What if Sports Authority only had one door into its sports shoe department and it was marked “professional athletes only”? That would make no sense whatsoever. Right? What about the moms that buy sports shoes and the kids that wear them and the amateur athletes, oh and the dads. Sports Authority knows that they need …
Travel industry Distribution is like Sport Shoe Sales – or rather it should be. Read More »
For my regular readers, I want to apologize for missing day four of the new series. Sometimes life just gets in the way. Miss the first post in this new series – Alphabet Soup of Success? Click HERE and go back to the beginning. ——————————————————————- The next letter in our Alphabet Soup of Success is …
As I look back through all of my blogs, the second most popular one is “Who is the biggest GDS”. (For those wondering what the first most popular blog was, it was the one “To Delta Airlines: I would have built the website for $80 million…..“). Well, it is time to put this argument to …
Tonight as I looked through my most popular blogs, in the top 3 was a story in my Pedigree Series about Orbitz. At the time of the article, just a little over 2 years ago, their market cap was just $233m and they were embroiled in a battle with American. The suit is now history …
Travel Distribution is an interesting, complex animal. Shoppers are incredibly fickle and they love to compare prices. And travel suppliers love to fill their airplanes, rooms, cruise ships, etc., at the highest possible rate of course! There is an ongoing debate that is playing out in the marketplace about the value of third party distributors, …
Want consumers to buy direct? Wishing won’t make it so. Read More »
Retrospective – Part 3 of a 4 part series (for Part 2 click HERE) In my last blog, we talked about how mini-computers impacted the travel ecosystem and how they helped travel agencies consolidate booking information from multiple sources for reporting and accounting purposes. They vastly improved productivity, accuracy and timeliness and were especially useful …
Flashback 1995 – This is not a drill. This is not a drill. Read More »
As far as alliteration goes, dashing deals is not bad. People may remember it. But while I understand flash sales for my local spa, or a restaurant that I haven’t tried, or even buying a coupon for the chiropractor on the off chance that I hurt my back, I just don’t get travel flash sales. …
Travelocity is getting in the fray with Dashing Deals Read More »
Occasionally, when you least expect it, you can get a view into a company’s strategy from the most inocuous of places – their job boards. Since I’m updating my book on Multi-Channel Distribution, I have a Google Alert set up for distribution and today, up popped this job description. Senior Manager, Travel Agent Distribution Americas …
Offline Strategy in the Wings for Leading OTA Expedia? Read More »
Today Compete released its June 2011 normalized metrics for unique visitors to the wide range of websites tracked by the organization. Here are the results for the top Online Travel Agencies (OTAs). Expedia remains in the number one position with just over 19m unique visitors, up 12.07% from May and up year over year by …
I have two children — a girl age 13 and a boy age 11. In our house, we have a firm rule. No tattling. We force them to “make nice” with each other, finding middle ground that works for both of them. It is our hope that they are building lifelong negotiating skills. We expect …
