Siva Ganeshanandan, General Manager, APAC Autonomy Optimost

Q: What are the three things you think will happen in the travel distribution, marketing and technology space in 2011? (in other words, your predictions)
• Greater automation of targeting of content, offers, and media – allowing more relevance for the customer, more use of content as long tail content meets long tail travelers more readily, and some pain in over-use (being targeted things when I want the big picture).
• The beginnings of Augmented Reality reaching a broad base – for both informational and immersive experiences. We will start to see tourists on the road holding their phones up to the horizons rather than looking up maps. The difference is that if the apps are good, these tourists will not be lost!
• The Chinese and the Indians – continued impact of these two groups, in every sector in the travel industry : budget to ostentatious luxury.

Q: What are the three consumer truths companies should heed in 2011?
• Current experiences (of deciding and buying travel) are not good enough. That’s why travel agents you can call are still popular.
• Gaining credibility and trust are harder than the first hard step of getting heard.
• Consumers expect to have their travel agents, travel guides, and ‘that friend who know that place really well’, in their pockets, wherever they go.

Q: Three important pieces of consumer data that you think points to the future ….
The number of people phoning or walking into travel agents – user experience online has to change, and still has a long way to go.
The sheer numbers of Indians and Chinese who are now travelling.
The number of smart phones that are in each market.

Q: As the year winds to an end, what will you remember most about 2010?
It’s the year that sites in APAC started investing in live testing sites in a structured way – listening to customer actions not just words. (The year Optimost really took off!)

Q: What did most people get wrong in 2010? And what do you think they will get most wrong in 2011?
Most people still got their user experience, websites wrong – not completely wrong, but certainly, not right.
2011 – if they fix this, they will struggle to get targeted experiences right.

Featured image credit (new year’s numbers glass decoration): Ockra/iStock