Friday, February 29, 2008

Defining the Role and Purpose of Training in Your Organization - By Terrence Donahue, National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation

Here is a scary statistic: 85 percent of training department heads have never read a copy of their own company's strategic plan or annual report.
It's not surprising, then, that many training departments have trouble aligning their objectives with those of their organizations-and that most training activities continue to hit the expense side of the ledger, rather than the investment side. The solution? Develop a training mission statement that both defines the role of training and establishes its worth to the organization.

If a senior executive in your organization asked you about the role and purpose of training in your company, what would you say? If you find yourself struggling for an answer, you might be in trouble. When an organization's leadership is confused about the purpose of training, there won't be a commitment to training in that organization's day-to-day activities-and your initiatives will have little chance of success. But that confusion doesn't always begin at the leadership level, it's often the result of a training department that is uncertain about itself.

Through the process of creating a training mission statement, you can erase that uncertainty and increase your value as a strategic business partner within your organization.

Step 1: Ask Role Definition Questions. Clarifying questions-like 'Why is training important to our company?' and 'What would happen over the next year if the training department were eliminated?' (see the end of this article for a complete list)-will provide the basis for the training department's mission statement. Ask these questions of as many key stakeholders-both inside and outside of the training department-as you can. The answers will help you define the scope of training objectives and provide a framework to ensure business decisions are informed, consistent and non-political.

Step 2: Summarize the Role Definition Answers. Based upon the answers to your role definition questions, write a one-paragraph description of the role of training in your company. While this won't be your final mission statement, it will help you narrow your focus to include only the objectives most important to your organization.

Step 3: Develop a Training Mission Statement. This statement describes the reason your company has a training department, and it must be aligned with the corporate mission. Your mission statement will have three components: Product (what you do), Market (whom you do it for) and Function (why you do it). For example: 'The mission of training at ABC Restaurant Corp. is to provide measurable performance improvement that leads to an improved dining experience and increased sales and profits in our restaurants. Our internal customers include all corporate departments and restaurant employees and managers. Our external customers are vendors, distributors and restaurant guests.'

Once you've developed your mission statement, you're ready to establish and prioritize training objectives, create departmental policies and implement a training strategic plan. But you're not quite finished, if you really want to keep the support of C- and V-level stakeholders (e.g. CFOs and Vice Presidents), there are four conversations you should have with them every year. They each start with the following questions:

1. What makes you pound the steering wheel on your way home from work?

2. What is your biggest concern, and how do you think I can help?

3. What does training do today that you would like it to continue doing two years from now?

4. What do you see as training's biggest miss over the last two years?

When you give these stakeholders a chance to voice their honest opinions about training, you gain political equity in the organization-without having to be political.

Role Definition Questions

1. Why is training important to our company?

2. What is the purpose of training in our company?

3. Why should we conduct training programs?

4. What are the internal and external markets (clients, customers and consumers) that we support?

5. Who should be trained?

6. When should training be provided?

7. To what level should they be trained?

8. What do we expect training to accomplish?

9. How should training programs be designed?

10. What are the limitations of training?

11. What would happen over the next year if the training department were eliminated?

12. What would happen over the next year if the training department doubled in size?

13. What responsibility do employees have for their own learning?

14. What responsibility do supervisors and managers have for learning?

15. What responsibility does senior executive leadership have for supporting a learning culture?

16. What responsibility does the training department have to its clients, customers and consumers?

17. What responsibility does the training department have to other departments in the company?

18. Is training considered an investment or an expense?

19. How will the effectiveness of training be measured?

20. How should continuous learning be viewed?

21. What must training do with regard to innovation to support the organizational mission?

22. What is [insert your name here]'s role as the one who leads the training function?





This article comes from Hotel News Resource
http://www.hotelnewsresource.com

The URL for this story is:
http://www.hotelnewsresource.com/article29212.html

Monday, February 25, 2008

20 Problem-Solving Success Tips.

By Jeanne Sawyer
Saturday, 23rd February 2008


Define the problem first. Explain what the problem is—what went wrong, what are the symptoms, what is the impact on your business. Write it down. Everyone who reads it should understand what the problem is and why it’s important. Caution: describe the problem, not what you will do to fix it.

Use your time for problems that are truly important. Just because a problem is there doesn’t mean you have to solve it. If you ask, “what will happen if I don’t solve this problem?” and the answer is, “not much,” then turn your attention to something more important.

Test your assumptions about everything. Check the facts first. Be sure that you and your team understand the problem the same way, and that you have data to confirm that the problem is important. Test the assumptions about proposed solutions to improve the chances your solution will actually solve the problem.

Measure. The key question to answer is, “How will you know when the problem is solved?” If you don’t measure, you won’t know for sure. Use measurements to learn and portray the truth—the real truth, not what you wish were true.

Measure the right things. A common measurement trap is to measure something because it’s “interesting.” If knowing a measurement won’t change anything (e.g., help you make a decision, verify an assumption or prove the problem is solved), then don’t waste your time measuring it.

Use your project management skills. Solving a big problem is a project: you’re far more likely to solve it successfully if you treat it like one. That means you’ll need to identify tasks, make and adjust assignments, and keep track of what is due when. Be sure to get appropriate management support for your project.

