TDS08: My notes about "Where to invest – and on what? Which travel products will be making the money next year and how will you be selling them?"

•[My own comments in brackets]

•Glenn Fogel, Priceline.com

–[I took the following notes while I was absorbed by Glenn’s fantastic presentation. He really caught everybody’s attention with a presentation “a la Tom Peters”: powerful and straight to the point slides, relevant examples, personal insights, honesty and passion! For me he delivered the best presentation of the event! It didn’t matter that it wasn’t the most relevant presentation for me.]

–How to maximize the chance of success for Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A):
•Trust deal-maker [The guy with whom you shake hands];
•Trust partner [Not only the guy with whom you shake hands. Salesmen come and go…];
•Know/Predict/Anticipate your partner’s future [Just don’t forget to think about it because you don’t want to waste time and money partnering up with a “sinking ship”]
–[These are only the basics about M&A…]

–Regarding future trends I believe Glenn mentioned something about being alert, that is, pay attention to opportunities/competitors and to new/niche markets. [And act fast!] You should drive your actions/efforts/investments towards your strategy. If you don’t have one you should! [And you should also spread your strategy across your organization in order to keep everybody tuned and in order to act fast! The world is changing really fast!]

IT Meets Marketing, IT Marries Marketing

Recently I read a very interesting article about Web Marketing Strategy by Brad Beiermann from Cimstrat Inc..

Brad states that "Interactive online marketing is here to stay and will only grow larger in the foreseeable future. Getting the marriage between IT and marketing to meet the needs of online interactivity will be a key ingredient for many organizations. And at the heart of this marriage exists the need to integrate the IT resources into the marketing creativity process.". I couldn't agree more with him! When I was flying back from TDS08 in London I was thinking about that while reading Kotler's Marketing for Hospitality and Tourism.

You can read the full article here.

TDS08: My notes about "Discover How to Manage Your eCRM Initiatives In the World Of Internet-Based Loyalty"

[My own comments in brackets]

Steve O’Keefe, Rightnow Technologies
–Three elements drive loyalty [I agree]:
•Superior product/service; [Superior as quality/expectations, as differentiation/personalization…]
•Low cost product/service; [It’s so cheap you won’t mind a few glitches/limitations]
•High quality interactions. [Interesting point there! Specially if you’re talking about complex/long/informed buying decisions such as booking expensive/dream holidays or buying an expensive/dream car…]

TDS08: My notes about "Discover How to Manage Your eCRM Initiatives In the World Of Internet-Based Loyalty" II

[My own comments brackets]

Francesca Ecsery, Cheapflights

–Cheapflights learned by doing that it’s very important (and rewarding) to:
•Be relevant when communicating to customers; [Relevancy drives clicks!]
•Research/ask customers about their preferences in order to be relevant (including frequency of communication); [Don’t send e-mails without being asked to do it…]
•Develop triggered communications (triggered upon customer selected events such as price drops…) [Very interesting and dynamic approach!]

–For Cheapflights relevancy proved to be a successful strategy because it:
•Improved response rate, click rate, open rate and unsubscribe rate (e-mail communication); [RELEVANCY!]

•Saved time (and money). The saved time can be used to research and deliver even more relevant communications which support the results above. [RELEVANCY!]

–[RELEVANCY also applies direclty to webpages (personalized content). Google should know a thing or two about relevance due to their ad placement technology]

TDS08: My notes about "Discover How to Manage Your eCRM Initiatives In the World Of Internet-Based Loyalty" I

[My own comments in brackets]
Xavier Vallée, AVIS UK

–Through research AVIS found out that usually online customers
• Read peer reviews (1/3) and 1/3 of those change their opinion upon reading (which translates roughly into 1/9 of online customers changing their opinion after reading reviews); [Pay attention to reviews!]
•Trust 2 times more in reviews than in official pieces of communication (marketing pieces, website…); [Interesting and disturbing for traditional marketing!]

–AVIS embraced this User Generated Content (UGC)/Social Media “opportunity” by seting up their own corporate blog called We Try Harder.
•Xavier stated they “listen to the customer” and reply when needed and that AVIS uses the feedback from this blog between others (other blogs they monitor and other sources of information) when they make decisions such as renewing their fleet and buy model A or B. [This is an example of how customer feedback can be used as an affordable source for innovation][EMBRACE!].

–[UGC/Social Media shouldn’t be ignored but embraced as an opportunity to develop online conversations with customers].

–[Click here for AVIS case study by market sentinel]

TDS08: My notes about "Monetising Web 2.0 – Who now controls your customer’s online buying behavior?"

[My own comments in brackets]

• Blake Chandlee, Facebook
  –People use Facebook to connect with friends and family. Connecting means sharing (news, reviews, photos…). [And influencing…]
  –People are spending more time in social media websites than e-mail; [Perhaps that’s why Gmail is becoming more and more social…]
  –Number of Facebook users is larger than many countries.

