Following the lead of airlines irrationally pricing airline seats, hotels embraced variable pricing and its promise of liberal price increases during high demand periods. Hotel revenue management became a high stakes game to optimize revenues.

photo credit: JasonTromm

Hotel revenue managers welcomed their new computer overlords - and then quickly started overriding the revenue management system pricing recommendations

Encountering wild price fluctuations, consumers began playing their own games to save money booking hotels. The ability to find discounts from rates offered by hotel websites alters consumer buying behavior – just ask the online travel agency community.

So what happens as a result of this gamification of the hotel booking process? Much more is involved than simply pitting two sides against each other in a tug-o-war over the contents of a hotel guest’s wallet.

Hoteliers learned that variable pricing was a double-edged sword – similar tactics could be used by competitors to undercut pricing and steal market share. The game became more complex than originally imagined.

Similarly, consumers faced with a daunting assortment of distribution channels, business models and promotional pitches had difficulty finding a reliable method to score big hotel discounts. The complexity of their game increased as well.

How to Save Money Booking Hotels
The approach detailed below has been used successfully for several years. Simply put, it involves bidding using Priceline‘s “Name Your Own Price” service while using Expedia sister brands Hotels.com to calculate an inital bid and Hotwire.com to set the maximum bid.

It is a relatively easy game for travelers to play, with only basic arithmetic skills and a bit of organization required. The hotel savings don’t require booking months in advance, waiting until the day of arrival, or involve buying flash sale coupons and hoping for open availability when travel needs arise.

Tragically for the hoteliers, there is no accretive demand generation, just a potential share shift between candidate properties. These savings do not inspire discretionary trips or stay extensions to take advantage of a great hotel deal. Rooms are booked into targeted destination neighborhoods only when a trip is required.

Plus, this game is not just for the leisure traveler – it also works well for the unmanaged business traveler. Worse yet for the hotelier, even formerly brand loyal guests will be tempted to become brand agnostic when consistently rewarded with discounts ranging from 33% to 67%.

I live a conflicted existence. My hotelier persona laments the slow hotel industry recovery following the 2008 global financial crisis and promotes the need for hotels to build differentiated brands and execute disciplined pricing strategies. However, I must sadly confess to my hotel industry friends that my personal consumer behavior is guilty of waging a deliberate assault on their average daily rates.

The rationalization for such treasonous behavior toward my hotel brethren is simple. I am playing a consumer game with a clear objective – pay the lowest possible amount for a good hotel in a good location. Publicly available tools are used in a manner that is consistent with their design and full endorsement of the intermediary website. The hoteliers deliberately make these rates available for sale, so they should have no gripe with me – The process does not violate any channel, access or opacity constraints.

Why Hotels Offer Irrationally Low Rates
Renting a hotel room is a perishable service whose value drops to zero once a particular night passes. Hotel cost structures tend toward fixed costs. Direct expenses related to renting an incremental hotel room are relatively low. Typical hotel variable costs, excluding overheads, range from $20.00 to $40.00 per hotel room night.

Ridiculously low hotel rates normally occur when:

• Senior management or ownership issue directives to price distressed inventory at arbitrary levels
• Revenue Managers fail to analyze competitive pricing initiatives through merchant, retail and opaque channels
• Profit projections only evaluate marginal costs and do not consider contribution to fixed overheads
• Hotels desperate to put heads in beds neglect the impact of guests that may negatively impact core market segments
• Assumptions that ancillary revenue capture will be comparable to other market segments
• The assumption guests staying at deeply discounted rates may be easily converted to regular customers at normal rate levels

As a result, there is a temptation to open distressed inventory distribution channels under the assumption one incremental dollar is better than nothing. Unfortunately, this behavior can cause substantial collateral damage – and not just to that hotel’s bottom line.

Lowering prices to attract customers from the competition may also attract guests from lower tier hotels that are not members of the hotel’s traditional competitive set. Impacted competitors may react and potentially start a race to the bottom to shift share. Price differentials get compressed between 4-star and 2-star hotels.

Comparing quality grade/price/review score differentials for New York City – Times Square hotels on Hotwire, one sees relatively normal splits six weeks before arrival:

• Stars – Rate/Review % Favorable
• 2-star – $159/80%
• 3-star – $223/65% (+$64)
• 4-star – $308/90% (+$85)
• 4.5-star – $359/95% (+$51)

However, this all changes with intense pricing compression one week prior to arrival during a high demand period:

• 2-star – $248/35%
• 3-star – $228/85% (-$20)
• 3.5-star – $236/65% (+$8)
• 4-star – $380/90% (+$144)
• 4.5-star – $282/95% (-$98)

One would expect the first set of rates to align well with guest budget and quality preference tiers – producing a logical shopping and purchase process (with perhaps some hesitation to book the 3-star property given its low 65% approval score.)

In the second example, the 2-star (apparently a low quality property) and 4-star hotel are clearly maximizing revenues during a high demand period and not focused on driving business from the opaque channel. The 3.5-star hotel appears to be drastically discounting, perhaps to counteract relatively low ratings. Based on this spread, it would be anticipated that the 3-star, and especially the 4.5-star hotel would capture the vast majority of bookings due to their steep discounting.

While radically low pricing signals profitability issues a hotel, they also represent buying opportunities for consumers.

How Priceline works – The Rules
Priceline patented its “reverse auction” model, so it is unique within the travel industry. “Name Your Own Price” hotel bookings require guests to blindly bid for a hotel by defining the dates of the stay, a desired neighborhood and quality (star) rating. Users must submit full credit card details before being able to bid. The name of the hotel is not revealed until after a bid is accepted.

Accepted bids are pre-paid, non-cancellable and non-refundable. Arrival and departure dates can not be changed.

If a bid is not accepted, one must wait 24 hours to rebid unless the travel dates, city, neighborhood, or hotel quality rating is changed.

After 24 hours have passed, the re-bid can duplicate a previously declined bid.

The downside of using Priceline is if bids are too low, they are a waste of time. If they are too high, they are a waste of money. The secret to avoiding the Priceline lose/lose scenario is to figure out how to make the lowest acceptable bid.

How Priceline Gets Worked – The Loophole
Since its inception in 1997, Priceline has had a loophole that can easily be exploited to avoid the 24-hour waiting period for rebidding.

The key is to enable rebids by adding additional neighborhoods to the search. The secret is that Priceline will allow users to add neighborhoods that do not have hotels with the desired quality level. If a shopper adds a neighborhood that only offer hotels with lower quality grades than the quality tier used in the bid, the rebid is enabled, but the universe of hotel candidates remains unchanged.

As if this basic loophole wasn’t enough, Priceline doesn’t simply flag previous zone searches, but allows users to get even more rebids by only tracking specific zone combinations.

Here is an example –

For clarity, let’s say New York City has only three zones:

Zone 1 – Times Square (has 5-star hotels participating)
Zone 2 – Upper East Side (no 5-star hotels participating)
Zone 3 – Upper West Side (no 5-star hotels participating)

Common sense would lead most to assume that if one wanted a 5-star hotel in Times Square, they would only make one bid, but using the rebid loophole, they get two “free” rebids – one extra for Zone 2 & Zone 3 respectively. Like this:

Bid 1 – Zone 1
Bid 2 – Zone 1 + Zone 2
Bid 3 – Zone 1 + Zone 2 + Zone 3

However, Priceline only considers exact zone combination matches when identifying duplicate bids. As a result Priceline provides an extra “bonus” rebid, allowing this series of bids:
Bid 1 – Zone 1
Bid 2 – Zone 1 + Zone 2
Bid 3 – Zone 1 + Zone 3
Bid 4 – Zone 1 + Zone 2 + Zone 3

With some cities offering up to 20 additional zones lacking 4-star hotels, the permutations and combinations enable a huge number of instant rebids.

The coding logic for Priceline to close these loopholes is easily implemented, but negatively impacts Priceline’s conversion rate – something consumers and Priceline shareholders do not want. Again, Priceline has been aware of this issue for 15 years, but hoteliers have reportedly not been outspoken in calling for its closure. The belief is that only a small minority of Priceline customers are aware of this capability, so exploitation of the loophole is limited.

The Process
While this is a multi-step process, the four steps are logical and not very complicated. The detailed steps are provided below, with a real-life example provided later.

Step 1: Find your bid floor and ceiling

1. Search Hotwire.com for the desired city, arrival/departure dates and party size. Check the ” Compare with Hotels.com” box before submitting the search – those results will be used in the bid floor calculation later.
2. Look at the Hotwire search results for the neighborhood(s) and quality rating (star-tier) you desire. The hotel rate will be used as your bid ceiling.
3. Now check the Hotels.com results. Filter the results by neighborhood and quality rating to identify the best available rate for a comparable hotel matching the desired neighborhood, hotel quality and stay dates. Multiply that rate by 30% (to reflect a 70% discount.) The result will be used as the bid floor. If the rate appears unreasonably low, try the calculation using 50%. Note that if your first bid is accepted, your floor may have been too high.

Step 2: Find the number of free re-bids.
NOTE: In the interest of simplicity, the method used to calculate rebids uses the first example used in the loophole explanation above. Any anal-retentive cheapskates (used here as a term of endearment) that feel true rebid process optimization should involve stair-stepping in one dollar increments, please feel free to knock yourself out and use the second method. Also, if you want to involve a spouse or partner with a separate email address and credit card number, you can go even further by doubling the number of bids. (In my opinion, this is unnecessary overkill.)

1. Search on Priceline.com’s Name Your Own Price Hotel product using the same city, dates and party size.
2. Look at the Priceline search results for the list of neighborhoods. This list will be used to determine the number of available rebids.
3. Check the first of the neighborhood selection boxes and note the neighborhood name if it only offers hotels in LOWER quality categories than the one desired.
4. Repeat this for each of the neighborhoods.
5. When finished with the list, count the number of neighborhoods that only offer lower quality hotels. This total, plus any number of target neighborhoods that include hotels of the quality desired, will be your total number of available bids. Don’t worry if you do not want to stay in some of these other zones. Since they do not have hotel inventory in the requested quality category, structurally, no hotel can be selected from that neighborhood.

Step 3: Calculate price increase to use after receiving failed bids.

1. Carefully prioritize a list of your target neighborhood(s), followed by the other zones with lower rated hotels. This will be the bid sequence that will be followed.
2. If you have more than one acceptable target neighborhood, check to see which are priced lower in Hotwire and sort them into ascending order.
3. Put the bid floor amount next to the first target neighborhood.
4. Add Hotwire at the end of the list and enter the bid ceiling amount next to it.
5. Subtract the bid floor amount from the bid ceiling amount.
6. Divide that result by the total number of entries in the neighborhood bid sequence.
7. The resulting figure will be the amount to be added to the price following every failed bid.
8. On the bid sequence list, fill in the amounts to be used for each individual bid.

Step 4: Start bidding.