Look for solution owners rather than problem owners. Everyone participating in the situation owns the problem, like it or not—and nobody likes it. Avoid the finger-pointing trap by looking for solution owners, i.e., the people who can do something to help solve the problem. Helping with a solution is much more fun than being blamed for a problem, so you’re more likely to get the response you need.

Whatever you do, do it on purpose. Doing nothing is a wimpy way to decide not to solve the problem—and is quite likely to leave you making awkward explanations when the problem resurfaces.

Communicate. Don’t leave you key stakeholders guessing. Being human, we tend to be bad about keeping others informed about the progress we’re making, especially if there is little or no progress. You’re more likely to get support and understanding if you get the word out honestly about what is happening.

Avoid “bug mentality.” Fixing bugs fixes symptoms: like taking aspirin for a headache, it may provide relief but does nothing to prevent the next headache. It’s ok, and often necessary, to relieve the symptoms but you have to dig deeper if you’re going to prevent problems from occurring.

Identify and fix the right root causes. Complicated problems have multiple root causes, probably more than you can fix in a reasonable amount of time. Don’t waste time or money on causes that are either insignificant in impact or only peripheral causes of the problem you’re trying to fix.

Choose solutions that are effective—and implement the solution completely. Identifying the right root causes is necessary, but unless you then implement a solution, you still have a problem. Double-check to be sure your solution plan really will eliminate the causes you’ve identified, and then execute the plan. It’s easy to get distracted by other projects once you get to the implementation phase and never finish.

Reward prevention. Although it’s generally understood that it costs more to deal with crises than to prevent them, many companies do not recognize and reward those who push past the symptoms to the root causes, preventing future occurrences. If you want to focus on prevention, be sure to reward those who do it successfully.


Have the courage to say “no” when appropriate. If you believe the problem can’t be solved in the time-frame allowed or with the resources available, your best option is to say so right away. Accepting an assignment that you believe is impossible is setting yourself up for failure. Do, however, choose your strategy for how you refuse to take on the project: gather evidence, explain what it will take to accomplish the desired results, etc.

Meet your commitments. Do what you promise and don’t promise what you can’t deliver. Meeting commitments strengthens relationships and builds trust. You need both to solve messy problems. If the situation changes and you do have to change a commitment, let everyone know as soon right away so they can make appropriate changes to their own plans.

Everything necessary, nothing extraneous. Make sure you solve the problem completely, but don’t get sidetracked into doing other things that won’t make this problem go away. Put those extras aside to evaluate later as special projects.

Everyone necessary, no one extraneous. Make sure everybody who can contribute to the problem solving effort is appropriately involved. Only have the people on your team who will contribute actively to solving the problem. People who need to know what’s going on can be informed more efficiently in other ways.

Plan for things to go wrong. We’ve heard it before, and it’s still true: if something can go wrong, it will. Figure out what can get in the way of your problem solving effort and develop appropriate contingency plans.

Use completion criteria. Define what successful completion of each task entails. Specify when it is due and what standard must be met to avoid misunderstandings and delays. You don’t want to tell someone who has worked really hard to complete a task that they misunderstood and you wanted a sledge hammer rather than an ordinary hammer.

Acknowledge and thank everyone who helps. Solving an important problem deserves recognition, and nobody else is going to take care of this for you. Make sure management and key stakeholders know what you and your team have achieved. Remind them of the risks avoided. Thank everyone who participated in the project. It’s the polite thing to do, and encourages them to help you next time.

THE SAWYER PARTNERSHIP Solving Problems PermanentlySM

Consultant, coach, teacher and writer, Jeanne Sawyer specializes in solving messy, expensive, chronic problems—the kind that cause customers to make angry phone calls to executives or even to take their business elsewhere. Her pragmatic approach demonstrates measurable results.

As a consultant and coach, Jeanne has saved her clients millions of dollars and kept them off the front pages by leading them through problem solving projects on particularly complicated problems, helping them incorporate systematic methods into their business processes, and helping them build partnerships that get past the marketing jargon and really work.

jsawyer@SawyerPartnership.com
www.SawyerPartnership.com

Monday, February 18, 2008

Who's blogging? Virtually everyone

By Tom Haines, Globe Staff | February 17, 2008

Dispatches from a quick tour of the travel blogosphere:

At worldhum.com, there's wonder at whether North Korea's Ryugyong Hotel is the worst building in history. There's also talk of Robert Redford making a movie based on Bill Bryson's book "A Walk in the Woods," and a link to a video of Improv Everywhere's stunt in which 207 people freeze for five minutes in Grand Central Station.

On to gadling.com, where there's information and ideas about global migration - everybody, it can seem, is on the move - and updates on Hilton Head Island's annual Gullah celebrations as part of Black History Month.

No time to waste, as crankyflier.com is recapping the latest efforts to build Family Airlines, and weighing the news that United will charge for a second bag.

Too much detail? Then head to travelblogs.com where Sloan and Amy share thoughts on round-the-world travels they blogged about for a year at reasontowander.com.