• Daniel Robb, Google UK
  –10% of queries are travel related and of these 16% are hotel related;
  –Google queries [or Hot Trends] can be used to predict demand; [Interesting idea since you can easily get this data.]
  –On average before booking people perform 12 queries and visit 22 websites during 29 days; [Interesting numbers…]

• Ian McCaig, lastminute.com
  –Selling implies someone is willing to buy (be careful when/who you send your marketing message). [I couldn’t agree more.. It’s called relevancy!]
  •Tom Griffiths, gapyear.com
  –Passionate people make web 2.0; [and they influence others]
  –Passion sells products; Web 2.0 elevates “amazing”; [Passionate people tend emphasize extreme feelings like love or hate.]

• Richard Lewis, Dutco Group
  –Customers who wish to share their own comments/suggestions/reviews will post them anywhere. For instance Tripadvisor is just a click away…]
  –If your website enables your customers to post them there perhaps you can manage them better/easily.
  

TDS08: My notes about "Find Out Which Loyalty Marketing Trends and Innovations Are Fuelling Increased Customer Retention"

[My own comments in brackets]

• Rob McDonald, Hilton Hotels Corporation
  –Customers expect rewards and/or recognition from loyalty programs;
  –Loyalty programs should be seen not as a cost but as investment [towards customer retention. On average it’s more expensive to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one].
  –Clear metrics should be defined to measure ROI for loyalty programs;
  –Partnerships help bring new customers.
  

• David Oliver, Hertz Europe
  –Trends: User Generated Content (UGC)/Social Media/Word of Mouth (WOM)/Viral Marketing/Viral games;
  –Important online social media/networks/websites to watch/engage: Bebo (UK), Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, Wikipedia, Tripadvidor, Blagger, Flicker.
  

• Peter Wray, CM4P
  –Trends: customers empowerment = customers in control;
  –Challenges: Card = Community? Customer = Fan?
  –Facts: Coalition loyalty programs enhance rewards and program adoption.
  

TDS08: My handmade cloud

User Generated Content (UGC)
Social Media
Conversation
Reviews
Video
Segmentation
Relevancy
Channel Management
Rate Parity
Contextual Help/FAQ

This handmade cloud represents the words/concepts that I best remember from the Travel Distribution Summit 08 (TDS08).

I'm back from holidays and TDS08!

I'm back from holidays and also from Travel Distribution Summit Europe 2008 (TDS08) that took place in London (UK) during last week and where I most attended the CRM & Loyalty Strategies Conference.

The TDS 08 comprised three parallel travel and hospitality conferences ( CRM & Loyalty Strategies Conference, Online Travel Strategies and Revenue & Pricing Strategies) and a couple of other events such as the Hotel Technology Forum and the Innovation Initiative. Although I picked CRM & Loyalty Strategies as my primary focus conference I also attended a couple of sessions from the other two conferences and events.

As this was the first time I attended a major travel and hospitality conference such as this one I found it very interesting, useful and... fun! For instance the speed networking event although a bit chaotic was fun!

I expect to share a few thoughts about key TDS08 topics quite soon.

Regarding my holidays I must say that I had a wonderful time at Albufeira (Algarve, Portugal) and stayed at the five star CS Sao Rafael Suite Hotel from CS Hotels. CS Hotels is a brand of the Grupo CS. Tripadvisor reviews for the CS Sao Rafael Suite Hotel can be found here.

Travel Distribution Summit Europe'08

If you're in the travel/hospitality industry this is perhaps THE EVENT you can't miss. This event is composed by the Online Travel Strategies Conference, Revenue and Pricing Strategies Conference and CRM and Loyalty Strategies Conference. Click here to get an overview of the event and here toget and overview of the CRM and Loyalty Strategies Conference. Although all the conferences are appealing this last one is the one I'd like to attend. I'm waiting for clearance...

Should Microsoft Quit CRM? Hell no!

I read this interesting news article at destinationCRM with the title "Should Microsoft Quit CRM? ". It seems that there are quite a few important people who support that Microsoft should quit CRM and even the Dynamics product line. If I would have to comment on that based on my personal experience with MS CRM 3.0 I would say those guys are probably right. However after a short trial period of MS Dynamics CRM 4.0 I am feeling quite positive towards MS CRM! I hope this feeling doesn't fade away!

CR what?

CRM or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) "is a customer-centric business strategy with the goal of maximizing profitability, revenue, and customer satisfaction.[1]

Technologies that support this business purpose include the capture, storage and analysis of customer, vendor, partner, and internal process information. Functions that support this business purpose include sales, marketing, customer service, training, professional development, performance management, human resource development, and compensation.

Technology to support CRM initiatives must be integrated as part of an overall customer-centric strategy.

Many CRM initiatives have failed because implementation was limited to software installation without alignment to a customer-centric strategy.[2]" as one can read at wikipedia.

I wanted to share this piece of information with you because it's one of the best CRM definitions I have read so far. It also states very clearly that CRM is not just another software suite: it's a business strategy supported by technology like Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4 and others (Siebel/Oracle, SAP, Salesforce.com).