1. For the first hotel on the list (your primary target) enter the bid floor as the Priceline bid, enter your initials & credit card security code when prompted and submit the bid.
2. If Priceline responds to a bid by stating there is a limited chance of success or proposing a higher bid, ignore it. Stick to your process.
3. If the bid is rejected, move to the second neighborhood on the list, check the corresponding neighborhood box in Priceline and change the bid to the rate associated with that neighborhood on your list.
4. Keep repeating steps 1-3 with the next neighborhood on the bid sequence list until a bid is accepted.
5. If no Priceline bid is accepted, book on Hotwire using the ceiling bid amount.

The Results
The number of deals found using this method are impressive. Over the last six months, here are some examples of the savings achieved:

• 67% off a 4-star hotel at Dallas – DFW Airport at $55 per night (Friday)
• 57% off a 3.5-star hotel in Downtown Denver – Downtown at $67 per night (Thursday)
• 48% off a 4-star hotel in New York – Times Square at $111 per night (Monday)
• 44% off a 4-star hotel in Minneapolis – Downtown at $49 per night (Friday)
• 42% off a 4-star hotel in Minneapolis – University at $94 per night (Saturday)
• 38% of a 4-star hotel in Los Angeles – LAX at $63 per night (Saturday)

Better yet, these bookings all reflected considerable savings over Hotwire, tallying 25%, 19%, 16%, 11% & 18% discounts respectively.

In deference to the dignity of the hotel groups involved, I have withheld the names of the specific properties associated with each deal listed above. Over the past 18 months, I have booked properties through Priceline affiliated with all major hotel groups including Hilton, Hyatt, InterContinental, Marriott, Radisson, Starwood and Wyndham, plus independent properties with similar results using this process.

Caveats
This approach does not work everywhere – it is predominantly North American focused where hotels are more inclined to offer inventory at opaque pricing tiers for groups like Priceline and Hotwire. It also works better in major markets that have many neighborhoods. As the opaque model continues to grow in popularity throughout the world, more neighborhoods will be added in destinations, introducing the opportunity for the recursive rebidding required for this approach to be successful.

As Priceline only books rooms with a maximum double occupancy using the “Name Your Own Price” option, it is not a good solution for families or friends interested in booking triple or quad occupancy for a single room.

Try to do all your analysis and bidding within an hour. It is highly unlikely that Priceline will add a new hotel in an undesirable “rebid” neighborhood during your bidding session, but that risk increases if you wait until the next day to bid after doing the initial research. Additionally hotel pricing can change considerably over a matter of hours, which can result in bids failing unnecessarily or paying more than required.

Remember not to bid on a neighborhood that has hotels in equal or higher star categories than the one being bid. Depending on the level of the bid, Priceline will occasionally pull a hotel from a higher quality tier. An accepted bid for a nicer than expected hotel in an undesirable location is still a problem.

Since Priceline hotel bookings are non-refundable, non-transferable and non-changeable, carelessness can get expensive. When it comes to Priceline bidding mistakes, the old saying applies – “You made your bed, now lie in it.”

If you need to also rent a car or take a flight, it may be more beneficial to book a package – some airlines and most car rental companies move distressed inventory through the package channel to shield their retail pricing structures behind a package rate that keeps the underlying component prices opaque. Booking the hotel separately from the car rental may prevent access to some deep package discounts.

Car rentals may be booked using Priceline’s Name Your Own Price service, but there are no rebidding loopholes similar to the one for hotels.

A Recent Practical Example
Warning – Hotel Owners already suffering from falling rate induced vertigo, irritable refinancing syndrome, OTA dependency or distribution channel dysfunction should not read any further. You have been warned.

Target Hotel Stay -
Location/Neighborhood: Dallas, Texas – DFW Airport North
Hotel Quality: 4-stars
Arrival: Friday, May 19, 2012
Length of Stay: 1 Night

Bid Ceiling Calculation -
Hotwire Base Rate: $75.00 | $94.16 including taxes & fees for 4-star hotel Dallas – DFW North and Grapevine

Bid Floor Calculation -
Hotels.com Lowest DFW 4-star Best Available Rate: $89.00 (Westin Dallas Fort Worth Airport)
Bid Floor: $45.00 (rounding 50% off Westin best available rate)
NOTE: As the Westin rate was already at least $40 lower than the next closest four-star hotel in the area, it was highly unlikely the hotel would offer a rate 70% off an already discounted price. The floor bid was calculated by taking 50% off the discounted $89.00 rate.

Bid Count / Bid Strategy -
Area | Highest Star Rating
1. DFW Airport North | 4 (Target)
X. Downtown Dallas | 4
X. Frisco – Plano North | 4
X. Galleria – Dallas North | 4
X. Irving – Las Colinas | 4
X. Knox – Northpark | 4
X. Market Center – DAL Love Field | 4
X. Park Central | 4
X. Richardson | 4
2. Arlington – Grand Prairie | 3.5
3. Dallas Northwest | 3.5
4. Allen – McKinney | 3
5. Arlington South | 3
6. DFW Airport South | 3
7. East Dallas – Mesquite | 3
8. Garland North | 3
9. Hurst – Euless – Bedford | 3
10. Lewisville | 3
11. Plano East | 3
12. Plano West | 3
13. Carrollton – Farmers Branch | 2.5
14. Dallas West – Pinnacle Park | 2.5
15. Garland | 2.5

Qualifying Neighborhoods/Bids: 15
Difference Between Bid Ceiling & Bid Floor: $30.00 ($75.00 – $45.00)
Bid Steps: $2.00 ($30.00 / 15 Bids)

Bid Execution -

1. $45.00 (DFW Airport North) Unsuccessful
2. $47.00 (+ Arlington – Grand Prairie) Unsuccessful
3. $49.00 (+ Dallas Northwest) Unsuccessful
4. $51.00 (+ Allen – McKinney) Unsuccessful
5. $53.00 (+ Arlington South) Unsuccessful
6. $55.00 (+ DFW Airport South) Successful
7. $57.00 (+ East Dallas – Mesquite)
8. $59.00 (+ Garland North)
9. $61.00 (+ Hurst – Euless – Bedford)
10. $63.00 (+ Lewisville)
11. $65.00 (+ Plano East)
12. $67.00 (+ Plano West)
13. $69.00 (+ Carrollton – Farmers Branch)
14. $71.00 (+ Dallas West – Pinnacle Park)
15. $73.00 (+ Garland)
16. $75.00 Hotwire – Ceiling

Winning Bid: $55.00 ($70.16 including taxes & fees.) 67% off Hotel Brand.com website best available rate of $169.00 ($212.33 inclusive) and 25% below Hotwire 4-star Dallas – DFW North and Grapevine $75.00 rate ($94.16 inclusive.)

The Unintentional Gamification of Hotel Booking
Unfortunately, the hoteliers have turned the hotel booking process into a game, so I play that game to the best of my ability. On the rare occasion Priceline does not provide a lower rate, I always have the Hotwire ceiling rate to fall back on and those savings normally run in the 25 to 50% range.

Hotwire, may be a good alternative for those unwilling to do a bit of extra work for a deeper discount, but their reputation has slid somewhat since Hotwire sabotaged their hotel rating scale to bump some half-star properties into higher rating categories.

To sprinkle some additional salt into the wounds of the hoteliers, suffice it to say that in every case, I would have been happy to pay the Hotwire rate. In the Dallas example, I would have been happy paying the $89 at the Westin – that’s a pretty good deal. However, as I am now playing a game, I don’t want to do well, I want to win.

These excessive discounts do little to earn loyalty or provide any motivation to return to the hotel when paying full price – unless perhaps if someone else is paying for the return trip. More than doubling the price for a product substantially changes the value equation – and the full retail value equation suffers irreparable damage when such deep discounts are experienced.

That is not to say that getting these low rates doesn’t inspire loyalty; it’s just that the loyalty is gained by the intermediary, not the hotel providing the accommodation. Priceline’s Name Your Own Price website, not the hotel website, now becomes the starting point when a return trip is planned for that city.

Consistent 33-67% savings provide sufficient incentive to replay the game and bid on a 4-star hotel in the same neighborhood on the next trip. There is always a good chance that one might return to the same hotel.

The reward to the consumer for playing is not just financial. Getting the lowest possible hotel rate also satisfies competitive instincts and provides an intellectual challenge. It’s mano a mano – guest versus the hotel revenue managers in that wallet tug-o-war.

Game playing travelers quickly learn that like a Cheetah, to win, one doesn’t need to run faster than all the antelopes, just the slowest member of the herd…

Is the time spent searching for benchmark rates and calculating bid differentials worth the benefit? That’s exactly the point. In the Dallas example, the savings were $142 (inclusive) when compared to the hotel’s BAR rates, but a better measure is that the winning bid was $24 (inclusive) lower than the Hotwire rate and $32 (inclusive) lower than the Westin rate. For some, that might not be enough to justify the additional effort.

However, for the hotel booking game aficionado, the principal satisfaction is not the financial savings, but playing the game well and besting the opponent. Accomplishing a clearly defined goal and not succumbing to the temptation to compromise by paying more than required may be sufficient reward in itself. It’s not a financial equation, it’s an emotional one.

In summary, promoting “4-star Hotels at 2-star Prices” or “Save up to 60% by naming your own price” are not healthy messages for the hotel industry. A generation of guests, one that has grown up with extensive training in gaming related skills, are learning through positive reinforcement to not trust brand messaging and to relay on various intermediaries to provide deeply discounted, high value offers.

For the hotel industry, this problem is compounded by the oblivious management or lazy revenue managers whose under-performance reinforces that sentiment – They ultimately bear a majority of the blame for doing their hotels and the industry a disservice. That’s the hotelier side of my brain speaking.

Each time I book a laughably low hotel rate, the hotelier in me weeps a little bit. Then I quickly get over it as the consumer side of my brain basks in the glory of another relatively easy victory over the missing links of the hotel and revenue management professions.

I may be conflicted, but I am not stupid enough to pay more than required for a hotel room of the quality I desire in a neighborhood I prefer.

Earlier this year, Priceline killed off their long running ad campaign starring William Shatner.

R.I.P. The Negotiator… The Priceline rebidding loophole sustains your legacy.

Related posts:

1. Hotwire Expands Menu – Adds Bed Choice
2. Travel Industry Site Traffic Rebound – Not a Hotel Slam Dunk
3. Leading Hotels of the World – Marketing Conference Presentation

Travel Gamification – How to Save Money Booking Hotels

Over the years, Kevin May has been derided as a self-obsessed megalomaniac or foreboding overlord, but the King of Tnooz himself will tell you that these baseless charges are the work of trifling minions consumed with jealousy over his success, fame, and rugged good looks.

photo credit: HappyHotelier

Kevin May explains to conference attendees that the curse of his awesomeness is a lifelong burden that he alone must bear...

Exactly how did Kevin become so awesome? The details, like all aspects of his existence are swathed in secrecy, mystery, and legend.

After an exhaustive year-long effort, a team of two dozen researchers have managed to piece together a telling mosaic of the enigma that calls itself Kevin May. Their assessment? It was unanimous: Kevin May is the first Renaissance Man of the 3rd Millennium – the epitome of awesomely awesome awesomeness.

