Jan 29 – Feb 4 TripAdvisor takes flight, Skyscanner ups the marketing game, People moves, The wonders of wearables, Content is king and more…our pick of the week’s stories

TripAdvisor takes flight

If you thought meta-search was getting competitive, that landscape is about to get tougher. In an interesting move, this week TripAdvisor will introduce an ambitious redesign of its Flights search feature, according to the New York Times. The report says that TripAdvisor will now offer customers detailed information globally on any given flight’s price. It will show additional charges for add-ons like extra legroom as well as in-flight extras such as WiFi and in-seat power ports. Going even further, TripAdvisor will offer this in 17 languages for 31 countries. The primary goal is to simplify the flight shopping experience by showing people exactly what they are, or could be, paying for.

Skyscanner on the move

It seems the UK is on the horizon for travel search website Skyscanner, which has seen triple-digit growth for four years. This week it said it was preparing for its biggest-ever marketing investment a £3m integrated campaign, which aired on TV this week. It aims to target young, urban professionals and couples whose children have flown the nest. Coined ‘Born Honest’, it is about looking through the world through the eyes of children. But it’s also a play on the fact that Skyscanner operates ‘honestly and without bias’ because, unlike online travel agents, it does not actually sell tickets. This is the first time the company has invested in media spend outside of SEO and digital media because not many people have ‘spontaneous awareness’ of Skyscanner. And yet the company claims to have the highest repeat visit rates in the industry. Part of the investment has been in people with three senior hires to the marketing department.

More people moves

Also hiring this week is Thomas Cook. As part of the company’s ongoing transformation strategy, it has appointed omni-channel marketer Remo Masala from Kuoni Travel as the new Group Head of Marketing. Remo will oversee the development of the Group’s online and offline programmes. The role will involve creating processes to best inform customers of products and services, utilising a wide range of multi-media communications. The aim will be to deliver tangible results across group-wide marketing activities, enabling each region to provide clearer marketing incentives, to drive increased customer acquisition and retention from both high street and online sources.

HotelTonight gets the ‘King’

The third people move this week was at HotelTonight, the on-demand mobile hotel booking app. It announced that Barry Sternlicht – aka the ‘King of Hotels’ - but also the founder and chairman and CEO of Starwood Capital Group, has made a personal investment in the company. Sternlicht also joins HotelTonight as a strategic advisor, a move that is expected to help grow the mobile company’s product offerings and portfolio of cities and hotels. Sternlicht has spent his career developing unique, personalised hotel brands and expect to advise HotelTonight on, among other things, aspects of design. HotelTonight has also teamed up with several big, global chains including InterContinental Hotels Group and Best Western International.

Gimmick or not?

In an in depth look at what is happening on the ‘wearables’ front, EyeforTravel reporter Andrew Hennigan goes in search of answers. He touches on Google’s Glass but then goes on to explore less well-known wearables like Samsung’s Galaxy Gear watch and Jawbone’s UP fitness tracker. He speaks to Facebook’s Global Head of Travel Strategy, Lee McCabe, about what being mobile could mean to travel brands. From the wearable watch to a bracelet that tracks the sun’s intensity or a gadget that measures your cardiac rhythm, the creativity and innovation is there but will they become mainstream? Read the full story on EyeforTravel.com. Oh, and Lee McCabe, Facebook’s head of travel, will be speaking in San Francisco at Social Media in Mobile Strategies for Travel, 2014 (March 17-18).

How to dream up a content plan that will deliver

Creating great content in the multichannel environment might be fun but it’s not about you, it’s got to be about the customer. That is the gist of another story on EyeforTravel.com this week, which takes a closer look at how to go about doing this. We hear from a hotel chain and a marketing expert to come up with seven tips for travel brands to try now. These include: being genuine and understanding what your guests want, keeping social media firmly in frame, working creatively cross channel and making the most of video. The article is packed with insights so don’t miss it.

MakeMyTrip aggressively targets mobile

In India, MakeMyTrip has said that it is aggressively driving business through mobile phones. In a report in the Economic Times, it says that the site expects almost 50% of business to come from mobile in next three years and it has plans to roll out vernacular language capability to include Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil and Bengali. In addition it is on the acquisition trail for tech companies that have mobile app capability. CEO Deep Kalra is quoted saying that 20% of total site visits or traffic and 13% of total transactions at MakeMyTrip are driven through mobile phones. That has happened from a zero base in the last 18 months. Meanwhile, the firm’s app has been downloaded over 2.4 million times and a lot of first time customers are visiting the site via mobile. MakeMyTrip claims to dominate 48% of the online travel business (over Cleartrip and Yatra) in India, seeing 10 million unique visits each month.