Get informed, compare, book – the Internet didn’t just turn the tourist industry on its head but it also inspired it

It used to be the case that you selected a travel agency, stocked up on catalogues and at home a family meeting was held where various possible holiday destinations were weighed up before a decision was made. Nowadays many people are adopting a different approach. They get informed online in advance before either booking immediately using the agency portal or traipsing as was always the case to the travel agency. So the web is becoming ever more important when it comes to planning a holiday.

Overview The number of travel agencies online has become almost too great to have a clear overview anymore, so much so that consumers can no longer distinguish whether it is a purely online travel agency or a traditional travel agency which is now online, of which in Austria 300 (out of 1400) have adopted the advice tool “BistroPortal”. With this, as well as being able to find and compare holiday offers, additional information can also be accessed. BistroPortal was developed by the company Traveltainment, which belongs to Amadeus Austria, and offers many functions. Aside from being able to access information directly concerning price and availability, the portal makes use of databases from the Berlin company GIATA, which offer comprehensive photos, videos and descriptions of 90,000 hotels worldwide. In order to avoid the hotels being saved more than once under different names (spellings) the hotel’s GPS location is also stored. For example, whoever visits the websites from TUI, Gulet, Neckermann or bentour will find descriptions which were composed by GIATA. According to GIATA’s managing director Remzi Aru “116 employees write, process and translate the texts”. In doing this even country specific language and customer preferences are taken into consideration “because an American customer values things differently to a European one”.

Travel 2.0 “The travel agency industry is in upheaval” says Amadeus boss man Wilfried Kropp “but many operators have yet to understand, the journey until the customer has reached their destination is a virtual one.” In these times of “online participation” with sites such as Youtube and Wikipedia, it is no wonder that that travel industry is in the grip of Web 2.0 hype:
On www.wikitravel.org there is sometimes more up-to-date information on holiday destinations than there are in many guide books. Using maps.google.com you can get a birds eye view of hotels, surroundings and beaches, while on www.locr.com there are photos available on the portal taken by those that were already there on holiday.

Online Travel The competitors of the “stationary” travel agencies are online travel portals such as Expedia (www.expedia.at), Opodo (www.opodo.at) or www.weg.at. Even these sites also work with the same ingredients . 90% of them use the same booking system (Booking Engine Touristik), which has the same content (photos, descriptions etc.) as many other portals.


WEB TIP
Go on holiday and earn a little money on the side? This possible on the platform Myhotelvideo (www.myhotelvideo.de) where hotel reporters are sought after. Whoever films their gaff, registers on the site and uploads the films to the portal receives up to 10 ¬, that is 2 ¬ per short film, since five motifs are required: the outdoor area, reception, restaurant, living area and pool.

By Gerald Reishcl
And Jakob Steinschaden

---