With all the talk in the industry about who owns the customer journey, Yeoh Siew Hoon wonders if travelers want to be owned.
Many things were said at Phocuswright Dublin including how as part of Expedia’s test and learn strategy, 1,500 changes were made in 2014 versus the 200 changes made in total between 2009 and 2011, indicative of the relentless pace and competition out there – but three threads of thought stood out for me.
1. Day 1 it is, let’s sound the Disruption Alert
Everyone seems to think we are just at Page 1 of everything. Oliver Hua, managing director of Booking.com, Asia Pacific, maintains it is Day 1 of the Internet as far as travel e-commerce is concerned in Asia and in Dublin, Kevin O’Shaugnessy, CEO, IndigoConnect, in his pitch for his airport-to-city ground transport platform, said we were only seeing P1 of Uber’s business plan to convince judges of the potential scale of the 24b Euro market.
Which is both thrilling and terrifying to hear. On one hand, the opportunities ahead. On the other, the disruption and uncertainty looming.
What on earth will Airbnb do next seems to be the ringing question? This week, it signalled its expansion into the professional vacation rentals space and is developing software that will make it easier for property managers to link their properties to their platform.
Oliver Gremillon spelling out Airbnb’s ambitions at Phocuswright Europe.
In Dublin, Olivier Gremillon, managing director Europe for Airbnb, likening Airbnb to a “book of many pages”, said, “We only have 1.2m listings and there are 7 billion people. There is still a way to go. At some point in the future, 50% of people will share their home.”
With a booking volume of 35m guests – it doubled its booking volume in one year – the company is betting on mobile to transform its business.
The company launched its Insta-Book product last year and at the launch, CEO Brian Chesky said, “It’s like a hotel. You click, and it’s reserved. One thing that we’re doing is trying to shift every host to mobile. We’ll eventually get to a place where every booking is insta-book….Imagine Uber if every driver didn’t have a phone. And every driver had to drive home to check the laptop to see when a ride was available. Think about how much friction Uber would have. In our business, if a seller has a mobile device, it could simulate the responsive and the up-to-dateness of a hotel. This is why mobile is transformational for our business. It means a seller can act like a company, in the best possible way.”
Gremillon said that 50% of bookings now include a mobile interaction either on the part of the guest or host.
2. Who owns the customer journey? Brands or the traveller?
I lost count of how many times the words “ customer journey” was used by speakers and how everyone wants to own it.
Gary Morrison: How to innovate in a real-time world
Expedia wants to own it by becoming an indispensable companion to its customers by offering real-time everything – price information, partner marketplace, reviews and notifications. Gary Morrison (left), senior vice president and head of retail, Expedia Worldwide, spoke of how Expedia trawls through 78 billion rows of consumer data, and how there were 5 trillion air searches a year and questioned if flight selection was all about price. Saying air reviews will double in 2015 – reviews collected by Expedia went from 3 million to 5 million in a year, he said, “The whole product information influences decision.”
The key is “how to innovate in a real-time world” so that risks are not discovered too late, said the executive who now oversees Expedia Asia following the global reorganization which came on the heels of the increase in ownership in the joint venture to 75%.
TUI Group wants to own it by literally owning everything its customers use – of its 20m customers, 70% fly on its planes, 7m stay in its own hotels and 13m are serviced by its DMC (Destination Management Company). It also has a growing fleet of cruise ships.
Said Peter Long, joint chief executive, TUI Travel Plc, “The big new change for TUI is ownership and control of content on a unique basis. This is the fundamental platform for us to drive long term security and sustainability of our model. We want control of the end-to-end customer journey.”
Peter Long: Ownership and control of unique content differentiates TUI.
This asset ownership strategy is interesting considering the fact that today’s most valued (in dollar terms) brands – Airbnb, Alibaba, Facebook, Uber – owns no inventory, and you’ve got to wonder where the future is headed.
Airbnb too wants to focus on the traveller journey – now accommodation, next in-destination. “The trip starts when you decide on a vacation to when you go home. You could book a listing in San Francisco and we could recommend activities such as microbrewery and yoga class by host,” said Gremillon.
3. Just take care of us, don’t own us
So while the jury is out over who will win the battle to own the customer journey – of the three, Expedia, TUI and Airbnb, who would you bet on? – I find myself thinking, as a traveller, what if we don’t want anyone to own our journey? What if we just want to be able to dip in and out, flit about, do what we like with whom we find it easy to do business with and get help when we want it?
Do we as travellers really want to be babysat and journey within an Expedia, or TUI, or Airbnb bubble? Where’s the “travel” in that?
Do we, as customers, own the journey, not the brands and all that we want really is for travel suppliers to take care of us, delight us and surprise us, not own us?
Are travel brands losing the plot – thinking too much of technology and assets, and not of the travel experience itself?
Yes, I always return from a conference with more questions than answers.
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