It doesn't take long to get the lay of the land. In a few keystrokes, a reader can find advice on the best barbecue in Birmingham, Ala., or thoughts of a longtime wanderer about settling down on the Kansas prairie. You can get travel tips at traditional media blogs, or the latest on Paris and Perez Hilton at Sundance, for example, at jaunted.com.

Much like terrestrial travel, where you end up depends on what you hope to find.

For six years, I have been an occasional travel blog reader and a blogger on boston.com. As a reader, I look for the random and reflective, preferring an unexpected anecdote to another take on the latest trend. As a blogger, I post about incidents or observations that are often removed from the spotlight, yet connected to broader contexts. What of memories from African afternoons and Irish rock 'n' roll, for example? I hope the answer gives meaningful pause in a fast foray through the Web.

Joanna Kakissis, a journalist and blogger at worldhum .com, told me in a recent e-mail that she aims to stimulate two-way exchange.

"I try to find a way to reach out to the reader, either through a question or by stoking a debate," she wrote. "I want people to read and respond to my post."

That digital dialogue is now part of the mix at Globe-trotting, boston.com's catch-all travel blog. Readers can share their comments about several daily posts from more than a dozen writers on everything from book reviews to Logan Airport news, from trips with the kids to traveler reflections from Los Angeles, London, and more.

A few more to consider: National Geographic Traveler's Intelligent Travel blog has broad boundaries. The Washington Post's Travel Log also aims far and wide, while the Chicago Tribune's Midwest Getaways blog has a regional reach. USA Today's Today in the Sky blog tracks airline industry trends and breaking news. Crankyflier.com, the work of a self-proclaimed "airplane dork," adds insight to everything from the emergency landing of a 777 at Heathrow to US Airways' on-time performance.

Regardless of range, the best blogs quickly take you in and out of a topic or place. Audio and video can help. During one visit to World Hum, a post included a video clip of Claude Lelouch's 1976 short film "C'etait un Rendezvous." The footage of a car speeding through the streets of Paris at dawn had been resurrected in a video for "Open Your Eyes" by Snow Patrol - another world completely.

For sites like World Hum, a long-running independent operation bought last year by the Travel Channel, the blog is just one part of the mix. It serves as a daily update section of an online travel magazine that includes original stories, timely Q&As, book reviews, and more.

For other sites, the blog itself is the destination, and many inspire by their breadth. Independent travelers have for years been using blogs as a public version of the family vacation slideshow, in real time, on location.

Two men are posting their adventures during a round-the-world odyssey at Long Jaunt, a blog currently at boston.com/travel that is heavy with colorful photo galleries and cultural encounters. The ladies from lostgirlsworld.blogspot.com, "three twentysomething New Yorkers," are home again after a year on the road. But continued posts suggest they earned admirers online besides the ones they met in faraway lands. And they hope to spread the love. One recent post explained the basics of RSS feeds, and another offered a 10-step guide to setting up a blog.

A particularly profound example of where it all can lead is found at notesfromtheroad.com. The site is the work of Erik Gauger. It began nearly a decade ago as a place for him to entertain friends about his travels. In that it is Gauger's private posts about his travels it is a travel blog. But it has become much more: a broad library of his quickly but carefully crafted stories and compelling photos of people and places, from Panama's Kuna Yala territory to Texas Hill Country to the Oregon coast. In one series of dispatches, "Rise Up Sweet Island," Gauger chronicles the struggle between preservationists and developers on an island in the Bahamas.

Gauger wrote in an e-mail that he means for all of his entries to represent "the other Web." For a reader, it is rich reward to arrive at this unexpected frontier of the travel blogosphere.

Other examples of individual work can be found through travelblogs.com, which highlights independent blogs, including one featuring thoughts from a student studying in Mongolia, and another the musings of an American living in Benin. Clicking among dozens of such personal sites can of course be hit or miss. Dead end? There is always the "back" button. Or even logging back into the real world.

Tom Haines can be reached at thaines@globe.com.

Friday, February 15, 2008

So many sites. So little time.

Avalon Report press/news

Monitoring the ‘Reviewsphere’ is overwhelming: focus on key sites is the solution.

A recent survey conducted by Avalon Report (www.avalonreport.com) of 225 three and four diamond hotels showed over 90% of hoteliers think it is important to monitor reviews online, yet the majority of hotels monitor comments less than once every two weeks. Since 87% monitor reviews manually by surfing site to site, time impoverishment seems to play a major role in this lack of research. Many hotel professionals appear overwhelmed by the scope of the issue, commenting they are lost in the prioritization of endless sites and searches.

Gossip is not the challenge. Does Buzz = Buy?
There is no doubt that Web 2.0 has entered into the hotel landscape like a tidal wave of whispers. Hoteliers worry about traveler comments and web photos with unmatched paranoia. The level of anxiety differs from hotel to hotel and brand to brand, but the conclusions are frequently the same: word of mouth may soon trounce marketing dollars in the sales cycle and tuning into the reviewsphere is essential.

It is true that social networking sites as a whole provide endless places to post commentary regarding travel. Essential to an hotelier is whether all the gossip is translated into purchasing behavior. Recent studies indicate up to 88% of Trip Advisor visitors are influenced by content they read. The numbers for Facebook and MySpace are not so impressive.