Full Disclosure: Following the conclusion of their engagement, the two dozen researchers participated in a group conversion to Kevism – and are now members of the religious cult headed by Kevin May. Unfortunately, none would break their silence regarding the reportedly rigorous three-day initiation ceremony…

Echoing the sentiment of the research team, a recent survey of senior travel industry executives revealed that the nearly unanimous choice topping their Bucket List was “Meeting Kevin May.”

Interestingly, even for those senior execs that had previously met Kevin, their #1 Bucket List item remained “Meeting Kevin May Again.”

What inspires such adulation?

Tnooz North American Editor Dennis Schaal, one of the few interviewees capable of expressing sentiment beyond “he’s awesome,” remarked “Well, for starters, he pays my salary…”

A Tnooz Node who pleaded for anonymity added “The terror and fear aspects of Kevin’s persona are greatly overstated. Stories of loved ones suddenly turning up missing, while true, have nothing to do with the deep affection and heartfelt love we publicly express for Kevin.”

Culled from the 2,700 page dossier collected by the research team are the most revealing details about a man you previously knew merely as the most powerful man in the travel industry…

Seven Awesome (and little known) Secrets About Kevin May

1. Kevin’s Favorite Word is Awesome

Many have misinterpreted Kevin’s tirades against those casually using the word awesome to describe mundane things like technologies, people or natural phenomena as a dislike for the word itself. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Kevin deems awesome to be the awesomest word ever – warranting usage solely when referencing literal superlatives, for example, himself. May lacks patience for the ambiguity introduced by figurative language. All other things incorrectly described as awesome by others are simply inferior and undeserving of the hallowed term.

Kevin’s beliefs are founded on the notion that the awesomeness of an object, place or event is solely a consequence, inherited from awesomeness possessed by its creator. When it comes to technology, anything short of a successful teleportation demonstration won’t inspire much more than a “meh” from Kevin.

Kevists, unlike other religious sects, do not struggle with the God v. Science question. Kevism demands no faith – all beliefs are supported by empirical evidence. God’s existence can’t be proven, but Kevin’s can. That’s all his legion of followers need or want to know.

Deification has offered Kevin new clarity of insight. He has jettisoned voicing opinions and now expounds only truths. Tnooz is awesome because it was created by Kevin May.

“While it is undisputed that I personify the term Awesome as both an adjective and intransitive verb, my ultimate wish is to have it objectify me as a noun.”

- Kevin Luke May

2. Kevin is Constantly Pursued by Swarms of Fangirls

He affectionately calls them Kevlings. Not to be confused with those barely tolerated Tnooz Nodes, whose unbearably annoying quest for his attention and approval repulses May, Kevin cherishes the palpable adoration generated by his beloved Kevlings.



Frenzied Kevlings swarm and swoon in anticipation of seeing their hero

Most Kevlings are too humbled in his presence to utter his name. They refer to him as “He Who Must Be Named Awesome.”

“People get the wrong idea about Kevin. It’s not his choice to be mobbed by legions of adoring fans. And it’s not just young, attractive women. There are huge numbers of older women and men of all ages who are equally obsessed” states Tnooz Node Valyn Perini, adding “You got my name, right? That quote will be attributed to me? Kevin will definitely see it? Awesome Cool.”

Apparently following the concept of ‘Women and Children First’ popularized by sinking cruise ships, Kevin’s largely unseen security detail adeptly manages the crowds by prioritizing gender, age, attractiveness and energy level.

“It’s a personal safety issue, mostly for the Kevlings,” sympathizes the 6’9″ 320 lb., heavily tattooed former rhinoceros wrestler named “Mayhem” who leads Kevin’s team of 50 security operatives. “We don’t want all those nubile young ladies getting their view blocked when some older, fatter or taller person pushes in front of them. We put all the middle-aged, sedentary folk to the back for their own safety.”

“My Kevlings tell me that I embody a perfect blend of Shakespeare’s writing ability, John Kennedy’s leadership, Da Vinci’s creativity, Richard Branson’s business acumen, Brad Pitt’s looks, and Fabio’s intellect… One can’t expect them to react any other way when exposed to my enveloping aura of Awesomulinity…”

- Kevin Luke May

3. Kevin’s Degree is in Criminology

While Kevin’s LinkedIn profile describes a Bachelor of Arts degree in Criminology from Middlesex University, researchers uncovered a different backstory. His formal education was more closely related to a four year vocational “training program” while incarcerated in the Dangerous and Severe Personality Disorder Unit of Cambridgeshire’s super-maximum security Whitemoor Prison.

“My intense interest in travel was revealed soon after my liberation from the Close Supervision Centre where I was engaged in my Criminology studies” confesses Kevin.

Criminology is the ideal course of study for someone seeking a career writing about travel and travel technology. Investigative reporting on the business practices of major airlines is remarkably similar to investigating crime scenes; victimology studies are invaluable when understanding the relationship between hoteliers and the online travel agencies; studying criminal behavior comes in handy when analyzing fundraising tactics employed by travel technology startups.

Perhaps the most revealing discovery from the research was putting to rest rumors circulating that accused May of caging fangirls. They are true.

photo credit: Eve Edelheit/Dallas Morning News

Kevin May's fan's don't seem to mind the minor inconvenience of being caged for transport.

“One never realizes how things learned in one’s education may be applied later in life. What started as a security challenge wound up becoming a transportation solution. My favorite Kevlings benefit by getting to follow me on my travels at very low cost. It’s really a badge of honor – being singled out as one of the chosen few is a very rewarding experience.”

- Kevin May

4. Kevin’s Hobby is Forensic Pathology

Kevin has not completely left his background in criminology behind. In his spare time, he still fancies himself one of Britain’s foremost, albeit amateur, forensic pathologists. His expertise was borne from an interest he fostered through a self-administered, lottery-based, experimentation process he created for his fellow “classmates” at the correctional facility.

Kevin cherishes the time he gets to spend in his small basement lab – testing new “innovative” techniques on errant children prone to inevitably losing their way on local mountain biking trails.

As much a purist when it comes to his hobbies as in his business endeavors, Kevin designs and crafts his own tools based on his own exacting standards.

Kevin also enjoys re-purposing antiques, for example, his integration of a circa-1903 50cc single piston Harley Davidson Engine with a 1970′s era VAX Wet Vac. “Embalming’s no longer boring or time consuming… plus the kick-starter allows me to keep both hands free,” he boasts.



Timothy is shockingly lifelike

The unit is also reportedly used as a motivational tool to discipline Tnooz Nodes careless enough to make spelling errors or submit pieces requiring the slightest grammatical edits.

The research team was relieved to learn that Kevin’s well-documented obsession with Dr. Frankenstein’s reanimation projects was merely a passing phase. After witnessing the horrifying outcome of his one successful effort, Kevin swore never to experiment with creating humanoid life again.

His decade-long project “Timothy” is now a Tnooz Node who, still to this day, lovingly refers to Kevin as “Daddy.”

5. Kevin Abjures Child Labor Laws

Resurrecting a Dickensian method that would make Fagan himself jealous, May lures unsuspecting street urchins (many lacking even shoes as shown in the accompanying photo) into his confidence and requires them to work 18-hour days wearing sandwich-boards to promote Tnooz at local Tube stations.

Informed observers reveal that in the case of some very young workers, a child’s first words are often “Check Out Tnooz…”



Shoeless street urchins tragically lured into a life of indentured servitude - the only existence they will ever know

Kevin dismisses critics that accuse him of preying on society’s most vulnerable by accentuating the positives. “This lot are predominantly uneducated, unemployed and contribute very little to the gross national product – on any given afternoon they’d likely be idly laying about” explains May. “By interning with me, they quickly learn that if you need something, like food, you need to work for it.”

6. Kevin is Moby

The research team eliminated any doubt whatsoever that Kevin May and Moby are indeed the same person. After an exhaustive global search, no one was able to produce a photograph of the two together in the same room. That fact alone should suffice to silence the skeptics.

At last year’s PhoCusWright Conference in Hollywood, Florida, Kevin, apparently tiring of sustaining the duality of the lies affecting both fan bases, attempted to provide an obvious clue by queuing up and blasting Ave Maria during the Tnooz Appy Hour. The music aficionados in the crowd were finally convinced.

Beyond the obvious physical similarities and their brief stints dating actress Natalie Portman, the facts are incontrovertible. You be the judge:

1) Visual Evidence (Exhibit A)




Kevin May relishes the adulation of a typical Tnooz Appy Hour crowd

2) Sonic Evidence (Exhibit B)
Submitted for your consideration as further evidence of the unity of the two personas is one of Kevin’s recent compositions – a 66 minute transcendental progressive house piece that can only be described as Awesome.

It is titled Audio Drivel 1 – Warming Up and is available on the kevinlukemay’s channel on Soundcloud.

7. Kevin is Evil Incarnate

For some, this may be a logical conclusion based on #6 above – especially considering that Soundcloud profile photo…

As with revealing his identity as Moby, cross-referencing two indisputable pieces of evidence eliminate any question of Kevin’s true nature.

1) Kevin is Hellboy

Once believed to be a fictional comic book superhero, Kevin’s cover was somewhat blown by the two Guillermo del Toro directed documentaries, despite desperate measures taken to protect Kevin’s true identity.

Compare these two unretouched photos:



Kevin May clearly has horns



Pull back the angle, add a little Devils-fyre and Kevin May is unquestionably Hellboy

Obviously, any true Son of Satan would have the power to disguise his appearance by transfiguring his horns to move from the front to the back of his head…

Researchers were not suitably convinced by Kevin’s feeble explanation that he was simply feeling a bit horny when the photos were snapped.

2) Kevin is the Eye of Sauron

You’ve seen the famed Kevin May “Eye” avatars. Yes, they are creepy. While Kevin has provided countless hints about his true identity throughout his social media, the missing link was provided by the Soundcloud avatar above. The photo captured Kevin’s eye partially through its transition from seemingly harmless bespectacled travel tech pundit to horrifying despot of Middle Earth.



Kevin May is the Eye of Sauron

According to the old English proverb, “eyes are the window to the soul.” Try dragging Kevin’s Twitter avatar (the eyeball) into a Google Image search and click on the Visually Similar link. A horrifying array of images are returned – even with Safe Search set to moderate.

The disturbing images include multi-eyed monsters, countless mouths, a mutilated thumb, fish, meat byproducts and babies mixed among among an assortment of unidentifiable body tissues. Whatever you do, DO NOT set Safe Search to OFF.

Further insights into the deranged psychosis that serves as the core of Kevin May’s soul are revealed through anagramic analysis of his twitter handle – @kevinlukemay.

• “Make Liven Yuk” – A poorly veiled threat to erode the quality of life for all living things
• “Like Knave Yum” – Relishing the oppression of the Underclass, with a cannibalistic flair
• “Me Kinky Value” – Nothing more than a cringe-worthy personal branding slogan


These results reflect a much more sinister subliminal plane of consciousness lurking below Kevin’s faux travel tech journo facade.

Renaissance men of the third millennium certainly have a new standard-bearer. Admired for his unparalleled supernatural power, musical talent, and work with children, it is understandable so many find Kevin May’s appeal irresistible. Augmented by his success, striking good looks and the attraction of inherent danger when associating with a sociopath, his followers simply can’t help themselves. They allow Kevism to wash over them.

