It seems like the industry has matured since I was last active and speaking to online travel providers -  both technically and fundamentally.  There were many companies who now have well established sites and have been activly engaging in ppc and seo campaigns.  Their sites (sometimes a second site after a poor first revision) were generally rather good – there was a surprising amount of people there also who had recently launched new websites.  Usability and optimisation of on-site elements such as booking processes and search facilites was just beginning to enter the picture for a lot of comapnies – most of them had minor projects they were working on but were looking to run some for of optimisitation on their sites over the next 8-12 months.

It is still a less digitally mature industry than retail, but is is slowly catching up and it’s advanced far from where it was a year from now.

Overall though, very productive and insightful!

I’ll be exhibiting at the Travel Distribution Summit 2009 for the next two days (over Tuesday & Wednesday).  I’ll be going over Travel website optimisations we’ve done in the past, looking at some new sites, and hopefully helping a lot of travel companies convert more customers online.  We’ll also be covering SEM, SEO, etc, the whole online marketing mix.

I find travel to be an interesting industry to have moved online.  It’s seems like finding your own holiday, doing the research, reading the reviews, finding the ideal time to go at the ideal price can all be fun, and lots of people now enjoy doing all this part themselves.  The problem frequently comes when going to make the booking.

Too many travel companies simply seemed to just upload their entire booking system to the web when they started out online and expect their customers to know how to use it.  And some of them, quite frankly, are just awful.  Over the years, things may have been changed or bolted on, and some of them have got this right, others still have a way to go.  It’s fundamentals are still similar to retail, and I’ve found that experience across these two sectors really can mirror each other sometimes.  Website optimisation works really well for travel – it’s usually one area where looking after customers pays off dividends, as service is a large factor in a considered purchase of such high value.

It’s located at the Business Design Centre, London.  For further details check out the website.  We’ll be exhibiting at Stand 42.