The uniqueness of Trip Advisor is the relationship the site has forged with the public. It is a trusted research source for travel buyers and is rapidly becoming an essential stop in trip planning. Among networking sites, Trip Advisor holds a coveted place because it has successfully penetrated the buying cycle for consumers. In this sense, it differs from mega-networking sites such as MySpace.com and Facebook.com, sites whose goal is to connect its users. MySpace and Facebook are bridges to other travel sites, sites where purchasing decisions are made.

A 2007 study by ComScore focused on Google searches indicated consumers visit a travel site with surprising frequency before making a purchase on the same site, an average of 2.5 times over 29 days. In fact, the average consumer does 12 searches and visits numerous sites in comparing pricing, destination and other factors. Also true: travel is considered one of the most competitive sectors on the web in terms of comparison shopping. With customers visiting multiple times and taking 29 days on average to make a purchase, reviews on major sites such as Expedia, Priceline, Trip Advisor, Travelocity and Orbitz may be seen multiple times by a visitor in the buying cycle.

This argues for dynamic content, requiring frequent monitoring and encouragement. In this process, one cannot focus on Trip Advisor alone. Added to Trip Advisor should be the monitoring of key revenue generating sites. Revenue dollars produced by these sites are at risk from negative commentary. Each traveler review on a third party site rides the coat tails of the marketing dollars spent by that site, positively or negatively.

Buyers visiting third party sites are more likely to be shopping, not just networking. One might say these visitors become motivated by comments while visitors to social networking sites become interested. Thus, an unflattering comment on Expedia.com has the potential to stop a sale in a way that a negative photo or comment on Facebook may not. Monitoring a reputation online has value, but managing dynamic commentary within the buying cycle is essential to hotel performance.

Work smarter, not harder.
Often, discussion of the new dialogue between guests and hotels in the sphere of Web 2.0 is ruled by misunderstanding. Limiting the search is a start. Begin by knowing which third party sites generate revenue. For most hotels this involves Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, and Priceline. Add other sites that penetrate the sales cycle, such as TripAdvisor. Allow booking numbers and e-commerce production goals to determine your search emphasis because sites that produce revenue are critical to performance.

Automating your search may be the next step toward efficiency. Automated searches save hours of web surfing. Subscribe to a Web 2.0 service, making sure key sites are the focus and that all your results are viewed through a competitive lens for a reality check. In the final analysis, customers on key sites are comparing to other hotels, not just reading about your hotel.

Fight back.
Allowing negative comments to dominate any site in the reservations cycle is damaging. Fortunately, a hotel has weapons at its disposal to combat these perceptions.

1. Respond to comments where possible. On TripAdvisor.com, hotels are allowed to respond to customer comments. Hopefully, other sites will follow their lead in the future to create a consumer/supplier dialogue.
2. Use comments to improve service delivery. Obviously, the best way to combat bad comments is to prevent them from happening. This involves educating staff that every unhappy customer now has an Internet megaphone to use at your door. If negative comment cards are a concern, imagine posting all negative comments on the front desk—this is what the Internet allows. Open internal discussion of concerns is essential to prevention.
3. Encourage guest posting on sites. Although counter intuitive, encouraging participation liberates the majority of guests who have positive experiences to post on sites. Guests who book on third party sites may post on those sites. Other guests may be encouraged to post on critical open networking sites like TripAdvisor.com. Time after time, hotels that encourage posting find the positive outweighs the negative.
4. Do not allow stagnant content. Failing to respond to concerns on a site, where that is allowed, puts the hotel in a negative light. Having old content on a site, whether it is photography of a dated lobby, or a customer comment from 1 year ago as the most recent rating, makes a hotel look far less than dynamic. Updating photography, encouraging comments, and supporting traveler photos will make the hotel look “fresh” and active.

Being paranoid about customer “buzz” in the reviewsphere is pointless, like chasing clouds rather than following a clear path. Focusing on revenue generating and sales cycle sites is the key to sanity. Essentially, it is the difference between trying to listen to all the conversations in a crowded restaurant and talking to the person at your table.
Bottom line is- monitor where it matters.

Subscribe to the leading Web 2.0 solution- The Avalon BUZZ Report.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Sales Success And The “Art Of The Question” --- Eight Key Rules

By Dr. Rick Johnson
Saturday, 9th February 2008


Any successful sales strategy starts with the ability to understand the “Art of the Question”. It is imperative that you understand the customer’s needs and find their pain. That not only means asking lots of questions but it means asking the right kind of questions and then listening very carefully. If you become skilled at the “Art of Questioning”, you will be amazed at the information you can uncover.

Key Rules for the “Art of the Question”

Rule #1. Gain information. Don't assume anything when you are building relationship equity with a customer. Ask question after question until you completely understand your customer. The real value is not in the answer but in the ability to ask the right questions.

Rule #2. Check your relationship status and customer interest. Ask questions that uncover the customer’s attention level. Determine if they understand your value propositions. For example, ask whether they agree that your business relationship can help them increase profitability.