In summary, Kevin May is not simply Editor of Tnooz, but boy toy, criminologist, Moby, Hellboy and the Eye of Sauron neatly layered into one adorable package. Pretty awesome, huh?

Your awesome responsibility is now to tell Kevin how awesome he is through all his social media channels. He is particularly fond of unique suffixes being appended to the word. Help make April 1 an unforgettably awesome day for Kevin.

No related posts.

The Awesomosity of Kevin May

Kris Strauss of Sports Golf Management and I teamed up to present Measuring and Monetizing Social Networking and Mobile Media for the 2012 National Golf Course Owners Association Annual Conference held February 29, 2012 at the Renaissance Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

What happens in Vegas... Stays on Facebook... Successful visits to Sin City are now measured by the amount of incriminating evidence posted on social networks

Golf courses and private golf clubs in particular may be the premier example of offline social networking. Similarly, due to the demographics of golfers and the strong symbiotic relationship of golf with business, mobile penetration is among the customer pool is extremely high. As a result, a discussion of social and mobile at the largest gathering of golf course owners is more than appropriate.

The challenge for the golf industry is that while golfers are highly engaged with social and mobile technologies, course owners have typically been a bit late in arriving to the technology party. Justifiably, a good portion of technology related expenditures have been dedicated to core operational platforms like tee time booking platforms, GPS-based cart technology and food & beverage ordering systems.

Now however, innovative course owners are getting more adventuresome by creatively applying social and mobile technologies to help players and members interact with each other, drive more rounds and improve the end-to-end experience of the game itself.

Here is a copy of the presentation. It can be downloaded from the RobertKCole SpeakerDeck page.

I teed things up (no, we didn’t rely on golf clichés to annoy our standing-room-only audience) with a high level overview of the promise and pitfalls of the most dynamic aspects of modern personal computing.

My focus was the integration of SoLoMo, but started with social and a warning to focus attention first on running a quality operation and the needs of customers.

I continued with cautions about the mobile complexities and the impatience of mobile consumers, adding some mobile design best practices.

Kris then took the mic to provide an extensive array of examples including location based services, user generated content and social ads to engage golfers and promote both golf-related and non-golf events.

He then offered a similar variety of examples highlighting mobile strategies encompassing QR codes, text clubs, mobile websites and tee time apps.

One additional note regarding the conference is that the NGCOA leadership has been very proactive in embracing Open Travel Alliance XML standards that are used extensively to facilitate the booking of tee times.

The golf industry is now facing many of the challenges faced by the hospitality industry in the early 2000′s when intermediaries began flexing their muscles due to greater marketing reach and an ability to produce customers.

It will be interesting to see how golf course owners will embrace social and mobile technologies to attract, retain and create value that will increase player loyalty.

Related posts:

1. The Yin and Yang of Social Media
2. What a Skull Fracture Can Teach Us About Social Media
3. Social Commerce – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Measuring and Monetizing Social Networking & Mobile Media

The winner of the 2011 Unsuspecting Travel Hero Award goes to hrrmph (a.k.a. Hugh R. of Las Vegas, Nevada) for the nearly 9,300 word TripAdvisor review of his solo shore snorkeling trip to Kandholhu Island Resort & Spa in The Maldives. Not only was the review extensive and highly informative, but it provides an excellent example of the benefit provided by unbiased, anonymous, user generated reviews.

This year’s Unsuspecting Travel Zero honoree is HotelReputationManagement.org, an Online Reputation Management group that will “aggressively improve your online reputation” with brazenly described methods including “the more content we create, the more we feed the monster and thus we bury the negative results deeper and deeper.” A poster-child for the Fake Review Optimization movement is born.

photo credit: xjrlokix

The double edged sword of anonymity frames the 2011 Unsuspecting Travel Hero and Travel Zero Awards. Travel information is power and the forces of good and evil are being contested.

The huge travel stories of 2011 included the aftermath of Japan’s Tsunami, Google’s acquisition of ITA Software, American Airlines bankruptcy and Groupon’s highly controversial IPO. All dominated the headlines and were well covered by traditional media and the blogosphere. Conversely, the Unsuspecting Travel Hero and Travel Zero Awards go to those stories that were overlooked and deserve greater exposure – for better or worse.

Unsuspecting travel heroes represent the lifeblood of the global tourism industry. Their unheralded works of generosity provide immeasurable value to countless numbers of travelers, yet typically yield little in terms of immediate financial reward. For the Travel Hero, there is rarely a windfall return on investment resulting from the particular act of traveler-empowering compassion. For individual, the effect may be an unrequited contribution to assist others with common interests; for the business, an act may reinforce the foundation for guest loyalty, with customer retention measured over years, not by quarterly financial results.

On the other hand, one finds that Travel Zeros are typically focused on short-term financial gain that often reflects a willingness to sacrifice ethics, customer service or return business. A profit motive supersedes the priority for an optimized consumer travel experience. While reducing operating costs or growing revenues to maximize profit is no sin, when it results in a degraded travel experience, it does a disservice to both the traveler and the industry as a whole.

Past Unsuspecting Travel Hero award winners (see 2009 here and 2010 here) – Four Seasons Hotels and Enterprise Rent a Car both exhibited exceptional examples of customer service associated with their operations. Previous Travel Zero Award recipients AirTran & Hotwire both subjected travelers to hostile policies that traded what it traditionally deemed as a fundamental service for what could arguably be described as negligible profit opportunities.

Unlike past years, this year’s heirs bear no direct relationship to the provision of travel services, yet both play increasingly important roles in 2011′s most volatile and dynamic area – Travel Information. Exemplified by Google spending $750 million to access the “deep web” flight schedule, pricing and availability content managed by ITA and TripAdvisor’s IPO/spin-off from Expedia, those possessing unique travel-related information cashed-in big during 2011.

Nothing speaks more to unique content than user generated content – a favored contributor to freshness and relevance factors in search engine algorithms. When shared via social media, this content serves as a bridge between very specific content (a hotel located in a popular holiday destination,) social graphs (who likes that hotel,) and SEO (higher ranking in organic search results.)

This year’s recipients epitomize the ying/yang of user generated content, its impact on search engine optimization, review site ranking and ultimately, ever elusive social-media ROI. Both hrrmph and hotelreputationmanagement.com cohabit the realm of travel information – one philanthropically sharing valuable knowledge, the other, covertly subverting the process.

A Big Hrrmph About Something

Hrrmph prefers to maintain his anonymity, so he uses a generic TripAdvisor supplied avatar of passports

hrrmph’s TripAdvisor review of Kandholhu Island Resort & Spa is available here.

Despite its rather dubious distinction as TripAdvisor’s most verbose review of 2011, hrrmph’s 9,250 word tome about a five day snorkeling trip to The Maldives was not only well written and rich in insight, but it also addressed issues ranging from the destination selection process, travel time and budget to highly detailed recommendations for activities in the destination.

In addition to relatively standard, albeit more personally detailed, commentary on room descriptions, recreation and food & beverage options, hrrmph covered normally unmentioned subjects like an assessment of the typical guest profile (including typical guest beach & dining attire) & the interaction of guests with each other.

His exhaustive detailing (perhaps exhausting for many readers) covers the type of information that select groups of niche market guests want to know about a resort property, but that is rarely communicated in hotel or destination promotional materials.

In most cases, hotels lack the subject matter expertise required to create relevant content for specialty travel disciplines. Those that contract experts to author the content often run afoul of experts who cannot write, or accomplished writers with limited expert insights.

Four Seasons Hotels, with its advertising subsidized magazine, generates dozens of feature articles each year covering experiences of interest to gourmets, families, adventure-seekers, couture and wine enthusiasts, or any other topic that may appeal to luxury leisure travelers. This editorial content is always at least tangentially related to a hotel or its location, but there is no embedded call to action with a toll-free number, discount coupon code or points reward – the experience and article stand uncommercially on their own merits.

The beauty of social media is that hoteliers are suddenly able to benefit from the sharing of expertise by true experts – their guests. Allowing them to tell their stories unencumbered by targeted messaging, pre-defined points of differentiation or the latest hotel features provides a degree of authenticity that appeals to travelers. An added benefit is having the cost of quality content creation drop considerably.

The value of this material can not be underestimated – it provides important insights that help guests differentiate properties to find the best fit.

Such content is exceptionally important to properties like Kandholhu Island Resort & Spa – especially since this particular hotel does not seem to have a website. Hugh mentions that the hotel can be booked through the larger Kuramathi Island resort, but that website is quite limited and makes no specific mention of Kandholhu.

It is apparent that without user generated content provided by TripAdvisor and the Maldives Complete website, hrrmph might not have ever stumbled across the resort.

In the case of Kandholhu Island, the resort should pride itself for inspiring hrrmph’s review, not through blatant or highly orchestrated reminders to “Vote for Us on TripAdvisor,” but by providing exceptional service. hrrmph notes two specific examples:

• “At the evening meal on the first full day at the resort (my second night), the manager stopped by and we discussed my ambition to snorkel around the entire island starting at daybreak. For no additional charge, he had a Zodiac boat and crewman waiting at dawn. As I made the circuit around the island, the boat stood by offshore at a distance of about 25 to 75 feet from me.”
• “At 05:15 luggage was collected and I was off to breakfast. Breakfast was a full-on made to order affair with the staff kindly suggesting a mixture of my favorite items and a few lighter ones. They deftly knew what I wanted even before I did. There was the Kandholhu magic again.”

Those are the types of experiences that create indelible memories of a hotel – independent from the memories of the destination. Hotels have become quite accomplished at selling features – nice beds, HD televisions, free Internet, but in most cases, remain woefully poor at selling benefits that are relevant to the guest. That’s where hrrmph thankfully filled in a gap.

If soliciting user generated reviews, hotels should strongly consider suggesting guests address

1. The purpose of the trip
2. How the hotel improved their travel experience
3. Ideas on how future guests can help enhance their travel experience

Why Hugh Writes

While hrrmph prefers to remain anonymous, through an email exchange, the man responsible for that TripAdvisor profile, Hugh R, expressed some of his motivations for writing such a comprehensive review.

“I later learned that the time spent on research is a necessary and worthwhile investment for discerning people who crave that ‘wow’ feeling.”
- Hugh R. (hrrmph on TripAdvisor)

Hugh was simply being generous by sharing a considerable quantity of information that was otherwise unavailable to travelers.

Hugh revealed that his background is technical writing, so noting minutia is apparently part of his DNA. hrrmph not only detailed the resort’s room category configuration and every imaginable room feature, recreation and food & beverage option, but adds example mini-bar prices, and shout-outs to ten line staff members.

It would appear that having the ability to write on an unstructured topic of personal interest probably represents a somewhat cathartic experience for an individual whose writing is normally strictly constrained, lacking any opportunity to express appreciation for exceeded expectations.

Of course, conspiracy theorists will assume hrrmph’s choice to remain anonymous is the smoking gun – hinting at a bogus persona for a fake review authored by the hotel. However, hrrmph’s narrative, structure and tone is more focused on the trip purpose (snorkeling) than the hotel itself.

