chance to join the west coast’s largest digital travel conference.
The focus of this event is mobile, social media and tech innovation. With more travelers turning to the internet and mobile to get ideas, inspiration, and options for their trips. Mobile has made the journey more spontaneous with ‘on the go’ research tools.
Research shows that 85% of leisure travelers decide on activities only after having arrived at their destination. With mobile playing such a key role we see platforms like Facebook, Lola, Instagram, Hopper,  Lyft, YouTube (travel hack videos) SnapChat, and travel supplier’s bespoke apps like Hilton and KLM  becoming the starting block of a traveler’s journey.
EyeforTravel are excited about this shift and have positioned their EyeForTravel San Francisco Summit (April 24-25) to focus on the digital big bang in travel. The event will have 350 travel decision makers to help you identify the data, technology, partners and strategies that you need to grow revenues in the mobile-first world! They are even offering a sneak peak of their attendee list 2 months before the event.
To shed light on who will be at the event, Shreya Ganapathy the lead researcher for the event said “We’re really excited to be welcoming back executives from Booking.com, Intercontinental Hotels, Southwest Airlines, Hilton, MGM Resorts, Grand Pacific Hotels, Expedia, Marriott, Alaska Airlines, Amadeus, Wyndham, Lola, Google and a lot more”
She went onto to say “We don’t usually release our delegate list this early but with over 2 months to go, we have over 130 people in, and thought we should share it, and give others a chance to book too!”
This year’s conference will be 3 in-depth travel conferences all in one!

• Mobile and Innovation Strategies: Mobile is fundamentally changing the way online travel brands do business. Mobile is not only fueling key shifts in consumer behavior but is also facilitating new business models and industry partnerships
• Social Media and Content Strategies: The revolution in segmentation, targeting and personalization - and what travel brands and marketers must do to both understand and serve customers better in our new digital world
• The Start-up Village: A special bolt on program to cater to our growing start-up community interested in travel. Complete with its own networking and a start-up competition

Learn more about who is attending our 2017 (April 24-25) event here: http://events.eyefortravel.com/san-francisco-summit/
If this appeals to you, get involved either as an attendee, a speaker or an exhibitor.
Contact the team directly at – shreya@eyefortravel.com

One of Obama’s major foreign policy objectives was rapprochement with Cuba, leading to a relaxation in travel restrictions between the two countries through a process known as ‘normalization’.
This has led to a huge jump in US tourists to Cuba, with the island’s already growing tourism entering a full-blown boom in 2016. The Miami Herald reported that “visits by Cuban Americans and other US travelers last year was 614,433, a 34% increase,” making them the second biggest visiting nationality. American Airlines has even opened a Havana office in a sign of the changing times.
However, President Trump is furiously signing in executive orders, overturning many of the key initiatives of the Obama administration. President Trump has threatened to halt the process of normalization “unless the Castro regime meets our demands”, so if you are an American looking at Cuba, now might be the time to go before it’s too late.
For more insights like these, why not sign up to our newsletter? Or you can get the best opinions first hand by attending one of our events.
Alex HadwickHead of Research, EyeforTravelalex@eyefortravel.com 