Rule #3. Determine buyer makeup. Ask questions to find out where the buyer is "coming from," if he is experienced, knows exactly what his needs are and understands how your products can be beneficial.

Rule #4. Encourage interaction so you can listen more. When you ask questions, you encourage the buyer to talk. This makes the buyer like you better-and helps you learn more about them personally and about their business. It's especially helpful to get the buyer to talk when you realize you have said something they didn't agree with or understand.

Rule #5. Share information. Sometimes you may want to provide information that will help your customer understand your products, your company and the value you provide. For example, you could ask, "Did you know that our product line is rated number one by Purchasing Magazine?”

Rule #6. Ask what they think. Questions that ask for someone's opinion not only provide knowledge, but also indicate that you are interested in what that person has to say. For example, ask, "If you could make a preseason buy with X terms, how much impact would that have on your growth and net profit.

Rule #7. Staying Focused. Key questions asked when the conversation seems to wander can get you back on track toward meeting your goals. Asking personal questions about a prospect to find a starting point is fine, but eventually you need to discuss the real reasons for meeting. Asking questions like "Can we get back to that issue you mentioned regarding your service problems? This will refocus attention on the important issues.

Rule #8. It’s not about you. Simply put, questions that make the customer feel important go a long way to strengthening your relationship. If the customer has mentioned any type of difficulty such as shortages, personnel issues or product quality issues from other suppliers don’t start puking all over them with a sales pitch. Ask them if they are having a rough day, a rough week. Ask if there is anything you can do to help. I once asked a customer what it would take to do business with him and he told me I needed to give him the product free. That led to further discussion and a consignment program that turned him into our largest account.

Questions can be Powerful

Asking the right question at the right time can be very powerful. Timing of questions and the types of questions are directly proportional to your relationship with the customer. Initial questions should all focus on developing your relationship equity with the customer. One of my very first mentors once said to me;

“Rick, if you call on a customer and talk for forty-five minutes telling him all about your products, your company and preach about features and benefits and he talks for fifteen minutes, when you leave he probably isn’t going to think you are a very good sales person no matter how good your presentation was. On the other hand, if you talk to him for fifteen minutes asking the right questions about his problems, his company, his goals and even his personal beliefs and family and you let him talk for forty-five minute, chances are he is going to think you are one of the best salesmen that ever called on him. How can he not think that when you just spent forty-five minutes listening to him tell you about his issues, his challenges, his problems, his company and even his family?”


Choose Your Questions Wisely

Do you remember some of your basic sales training when it comes to the types of questions to ask? As you recall, there are two basic types of questions. They are closed end questions and open end questions. The individual situation and type of information you are trying to get often dictates which type of question to use. However, during the initial relationship process, open ended questions should dominate.

Closed Ended Questions

Closed ended are restrictive questions that can be answered very quickly with a simple yes or no or a very limited response. This type of question is useful for obtaining a specific bit of information, data or validation. They are often used in the closing process as well. Examples include questions like:

Do you want me to order six or eight widgets for delivery next Tuesday?

Do you prefer our next appointment to be on Monday or Thursday?

Open Ended Questions

Open-ended questions do not lead the customer and they do not require a simple answer. Open ended questions seek to gain a better understanding of the customer by getting them to reveal much more about their objectives, needs, current situation and personality profile. Examples include questions like:

Can you explain to me exactly how your business generates new accounts?

How do you determine which business segments are going to get priority on resource allocations?

Can you tell me about the last time you missed productivity targets and how you got things back on track

It’s a Cake Walk

These are simple rules about a simple concept and yet it is amazing how many sales people, even experienced sales people forget to apply them. Sales is not easy especially when the economy is struggling. So ….. print these eight simple rules out and have your sales force keep them close at hand. Maybe just this little reminder may make a difference during these tough times when they are out trying to increase sales and gain market share.

Check out Rick’s new CD series and workbook “Unlocking the Secrets to Amazing Sales” @ http://www.ceostrategist.com/resources-store/unlocking-the-secrets-to-amazing-sales-incredible-profits.html It is a must addition for your sales training initiatives. Order today and get a bonus copy of Rick’s book “Turning Lone Wolves into Lead Wolves ----56 ideas to maximize sales.

www.ceostrategist.com – Sign up to receive “The Howl” a free monthly newsletter that addresses real world industry issues and receive complimentary copies of the “Lead Wolf Interview Guide & “Sales Training 101”. Rick Johnson, expert speaker, wholesale distribution’s “Leadership Strategist”, founder of CEO Strategist, LLC a firm that has helped hundreds of clients create and maintain competitive advantage. Need a speaker for your next event, E-mail rick@ceostrategist.com . Don’t forget to check out the Lead Wolf Series that can help you put more profit into your business.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Five Predictions About The Future of The Long Tail in Travel - By Bob Offutt, Senior Technology Analyst, PhoCusWright Inc

The Long Tail is a positive force, holding great promise for travel, tourism and hospitality. Yet, it also has the potential to become a major market disruptor in travel distribution.

