By EyeforTravel.com Correspondent in MunichOctopusTravel.com has been working on plans to get into the first phase of its social media experience.

Published: 15 Oct 2008

By EyeforTravel.com Correspondent in Munich

OctopusTravel.com has been working on plans to get into the first phase of its social media experience.

Though Octopus Travel's managing director Gareth Gaston didn't share details, he told EyeforTravel.com that the company is anticipating that as it adds more photography and video UGC there will be issues.

"In particular, some Asian countries present significant issues from their 'country firewall' - in particular China and Korea," shared Gaston.

Gaston says video, social networking and user-generated content are all quite significant now.

"All the research points to significant uplift in conversion when UGC is present. Logic would suggest that the richer the UGC, the higher the uplift in conversion. Clearly, balancing this with site speed issues and not putting the rich content in the way of a purchase is paramount to success," according to Gaston.

For online travel intermediaries, a major opportunity is to leverage the intelligence it has built through CRM to drive business to suppliers. On how OTAs and meta-search engines have attained proficiency in the same over the years, he said, "There is no doubt that there is good knowledge of what customers are booking. This is then used to demonstrate value to the supplier and explore further opportunities e.g. increased allocations, more favourable commercial terms, etc. It is important for intermediaries to ensure suppliers that they understand the value of their offering if they endeavour to be successful in selling to the customer."

Overall personalisation efforts and cross-selling initiatives are becoming more targeted and seamless across all touch points – email, onsite, partner ads, call center and mobile.

In this context, assessing the role of the website capturing customer data to feed CRM initiatives and accordingly offering customised communication and offerings via various channels, he said, "The vast majority of our business is transacted on the web. Therefore, the web is critical for capturing the majority of the customer and transactional date. However, multi-channel reporting and integration is important to get a 'single view' of the customer. But it is vital to have a view of the information that is required for CRM and the reports you need to generate first - and then implement data capture across multiple channels feeding into one central 'warehouse' or repository."

Online travel agencies are offering personalised experience based on the customer's recent shopping activity.

It is important to understand the different between implicit and explicit personalisation, pointed out Gaston. "In other words - the difference between looking at activity and trying to define potential needs and actually asking the customer what they want," he said.

To date, according to Gaston, the company has favoured the 'explicit' route using the past data to target, for example, email communication.

Ritesh Gupta,
EyeforTravel.com