Sources: The Miami Herald; New York Times

Technology with a human touch: travel’s new super power?Pamela Whitby has been finding out if the days of purely self-serve online travel are over.“Metasearch on steroids,” is how industry veteran Krista Pappas, the vice president of Lola, describes the firm’s new agent console, a state-of-the-art piece of kit that delivers “super powers” to the group’s living-breathing travel agents.The console, which communicates back and forth with Harrison, Lola’s artificial intelligence (AI) engine – its answer to IBM Watson – gives the firm’s 20-strong travel agent team “all these new, amazing and efficient tools”. Tools that will help Lola, a startup leading the charge away from purely self-serve online travel, to deliver a truly personalised experience.Says Pappas says: “With travel factories spitting out thousands of results that aren’t personalised for the customer, we want to prove that it really doesn’t have to be one size fits all…what we are really trying to do is weed through all the noise and clutter that you get from the big agencies.”“With travel factories spitting out thousands of results that aren’t personalised for the customer, we want to prove that it really doesn’t have to be one size fits all” Krista Pappas, Vice President, LolaThough she isn’t naming or shaming anybody, the travel industry veteran’s argument goes that whether you like it or not, the results of the agencies are influenced by who pays the highest commission.To highlight the point, she refers to her own experience:“No offence to Best Western – this is simply a personal choice – but given the number of times I have booked on a particular OTA, they really should know by now that I am never, ever going to stay in one of their hotels…This is just one of the ways where we [at Lola] aim to be a different. We are 100% focused on giving the customer the hotel that is right for them.”This isn’t easy but with a further $15 million awarded in recent Series B funding, taking Lola’s total investment to just under $35 million, the tech-driven vision seems within reach.
Delivering uniquenessAs a quick recap, Lola launched its limited beta version in the app store in May 2016. Led by former Kayak co-founder Paul English, Lola’s target audience is the tech-savvy frequent traveller, fed up with having to sort through the thousands of generic search results spat out by well-established OTAs. Though everybody in travel is talking about ‘personalisation’ more often the results don’t deliver, and end up costing travellers time and productivity.Pappas explains: “One of the big lessons from the launch of version 1 was just how unique everybody’s needs are…In the next iteration [due for launch in Q2] we are going to give people a much higher level of personal travel service, which means personalised answers and real service when they need it.”Following feedback, the next iteration will also include significant changes to the user experience. “It’s truly a mobile-first user experience versus just a mobile-adaptation of a 20-year-old idea of search,” she continues.Of course, there are some simple, easy-to-complete tasks, such as booking a regular weekly business trip from Boston to JFK, but there are still enough times when things go awry. “When a flight is cancelled, and you’re stuck in a cab, or there is a problem with hotel check-in, people absolutely do want to talk to an agent and with Lola, 24/7 service is always one touch away,” Pappas insists.In essence then, Lola is now set on building a true personalisation engine for hotels, flights and other travel components that will deliver a “self-service travel plus agent” model.This trend away from pure self-serve travel is one that Jared Alster, VP and co-founder of San Francisco-based startup Stride Travel, a go-to market place for baby boomers, sees playing out in 2017.He says: “We believe that travellers will want more guidance when booking travel online so we see a shift a bit away from the OTA ‘self-serve’ model to one that is not exactly a traditional agency [aka Lola].”Lola’s investors also seem convinced. In the latest funding round, led by Charles River Ventures, previous investors General Catalyst and Accel both came back to the table.Want to learn more about AI in travel then join our EyeforTravel San Francisco Summit this April - Click here to learn more.The real messaging dealOn the journey to personalisation, a core focus will be to perfect messaging tools using AI. Says Pappas: “What we have found is that people really do prefer messaging when looking for travel. It is how they have come to behave and communicate.”The numbers seem to back this up. According to Statista, by August 2015 at least 2.5 billion people were using at least one messaging app, a number that’s expected to grow to 3.6 billion by 2018.The real test now, however, will be how this upstart tech company harnesses AI, machine learning and natural language processing to perfect the messaging experience.“A lot of companies, who I won’t name though I’d love to, were guilty of an over-exaggerated product/reality quotient this last 12 months,” says Bobby Healy, the chief technology officer of CarTrawler, the technology platform connecting travel businesses including OTAs, airlines and accommodation providers to all forms of ground transportation. “But people are now sick of hearing about AI and bots, so I think they’ll actually start doing something in that space rather than just talking about it.”Lola is definitely “the real deal”, insists Pappas who says we can expect to see a lot more than talk in 2017. To advance the firm’s AI ambitions, last September last year came another “best-of-breed appointment” to the executive team in the form of Bryan Healey, a former Amazon Echo technology leader.“Our AI team’s ability to help with personalisation and natural language processing for a better messaging experience will be paramount,” Pappas says.While some industry players are calling 2017 as the year that the mobile native app dies out, Lola doesn’t buy into this view. “The other part of our tech vision is the mobile app – so it’s Harrison, agent, console, mobile app,” Pappas says. Importantly though, the human agent will always be there to “ensure that Harrison is getting it right”.To ensure this happens, Lola has adopted an approach which helped Kayak to take the tech lead – insisting that engineers sit with the agents to hear first hand the customer’s pain points in order to build the most effective solutions.Human capitalThat humans will remain central to this fledgling business is an important one in the current climate. Recently the Financial Times reported on the pressure being felt by senior Silicon Valley executives at the World Economic Forum in Davos. With Brexit and the election of Trump, here executives including the chiefs of IBM, Salesforce.com and Microsoft were anxious to present themselves as more responsible and sympathetic to the potential impact of AI. Salesforce.com’s Marc Benioff is quoted saying that “advances in AI are beyond what we had expected,” and the concern is that it could lead to job losses.Artificial Intelligence fuelled job losses are less likely in travelIn travel, however, Pappas argues that this is less of a problem. “Booking travel is inherently complex and we believe there are always going to be things that humans are better at doing than the engine,” she says.Yes, lots of tedious tasks that agents have been doing manually can be automated, but that gives them the flexibility to handle the more complex problems.“The agent remains integral to this; we are a long way from the idea that this doesn’t require an agent to be involved,” she says.Building trustLike all consumer-facing brands Lola is keen to show that it’s all about putting the customer first but as a commercial organisation, whose first stage investors have come back to the table in round 1, it must also deliver returns.“The team has raised a tonne of money and we have a lot of work to do, so pressure is on,” Pappas admits.While positive feedback from users is the end game, like other agencies its business model is commission-based so it cannot ignore the importance of building the right partnerships. Lola’s promise to the travel suppliers it chooses to work with is “to complement their own marketing programme”.Already it is working directly with hotels, as well as other third-party suppliers and global distribution systems Amadeus and Sabre.Pappas is clear that Lola is not trying to take control of hotel loyalty data, which it could be argued is Expedia’s goal for its relationship with Red Lion, and ultimately other smaller chains. Last year, the online travel giant convinced Red Lion to allow it to auto-enroll guests to its hotel loyalty programme, in a move some commentators have called shortsighted.
Not so for Lola. “We want to ensure our customers are getting the best rate from hotels, that their loyalty is in check and that hotel recognises them when they arrive,” she explains.Next steps for the firm are to “use the dough from the Series B funding round to for continued product development and marketing”; to date marketing efforts have been largely word-of-mouth.Though the idea is still germinating, a longer-term vision is to become the Uber of the travel agency world, with Lola talking through the idea with prospective partners.Says Pappas: “It’s a way down the road but we envisage that like Uber, you would be able to use Lola to both plan a trip or remotely join up to be part of a wider network of agents.”One of the biggest challenges facing companies in the digital age is the ability to build trust That’s for the future, perhaps, but Lola’s immediate priority is building trust, one of the biggest challenges facing companies in the digital age. On this subject, Lonely Planet CEO Daniel Houghton, who joined in 2013 to engineer its digital turnaround and was recently named one of Forbes’ 30-under-30, has this to say:“In our case, the business was built on the trust of our content, because we go to the places we write about. That’s what always set us apart and that is just as important today as our content appears on more and more platforms and in different ways.”English and Pappas have been in the business long enough to know that it is trust too that will set them apart. “It’s truly amazing when you know you can trust somebody to book travel for you,” says Pappas.As Lola ramps up to deliver on this vision, the industry will be watching closely.Krista Pappas, Daniel Houghton and Bobby Healy will be speaking alongside other online travel industry innovators at EyeforTravel’s San Francisco Summit (April 24-25). Click here for details.