There are already warning signs that the democratization of travel content is enabling new competitors and value equations at the expense of the Head, the traditional air/car/hotel/cruise channel. With air travel becoming a commodity, metasearch enabling airlines to compete effectively with travel agencies (both brick-and-mortar and online), and the airlines squeezing the distribution channel financially (e.g., with full content deals, surcharge threats, elimination of commissions), the old value equation is at risk. It is time for something new.

Philip Wolf, president and CEO of PhoCusWright, in his article 'The Long Tail and Travel', outlined the following five tenets for realizing the power of the Internet in travel distribution:

• The little guy's (product, channel, site, business) influence is significant

• The sum of the niches is embraced

• The 80/20 rule is debunked ('law of the vital few')

• The size of your reputation matters more than the size of your marketing budget

• Distressed, 'out of print' or discontinued product now has value

Now, PhoCusWright offers five predictions about the future of the Long Tail in the travel distribution industry:

1) The Long Tail era will drive a new economy.

GLOBAL CONTENT WILL BE EASY TO PUT INTO THE SUPPLY CHAIN.
Historically, the travel distribution channel was the domain of large suppliers. Reservations systems were complex and unwieldy, requiring significant investments in hardware, software and connectivity. It took days or weeks of training to learn to use the green screen suppliers employed 15 years ago to place their information in a GDS. Today, making content available globally is accomplished with a Web site and a simple editor. Large airlines still use intermediaries (the OAG and Airline Tariff Publishing Company) to distribute their fares and rules, but the smaller ones, who rely heavily on the Web for distribution, use their own Web sites and metasearch to attract customers. It is the large airlines' desire to retain complexity in their pricing, sustaining the complicated and expensive process that they continue to use.

PRACTICAL, LOW COST RESERVATION/CONFIRMATION SYSTEMS WILL EXPAND BOOKABLE CONTENT.
There are low cost and shareware packages that provide the capability for a small travel supplier to accept and confirm reservations online. With the low cost of hardware, it only takes a small investment to put a simple reservation system online. We are seeing a proliferation of these systems from parking reservations to dining, bed and breakfast (B&B) reservations, preshipped luggage, weather, traffic, flight information and event tickets.

MECHANISMS WILL BE IN PLACE FOR THE COLLECTION AND DISBURSEMENT OF FUNDS.
In the past, funds collection and credit card clearance were huge barriers for commerce sites, but with players like Paypal and Google Checkout, this is much less an issue.

MEDIA AND "NEW" COMMERCE SITES THAT WILL BOTH HAVE A PLACE IN THE LONG TAIL WORLD.
The travel distribution industry has struggled for years trying to figure out how to monetize non-commerce activity. For commerce, it had always been the booking fee, the incentive, the commission, the override and more recently, the service fee. Other information like flight arrival and departure details or weather at a destination was thrown in for free as a cost of doing business. Now with the advent of media sites that are supported via some form of advertising model, sites with content such as weather, traffic, flight statistics and even seat configurations can be economically sustained. While quality individual sites are in place, the value is in the aggregation.

THE LONG TAIL WILL FOLLOW INTERNET PENETRATION.
The Internet is a global phenomena. Yes, but... the Long Tail can only be sustained where the infrastructure exists to support it. This is different for different types of content. For example, for an individual to take advantage of the Long Tail in the music distribution industry, all that is required is an Internet capable MP3 player and access to a single music aggregation site. A person in India can easily download music from iTunes to his MP3 player. However, if the same person wants to plan a trip in India and to make reservations, each supplier (or intermediary), for example, requires reservations software, Internet presence, the ability to collect payments charged against a credit card. In addition, the traveler needs facilities to print an itinerary. In many developing countries, telecommunications and facilities infrastructure is not capable of supporting this. Thus, the provisioning of the Long Tail in travel will follow the development of the necessary supporting infrastructure.

2) The Long Tail facilitators - content provisioners, software suppliers and ASPs - are in pivotal positions.

The commercialization of the Long Tail presents major opportunities for facilitators. While there are existing software packages, as needs mature, there will be opportunities for more complex capability and custom development.

Many businesses will not want to compete directly on the Internet and instead would prefer to have an intermediary to handle the details. Viator, which has content from over 500 destinations worldwide, has been extremely successful at this, while Gullivers Travel Associates works with over 35,000 ground product suppliers globally. On the reverse side, points of sale may not want to deal with thousands of suppliers and would prefer to deal with an aggregator. Smaller points of sale may not want the overhead of their own technology and would prefer to outsource this to a third party. This strategy appears to be working quite well in the dynamic packaging area. There is also a significant opportunity to target specialty markets such as road trips, the vacation - drive market, still the largest single leisure segment in the U.S.

Enabling, supporting and developing the travel Long Tail represents a great opportunity for a new generation of aggregators, software developers and application service providers.

3) Technology and standards will evolve.

The glue that held the traditional travel distribution industry together was standard data formats for intercommunication. To enable the new era of Internet-based distribution, these were updated in XML (extensible markup language) by the Open Travel Alliance. Unfortunately, the bulk of the activity was focused on the Air/Car/Hotel/Cruise industry and the majority of the developed standards (with a few exceptions) focused on sustaining the Head, not enabling the Long Tail. Even the Head suffered because these standards were complex, often required significant technology investment to implement and were often employed inconsistently. This would suggest there is little hope for developing true standards in 'the Tail.' Yet key Long Tail players such as Rearden Commerce, are already forging ahead, establishing defacto standards for suppliers. Aggregators such as Viator, Gullivers Travel Associates (now owned by TravelPort) and Rearden mask the complexity and provide an easy-to-use interface to points of sale. As the Long Tail expands, standards will develop, giving it even more momentum. This is critical if the Long Tail benefits are to be fully realized.

