Web 2.0's Impact: The Tourism Industry

Over the next several weeks I am going to start posting about the global medium to long-term impact Web 2.0 will have on different industry sectors. First up: travel and tourism.

According to the the Travel Industry Association, tourism generates $1.3 trillion in economic activity. And that's just in the US, folks. They say if one dollar bill equaled a second of time, then $1.3 trillion would equal over 41,000 years. That's a lot of iron. Get ready to get your share.

Before we were all connected to the broadband Internet, it was hard to get good information about a particular destination. In 1980 when I was 10 years old my parents took my brother and I on a six week trip to all the National Parks. I wrote the AAA and National Park Service by mail and waited for them anxiously to send us all the brochures and maps. Then I studied them until I knew everything about places like Bryce Canyon, Arches National Park, Crazy Horse and Mesa Verde. Until very recently most of us turned to travel agents, the Sunday newspaper and travel mags to guide us. They were our sherpas.

Flash forward to today. Beginning in the early to mid 1990s it became very easy to research destinations. Hop on to Expedia, Yahoo Travel or Travelocity and there's gobs of information to help you compare prices and make an informed decision. That's how most of us still go about planning for a trip today. Our habits are locked...or are they.

In the Web 2.0 era, the power is shifting. The authority figure is no longer the travel agent or even the media. It's us. We're empowered with technology and we're using it to catalog every place on earth using video, photos and text. We are telling it like it is and sharing it globally. Consider the following examples.

• Wikimapia: Hey, what's a wiki doing in my Google map? That's the big idea behind this killer site. They layer a Wikipedia-like service on top of a Google Map allowing everyone to label every single place on earth. In just a few months, there have been more than two million places annotated, including some places in those national parks I adore. You can even view these annotations as a layer in Google Earth.

• Flickr: One of the most popular photo sharing sites is making it easy for us to annotate every place on Earth with photos. They allow people to geotag (definition) their photos so they can show us where the shot was taken. Soon digital cameras equipped with GPS and wireless technology will do the work for us.
• Yahoo Trip Planner: Who needs a travel agent when there's 43,000 people eager to help us. That's how many full itineraries have been created on the popular site. Simply plug in a destination and there's someone who has likely created a Triptik of their vacation, which you can easily then replicate using Yahoo's tools.

Right now, while all of this information is invaluable for travelers, it's basically fun and games. I started this post talking about money and I plan to finish it that way. While Web 2.0 is wonderful for transparency and knowledge sharing, when it comes to the impact on the tourism the final chapter has not yet been written. It's all about the Benjamins.

In the very near future these hubs will enable people to monetize their wonderful contributions to our collective knowledge about destinations, hotels, flights and more. Pennies to a site like Yahoo Travel is dollars to the individual who is the highest ranked authority on the Yahoo Trip Planner site or Yahoo Answers. This sort of revenue sharing will turn everyone into a real travel agent.

Here's a future scenario...

Maryclaire730 has put together a terrific itinerary on the Yahoo Trip Planner of my home town, New York City. She highlights a three-day junket that covers the basics like the Waldorf Astoria hotel, a Broadway show as well as places off the beaten path, like Dylan's Candy Bar, which is deep in the bowels of Bloomingdales. (Who knew?) The trip plan has been rated positively by Yahoo users and there are lots of rich photos to boot. However, maryclaire730 hasn't made a dime on this.

Now imagine that Yahoo linked you back to their main travel site. If you wanted to, you could copy maryclare730's entire trip. You can book the same flights, stay in the same hotel for the same number of days, reserve the same restaurants and even get a coupon for Dylan's Candy Bar. The revenue is shared between Yahoo, the specific attractions/airlines/hotels and, yes, maryclare730. She gets a few bucks every time you link over and book all or part of her itinerary.

That is what Web 2.0 will do for travel and tourism.

Comments

[Asi]

The link that is missing from this fantastic post is the new DK travel site (http://www.travel.dk.com/)

Aside from browsing your chosen destination, viewing attractions, and booking flights/hotels/tickets - which is what you can do on other sites - the BIG idea here is to allow users to “roll their own” travel guides with just the stuff in them that they want, saving weight carried and money spent on guides that mainly go 80% unread.

These personalised guides can be purchased for £2.50 in PDF form (free for a limited period now) and in a couple of months can be ordered as special one-off bespoke book, delivered straight to your door or hotel.

Add to that community ideas like allowing people to share their ideal holiday itineraries in a “playlist fashion” and the UGC component of attraction suggestions and you start to transmogrify a publisher into a leaving, breathing travel publishing community … and one that makes money doing so.

[Marcus]

Hi Steve,

Great post! I agree - the travel industry is perfect for Web 2.0.

At NXTbook Media, we recently launched a digital travel guide/Google Map/Flickr vacation photo mash-up. You can view it here: http://www.nxtbookmedia.com/vacation/index.php

[luca]

Steve,
I've just posted some comments on how the tourism industry is the most responsive to products like our Sitofono (Voice 2.0). Your post confirms my view.

http://lucafiligheddu.blogspot.com/2007/02/sitofono-and-bit.html

[Eliza]

Hello Steve,

You may be interested in learning about useful + agreeable (www.ua.tv), a travel and design micro network. In light of the climate for web 2.0, u+a professionally produces travel and design related short films from around the world.

The Creative Director was a former architecture critic and travel writer for numerous publications, and he has combined his interests and expertise into useful + agreeable.

The beauty of the web is that it has a place for everybody and for every interest - from UGC to micro network to...

Thanks for your article.

[kyle]

on a less economical note, but hitting on the web 2.0 powers + geotagging...

it's important to understand how useful data comes together. and theres no better data than a social network...

http://www.ourglobes.com

ourglobes is a social network based around the personal profiles of its users. the real fun though is in the user's ability to do what you write about, and geotag photos, videos, notes, and whatever else they like to their personal map. you can do this under the my account section when you sign in, then click "submit items." so if you travel, film, party or just plain have media of you and your friends, you can now share it on the network. soon, groups will allow sharing between people on group maps with common interests, and embedding for other sites is in the works (so you can put your map on any site).

its VERY early on, so the network isnt too large. i am like you, and really think geotagging is not only powerful, but think its a great way to connect to others by viewing another user's "global photo album" in the context of a personal profile. on top of its social value, the maps could become educational, promotional, or whatever else the user sees in geotagging's abilities.

as i update the site, ill keep you in on the loop. my page:

http://www.ourglobes.com/frominator1

take care,
kyle

[Joe Buhler]

Hi Steve,

Only came across this post today. You're absolutely right. Travel has been impacted by Web 2.0 in significant ways and it will continue to be in even more ways than we can imagine today. I've been covering the subject for some time now on my Travel and Web 2.0 blog at http://jebworks.wordpress.com
Glad to see this covered outside the industry as well.

Joe

[Jonthetourist]

Hi Steve

Greeting from the UK! I think you are so right. The balance of power is changing, and the rewards must fall to those who assist the traveller in making informed choices.

Jon

[Matt Thomas]

Steve,

We would like to share with you our new online travel planning, booking, and management site eTripBuilder.com. We realize how time consuming travel preparations can be, so we built eTripBuilder.com to help travelers. eTripBuilder offers thousands of restaurants and attractions you can add to your trip itinerary as well as online booking services for car rentals, airfare and hotels worldwide. Once you’ve finished planning your trip – you can print your customized travel itinerary or export it to your GPS device or calendaring software.

It’s your trip, take control of it!

Matt Thomas
www.eTripBuilder.com