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Firstly, I wanted to reflect on how Chinese travel websites were originally positioned and make some general points on that core messages, audience and purpose.

A historical snapshot- a few years before

• Airline websites sold flights.

• Hotel chain websites sold hotel reservations.

• Tour operators sold package holidays.

• Newspapers / magazines reviewed destinations and travel related products; strong revenue source from advertising various travel products.

• Review websites published reviews (professional/paid journalism)

• Online Travel Agencies (OTA) were copies from their Western counterparts and tried to attract an audience and consumer through ‘cheap’ or ‘discounting’ travel options.

From this starting point, it is evident that the various travel sites where much more focused on their core business and provided little in the way of ‘value added’ and ‘cross selling’.

Interestingly, taking a look at the Ctrip’s and eLong’s websites from 2001, we can see both had many features still in effect on their sites today. Apart from seeing airfares from Beijing to London are 50% the price today than 8 years ago their sites in the most part were one dimensional, offered mostly single product options and the reviews were written by their own staff, usually with the agenda of ‘pushing’ a particular offer.  Here are the sites as they were in 2001.

We have already come a long way towards what is now considered a typical travel ecommerce site.

Now .. where are we?           

Major online travel sites now look at providing ‘one stop’ shopping and as such will offer many related (and sometimes not related) travel products. Simply taking a look at the two major Chinese sites, namely Ctrip and eLong and you can see this in action. They have moved into multi-language (although Ctrip had a poor English language version in 2001), multi-product two-dimensional sites (meaning the ability for online engagement with consumers) and this is consistent with what is also happening for the other sectors. Here are the two major OTA's sites as seen today in 2009.

The travel sites of today can be generally summarized as:

• Airline websites sell flights, hotels & car hire. Online travel planning widgets.
• Hotel chain websites sell hotels.
• Tour operators sell flights, hotels & car hire.
• Newspapers / magazines sell flights, hotels & car hire and have “reviews”. Revenue from travel product advertising is falling as advertising moves online.
• Review websites use a combination of professional/paid and user generated/unpaid content to sell flights, hotels & car hire. Price comparison engines.

The future... social travel ecommerce

Websites will need to be difficult to differentiate. Just look at how visually close the eLong and Ctrip sites look to each other and they also seem to promote similar travel products. Given that many more sites also copy these two sites, the least profitable websites (and hence companies) will close down / merge because they won’t be able to keep up with the major's OTA’s.

Online travel agency sites will also need to work harder at improving the entire end to end website experience if they are to build trusted, long-term relationships that encourage customers to buy from them time and time again. This is where I think we will see the greatest evolving of new online travel sites that resemble more a social network/community site rather than the web designs of today. Online Travel Agencies (OTA’s) will see flights, hotels & car hire – and have user generated “reviews” the ability to friend and upload photos. Participate in online competitions, build fan pages to promote their favorite destinations or even engage directly with staff at the hotels, airlines and tour operators to provide both positive and negative feedback.

This shift by OTA’s is in part a move to make their sites more ‘sticky’ as the airlines/hotel groups start adopting aggressive B2C strategies to service consumers directly.  OTA’s argue that Hotels/Airlines get benefit to direct bookings from the additional exposure gained from the OTA’s marketing and promoting their products. Fundamentally flawed logic, as today digital marketing for this sector is performance based not brand driven. Hotels/airlines are becoming savvier in using search marketing, affiliate marketing and even social media marketing in ways that drive conversions and not just a branding strategy. This is why I believe the OTA’s need to quickly move towards social mediated ecommerce. I suggest the OTA’s strength and core advantage is in providing multiple hotel or airline options for those that want a nights accommodation within certain parameters (location, star rating, facilities etc) and the consumer is not fixed on a particular hotel.

Newspapers / magazines who have been struggling with the loss of ads revenues will not recover from this and although the ad revenues will continue, the previous levels will never return.

Summary

There is much potential still untapped in online travel sales and I would suggest that we should push future OTA and Travel product sites (hotels, airlines & tour products) need to develop around social media frameworks. The new business models must incorporate active and engaging connections directly with consumers. I see evolving as a natural extension of where the online travel sites have come from over the past 8 years in China.