Travel marketers spend a huge amount of time trying to get people on to their brand’s booking channels but should they instead spend more time improving these channels? A new white paper suggests that closing the loop is the most profitable thing marketers can do
For every customer that makes a booking on your site, it is highly likely you have already digitally encountered them. That’s the conclusion of EyeforTravel’s new Understanding the Travel Consumer’s Path to Purchase white paper. It looks at real purchase data from more than a quarter of a million consumers across five countries and found that three quarters of consumers will visit and then leave a travel site, before coming back to it to complete their purchase.
The research looked at Online Travel Agency (OTA), airline and hotel verticals, tracking the 15 sites a consumer looks at before they make a purchase. OTA sites were visited between 73% and 78% of the time before conversion, airlines between 69% and 84%, and hotels between 69% and 70%. This suggests that all types of travel brands should aim to convert these visitors first time and optimizing their sites so that consumers don’t feel the need to shop around.
This is particularly the case for hotel brands, as the white paper finds that their conversion rates lag noticeably behind airline and OTA desktop conversion rates in Brazil, India and Germany. Furthermore, across all geographies both airline and hotel brands have substantially lower conversion rates for mobile bookings in comparison with  OTAs.
“Reportedly, travel purchases in Q4 2016 had an above average abandonment rate of 82%,” said Alex Hadwick, Head of Research at EyeforTravel, “and I think that this research reinforces the importance of getting the fundamentals right so that rate reduces. Travel brands need to get their own-brand site right across all devices because this is one of the most cost-effective ways of driving better profitability, especially as, typically, half of users will abandon a site if it takes more than two or three seconds to load.”
EyeforTravel and Jumpshot tracked more than a quarter of a million travel purchasers across five countries through clickstream data and consumer surveys to build a picture of the path to purchase. The white paper details the how, where and why of the decisions people make before they book, and identifies what travel brands should be doing to capture market share.