Hotels can learn a valuable lesson from this approach for their own promotional material – A trip can be considered a work of art; the guests comprise the subject, the destination is the canvas, but their experience is the paint on. The hotel merely provides the frame – its role is to enhance the work, not dominate it.

During a period when many outspoken critics of TripAdvisor are arguing that anonymous reviews should be eliminated, High R. shared an important insight through our email exchange – if he had to reveal his true identity, he would have never submitted the review.

Hugh does not want his personal life and his professional career overlapping. By remaining anonymous, Hugh can speak freely, without worrying about the risk of inadvertently voicing an opinion that is interpreted as representing his employer.

The world is a little it richer from Hugh/hrrmph sharing his experience – especially snorkelers interested in exotic, aspirational or prospective bucket-list destinations.

The Astroturf is Always Greener

This hotelreputationmanagement.org image is shared by the 'Good Luck, I'm Behind 7 Proxies' meme... Coincidence?

Based on unique monthly visitors, the aggregation of TripAdvisor’s main site and various localized websites rank as the world’s largest online travel property.

As a result, the “wisdom of crowds” endorsement for a top ranking in destination hotel listings now directly impacts website traffic and booking volume for the subject hotel.

Various service providers, many with deep experience in the search engine optimization (SEO) discipline, have also discovered that helping hotels attain high review rankings can translate into big profits.

The vast majority of those choosing to take the black-hat path logically prefer to maintain a low profile – or ideally, no profile at all. However, some more brazen groups have taken to overtly promoting their capabilities online. The poster-child for this group is our 2011 Unsuspecting Travel Zero Award winner – hotelreputationmanagement.org.

The promotional pitches for hotelreputationmanagement.org speak for themselves:

“We Move And Force Negative Search Results And False Online Reviews About Your Hotel Off Of Page One, Page Two, Page Three, Page Four and Page Five…”

This sort of brute-force approach requires a relatively low-tech, high touch effort for success. The high tech aspect is typically related to avoiding detection by US Federal Trade Commission or UK Advertising Standards officials who tend to frown upon these sorts of endeavors.

The steering philosophy of hotelreputationmanagement.org is best characterized by their approach to SEO:

“As your dedicated team of online reputation advocates, we will do everything imaginable to influence Google’s search results for your hotel’s benefit. We will strive to achieve your goals BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.”

- hotelreputationmanagement.org

Doing “everything imaginable… by any means necessary” would not imply that the group sticks to white-hat tactics when supporting its clients. Similarly, the magnitude of the impact they purport to make does not lend itself to conventional industry best practices. For example:

• “If your hotel needs 5,000 Followers or 50,000 Followers, we created flexible Twitter marketing campaigns that fit just about any hotel’s budget.”
• “If your hotel needs 5,000 Likes, 10,000 Likes, 50,000 Likes, hundreds of thousands or millions of Facebook Likes, we have flexible campaigns that fit just about any budget…”
• “If your hotel needs 10,000 views or 500,000 views to your YouTube video, we can deliver.”

As a point of reference, the 5,000+ room MGM Grand in Las Vegas is just now nearing 50,000 Twitter followers after nearly four years on the platform. Starwood’s lauded Preferred Guest Program is only now nearing 100,000 Facebook Likes. 500,000 YouTube views is approximately equal to the aggregated total views for the famed Rapping Southwest Airlines flight attendant…

The upper range numbers casually regarded as targets by hotelreputationmanagement.org reflect traffic volumes that only a rare few travel companies ever attain; heady levels for a single hotel location – especially when the content itself is never mentioned.

One must wonder if the ability to unleash a tsunami of positive recommendations, ratings and reviews in support of a client is also wielded to smite competitors with negative sentiment. It certainly falls within the scope of “everything imaginable… by any means necessary.” If the end justifies the means, one must assume no options are taken off the table.

The .org designation is somewhat ironic as that is normally reserved for non-profit or non-commercial organizations – groups dedicated to philanthropically benefiting the community by fostering education and understanding. The objectives of hotelreputationmanagement.org appear to designed to drive profit from aggressively manipulating a community’s perceptions of its clients. Online Reputation Management in its purest sense – no truth in advertising problems here…

A final interesting note is that hotelreputationmanagement.org looks remarkably similar to restaurantreputationmanagement.org, doctorreputationmanagement.org, dentistreputationmanagement.com, franchisereputationmanagement.com and attorneyreputationmanagement.com to the extent that they even share the same office addresses and toll-free telephone numbers.

hotelreputationmanagement.org is the Top Travel Zero for 2011 because they subvert the value of social networks to educate travelers, aid in discovery and improve transparency. Instead, social search becomes a numbers game to be conned, with sharing derailed, relevance masked and engagement suspended.

More evil than black-hat SEO tactics that merely aim to outsmart anti-spam algorithms to capture high rankings, large-scale black-hat reputation management tactics create indelible perceptions by effectively manufacturing sentiment and applying it in context against its target. Fighting such methods by relying on white-hat methods can become a daunting challenge.

And that is what makes organizations like hotelreputationmanagement.org so scary.

I won’t spend any more time detailing the brazen claims and abhorrent business practices of hotelreputationmanaement.org – they disgust me. The good news is that physical revulsion is a new criteria that will be factored into identifying future Travel Zeros moving forward.

It seems in today’s wild west of social media where pioneers are exploring new boundaries, buzzards, snake-oil salesman and train robbers are a natural part of the ecosystem.

Related posts:

1. 2009 Unsuspecting Travel Hero and Travel Zero Awards
2. 2010 Unsuspecting Travel Hero and Travel Zero Awards
3. Seven Travel Planning Steps – Impact on Hotel Distribution Strategy

Unsuspecting Travel Hero and Travel Zero Awards 2011

The PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit offers thirty travel technology companies the opportunity to pitch a panel of judges comprised of industry leaders on their customer value proposition, technology platform and business model.

photo credit: Louish Pixel

Based on the number of punks trying to stuff the ballot box, there's big money to be won or lost betting on the 2011 PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit - just like betting on the companies themselves...

Leveraging the wisdom of crowds (attendees of PhoCusWright are supposed to be smart people, right?) and in the interest of having some fun, everyone following the conference on social media were invited to predict the top six winners before the actual presentation sessions started. Think of it like handicapping a horse race.

But before we review the results of the handicapping exercise, a bit of unanticipated editorial commentary on the process is necessary…

[Climbs onto Soap Box...]

At first glance, the raw results showed two clear favorites in the Emerging and Established company categories, with the Startup group looking like a tight four-way competition. Unfortunately, upon closer scrutiny, it seems that certain “fans” of various demonstrators (you know who you are) felt that their faves needed a little boost in the voting.

How could I tell? Well, they only voted for their company once – not for 2nd 3rd or 4th place as the other people did… Yes, individuals from multiple presenters were either lazy or stupid in their approach to astroturfing the vote tallies. The singular votes represented a whopping 51% of the total votes cast – a material number with a highly atypical voting pattern that was clearly differentiated by the other respondents.

Morons. Didn’t they know that a cardinal rule of astroturfing is to blend in with the crowd?

By sheer coincidence, I just authored a three-part series for Tnooz on how black-hat fake review optimizers combine social media and SEO techniques to undermine the reliability of travel reviews sites. Take a look at the second installment: Fake Review Optimization – How black hat masters beat the travel system

So here’s the moral of my sermon.

Considering that the motivation exists to game a goofy poll that has no bearing on the outcome of a judged competition, one can only imagine what steps these reprobates are willing to take when real sales volume and profit are on the line. More evidence travel marketers and their technology partners might not be as trustworthy as one would hope.

There is an excellent case for punishing this behavior by posting the names of these groups on a wall of shame. I won’t – the actions may have been undertaken by a single individual and not condoned by the company. They get a pass this time, but one never knows when I might need a good example of social media abuse for a speaking engagement in the future…

Sparing you the gory details, let’s just say an adjustment was made to mitigate the impact of these highly irregular votes. Does this mean the scrubbing process was perfect? No. Just like with review spam, it is very possible the smarter / less lazy ballot stuffers went undetected {sigh…}

Does this action invalidate the reliability of the survey? In short, no. The survey never claimed a scientific sample or process. The results were always to be based on what I call Trustularity – results that look reasonable and superficially appear to have authority based on their presentation. I merely took measures deemed necessary to clean the data to improve the veracity of the results.

This is exactly why PhoCusWright went to a 100% judging process – In the past, audience votes (which had to be done in person, with only one vote per terminal during a defined time frame) were skewed toward larger companies with more personnel attending the conference.

It was a smart move to eliminate the audience component. Next year, I’ll see what I can do to create a more reliable method to gauge authentic audience sentiment. And maybe add interactive parimutuel betting…

[Descends from Soap Box...]

Now, On to the (Adjusted) Results

Scoring was applied with six points for first place, five points for second, etc. down to one point for being rated sixth.

The high score recipients OVERALL (regardless of category) were:

1. Hipmunk at 10:1
2. Rearden Commerce at 13:1
3. FlexTrip at 14:1

The top vote getters in terms of FIRST PLACE VOTES (regardless of category) were:

1. Rearden Commerce (13:1 odds)
2. (tie) SaveLikeLocals (20:1 odds)
   (tie) TripTV (26:1 odds)

For the three $15,000 awards, here is how the teams scored by Category (odds are for winning within the respective category only)

STARTUPS

1. Hipmunk at 4.6:1
2. Flextrip at 6.5:1
3. FlyMuch at 7.8:1

EMERGING

1. TrustYou at 4.7:1
2. TripTV at 4.8:1
3. gtrot at 6.2:1

ESTABLISHED

1. Rearden Commerce at 5.4:1
2. Tealeaf at 8.3:1
3. MapQuest at 8.4:1

So, do you agree? Disagree? See a group where I failed to pull out all of their faux votes? Please use the comments are below to weigh in on how these varied from your predictions.

2011 PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit Demonstrators

On the other hand, maybe you sat through all 30 demonstrations and the memories for several of them are are blending together… Or there was the one that looked interesting, but the name now completely slips your mind…

If you are interested in learning more about these companies, below is all you need to know – their pitch, their website and their Twitter handle.

