Travel Trends

You know traditional agents are in trouble when the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission effectively approves the mega agency merger between Stella Travel Services and Jetset on the basis that it won't impact competition because everyone's heading online anyway.  "The internet has dramatically affected the way competition works in the travel industry as more and more customers look online for the best deals," ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel said. "As a result, not only are traditional bricks and mortar agents forced to compete harder on price and service to attract customers, but airlines, hotels and tour companies have new ways of reaching those customers. In that context, the Jetset-Stella merger is unlikely to substantially lessen competition".

Hotelscombined.com has beaten a strong field to win TRAVELtech Website of the Year, announced yesterday at another very successful TRAVELtech conference, attended by 260 of Australia’s online travel industry leaders.

There were also nine category winners in the TRAVELtech Web Awards: Webjet, Jetstar, Habitathq, Lonely Planet, Wicked Campers, P&O, Contiki, World Nomads (and of course Hotelscombined.com) – details below.

The TRAVELtech Web Awards, sponsored by Amadeus and also Tourism Technology, were judged on the following criteria … Innovation, Design and Usability, Meeting the Brief, Speed and Build, Content.

Hotelscombined.com is a Sydney-based hotel search engine operating in the global online marketplace.

Deceptively simple but supported by excellent technology, it finds and attractively presents deals from many of the world’s leading websites in seconds, seamlessly incorporating modern essentials like user reviews and maps.

As one of the three judges commented: “Outstanding, quick to the point, no hoo ha in the way of getting deals… Elegant clean design to aid search.”

• BEST AIRLINE WEBSITE – http://www.jetstar.com.au
• BEST HOTEL OPERATOR WEBSITE – http://www.habitathq.com.au
• BEST ACCOMMODATION WEBSITE – http://www.hotelscombined.com/
• BEST TRAVEL AGENT WEBSITE – http://www.Webjet.com.au/
• BEST TRAVEL DESTINATION WEBSITE – http://www.Lonelyplanet.com/
• BEST CAR/CAMPER HIRE WEBSITE – http://www.wickedcampers.com.au/
• BEST TOUR OPERATOR WHOLESALER WEBSITE – http://www.contiki.com.au/
• BEST NICHE WEBSITE – http://www.worldnomads.com/
• BEST CRUISE WEBSITE – http://www.pocruises.com.au

Founded in 1999, TRAVELtech is Australia's leading online travel marketing, website, distribution and technology event.

Wotif.com execs must be scratching their heads. The company's shares fell more than 6% today after the online travel retailer posted a 22% increase in profit to $53m, marginally down on last year's 26% boost. Webjet shares also slumped 5% in a clear re-rating of the online travel sector.  Wotif.com sold 7.12m rooms during the financial year, turning over $1.09bn.  It is now claiming more than 10% of all Australian accommodation sales. Wotif.com shares – now trading at $4.60 – have fallen more than 50% since April when they hit a high of $8.08. But nothing has changed. Maybe that's the issue.

Bookings are strong for TRAVELtech with a crowd of 250 expected at Australia's leading online travel marketing, website, distribution and tech event next Tuesday, August 31. Great networking is guaranteed with delegates coming from all over Australia and New Zealand. There's still space available but you'd better get in quick. Check out some of the the delegates below. More …

BACK in the day, when I trod the road less travelled, I really thought there was a difference between myself and tourists. I was a traveller, you see, and they were … um … tourists. For some reason I thought my wanderings were superior, my interactions with local folk more meaningful. Why? Well, I was definitely more committed to travelling than the average tourist, quitting my job and travelling for months on end. But really, it came down to youth and a lack of understanding. Age has remedied that and I now really don't think there is a difference. A traveller is a tourist and vice versa. Seems I'm not the only one who's give this some thought. Check out this great article on the subject from Ben Groundwater. The comments are even better.

GET set for a domestic airfare war over the next six months as Qantas Group and Virgin Blue ditch marginal routes and redeploy aircraft to the biggest, most popular city-pairs in their network, virtually all of which are on the east coast. Qantas set the ball rolling last week by revealing a 10% capacity increase while Virgin joined the fray today with a series of hard-headed moves – it's pulled out of the small New Zealand domestic market, boosted trans-Tasman capacity, increased Pacific Blue services to Southeast Asia and confirmed that "recent changes to our flight patterns and frequencies now provide more than 490,000 additional (domestic) seats". More …

QANTAS Group is cautiously optimistic about the near future. CEO Alan Joyce yesterday said Qantas expects to increase aircraft capacity across its brands - Qantas and Jetstar – by 10% over the next six months "while retaining the capacity to optimise": ie switch aircraft between international and domestic, Qantas and Jetstar. This flexibility saw Qantas Group announce a respectable before tax profit of A$377m. Joyce said business demand has been encouraging but warned that the low cost leisure market is under "some pressure", evidenced by Jetstar's half-price sale this week.

