I stumbled upon a fantastic review of the 10 most influential people in the online travel industry over the past ten years, which was put together by UK based www.Travolution.co.uk. The article, which lists innovators in the online travel industry such as Simon Breakwell and Barry Diller from Expedia, Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page (obviously!), and Steve Kaufer and Langley Steinert, founders of Tripadvisor among others, but the article itself is a interesting look back at the evolution of the online travel space reminding us all that there was once a time that GDS was king and a website was an online brochure, if you were lucky enough to convince management that you needed one!

In 2007, we have search engines, major travel portals, online intermediaries, and dynamic packaging available to the travel consumer.As well, we as tourism marketers have had to open up the lines of communication and embrace customer feedback as a critical part of our communications strategy. New media such as Blogging, RSS and social media have changed the way that consumers research and buy travel online, and this continues to evolve every day.

I was recently speaking at the Student Youth and Travel Association (SYTA) conference in Whistler B.C., and was asked during our session on “New media” how to engage this new online consumer without the worry of “losing control” of the message. I guess the simple answer is that there is no real control anymore as it relates to online marketing.The consumers are really more in control than ever before in shaping your brand. I did answer the question however by saying that marketers should join the conversation and feed the message often.

Feed the message you ask? Yes! First and foremost, have your product available for purchase online across multiple online channels, make sure that your brand message is always consistent, update your content often, optimize your website so that it can be found by your target audience, read and comment on Blogs and other forums for customer testimonials (like tripadvisor.com), make sure that your site is user-friendly, and most importantly – test that your website is working the way that you had intended it to work – or more importantly, how your customers need it to work to close the sale.

Beyond that – you can be an innovator too by posting content online about your brand. Content such as video’s, articles and images of your tourism product is easy to post to channels such as Flikr and YouTube, and can be virally distributed by both you and your customers!The power of an online video like this one from the Log Cabin Inn in New England MA, entitled “want the perfect wedding?” illustrates that video’s posted to YouTube.com can engage (and amuse!) as well as point traffic back to a website, including an online audience who may have not found the website without seeing the video! Who knows what the next ten years will bring to the world of online marketing for tourism. Maybe the future will include virtual vacations online! (oh yes – you can already have that on SecondLife.com!)

Interestingly enough, the most influential list of people in the online travel industry over the past ten years includes only one female in the entire group and short list! It seems that Martha Lane-Fox, co-founder of lastminute.com is the only “chick” in the bunch! Perhaps the next ten years will hatch a few more women tourism entrepreneurs into the mix!

About:

Patricia Brusha is the co-founder of A Couple of Chicks e-Marketing, specializing in Creative, Distribution and Technology together to bring clarity to marketing online.The "Chicks", Patricia Brusha and Alicia Whalen, have published over 30 articles, launched the first ever Canadian Online Marketing Conference, (Online Revealed Canada in association with the Canadian Tourism Commission), presented over 15 e-marketing workshops for such notable organizations as Travel Alberta, SYTA (Student Youth Travel Association), Ontario Tourism (OTMP), and have continued to evolve with their clients and partners to produce successful online marketing case studies.