Timothy Hughes, Vice President Commercial, Orbitz Worldwide and HotelClub

Morris Sim, CEO & Co-Founder, Circos Brand Karma

Brett Henry, Vice-President, Marketing and Vice-President, India, Abacus International

Siew Hoon, our perpetually energetic host, is moderating.

She asks the panel to wrap their thoughts from the last few days and let us know what some of their insights may have been.

Tim kicks off and says that as travel companies, “We need to get in on the Social Conversation to best reach the new type of consumers”. 

Morris says his key learnings have been around search and social and the growing importance of the AV component of content.  He talks about the new ‘grammar’ of AV.  

Brett says (whilst smiling I should add) that this new concept of ‘AV is the new grammar’ is ‘ridiculous’ – “it’s just AV,” he says. “They learn by doing and are creating every hour of every day,” he adds. Morris retorts by saying that, “Maybe it’s up to us to learn the grammar?” but Brett says the ‘concept of rules’ around AV that the use of the word ‘grammar’ introduces just isn’t appropriate.  He goes on to say that, we shouldn’t ignore those people still embedded in the ‘older’ channels and uses the small classifieds in the Sunday papers as an example of this.

“But what about this new content?” Siew Hoon asks.  Tim says it has to be honest.  “Whether you are a major airline or small hotel you have to be honest. If you’re fifteen minutes away from the beach, don’t say you’re five minutes away.”

Brett talks about the same kind of thing but puts a slightly different slant on things and uses the word ‘authenticity’. “If you’re not authentic you’re going to pay a penalty”.  For Morris, the key is creativity – increasingly the standard of excellence is driven by other industries – fashion, for example. “It’s time for the travel industry to catch up”, he says.

Next we have a question from the audience.  “How do we address the question of noise?”  We get a bit sidetracked when the panelists start talking about a session from two days which asked an interesting question about hotel guests asking if a hotel ‘should’ prefer a guest who spent a lot of money or one who spent less but tweeted to thousands of followers about the experience.  “What is a ‘tweet’ worth?” asks Siew Hoon.   Tim suggests that it’s almost impossible to measure but reminds us of Kevin Smith being thrown off Southwest and, in that particular case; his tweets were ‘worth a lot’.  But Tim maintains that he’d take the cash now over the passionate tweeter. 

“But back to the question of noise”, Siew Hoon reminds us.  Morris says his company helps separate the noise.  “There’s so much data out there”, he says and tells us that some sort of listening platform is important to help brands get a handle on what’s out there and cut through all the chaos.  “At the very minimum, get the Google Alerts thing done”, Morris adds.  Brett talks about using Social Media to monitor sentiment around a brand’s touchpoints.  “Look at how sentiment around check-in, for example, changes over time and then act on it”

Siew Hoon asks Brett, “How is mobile going to work?”  Mobile Applications favors intermediaries. “ I’m going to have one or two apps at most,” he adds.  He then adds that he thinks a Mobile approach of a business needs to touch ALL aspects of the business.  Start as a service channel and then move towards transaction, he says – service is a great way of reducing costs.  The tablet really matters he says – but just focus on the iPad because Android won’t happen for two years. 

Morris thinks we should think about the mobile paradigm in a new way.  “They are small computers that can also make phone calls,” he says.  “Apps are the way forward.”  Brett adds another topic to the mobile discussion – Augmented Reality.  “Let’s not forget the whole location thing about the new mobile business”, Tim adds.  Siew Hoon asks us to remember an insight from the conference from a speaker who talked to us about couch surfers – people kicking back and watching TV but using mobile devices.

Siew Hoon then asks the panel what mind-shifts the travel industry has to make.  Morris talks about the four ‘Es’ (as oppose to the Ps) – it’s more about the Experience and the Exchange now.  The industry needs to focus on the (E)xperience. 

“How”, Tim adds, “can you use all this Social Stuff and turn it into useable data?  We need to incentivize data collection and good content creation.”  Morris adds to Tim’s sentiment by telling us that creating viral stuff is very difficult but creating functional stuff can be a good route.

Siew Hoon mentions another shift – is it about time we stopped talking about online and offline?  OTAs can now move into the influential space which differs from a couple of years ago when the OTA may have simply fulfilled the purpose of provide the end cheap transaction component.  Morris again talks about the new ‘E’ – “for me it’s about the overall experience – the total digital presence.”

Siew Hoon asks the panelists for some final words.

Brett: “As you listen to people share what’s possible, remember it needs to be led by somebody high in the organization – it’s not something that happens just in one department.”

Morris:  ‘As you all look at your budgets for next year, move away from the template you may have got used to.  If your marketing budget for next year looks like that from 2009, you may be going down the wrong way”

Tim:  “Collect and use data.”

A great session nicely summarizing some of the week’s thoughts and themes.

My guess is that should you listen to these guys and if you re-evaluate you marketing spend shape whilst collecting data and actioning this through a company-wide top-down sponsored initiative, you’re probably not going to go far wrong!

Featured image credit (silhouette speak bubble): Ockra/iStock