4) The democratization of supply will open up new marketing and packaging opportunities.

The lack of data and interconnect standards provides an opportunity for a new breed of market dominators. GDSs have dominated the travel distribution marketplace for the past 25 years. Their major airline-sponsored software and hardware systems have virtually controlled the distribution channel. Now with economic pressures from airlines, legacy technology and loss of air bookings to supplier-direct channels, the GDSs are struggling to sustain their economic position with the Head content. In the meantime, online travel agencies and travel management companies (TMCs) are developing or implementing new platforms that aggregate content from multiple sources, only one of which is the GDS. These companies have the potential to be the new intermediaries, drawing on a rich supply of Long Tail content, either directly or through aggregators such as Viator, Gullivers and Rearden.

This is the next wave of travel distribution but not the last. As Long Tail sales grow, then it will move to the Head and a new Long Tail will emerge.

5) The success of the Long Tail in travel is directly proportional to the quality of search - making metasearch, geographically-oriented search and vertical search key enablers.

To utilize content in the Long Tail, you need to be able to get to it. Search engines are the 'railroads' of Long Tail content. You have to be able to find it. Today's search engines generally provide too much detail to be useful. Searching for 'B&B in Napa Valley' yields 270,000 results in Google, while Yahoo! does a little better with only 94,000. There are a few embryonic efforts to provide vertical search, but these are relatively shallow and only seem to hit major destinations. Going forward, effective search will be the greatest opportunity for/impediment to the success of the Long Tail in travel.

Come join us at The PhoCusWright Conference in Orlando (November 12-15) where we will explore search and many other topics that are relevant to the movers and shakers of the Long Tail era.

Copyright 2007 PhoCusWright Inc., Sherman, CT USA +1 860 350-4084
All rights reserved.



This article comes from Hotel News Resource
http://www.hotelnewsresource.com

The URL for this story is:
http://www.hotelnewsresource.com/article28826.html

Five Predictions About The Future of The Long Tail in Travel - By Bob Offutt, Senior Technology Analyst, PhoCusWright Inc

The Long Tail is a positive force, holding great promise for travel, tourism and hospitality. Yet, it also has the potential to become a major market disruptor in travel distribution.

There are already warning signs that the democratization of travel content is enabling new competitors and value equations at the expense of the Head, the traditional air/car/hotel/cruise channel. With air travel becoming a commodity, metasearch enabling airlines to compete effectively with travel agencies (both brick-and-mortar and online), and the airlines squeezing the distribution channel financially (e.g., with full content deals, surcharge threats, elimination of commissions), the old value equation is at risk. It is time for something new.

Philip Wolf, president and CEO of PhoCusWright, in his article 'The Long Tail and Travel', outlined the following five tenets for realizing the power of the Internet in travel distribution:

• The little guy's (product, channel, site, business) influence is significant

• The sum of the niches is embraced

• The 80/20 rule is debunked ('law of the vital few')

• The size of your reputation matters more than the size of your marketing budget

• Distressed, 'out of print' or discontinued product now has value

Now, PhoCusWright offers five predictions about the future of the Long Tail in the travel distribution industry:

1) The Long Tail era will drive a new economy.

GLOBAL CONTENT WILL BE EASY TO PUT INTO THE SUPPLY CHAIN.
Historically, the travel distribution channel was the domain of large suppliers. Reservations systems were complex and unwieldy, requiring significant investments in hardware, software and connectivity. It took days or weeks of training to learn to use the green screen suppliers employed 15 years ago to place their information in a GDS. Today, making content available globally is accomplished with a Web site and a simple editor. Large airlines still use intermediaries (the OAG and Airline Tariff Publishing Company) to distribute their fares and rules, but the smaller ones, who rely heavily on the Web for distribution, use their own Web sites and metasearch to attract customers. It is the large airlines' desire to retain complexity in their pricing, sustaining the complicated and expensive process that they continue to use.

PRACTICAL, LOW COST RESERVATION/CONFIRMATION SYSTEMS WILL EXPAND BOOKABLE CONTENT.
There are low cost and shareware packages that provide the capability for a small travel supplier to accept and confirm reservations online. With the low cost of hardware, it only takes a small investment to put a simple reservation system online. We are seeing a proliferation of these systems from parking reservations to dining, bed and breakfast (B&B) reservations, preshipped luggage, weather, traffic, flight information and event tickets.

MECHANISMS WILL BE IN PLACE FOR THE COLLECTION AND DISBURSEMENT OF FUNDS.
In the past, funds collection and credit card clearance were huge barriers for commerce sites, but with players like Paypal and Google Checkout, this is much less an issue.

