“I don’t mind saying that we are feeling rather insecure at the moment. Google getting into flight search, Hotel Finder, buying content, Apple may be coming in, Amazon too – we want to be prepared and we have to be good at what they are not good in.”

Hence the CEO of Venture Republic, which runs air and hotel search sites,travel.jp and hotel.jp, is transforming its flight business and adding a layer oflocal, curated content, compiled by human experts, to its search function.

(Picture: Shibata enjoying a local travel experience)

“We need to differentiate. Technology is not the answer because we can’t fight with the big boys. We can leverage on it however and we need to blend it with human beings. Collective knowledge makes sense to us.”

So what it is doing is finding experts in each field – for example, diving or skiing – and getting them to share their knowledge on its platform.

“It is amazing the obsession people have with certain things, like I have about indie music and I could tell you a lot about that. People are so informed and each person really cares about something, so you could say we are crowd sourcing in a selective way.”

Shibata believes that with mass user generated content such as those found on Facebook, there is lack of focus. “You want to hear from someone who understands your interests.”

It has hired 30 “navigators”, who are selected through various means, and they need not be necessarily trained travel writers. They share revenues when a customer clicks on a link in their article, that would take them to flight, hotel or package tour information.

Over time, Shibata wants to expand the navigator team to 100.

It is a model that has worked well for its shopping sites. “We have more than 100 experts who can tell you what to get from where at what price, there’s a bicycle maniac for example who has 17 bicycles in his place,” said Shibata.

“Content is the differentiator and we are adding content because users want to know more about the destination and that influences their purchasing behaviour. Our ultimate goal is to help consumers plan and buy, and we need content to do that.”

Shibata said the difference between the old and new media models was that old media models are struggling to monetize content while new media models already have a monetization engine.

Referring to Jeff Bezos who in unveiling the latest Kindle Fire said, “people buy from people, not the Internet”, Shibata said, “Our decision to become a curated media vertical is based on that premise – there’s a new wave of citizen journalism.”

Asked if he was concerned that he might lose focus and jeopardise the bread-and-butter search business, Shibata said, ““Of course, it is a big risk but we are still running our metasearch engines and that’s an important to monetize.

“Yes, it is a fundamental change to our business model. We want to be the ultimate travel resource – search, find information, get recommendations, communities – but not book. That, we leave it to suppliers, we want to be neutral.”