To download the complete white paper and find all the research click here.

Mobile is now the primary means with which visitors interact with travel sites, according to new research from EyeforTravel and Jumpshot
More than half of visitors to travel websites are now using mobile devices in Brazil, India, the UK and the US reports EyeforTravel’s Understanding the Travel Consumer’s Path to Purchase white paper. This rises to two thirds of consumers in India, where smartphones are more important for accessing the internet.


In Brazil and the US 54% of daily visitors to travel sites used mobile devices, with a slightly higher 57% doing so in the UK. The data was captured using clickstream data from white paper partner Jumpshot’s panel of more than 100 million consumers, which tracked visitors across major travel sites in each country.
However, the paper notes that travel brands cannot increase focus on one channel at the expense of another, as consumers are largely adopting a multichannel approach to researching and then purchasing travel, with different devices more important at different stages of the process. Data presented in the paper shows that consumers frequently cross over from primarily using mobile devices to research their travel options, to desktops and laptops in the purchase phase. Desktop conversion rates are also considerably higher than for mobile in all the countries studied, further demonstrating that, for the time being, desktops and laptops remain the primary booking devices, if not the main drivers for research.
Alex Hadwick, Head of Research at EyeforTravel emphasised that “travel brands should be getting ready for a mobile-led future if they have not already done so. The demographics we have studied in this paper are clear, with younger generations clearly more inclined to use mobile devices compared to older generations. Although baby boomers are still the generation with the greatest disposable income, millennials are now the largest generation demographically in the West and alongside the populations in developing economies, which are also younger and more mobile-focused, they will change the way travel is viewed and consumed.”
EyeforTravel and Jumpshot tracked more than a quarter of a million travel purchasers across five countries through clickstream data and consumer surveys to build a picture of the path to purchase. The white paper details the how, where and why of the decisions people make before they book, and identifies what travel brands should be doing to capture market share.
To download the complete white paper and read all the research click here.

Last year was a good one all round for air travel. Consumers were able to benefit from declines in prices whilst airlines reported excellent profits. However, has this trend now flipped around?

It seems like prices may now be on the up. Underlying this is the rising cost of jet fuel kerosene. Prices plummeted in 2014 and remained through 2015, allowing consumers and the industry to profit. However, in 2016 fuel prices have turned around and look set to continue on an upward trend. Year-on-year from mid-January 2016 to the same point in 2017, kerosene spot prices rose 68%. 
This, along with higher labour costs, is cutting into airline profits. IATA expects 2016 to have been the high point for airline profits and several major airlines, including Delta, United, Emirates and Easyjet all reported declining profits in the latter half of 2016.
Already, Hopper reported in January that US flight prices were up 8% on the previous year and CWT and the GBTA expect global rises of 2.5% in 2017.
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Alex Hadwick
Head of Research, EyeforTravel
alex@eyefortravel.com 
Source: US Energy Information Administration

On average, a fifth of travel consumers visit a social media site immediately before purchasing a vacation according to new research from EyeforTravel and Jumpshot.
Social media domains continue to be visited late into the travel funnel, with users regularly connecting with a social media site within 15 sites of their final purchase destination. This was one of the findings from EyeforTravel’s Understanding the Travel Consumer’s Path to Purchase white paper. This used clickstream data gathered through research partner Jumpshot’s panel of more than 100 million customers, tracking consumers who made a purchase on an airline, hotel or Online Travel Agency (OTA) brand in Brazil, Germany, India, the UK and US.
In all countries and purchase paths measured, social media sites were visited in at least 15% of the cases, rising to just under a quarter of those booking on OTAs in the UK and US. Additionally, 6% to 12% of consumers visited YouTube in their pre-purchase path, pushing the usage of social media up further.
The white paper notes that travel marketers should “continue to view social media as a useful marketing tool up until the point of purchase, but with a focus on programmatic advertising targeting offers that will attract clicks in the latter sections of the funnel. This is especially so because there is a strong possibility that a brand can pick up considerable tracking data in these latter stages to fully personalize an ad.”
The white paper details the how, where and why of the decisions people make before they book, and identifies what travel brands should be doing to capture market share.

