Posting via 'berry from Pearson T3 this AM. I've been selected to be on the Nomination Committee for CIRA, the folks who run the .ca domain (think: ICANN for Canada). Today is my first meeting.

Travel details: Flying WestJet booked directly on their site after a search via Kayak. Thank goodness I did the online check-in, as the line up here was horrific. Doing that last night got me row 2, aisle.

Car rental a pre-paid from Budget via my peeps at Expedia.ca, after checking them, Hotwire and Priceline.

In this case, Priceline would have been 20%+ more and Hotwire about 25%.

I've thought a lot about Google taking a serious run at the Travel category over the past few years. Mostly because that's part of what I was paid to do, and also because it makes a lot of sense. So I was interested to see Mathew Ingram's piece in today's Globe and Mail (which seems to have spun out of this blog posting) where he talks at length about the prospect. For the most part, I think he got it right.

For one thing, Google certainly has designs on being a portal, if their recent moves with Finance and Real Estate are any indication. Beyond that, their competitors are already there in Travel, sorta, with Yahoo!FareChase leading the way and msn Travel (in typical Microsoft fashion) representing a half-step towards a fully integrated travel "thing". As well, there is a lot of money at play, both from an ad and a distribution cost perspective, and they have reason to want to maximize it. Finally, if they have been nervous about upsetting the ad-revenue apple cart in the travel category (huge numbers) that nervousness has likely been reduced by things like IAC's purchase of Ask.com. IAC maintains a controlling interest in Expedia, and with this purchase is both a big customer of, and a direct competitor to, Google.

However, I think that there is a big difference between Google ramping up their travel "experience" and them actually fully taking on the OTAs. In terms of them having some multi-site search experience and sending traffic from that to an OTA or a supplier (airline, hotel etc.). that seems like a pretty obvious thing. Suppliers would love it, and the competitive gauntlet has already been thrown down.

But actually selling travel? Yikes. Why would they? Call centres, rules and regs, etc. etc. Easier to just further solidify their role as gate-keeper, and take advantage of the lack of loyalty and brand meaning that these guys have to crank out the ad money.

Also, worth noting that most of this applies less here in Canada. For a bunch of reasons, the OTA and Supplier landscape is different and it is less likely that the existing dominant players here (Expedia.ca, AirCanada.com and WestJet.com) would suffer or benefit much from such a move by Google. Why? Well, the competition is lighter here, they often have exclusive inventory, offer pricing of global inventory in Canadian dollars, work better and have brand meaning that brings a lot of business direct.

Technorati tags: google, yahoo, travel, expedia, travelocity, orbitz, aircanada, westjet

News today the WestJet has entered the Canadian pre-paid air pass fray, in the wake of Air Canada launching a major push for their smorgasbord of passes, which have actually been around for a while now. Lot's of coverage of these moves over the last while, especially since it marks AC's first big advertising push in many years, and the first move into this space for WS.

But hold up for juuuuust a second. Despite all the gushy commentary, it's not like this idea is new. Hardly. It's been around for as long as airline bankruptcy (read: a long time). But in this case, that actually doesn't make it a bad idea.

But first, a brief walk down memory lane. Passes are a tried and true, though usually last-ditch, airline sales tactic. Some might recall how Royal Airlines went nuts selling passes just before they went out of business. Sad fact is, over the years many carriers in trouble have offered deep discounts to buyers who were willing to pay-now / fly-later, in order to add much-needed cash to their coffers. Sadly, in some cases, this effort amounted to little more than a short-term revenue infusion on the road to business failure.

Not to say that's what is happening here. In fact, in this case, this is a really smart move on the part of both AC and WS. Why? Well, it kills multiple birds with one stone. To wit:

1)     They get the revenue now. This is good.

2)     They get "breakage," or segments bought and not used. This is VERY good as it represents pure margin.

3)     The passes can only be accessed and reserved-against online at the airline's own sites. While they can be                 *purchased* from offline agents, the traveller needs to go to the carriers' site to book them, and they are not             available via online agents. This is GREAT for the carriers, who, like most travel sellers, are anxious to pull             business direct and see ring-fencing inventory as key. Given that most online sites don't get access to the                 lowest airline fares already, this just makes that problem worse.

4)     Their costs are much less. Having customers make the bookings online-direct reduces sales commissions and         CRS (reservations system) fees.

5)     They make it harder for travellers to compare alternatives, especially on US routes. If travellers buy passes in         advance for travel to the States, they are less likely to check other carrier alternatives (which most do via                 online agency sites), which may be less expensive or more convenient.

6)     For WestJet, offering a super discount on Eastern Triangle flights (Toronto/Ottawa/Montreal) enables them to         pre-buy market share, without putting a low-ball price out in the open market.

Another interesting thing about WS' move is that they raised the bar by making their passes transferable. So, it seems that a company could buy a bunch and use them for multiple travellers. Or, a family could buy them and dole them out to kids attending university in another city or to Grandparents to come in for a visit. This has definite appeal. It will be interesting to see if AC follows.

All in, this pass war raises the bar in the battle not just between the carriers themselves, but between the carriers and their online distributors.

Game on.

Technorati Tags: air canada, westjet, online travel, travel

Well it bloody well took them long enough. After, what, five-ish years and a rumoured $50 million, Air Canada's little dotcom pipe-dream-in-the-sky is no more. Destina.ca was to be Canada's answer to Orbitz - an airline-owned online travel service for everything in travel, selling not just Air Canada but other carriers as well as hotels, car rentals etc. Theory went, back in the heady days of dotcom mania V1, that they would Rule The World, or at least have real skin in the Canadian online travel game, and then be spun off for untold millions in IPO manna.

Riiiiight.

Well, let's recap, shall we? The site sucked, WestJet wouldn't give them inventory, the marketing was abyssmal, they relied on points-hounds for most of their business, much of their inventory came from competitors, and - oh ya - September 11th took the wind out of AC's sails, just a wee bit (CCAA, anyone? Ringing a bell?).

In some ways it's a shame.Well, for their competitors, anyway. Maintaining some effort on that piece on online silliness meant they diverted some of their under-powered-and-financially-limited-to-begin-with focus from AirCanada.com in order to keep it on life support. Seems like that is finally over.

Technorati tags: air canada, westjet, online travel, travel, orbitz