FINALISTS have been announced for the 2010 TRAVELtech Web Awards. There are nine categories plus the big one – Website of the Year. Judging will be based on the following criteria – Innovation, Design and Usability, Meeting the Brief, Speed and Build, Content. Winners will be announced at TRAVELtech in Sydney on August 31.  More …

Cloudbreak Fiji

MASSIVE debate happening in the growing world of surf tourism with the Fiji Government opening up 'private' reef breaks like the famous Cloudbreak, previously exclusive to guests at Tavarua Resort which leases it from the local tribe. According to reports,  the Regulations of Surfing Areas Decree 2010 will "liberalize access to any surfing area in Fiji and thereby enhance Fiji's image as a premier surf travel destination". Reaction in the surfing community – pioneers of so many exotic ocean destinations such as Bali – is split. More …

Business travel is bouncing back, Europe remains soft, some leisure sectors are picking up and Amadeus dodged a bullet big-time with its IPO earlier this year, CEO David Jones said at a briefing in Sydney this morning. Jones revealed if the public listing of the company on the Spanish stock exchange had been held just a week or two later it would not have got off the ground. More …

Crawford Rix

Tiger Airways. What can you say? Cheap. And some would say a little nasty.

Unlike other new Low Cost entrants such as AirAsia, Tiger has adopted an abrasive public persona since arriving in Australia, best seen in the public comments of founder Tony Davis and its local leaders, including new boss Crawford Rix, who last week bitched about loyalty schemes. Why? Tiger doesn't have one. More …

New York and Chicago; Barcelona and Madrid; Sydney and Melbourne … Singapore and Bangkok. All very different cities, all very much in competition with the other for national or regional eminence.  But when it comes to tourism in Southeast Asia, there is no real competition any more. The latest STR Global stats show Singapore hotels in strong recovery mode (REVpar up 40%) while Bangkok hotels – endlessly hurt by civil unrest - are still scraping the bottom of what has been a brutal cycle. More …

HELP me out here please! I need websites you think are worthy of consideration for the 2010 TRAVELtech Web Awards, which features various categories in addition to Website of the Year. I've made a strong start as you'll see below but would love some outside input. Which is where you come in. The major proviso (see TRAVELtech Web Awards 2010 – Overview, Criteria, Eligibility)  is that that the nominated websites are Australian. There'll be separate category winners, each of which will be considered for the TRAVELtech Website of the Year. So have a look and post your nominations. Deadline is 10am  Wednesday, August 11, 2010.  More …

THE risks of doing business in Vietnam have been dramatically illustrated by the trevails of two Qantas staff, Tristan Freeman and Daniela Marsilli, who worked senior roles for Jetstar Pacific. Qantas Group has a 27% stake in the carrier. Its partner, the Vietnam Government, launched an investigation into US$31m fuel hedging losses sustained by the carrier, the country's second biggest, separated Marsilli and Freeman from their families, and interrogated them over a six month while refusing to allow them to leave the country. The enquiry was suddenly dropped without explanation. Both are now back in Australia but Jetstar Pacific's CEO Luong Hoai Nam is in jail. See full Sydney Morning Herald Story.

IT'S been a slow start for Wotif.com's flight booking offshoot, Wotflight.com, which in aviation terms is still trundling down the runway. Recent stats from Experian Hitwise shows that Wotflight.com clocked in at #389 on the Top 500 websites in May with an online travel market share of 0.03%, the same as 'Andrew's Airport Parking'.

It picked up some pace in June (#252 with .042%) but was down again last week. Some basic calculations cross-referenced with Google Trends arrives at a traffic estimate for Wotflight.com of less than 2000 visits a day. More …

THE Qantas group, including its Low Cost Carrier Jetstar, recorded a spectacular 72% year-on-year increase in "ancilliary revenue" per passenger (20.37 Euro) during 2009, according to a new report from Ideaworks and Amadeus. It estimates Qantas generated almost 783m Euro in ancilliary revenue last year, including baggage fees and food sold onboard aircraft, commissions from the sale of accommodation, car rentals, and travel insurance at airline websites, plus and partner revenue from frequent flier programs.

BALI Safari and Marine Park has embarked on a dangerous publicity strategy by offering journalists and bloggers a 10-day holiday for the best "positive published article" over the next six months. The "more articles you write the more chances you have to win," its media blurb states. The strategy is dangerous because it seriously comprises anything written about the tourist attraction. It will also alienate serious travel media. You can understand the motivation, but this is not PR – it is bribery.

THE online market share of New Zealand's best known agency group, House of Travel, has collapsed under the weight of fierce competition from Australian and American operators. According to Experian Hitwise, House of Travel's share of the NZ travel agency market plummeted from 23% in June, 2009, to 14.09% in June, 2010. House of Travel is still the top-ranked site but hard on its heels are Webjet (12%), Expedia (9.42%) and Flight Centre NZ (7.42%). NB: House of Travel has just rebranded its formerly self-named site mixandmatch.co.nz.

AUSTRALIANS have gone crazy over skiing. Despite a paucity of natural snow, Thredbo set an all-time record for children's program enrollments during the school holidays while Perisher had 36,000 visitors last weekend. Meanwhile, Tourism New Zealand reports a strong start to the winter ski season with Australian visitor numbers up 7%  per cent to 76,200 in June.

Qantas has reached an out of court settlement in the US with a 67yo passenger who claimed a child's ear-shattering scream on a flight from Alice Springs to Darwin rendered her deaf. AAP reports that Jean Barnard alleged the scream was so severe blood erupted from her ears and she was left "stone cold deaf". Qantas lawyers said Barnard later wrote in an email to her travel agent: "I guess we are simply fortunate that my eardrum was exploding and I was swallowing blood. Had it not been for that, I would have dragged that kid out of his mother's arms and stomped him to death. Then we would have an 'international incident'." Barnard claimed Qantas flight attendants should have controlled the child. Neither she or Qantas would comment on the settlement.