To download the complete white paper and read all the research click here.

Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) are leading the competition when it comes to online engagement, particularly with regards to mobile traffic, according to new research from EyeforTravel and Jumpshot.
Over the last 18 months, hotels and airlines have been on a drive to win customer loyalty, but EyeforTravel and Jumpshot’s new Understanding the Travel Consumer’s Path to Purchase white paper shows they still have a long way to go. According to both clickstream data gathered by Jumpshot from more than a quarter of a million travel purchases and EyeforTravel consumer surveys, OTAs are winning more bookings than travel suppliers, and by a noticeable margin. 
In Germany, the UK and the US OTAs represent the largest vertical, taking a greater number of bookings than airline and accommodation brands. In the US, the paper compared clickstream data tracking purchases made on Booking.com, Expedia.com, Airbnb.com, Hotels.com, Delta, Southwest, United, Ryanair, Easyjet, Lufthansa, Emirates, Marriott, Hilton IHG and Wyndham. It found that OTAs were responsible for 42% of the bookings made in the period measured, against 39% for airlines and just 19% for hotel brands. 
In the UK and Germany, consumer surveys of nearly 4,500 travellers presented in the paper revealed that OTAs controlled 46.5% and 47.1% of the bookings made on web browsers across all devices in the two countries. 
Even when consumers finished their purchase on a hotel or airline site, they were more likely to have visited an OTA site along the way than a hotel or airline site. For example, 33% of German consumers who bought a flight through an airline also visited an OTA along the way but just 13% also went via a competitor airline brand.
Not only this but traffic is increasingly heading towards mobile, where OTAs are convincingly ahead. OTAs across the five countries studied – Brazil, Germany, India, the UK and US – all saw higher conversion rates than airline or hotel brands in the study. Alex Hadwick, Head of Research at EyeforTravel, emphasised how important this is going to be: “Mobile optimization is going to be critical for the survival of all travel brands. Firstly, mobile is in the ascendancy, becoming the primary means of travel research over the last year or so and this will increase as younger consumers, who are heavier mobile users anyway, become more prominent in travel consumption. Secondly,  search engines are also becoming more mobile-focused in how they rank sites. This is especially important as 9 out of 10 consumers visit a search engine in the final 15 sites before purchase, according to this research.”
EyeforTravel and Jumpshot tracked more than a quarter of a million travel purchasers across five countries through clickstream data and consumer surveys to build a picture of the path to purchase. The white paper details the how, where and why of the decisions people make before they book, and identifies what travel brands should be doing to capture market share.  
To download the complete white paper and read all the research click here.  

EyeforTravel Infographic and Survey Report: Marketing and Mobile Strategies to Engage the Connected Traveller’.Find out why 74% of the respondents picked mobile investment as a big winner for the travel industry
With research findings showing us that 148.3 million bookings were made online last year, and 65% of same-day hotel reservations were made via a smartphone, according to eMarketer.Currently there’s a lot of room for disruption in travel and the stakes are high. The prize will go to brands that can successfully offer a seamless connected experience. Partnerships, data and technological innovation will decide who wins and who loses out.
"A smartphone is a critical tool for the travel industry, particularly in terms of understanding passenger patterns for booking, search and on trip decisions," said Shreya Ganapathy, Head of Content and Marketing at EyeforTravel. "When you consider how the mobiles have changed the way people interact with brands, its time travel brands follow the change, but what’s the right digital strategy is what we are trying to get answers to.”
So with this growth at stake and shift to mobile, data and technology to create the seamless travel experience we at EyeforTravel did a survey in January 2017 to give us an outlook at what impacts customer experience, online marketing and mobile investment, and the impact of changes on the travel landscape.
EyeforTravels report and infographic on what companies are spending their digital dollars you can access the report and infographic here.
Here’s a few findings: when it came to asking what would be the greatest opportunities to focus on in 2017 we had mobile as a clear winner at 74%, followed with content marketing at 65% followed by social media. Artificial intelligence, text based communication, VR and application development also showing increase from our last year’s survey.  Biometric tools and robotics are not the main focus for our respondents for 2017.
Want the rest of the report- get it here!