SmarterLiving.com's Krista Pappas talks with our news editor about the challenges of the online travel industry, search engines and metrics that matter.
Roger Park: Can you give me an overview of BookingBuddy and your role at the company?
Krista Pappas: BookingBuddy is a part of Smarter Living, Inc., an online travel network which publishes two sites: Booking Buddy and SmarterTravel.com, an online travel magazine. We consider ourselves to be a new breed of travel site that specializes in comprehensiveness, and we help consumers find great deals and easily plan the best itineraries for their travel needs. We currently have more than 130 commercial partners including Kayak, Starwood, United, Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline, Hilton and Enterprise, who have chosen to partner with us as an alternative to higher cost channels.
As a senior vice president at Smarter Living, my role includes strategy for our products and the company's commercial relationships.
Park: What is the current state of online travel marketing?
Pappas: Because there has been an increase in the amount of web pages containing some form of user-generated content, it makes what people say about your brand and your product even more important. Marketing extends beyond just advertising online, as consumers are becoming more savvy and less loyal, and the internet allows them to quickly move on to a competitor if their experience with your brand and products does not completely satisfy their needs. Travel marketers need to work very hard to lead the way by finding ways to get people to talk positively about their brand and their product; making it critical that the experiences people have with the brands and products be positive and meet and surpass expectations.
Park: What do you consider the biggest marketing challenges facing the online travel industry?
Pappas: As an industry, we face several challenges, from finding enough inventory to meet our great demand to click fraud.
From an inventory standpoint, we know that quality publishers experience severe inventory shortages in key vertical areas like finance, technology and travel. Additionally, other challenges include:
- Three or four mega players will continue to dominate the market
- Costs continue to spiral upwards
- The branding medium continues to suffer, but online marketing remains viable for CPC (cost per click) and CPA (cost per acquisition).
And finally, click fraud is a huge marketing challenge. Advertisers are consistently made aware of this problem; in a fast-changing environment, marketers need to keep up with the latest technology and advancements to stay ahead of the issue and keep advertisers from losing confidence in the CPC model.
Park: What are marketers doing wrong with online travel marketing?
Pappas: I don't think they are doing anything wrong right now. Online travel marketing is still in its infancy and will continue to grow as a vehicle to market your products to the right customer base.
If I had to say one thing marketers can improve upon it would be to widen their focus from just online search and create a more holistic marketing plan. Internet marketing has so many more options that marketers should take advantage of to diversify their audience base.
Park: What are the metrics that matter?
Pappas: The metrics that really matter are a qualified audience, loyalty and retention, plus creating a channel that drives incremental revenue to the bottom line.
Park: How do you think bigger players like Google and Yahoo! with their recent moves within travel search could shake up the space?
Pappas: Google and Yahoo are big players in the travel search space and always have been. They have huge market share based on the vast amount of travel media dollars being spent with each of them now. However, we need to remember that they are search engines, not travel experts, and that their core focus is always going to be on search in general. With that said, it opens up great opportunities for niche players, like BookingBuddy, which solely focuses on travel, to offer travel category specific, quality shoppers directly to the travel companies.
Park: So what do you see for the future of the online travel space?
Pappas: We are starting to see more of the big community sites, like Yahoo, focusing on travel more aggressively. People always ask, "What will happen when Google gets into travel," but the reality is they are in travel and have been for a long time. Clearly, it could be said that Google is currently the biggest online travel site. Their travel-related revenues far exceed other travel players in the space.
As long as there is a wide variety of product offerings across the online travel community, there will always be a need for sites, like BookingBuddy, that can bring all those great brands together in one place. Since customers have a high propensity to browse across multiple sites to get ideas and shop before buying, it is important to offer all options in their consideration set in one. Greater aggregation and filtering of key information will also be useful for consumers in the future.
At BookingBuddy, we know that the travel space is a great place to be, and we are very excited about all the opportunities that lie ahead for us and travel search as a whole.
As chief strategist and senior vice president of sales and business development, Krista Pappas brings extensive knowledge and experience in the areas of travel, business development and business strategy to SmarterLiving.com. A veteran in the online travel industry and expert in electronic distribution, Pappas is responsible for leading product strategy for SmarterLiving's websites, BookingBuddy.com and SmarterTravel.com. In her role, Pappas also manages the company's sales and business alliance development through external affiliations and partnerships including evaluating investment opportunities.
Pappas sits on several advisory boards including the Travel Industry of America, Executive Women's Travel Board, Agentware.com and ResExpo. She is a member of the NBTA and Travel Com and sits on the tourism board of directors for the Town of Concord, Massachusetts. In addition, Pappas has judged for the HSMAI travel awards as well as the National Geographic travel awards. Along with her responsibility in advisory board roles, Pappas' drive to improve the quality of the online customer experience makes her a significant asset to the travel industry.