MEDIA AND "NEW" COMMERCE SITES THAT WILL BOTH HAVE A PLACE IN THE LONG TAIL WORLD.
The travel distribution industry has struggled for years trying to figure out how to monetize non-commerce activity. For commerce, it had always been the booking fee, the incentive, the commission, the override and more recently, the service fee. Other information like flight arrival and departure details or weather at a destination was thrown in for free as a cost of doing business. Now with the advent of media sites that are supported via some form of advertising model, sites with content such as weather, traffic, flight statistics and even seat configurations can be economically sustained. While quality individual sites are in place, the value is in the aggregation.

THE LONG TAIL WILL FOLLOW INTERNET PENETRATION.
The Internet is a global phenomena. Yes, but... the Long Tail can only be sustained where the infrastructure exists to support it. This is different for different types of content. For example, for an individual to take advantage of the Long Tail in the music distribution industry, all that is required is an Internet capable MP3 player and access to a single music aggregation site. A person in India can easily download music from iTunes to his MP3 player. However, if the same person wants to plan a trip in India and to make reservations, each supplier (or intermediary), for example, requires reservations software, Internet presence, the ability to collect payments charged against a credit card. In addition, the traveler needs facilities to print an itinerary. In many developing countries, telecommunications and facilities infrastructure is not capable of supporting this. Thus, the provisioning of the Long Tail in travel will follow the development of the necessary supporting infrastructure.

2) The Long Tail facilitators - content provisioners, software suppliers and ASPs - are in pivotal positions.

The commercialization of the Long Tail presents major opportunities for facilitators. While there are existing software packages, as needs mature, there will be opportunities for more complex capability and custom development.

Many businesses will not want to compete directly on the Internet and instead would prefer to have an intermediary to handle the details. Viator, which has content from over 500 destinations worldwide, has been extremely successful at this, while Gullivers Travel Associates works with over 35,000 ground product suppliers globally. On the reverse side, points of sale may not want to deal with thousands of suppliers and would prefer to deal with an aggregator. Smaller points of sale may not want the overhead of their own technology and would prefer to outsource this to a third party. This strategy appears to be working quite well in the dynamic packaging area. There is also a significant opportunity to target specialty markets such as road trips, the vacation - drive market, still the largest single leisure segment in the U.S.

Enabling, supporting and developing the travel Long Tail represents a great opportunity for a new generation of aggregators, software developers and application service providers.

3) Technology and standards will evolve.

The glue that held the traditional travel distribution industry together was standard data formats for intercommunication. To enable the new era of Internet-based distribution, these were updated in XML (extensible markup language) by the Open Travel Alliance. Unfortunately, the bulk of the activity was focused on the Air/Car/Hotel/Cruise industry and the majority of the developed standards (with a few exceptions) focused on sustaining the Head, not enabling the Long Tail. Even the Head suffered because these standards were complex, often required significant technology investment to implement and were often employed inconsistently. This would suggest there is little hope for developing true standards in 'the Tail.' Yet key Long Tail players such as Rearden Commerce, are already forging ahead, establishing defacto standards for suppliers. Aggregators such as Viator, Gullivers Travel Associates (now owned by TravelPort) and Rearden mask the complexity and provide an easy-to-use interface to points of sale. As the Long Tail expands, standards will develop, giving it even more momentum. This is critical if the Long Tail benefits are to be fully realized.

4) The democratization of supply will open up new marketing and packaging opportunities.

The lack of data and interconnect standards provides an opportunity for a new breed of market dominators. GDSs have dominated the travel distribution marketplace for the past 25 years. Their major airline-sponsored software and hardware systems have virtually controlled the distribution channel. Now with economic pressures from airlines, legacy technology and loss of air bookings to supplier-direct channels, the GDSs are struggling to sustain their economic position with the Head content. In the meantime, online travel agencies and travel management companies (TMCs) are developing or implementing new platforms that aggregate content from multiple sources, only one of which is the GDS. These companies have the potential to be the new intermediaries, drawing on a rich supply of Long Tail content, either directly or through aggregators such as Viator, Gullivers and Rearden.

This is the next wave of travel distribution but not the last. As Long Tail sales grow, then it will move to the Head and a new Long Tail will emerge.

5) The success of the Long Tail in travel is directly proportional to the quality of search - making metasearch, geographically-oriented search and vertical search key enablers.

To utilize content in the Long Tail, you need to be able to get to it. Search engines are the 'railroads' of Long Tail content. You have to be able to find it. Today's search engines generally provide too much detail to be useful. Searching for 'B&B in Napa Valley' yields 270,000 results in Google, while Yahoo! does a little better with only 94,000. There are a few embryonic efforts to provide vertical search, but these are relatively shallow and only seem to hit major destinations. Going forward, effective search will be the greatest opportunity for/impediment to the success of the Long Tail in travel.

Come join us at The PhoCusWright Conference in Orlando (November 12-15) where we will explore search and many other topics that are relevant to the movers and shakers of the Long Tail era.

Copyright 2007 PhoCusWright Inc., Sherman, CT USA +1 860 350-4084
All rights reserved.



This article comes from Hotel News Resource
http://www.hotelnewsresource.com

The URL for this story is:
http://www.hotelnewsresource.com/article28826.html