Jean Spear
‘Wealthy gentleman living in Beverly Hills is looking for a petite, adventurous, intelligent female travel mate to the exotic islands of Thailand. Must have photos. E-mail now and cruise with me.”
Internet travel sites are filled with similar notices from travellers seeking the ideal travel companion to tour the globe with. From the philosophical to hard-core adventure-types, the Net provides the perfect interface to meet up and get on the road.
But more than a virtual pick-up spot, travel sites are changing the way people choose and book their holidays.
Travel is no longer the lonely pursuit it once was. Cybercafs have sprung up along the backpacking routes throughout Asia, Europe and the Americas. From Kathmandu to Budapest, backpackers can stay in touch when they’re out of sight with a mouse and a keyboard.
Some take their palm pilots, laptops, cellphones and digi-cams to document their travels daily and share their experiences with millions of others through personal homepages.
Others just like to keep in contact with fellow travellers on the road and find out travel news of the places they’re visiting.
Sites like lonelyplanet.com have been quick to catch on to the very specific needs of backpackers. Along with tall stories and travel yarns, they offer travel companion Web hangs – online notice boards.
If archaeological tours do it for you, there will be surfers who have been there and done that or are willing to do it with you. If climbing suicidal cliffs is your idea of fun, there will be companies who specialise in it. Fancy sleeping in a hut in Lesotho? Riding camels in Egypt? Playing golf over hippo and crocodile-infested waters? One click and you’re there.
“You no longer have to rely on a travel agent to give you a limited amount of travel choices,” says one surfer-turned- traveller. “Booking online with a credit card saves all the schlep and frustration of going to a travel agent.”
A top United States information technology analyst, the Gartner Group, projects the worldwide online travel market will increase from $5-billion in 1999 to $30-billion by the fourth quarter of 2001.
Although there is massive potential for an online travel market in South Africa, local armchair travellers are not turning into real-time travellers as quickly as Internet companies had hoped. Ananzi.co.za, one of South Africa’s busiest travel sites, has around 30 000 hits a month and 2 000 people contact its call centres by e-mail or phone, says CEO of Travel Technologies, Clive Hays. But its “looker to booker” ratio is lower. Only 5% of those who contact its call centres actually make bookings online.
Worldwide, the looker to booker ratio is also low – only 3% make the transaction online – but the Net influences the decisions of surfers by about 30%, says Hays.
“South Africans use the Net as a research tool, but are still reluctant to make transactions over the Net,” says Hays. “They still enjoy the personal interaction with a consultant.”
Online car hire and hotel reservations are gaining popularity, but airline reservations tend to be more complicated and people often require assistance.
Many South African travel sites are moving away from offering only real-time transactions to including call centres where people can phone or e-mail to make reservations.
Mtbeds (online booking website) MD Russell Hine sees great potential for travel on the Net, but says hotels often do not understand the importance of a portal or hub to attract visitors to their sites.
“People want variety and they are more likely to visit a travel site with a selection of hotels listed, rather than a single company’s Web page,” he says. “A hub will attract overseas visitors especially, who may not be familiar with South African hotel brands.”
Hine says Internet sites have to offer surfers the “carrot option”: better rates for bookings than they’d get at a travel agent, especially at short notice, to entice them to book online.
Online booking websites have to compete with hundreds of other sites for a surfer’s attention and text-heavy sites are not as popular as those that are visually rich.
They may also be competing with digital TV in the not too distant future. Using a combination of travel channels and the Internet, which will be accessible through their digital TV, viewers will be able to select text and pictures and send back messages including purchases to selected travel agents.
TV has the added bonus of being a more friendly technology than a PC.
But while Walker’s World and the Dice Man may give ideas to armchair travellers, the trick is to get them to book. Here lies the challenge for Web designers and travel agents alike.
In the meantime, while we wait for South Africans to lose their mistrust of the Net, I think I will leave a few notices on the Web-hangs of some of those travel sites.
“Young, energetic journalist living in Melville is looking for a bronzed, athletic, intelligent hunk as a travel mate to Peru. Must have photos. E-mail now …”