Amadeus on Twitter | Amadeus Website (Established)
The Pitch: Amadeus Dynamic Website Manager: A unique solution allowing fast, dynamic customization of airline websites, for each individual visitor.
CityBot on Twitter | CityBot Website (Startup)
The Pitch: CityBot’s mobile travel app helps travelers create personalized day itineraries based on their interests and constraints.
Evature on Twitter | Evature Website (Emerging)
The Pitch: Evature enables free-text travel search for mobile, social and regular websites, increasing conversion rates and user satisfaction.
ExpertFlyer.com on Twitter | ExpertFlyer.com Website (Established)
The Pitch: ExpertFlyer Seat Alerts get travelers into a better seat without repeated airline website checking. No more dreaded middle seats!
Flextrip  on Twitter | Flextrip  Website (Startup)
The Pitch: Flextrip allows online travel companies to utilize innovative personalization technology to market tours and activities to their customers.
FlyMuch on Twitter | FlyMuch Website (Startup)
The Pitch: FlyMuch is a Web and mobile application that helps people find and share travel experiences. Create, share and save your travel.
GroundLink on Twitter | GroundLink Website (Established)
The Pitch: Groundlink is the first global online and mobile private car service, reliably designed to give you a little peace of mind.
Groupize.com on Twitter | Groupize.com Website (Alpha)
The Pitch: Groupize.com is taking small group planning and sharing online and launching the only fully automated group hotel booking engine for 5 or more rooms. Customize, Maximize, Socialize.
gtrot on Twitter | gtrot Website (Emerging)
The Pitch: Discover great things to do on every trip with gtrot. Instantly see friends who live there, places they’ve been, deals and events.
GuestCentric Systems on Twitter | GuestCentric Systems Website (Established)
The Pitch: Deploying a boutique marketing strategy with mobile and social media using traditional channel and revenue management techniques.
Hipmunk on Twitter | Hipmunk Website (Startup)
The Pitch: Hipmunk’s flight and hotel search now integrate with your calendar, making it easy to visualize the best flights and best spots in a city.
Jetpac on Twitter | Jetpac Website (Startup)
The Pitch: Jetpac is making travel fun again. Travelers get inspired using their friends’ experiences as their guide.
Kony Solutions on Twitter | Kony Solutions Website (Established)
The Pitch: Learn about Kony’s leading applications that are designed to easily configure and integrate into a customer’s environment and take advantage of the mobile channel.
Liftopia on Twitter | Liftopia Website (Established)
The Pitch: Cloud Store by Liftopia brings real revenue management, analytics, pricing and distribution tools to ski and leisure ticketing.
Limos.com on Twitter | Limos.com Website (Established)
The Pitch: Pre-screened black-car services at yellow-car prices. Worldwide service available via desktop or mobile apps.
MapQuest  on Twitter | MapQuest  Website (Established)
The Pitch: MapQuest Vibe is a proprietary social – algorithmic platform delivering unique neighborhood rankings of restaurants, shopping, services, cultural attractions and more.
mygola on Twitter | mygola Website (Startup)
The Pitch: mygola.com gives you a personal travel concierge who uses our technology platform to find the best info from the Web for your trip.
myTab on Twitter | myTab Website (Startup)
The Pitch: myTab.co: a social travel gift card. Gift, save, plan, share and book travel. You can do any or all of this on myTab.
ostrovok.ru on Twitter | ostrovok.ru Website (Startup)
The Pitch: Ostrovok.ru is the leading online hotel booking service for Russia. Team from Yandex, Booking.com. VCs: Accel, GenCat, Peter Thiel.
Rearden Commerce on Twitter | Rearden Commerce Website (Established)
The Pitch: Transforming the way people plan, book and travel together.
Re-ticket.com on Twitter | Re-ticket.com Website (Emerging)
The Pitch: Re-ticket.com is the first online marketplace where consumers and travel agents can sell and buy their second hand tickets or overstock.
ReviewPro  on Twitter | ReviewPro  Website (Emerging)
The Pitch: ReviewPro enables hotels to leverage the social Web to improve guest satisfaction and increase revenue.
Sabre Travel Network on Twitter | Sabre Travel Network Website (Established)
The Pitch: The Sabre Red App Centre will be the world’s first online B2B travel app marketplace connecting buyers and sellers of Red Apps.
SaveLikeLocals on Twitter | SaveLikeLocals Website (Startup)
The Pitch: SaveLikeLocals lets tourists save like locals and boosts travel companies’ revenue from in-destination services.
Tealeaf on Twitter | Tealeaf Website (Established)
The Pitch: Tealeaf provides visibility into your customers’ mobile experience to identify then solve obstacles impacting your business.
TravelCarma on Twitter | TravelCarma Website (Established)
The Pitch: Cloud-based Applications Delivery Platform integrated with open-distribution TravelXchange that allows aggregation and multi-channel distribution.
Travolver on Twitter | Travolver Website (Alpha)
The Pitch: Travolver, Trip Lifecycle Management service allowing you to get personalized tours with local expertise by means of social networking.
TripAlertz.com on Twitter | TripAlertz.com Website (Emerging)
The Pitch: TripAlertz is a new global distribution channel that offers getaway deals to over 10M global customers via a robust API.
TripLingo on Twitter | TripLingo Website (Startup)
The Pitch: Customized language-learning products to help travelers make the most of their trips.
TripTV on Twitter | TripTV Website (Emerging)
The Pitch: TripTV combines technology with engaging, entertaining video content to offer Dimension – an online, self-service travel video portal.
Truphone on Twitter | Truphone Website (Established)
The Pitch: Truphone, the first global mobile network, will demonstrate how the Tru service uniquely answers the communications needs of international businesses.
TrustYou on Twitter | TrustYou Website (Emerging)
The Pitch: TrustYou ReviewAnalyst allows hoteliers and travel companies to analyze and react to the quality and reputation of their hotels.
Xtify  on Twitter | Xtify  Website (Emerging)
The Pitch: A mobile CRM company using persistent location, customer preference and app usage data to deliver relevant, branded messages to smartphones and tablets.

Thee winners will be announced on Wednesday morning during the PhoCusWright Conference Center Stage session. I will update this post when the winners are announced.

Related posts:

1. Handicapping 2011 PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit
2. Handicapping PhoCusWright’s Travel Innovation Summit
3. Kony Solutions – PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit Finalist

2011 PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit Predictions

Each year, PhoCusWright presents The Travel Innovation Summit where travel technology companies showcase their latest applications for an audience of influential travel industry leaders and investors.

photo credit: c.a. muller

PhocusWright picked Travel's Battle Ground as the theme for 2011's Travel Innovation Summit. Cool - I hope they let the finalists dogfight!

Last year, I handicapped the event by polling press, bloggers and the participants themselves to get an insiders perspective on the competition. The voters only identified two of the seven finalists from the 32 entries. Pretty poor guessing by the so-called experts…

This year, tying in with The PhoCusWright Conference’s theme of Travel Unleashed, I am subscribing to the wisdom of crowds and letting everyone participate in the handicapping process.

With thirty-one companies entered and demonstrations running from 9:00am to 6:00pm, the day can be a bit of a marathon. Hopefully this page will serve as a convenient quick reference for the competition (links are provided to all web sites, plus the respective Twitter accounts,) but for the overly ambitious prognosticators, links to the judges LinkedIn profiles and their company websites are also provided.

Sorry, again the temptation to introduce a parimutuel betting application was resisted. Wagering on the results of this competition is probably one of the few activities more risky than investing in the companies themselves… Anyone electing to use results from this survey as the basis for investment decisions may also want to seek professional counseling before signing any checks…

Please make your predictions and share the survey with your friends & colleagues. Let’s see who are the audience favorites and underdogs before they even hit the stage.

For those tree-haters who prefer a printed version, here is a link to a PDF Version of the 2011 PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit Survey.

Please note: Voting will close at 12:15am Eastern Standard Time, Tuesday, November 15, 2011.
The participants are listed alphabetically by category.

To simplify the voting process, votes will be scored without consideration to the categories of each participant. However, once all the votes are tallied, winners in the various categories will be extrapolated from the general voting results.

A separate blog post will be published early Tuesday with the results and the odds of winning for the leading contenders in each category.

Competition Overview

Travel Innovation Summit Votes are cast based on the following criteria:

• Technical Innovation
• Business Model Sustainability
• Marketplace Impact

Then, one winner is selected from each of following three categories – Each will win $15,000:

• Startup: Companies less than 18 months old
• Emerging: Company between 18 months and three years old
• Established: Company is more than three years old

New this year will be three additional awards of $5,000 each for the winners in the following categories:

• Mobile Technology
• Social Media
• International

Finally, also new this year, one demonstrator from the six category winners will receive The DEMO Award for the Most Game-Changing Travel Innovation. This replaces the traditional Best of Show Award.

The present field of 31 (there may be last minute additions and/or scratches) includes 10 Startup, 8 Emerging, 13 Established and 2 Alpha demonstrators. Groupize and Travolver are the two Alpha presenters this year. While not formally competing, the audience will vote their opinion of the product concept.

The Judges & Critics Circle

The judges for this year’s Travel Innovation Summit are:

• Gregg Brockway Co-Founder, Executive Vice President and General Manager, TripIt
• Kerry Cannon Founder and CEO, interactive MOBILE @dvertising LLC 
• Hugh Crean Entrepreneur in Residence, General Catalyst Partners
• Jay Habegger Co-Founder and CEO, OwnerIQ
• Kimberley McLoughlin Managing Director, Red Visitor
• Kathy Misunas Founder and Principal, Essential Ideas 
• Mark Okerstrom CFO, Expedia
• Debu Purkayastha Principal, Corporate Development, M&A, Google
• Barrie Seidenberg President and CEO, Viator
• Joseph Strodel Director of Communications and Corporate Affairs, Cornell University School of Hotel Administration 
• Ned Williams Partner, Brook Venture Fund

Making a return appearance is the Critics Circle, tasked with providing commentary on the presentations, they do not have a vote in the ultimate outcome. This year’s Critics Circle includes:

• Rod Cuthbert Founder and Chairman Emeritus, Viator
• Sophie Forest Managing Partner, Brightspark Ventures
• Jim Hornthal Chairman, Triporati
• Gene Quinn President and CEO, Tnooz

The PhoCusWright Conference

For those who are not familiar with the PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit, it is held annually in conjunction with the The PhoCusWright Conference. The 2011 conference will be held in Hollywood, Florida from November 15-17, with the Travel Innovation Summit taking place all day on Tuesday, November 15.

New this year is the FREE Online Ticket that provides streaming video of The Travel Innovation Summit, Center Stage presentations, and even the workshops. As an added bonus, access to the archived video will also be available on-demand through May 31, 2012. Considering tickets for attending the three-day event in person go for $3,700, this represents an amazing opportunity to learn about the latest trends in travel technology, travel marketing and online distribution.

To register for the Free Online Ticket, Click Here.

Good luck to all the competitors – reviewing the field, I am sure all those attending the conference both personally and virtually will be seeing some new and thought provoking applications.

Related posts:

1. Handicapping PhoCusWright’s Travel Innovation Summit
2. 2011 PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit Predictions
3. SilverRail – PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit Winner

Handicapping 2011 PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit

Google Flights heralds Google’s formal entry into the travel meta-search arena. Much has been made of the absense of intermediaries such as online travel agencies and meta-search competitors in lieu of direct booking with the airlines. Unquestionably, the game has changed.

Since the announcement of Google's acquisition of ITA Software, everyone knew it was going to be a game changer

The Fairsearch.org immediately reacted with a blog post asking if partners will be coerced into working with Google, if the new search technology will secure premium placement in search results, or if the content will be intermixed with search results. Valid questions. To which Google will undoubtedly reply with something along the line of “whatever provides the greatest utility to our users and yields the greatest benefits to our partners.”

As with all things Google, democratization of information and disruption of established business practices typically involves a balancing act between users and partners where the scale normally (and appropriately) tips toward the user’s end of the spectrum. Many partners understandably don’t like this and Google Flights will certainly be the poster child of the coming US Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights hearing.

