It’s been two weeks since I spoke about search marketing at the ABTA Travel Convention and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what I learned in Palma.

We attend the Travel Convention to listen rather than talk (although it was nice to be invited to talk too this time) and here are three areas that got me wound up:

There are far too many senior people that continue to talk about ‘online’ as if it’s something new.

In their defence, some people only just seem to be getting used to computers, nevermind the web. I met one delegate who told me his company had only just (last year) implemented a computerised booking system.  I can’t say I’m too surprised by this, particularly when it comes to some of the smaller agents.

But I was amazed to hear some senior people from big organisations talking about ‘online’ as if it’s a recent thing.

I heard a couple of people talk about prioritising the online opportunity as if this put them ahead of the curve. The truth is that for some businesses it could be a case of too little, too late.

Some big players are engaged in a game of catch-up that I’m not sure they can win - it will be interesting to see how effectively they can compete against the ‘pureplays’ and those that are already innovating.

People are far too focused on channels

I attended Econsultancy’s JUMP event last week and was very taken by a talk from Jonathan Wolf, Bazaarvoice’s Director of Product Strategy, in which he challenged the multichannel mentality.

He talked about how to engage shoppers across every customer touchpoint, moving beyond the multichannel to the omnichannel.

I’m not that interested in the terminology but, looking back, it struck me that the theme of the Convention was ‘game changers’ and that a lot of the focus was on the role of individual channels in facilitating change.

I think the real challenge for the industry as a whole is to better understand customers and how they research and purchase, offline and online. The challenge is to understand the stories that people are creating for themselves using the information the industry provides, and how different channels can contribute to the meaningful whole that is the connected customer.

It feels like travel professionals don’t necessarily need to know more about different technologies.

What they need is help understanding their customers’ journeys  and how best to engage with them.

This isn’t the year of the mobile…

For the foreseeable future, every year will be the year of the mobile.

It’s clear that mobile devices and ways of being are going to be a big part of our collective futures. But I’d like to make something clear: It’s one thing to have a mobile strategy; it’s another to have a mobile site or an app.

I think a lot of people are confused about this.
They’re not making the most of existing online opportunities and yet they’re already worrying about whether they should or should not have a mobile site.

They need not to get distracted.

They need to analyse their data and understand their customers and go from there.

It might be they need a mobile site now. It might not. It depends where your customers are.

It will still be the year of the mobile next year. And the year after.