For now, let’s forget about all that – there will be plenty of coverage in the coming weeks on the strategies, symbolism and voodoo surrounding Google’s deeper dive into travel. Much will be conjecture, lots will not be true, and some will be flat-out crazy.

One thing however, is for certain – Google Flight Search changes everything, but in more ways than you might think. It actually enables a very old school approach to searching air fares.

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly
Is Google Flights perfect? No, non-US/international itineraries are not supported. It also doesn’t present all those cool Hacker Fares Kayak finds.

For those predicting the demise of the OTAs, don’t be so quick. Earlier today, when booking a flight, Expedia found the cheapest itinerary, a UA-DL combination that was not identified by any other sites, including Kayak Travelocity, Priceline or Google Flights. Plus the price was $25 lower than any other comparable fares (although the last point may have been due to the location of Expedia’s servers on the West Coast.)

The concept of using a map to explore options based on budget and flight duration was worked out by Sabre Labs in the late ’90s and resulted in as Travelocity Dream Maps a few years later. It is questionable whether the Google Flights map should be presented as the default, especially because it occupies a lot of valuable screen real estate.

The map is nice for playing a joint round of “What-if” with both “where should we go?” and/or “when should we go?” as variables. It is a great experience to watch the fares change instantaneously as departure.return dates are changed. The only annoyance was having to close and reopen the map to get rid of the large “Popular Destination” tool tip that covers a large portion of the map as a default. The question is if most users are making where/when decisions when approaching Google Flights for the first time.

If one already knows their destination, is that much screen real-estate necessary, and does that little arc between the origin and destination really need to remind everyone the world isn’t flat? Sorry, but I doubt many people care if they can fly to Detroit for $151 when they have already entered their destination as Washington, DC. Inspiration is a noble goal, but integrating it in this way doesn’t simplify the process much.

Another minor mapping peeve is that when a flight includes stops, only the simplistic origin/destination arc is rendered, not smaller arcs between all connecting cities on the itinerary. Overall, when it comes to the mapping functionality in this version of Google Flights, the synopsis is: nice technology; low utility.

It was a good idea not to use the potentially disorienting Limits Scatter-graph as the default. The concept of using sliders in a graphical matrix to filter shorter and cheaper flights is nice, but the tight clustering and sporadic distribution of outlined and solid circles may create some confusion on first viewing. Once familiar with the content, most will simply use the sliders to highlight flights in the lower left corner of the graph.

Incorporating a hoverbox on mouseover into the Limits display would have been extremely helpful. A user could then immediately identify the targeted flight itinerary without needing to scan the list below. The current implementation requires the use to scan the results list even when the 2D scatter graph is visible. Simple sliders could have accomplished the same task, again, using less screen real estate.

There is plenty of other cool stuff – the calendar option lets one see a visual representation of the strategies employed by airlines for managing city-pair pricing. The outbound/return time sliders including departure & arrival times are nicely rendered, but far and beyond all other features is Google Flights blazing fast speed.

That said, there is incredibly powerful code underlying these tools – the key will be harnessing that power and unleashing it through an innovative user interface to make flight search more engaging and seamless.

From a content perspective, Southwest Airlines and Virgin America flight schedules are included, but pricing is not provided and no booking link is active. AirTran provides pricing, but again, the booking link is not available – the same goes for Frontier.

It is unclear if Google intends to enable integrated alternate day search capability, as the current iteration allows clicking forward & back by date. It may have been that in its initial version, the date paging was provided to simplify the UI and ensure page rendering speed was a key point of differentiation.

Google will need to do some retooling to compete with Kayak’s Hacker Fares. Kayak finds lower pricing or new itinerary combinations by linking two one-way itineraries to create a round-trip between airlines lacking ticketing agreements. As a result, two separate bookings are required. Google’s current limitation of one ad unit covering a complete roundtrip will probably need to be reworked to be competitive.

Hipmunk also has Google beat on pure graphic appeal. C’mon, all Google could muster was a generic airplane silhouette icon alongside the word “Flights” in a standard red font? Beyond the very cute mascot, Hipmunk has a clean & simple interface augmented by some clever agony filtering that eliminates irrelevant flight options. User experience is a critical factor that makes travel search much more of a challenge than basic web search. The current feel of Google Flights is a lot like Google Analytics – and that may not suit the typical leisure traveler.

It also seemed that Google Flights handled certain carriers somewhat sporadically. For some reason, Delta itineraries seemed to be most problematic.

Most OTA and meta-search user experiences are also superior to Google Flights – particularly because there are more itineraries listed on the page above the fold – especially with the map is displayed. On my display, only four outbound Google Flights are presented above the fold; the figure increases to 11 with the map collapsed. In comparison, Kayak displays five, Expedia offers 12 cells within its matrix, Travelocity offers a 15 cell matrix, and Orbitz, 24 cells. In my survey, Hipmunk, with its Time-bars, reigns as champion with a list numbering 28. Priceline is the laggard, displaying only three and lacking a matrix. This puts Google at the low end of the spectrum.

Now for Something Completely Different
So you already test drove Google Flights and passed judgement for better or worse, right?

Hold on – you might want to take a look at this little trick that foreshadows the inevitable Google Flights API.

Guess What? The Google Flights text-based query string works really well for quick & dirty air searches.

Click on this link as see what I mean:
http://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=ORD,MDW,MKE;t=WAS;d=2011-11-14;r=2011-11-17;a=AA,CO,WN,UA;c=DFW,IAH;s=1;olt=0,900;itt=840,1440

Is it fast? Hell yes. And there is no map pushing the search results below the fold.

That’s Cool.

But that’s not all, go into your browser bar and start manipulating the text string. Using Google Chrome, with Google Instant, the search results simply appear – even without clicking or hitting the enter key… Even when changing origin or destination airports.

That’s Magic.

The search query is easily broken down – here are the key elements (based on the query above):
http://www.google.com/flights/#search | The website URL
f=ORD,MDW,MKE | Origin Airport(s) (from)
t=WAS | Destination Airport(s) (to)
d=2011-11-14 | Departure Date (depart)
r=2011-11-17 | Return Date (return)
a=AA,CO,WN,UA | Air Carrier(s)(airline)
c=DFW,IAH | Connection Cities (connect)
s=1 | Maximum Stops (stops)
olt=0,900 | Outbound Landing Time Range – Min-Max in minutes from 0:00 (outbound landing – arrival time range)
itt=840,1440 | Inbound Takeoff Time Range – Min-Max in minutes from 0:00 (inbound takeoff – departure time range)

Each element is isolated by a semi-colon. If particular search attributes are not needed (at a minimum, keep the dates and origin/destination,) leave them out.

For experienced travelers who are familiar with airport codes, this may represent the industry’s fastest possible way to search for flights. The only tricky part will be the flight time calculations, but the sliders may be used if deemed easier. The outbound and inbound time attributes can both be altered for departure or landing times and are based on minutes, so be prepared to practice dividing by 60.

Try it – using Chrome. Awesome, isn’t it? It beats the page back / new search / or filtering options normally required on traditional airline, OTA or meta-search sites for raw speed & flexibility. You may experience the same code-driven rush as a travel agent typing into a green screen in the 1970′s. The speed is addictive.

Finally, before anyone starts getting too bent out of shape, Google has not (yet) embedded Google Flights into the organic search results page. A search of “Flights” today returned ten standard links to Expedia, Travelocity, Kayak, CheapTickets, Priceline, Hotwire, Orbitz, JetBlue, American and TripAdvisor in that order. Not that Google is completely ignoring the new functionality – Flights appears as a menu item in the left sidebar whenever the keywords Flight or Flights are entered, but not when the terms air, airfare, airline, plane tickets, etc. are entered.

At least for the present, Bing gives its air meta-search a much higher profile within its organic search results – including origin/destination and date inputs.

I am guessing Google’s approach may change in the future based on advertising click-through rates or when profile information is integrate profile information and retaining values from recent searches, for example the origin airport and dates. It would be logical for Google to follow Bing’s lead.

When Google fits together the pieces of the puzzle, this will be a platform to be reckoned with… just as everyone expected. I don’t recall anyone predicting the lightening-fast search results – and this is just the first release. Just wait until those smart Googlers and ITAers start tuning the application for speed in future revisions…

So in the interim, before Google launches international itinerary search, tweaks its algorithm and UI to present Hacker Fares, suppresses the map, introduces an API, or at least spruces up the branding on the flight search page, have fun relishing the speed and elegance of the old-school travel search technique proven by thousands of traditional travel agents on green-screens for decades – the simple paste & edit text entry.

No related posts.

A Faster Way to Search Google Flights – Cut and Paste

Hotel reviews and ratings are a hot topic of discussion and it’s getting hotter. Recent PhoCusWright research finds 43% of travelers are influenced by social media and that two-thirds of hotel reviews are submitted on Online Travel Agency sites, with the remaining 34% posted on travel review sites. However, various groups are also accusing TripAdvisor of not doing enough to identify and eradicate phony hotel reviews.

photo credit: jcberk

Hotel ratings and reviews are an invaluable resource for travelers, but with no industry standards and a black-hat element of the industry transitioning from Online Reputation Management (ORM) to Fake Review Optimization (FRO) can they be trusted?

All of the action isn’t necessarily taking place online. Earlier this year, Forrester Research found 29% of leisure travelers would work with a traditional agent, if they could find a good one. That statistic is sharply up from 23% in 2008.

To make matters worse, there are no global standards for hotel ratings, subjecting the prospective hotel guest to a litany of rating scales, often graded by vague, inconsistent, and frequently contradictory measures.

Regardless, the stakes have now been raised dramatically. User generated reviews now factor into search engine results, so enterprising Search Engine Optimization specialists, perhaps recently thwarted by Google’s Panda updates to its search algorithm, have now turned their sites on exploiting the system by doctoring user reviews to enhance search engine rankings.

Some intrepid pioneers brazenly promote their ability to bury negative reviews with positive ones originating from 10,000+ IP addresses and thousands of email addresses. Not surprisingly, there is no mention of these reviews originating from actual guests, a blatant violation of US Federal Trade Commission official guidelines governing endorsements and testimonials. Similar rules prohibit such black-hat practices throughout Europe and elsewhere.

Google itself is also making waves in the review space as it solidifies its local strategy surrounding its Places pages – already a hotbed of activity with hotel price ads pitting hotels against online travel agencies, this time using context sensitive inventory and pricing as the weapons of choice. Simultaneously, with Google’s launch of Google Plus, the decision to require individuals to identify themselves only by using real names adds an additional method to structurally inhibit illegitimate reviews from anonymous sources.

Perhaps Google’s most bold move is its purchase of Zagat, and its highly curated, yet crowd-sourced review platform. With Google internalizing a respected review platform, undoubtedly with an idea of expanding it dramatically, it gets much closer to the deep content that drives customer engagement, validation and relevance. This is particularly important when leveraging semantic search technologies capable of introducing much needed context into travel search processes.

Who Do You Trust?

So, where do travelers look for recommendations regarding their lodging choices? The burning question is more importantly, whose advice do they truly trust and act on when making a hotel reservation?

Considering the fact that I interact with a large number of sophisticated travelers, I prepared a brief 1-page survey to find out whose hotel reviews and ratings the travel cognoscenti trust. The resulting 34 potential sources are roughly divided into three categories – types of individuals, prominent hotel review sites and general categories of sites hosting reviews.

The survey was designed with a single question: “What Sources Do You Trust Most for Hotel Reviews and Ratings?” offering 34 options as responses to rate on a 1-7 scale, with 1 being Worthless and 7 being Excellent.

Here are the results:

Thanks to all that took the time to complete the survey.

Related posts:

1. Who is the Most Trusted Authority in Online Travel?
2. New FTC Rule Helps Improve Social Media & Travel Reviews
3. Seven Travel Planning Steps – Impact on Hotel Distribution Strategy

What are Most Trusted Sources for Hotel Reviews and Ratings?

I am a fool. I wasted three hours of my older daughter’s life that she will never be able to recoup – Thank you SuperShuttle.

This is a story about brand loyalty, shifting business models and what happens when a company completely loses focus on the customer experience.

photo credit: Richard Elzey

Super Shuttle's New York operation is a lot like this outhouse. Dilapidated, barely functional and, from a customer's perspective, it stinks.

It all occurred with the best of intentions. My 20 year-old daughter was planning her first solo trip to New York City to visit friends. The flight planning was easy and the lodging was settled as she was staying with a friend. The one twist was that since she was funding this trip herself, she wanted to be cost conscious. The first challenge was the transfer between LaGuardia Airport and the friend’s apartment in the Financial District.

Four options were considered:

1. Taxi Cab – Door-to-door from LaGuardia to apartment – One Way Fare: $37.50
2. Shared Ride – Door-to-door from LaGuardia to apartment – One Way Fare: $17.00
3. Airport Bus/Subway – NY Airport Service from LaGuardia to Grand Central Station, change to 4 or 5 subway train – One Way Fare: $14.50
4. City Bus/Subway – M60 Bus from LaGuardia, transfer to 4 or 5 subway train at 125th & Lexington – One Way Fare: $2.50

Option 1, the taxi, despite being recommended by her friend, was eliminated due to the additional cost. Option 4, the city bus was eliminated as she was traveling alone, lacked familiarity with NYC transit and the East Harlem transfer. Options 2 & 3 were very close in price, but again, as it was her first time in New York alone, we opted for the shared ride option.

It was particularly reassuring (at the time) to see that Super Shuttle’s familiar blue vans served New York City. Since its inception in the early 1980′s, I had used SuperShuttle sporadically, normally for extended trips when keeping a car parked at the airport for a couple weeks simply didn’t make sense. Having always had positive experiences, there was no reason to consider much had changed over the 10 years since I had used them last – after all, they had expanded to serving 33 airports.

I was a loyal, albeit infrequent customer, who didn’t think twice about trusting this company to provide a great experience to begin my daughter’s visit to New York, so we booked and pre-paid for round-trip LGA-Manhattan transfers on SuperShuttle through Orbitz.

Wow – I could not have been more mistaken.

The Gory Details – The Dirty Dozen

To avoid writing a 9,000 word post journaling the continuous string of service delivery failures that resulted in her round-trip transportation voucher being confiscated by the driver and more than three hours lapsing before she arrived at her friend’s apartment, I will merely summarize the highlights…

1. Orbitz provided a single round-trip SuperShuttle Shared Ride Voucher stating the “booking is confirmed” with instructions to call the service upon arrival at baggage claim.
2. Upon calling SuperShuttle upon arrival, as instructed, my daughter was advised by the dispatcher that the van would arrive within 20 minutes.
3. After one hour (being a much more patient soul than her father,) I received a call from my daughter asking what she should do next as the van had not arrived and the dispatcher on the phone refused to give her any more of an estimated arrival time than “it’s on the way.”
4. The van finally arrived more than an hour and 20 minutes after her original call from baggage claim.
5. The van was loaded with 8 other passengers and the driver insisted on taking my daughters full round-trip voucher, refusing to allow her to keep one of the two bar-codes or any printed documentation of her return trip. This triggered a second call, this time with tears as over two hours had now elapsed and she no longer had a return voucher.
6. I called SuperShuttle for the first time – initially asking what their policy was on “stuffing” the van. I was advised that there should be no more than 4 stops by the call center agent. I was then transferred to the New York dispatcher to further investigate number of stops and voucher capture policies. The dispatcher told me that there could be “an unlimited number of stops” and that without the return voucher, she would need to pay for the trip back to the airport before abruptly hanging up on me.
7. I called SuperShuttle for a second time. This time requesting that someone contact the driver of the van (my daughter had alertly provided me with the van number) so he could give back the return voucher. The customer care supervisor agreed that this was a viable alternative. She also explained that the company had initially started with a no more than three stop policy, but that had expanded to four stops several years ago and had since been eliminated and was now a somewhat taboo topic of conversation with customers. After an extended period of time where the supervisor was reportedly on the phone with NYC dispatch, she advised me that my daughter had already been dropped off, so there was nothing that could be done to get her the return voucher.
8. When I called my daughter to fill her in on the outcome of the voucher discussion, much to my surprise, I learned she WAS STILL ON THE VAN. At this point, I could only assume the New York dispatcher, or the driver, had lied to the customer care supervisor. Over 2 1/2 hours had now passed.
9. Call number three to customer care was even more unpleasant for all involved than the first two calls. By this time, my daughter’s friend had missed an appointment waiting for the van to arrive, my daughter had no pre-paid return voucher for a ride back to the airport, and SuperShuttle has sufficiently destroyed every shard of trust or loyalty to the point that there was no chance in hell we were going to rely on them to provide return transportation for her return flight.
10. The customer care agent appended our file with the new information and agreed that a complete service failure had occurred. Two subsequent steps were required – first, I needed to contact Orbitz to request a refund by providing a case number; second, a representative from SuperShuttle would contact me within 3-5 business days to address my concerns.
11. I called Orbitz, who advised me that only SuperShuttle could contact them to authorize a refund (this is very logical – I had even asked the SuperShuttle agent about the sequencing, but was assured that I needed to call Orbitz first… Wrong again – I should have guessed.
12. As I write this missive, two weeks have now passed with no contact from SuperShuttle. If you have made it this far, I assume you are not surprised either.

What Should Have Happened

From start to finish, this entire episode was easily avoidable.

A reasonable expectation would have been getting picked up by the van within 30 minutes of calling and getting dropped off at her destination within an hour following departure from the airport. One could hope for less than 90 minutes, but even if unforeseen challenges were encountered, 2 hours would represent the outer boundary of reasonableness. Again, this was early on a Sunday afternoon – eliminating any excuse of excessive traffic delays.

Let’s take a quick look at the service delivery failures that subverted a reasonable passenger experience:

First, as the booking was transacted with Orbitz in concert with a flight reservation, the flight information should have been captured by SuperShuttle and entered into their reservation system. According to the SuperShuttle Website, “We also have partnerships with many leading online travel providers… enabling passengers to make their SuperShuttle reservation at the same time they are completing the rest of their travel plans.” In my daughter’s case, this was not true – the customer care team advised me that no advance reservation had been made – my daughter was merely provided with a voucher.

Next, called on arrival by my daughter, the dispatcher, understanding the availability of vans and the number of passengers waiting to travel to various destinations, should have been able to provide an accurate time estimate for a van pickup. Again, the SuperShuttle web site establishes an expectation, “The moment you have your luggage and inform our staff you are ready to go, you will be entered into our system, quickly matched with others going in your direction, and a van will be sent to pick you up promptly.” By any reasonable measure, waiting 80+ minutes on a Sunday afternoon is by no means “prompt.”

The number of people loaded into the shuttle should be based on an estimation of the arrival time for the last passenger to reach their destination. Yet again, the SuperShuttle web site defines the service expectation, “Customers enjoy the cost savings of a shared-ride service along with the assurance that they will reach their destinations reasonably quickly.” Google Maps indicates the most direct route to my daughter’s destination as taking 19 minutes due to minimal traffic early Sunday afternoon. Even considering dropping off eight other passengers enroute, taking over 1 hour 40 minutes in the process is wantonly excessive – an indication of exceptionally poor route planning by the driver (this was even confirmed by my daughter after she noticed they were passing various landmarks multiple times.)

My daughter should have been allowed to keep her round-trip voucher, with the number recorded on the outbound trip and the document captured on the return trip. Despite the round-trip voucher issue potentially being a relatively rare scenario, that process still should be a basic element of driver training. If drivers have a question on a policy, a central resource should be available to authorize an expedient resolution. Standard processes should also be established so van drivers may be contacted quickly and efficiently – especially when a van number is provided. There must be frequent occurrences when passengers inadvertently forget luggage or personal belonging in the vans and the items must be returned. Quick communication with drivers can potentially spare all parties a lot of time and aggravation.

Regardless of any circumstances, there is no reason for a dispatcher to hang up on callers or mislead to coworkers.

This is a particularly important point considering the SuperShuttle credo is: “to maintain our founding principles of quality, superb passenger service, responsiveness, reliability and passenger safety.” So for this trip, the company achieved 20% of its stated goal, with passing grades on the safety front.

How Did SuperShuttle Lose Its Way?

SuperShuttle did not always operate this way. In 2001, their website proudly presented their Service Standards:

• We recognize that our first responsibility is to our guests, who are the sole support of each and every one of us.
• We are friendly and courteous no matter what.
• We help our passengers in every way possible.
• We will be on time, every time.
• We have a policy of no more than 3 stops, with the exception of holidays, express areas and travel emergencies.
• We take pride in the condition of our equipment and in our personal appearance.
• We will respond with urgency to any problem that jeopardizes these standards.

Times have changed.

Most significantly, around 2004, SuperShuttle changed its business model from employee-based operations to franchised operator/drivers. This change dramatically reduced the company’s variable operating costs for costs for employment and unemployment taxes, vehicle maintenance, fuel and insurance.

The move fundamentally converted its drivers from employees into small business owners – a move that reportedly many were not well prepared to take. Despite requiring drivers dedicate a minimum number of hours per week, the change also significantly undermined the organization’s capability to plan for service peaks & valleys. As a result, the company lost control of its operations and subsequently degraded its brand.

Due to the franchise relationship and inadequate incentive structures to support rider satisfaction, drivers now seek full vans to maximize profitability, causing more intermediate stops and loops around the airport trolling for additional fares.

How bad are franchisee relations? A hint might be offered by the SuperShuttle Corporate Slaves video. The points raised paint a fairly ugly portrait of the company.

Lesson learned – by being blindly brand loyal, one can get blindsided by service delivery issues. It is best to check user generated review sites with an ample number of recent reviews to confirm that others have not encountered systemic problems.

Travel Tip: When traveling to New York, to quote a friend of my daughter, the best way to get from the airport into the city is “anyway, except SuperShuttle.”

NOTE: I have held off more than two weeks to publish this post, giving Super shuttle more than ample time to contact me – a commitment that they have again failed to fulfill. Perhaps the company should refocus its efforts and promote its consistency. In my most recent experience, they are consistently bad, but at least they could abide by truth in advertising standards…

No related posts.

SuperShuttle in New York – Make that Super Shittle