L2 Think Tank has a brilliant series called DigitalIQ where they analyze the effectiveness of  the digital strategies for various brands in travel, retail and other luxury categories. Their latest report is on Hotels.

While attending the recent EyeforTravel Social Media and Mobile conference I heard a lot of great stories about how different travel brands are leveraging social and mobile to enhance the experience of their guests before/during/after their stay, as well as try to improve their reputation and acquire more guests. But while it’s an element of a successful strategy it is not a silver bullet either. And that’s the basis of my article for Tnooz:

Where I thought the report reached — significantly — was when L2 intimates there is correlation between digital brilliance and financial success, represented by better stock performance and higher RevPAR.  However when you look at the actual statistics the correlation is very weak. The numbers actually suggest no correlation at all while the regression line in the charts paint a very different picture.  Now I get that they are in the business of selling digital marketing services, but while the charts are pretty, the data is insufficient.

Part of my thoughts on the topic is related to comments I hear regularly from travel suppliers that intermediaries don’t really provide any value and they are ’stealing’ revenues from suppliers (e.g. Airlines, hotels, etc.). L2’s study claims that “OTAs cost hoteliers $2.5B in 2010″. I completely get that it is less expensive to book a reservation directly than to go through an intermediary, but to couch an intermediary’s role as purely destructive is insincere at best.

Whether it be the corner travel agent, an OTA or some other organization, there is value to a hotelier or an airline. They are in fact bringing a client to the table. These very same guests might not get to Hotel X or Airline Y without the agent/intermediary shepherding them to you. These guests will not magically appear at your doorstep otherwise, as much as you might like them too. Further, they are providing a level of service to the customer/guest that you are not. As such, they should be compensated for the effort they put in, not vilified.

Personally I don’t know why travel doesn’t take a more retail-oriented approach to the channel and margins. Provide a discount to the channel for their efforts so it is worthwhile for them to sell your product.  If you can get more people to come to Airline.com — Mazel Tov. Keep the extra margin, you earned. it. This is one of the issues I intended to write about when I did my first “outsider’s view” piece for Tnooz (well, it turned out to be first of one). So here it is.

I would love to hear everyone’s thoughts and reactions.

Many companies are looking for every opportunity to save time and money building and deploying mobile apps across multiple platforms. Such has been the promise of HTML5-centric apps and hybrid app deployment frameworks like Phone Gap and Appcellerator’s Titanium. These platforms aren’t the silver bullets that everyone wants them to be, though in certain circumstances they are a very good fit.

However, there was a significant, but not widely reported change in iOS 5.1 that breaks many hybrid web apps. The embedded WebView HTML5 applications to be packaged within a native application, enabling the distribution of web apps to native app stores. This is the primary method by which tools from PhoneGap, Titanium or Sencha create ‘native’ apps across multiple platforms using a single HTML5-centric code base.

Sencha’s HTML5 Scorecard for iOS 5.1 and the new iPad sums up the crux of the problem quite well:

Prior to iOS 5.1, when an embedded WebView was used, data stored locally using HTML5 storage was kept persistent. Specifically, if your application used localStorage or WebSQL, it was considered part of the application’s data. When a new version of the app was installed or the app was hard-closed, the persistent data was kept around. The next time the app started, the localStorage would appear as if it had never gone away, exactly as what happens in Mobile Safari.

In iOS 5.1, this data is no longer considered persistent and is treated as temporary or transitory data, so iOS can destroy it at any time, without warning, including during low memory scenarios. This is probably because Apple can’t reliably iCloud backup, or iCloud sync from anything that’s not stored in the native CoreData storage. As such, they’re pushing developers to move to Apple native data systems to make apps iCloud-ready. Of course not everybody will want to do this. For developers who relied on localStorage or WebSQL as their mechanism to store data in their app, breaking this mechanism is a big deal.

Alas, there are no easy fixes. On the PhoneGap Community Support forums, a PhoneGap employee suggests using their File API to address the issue. However that causes other problems for Android and other platforms.  So tread carefully.

Google’s Project Glass is a cool, yet creepy, preview of the future that I don’t want to live in. Who wants to wear spy-cam glasses from Google?

If you were concerned about the info that Google gathered with their “Street View” cars, just think about all the data they will be collecting about you and your friends while you’re wearing these glasses.

The only thing that was kind of heartening is that there were no pop up ads in the demo. But dollars-to-donuts that Google would find a way to put them in the production model. And wouldn’t you know it, someone else already released that video:

Spot on insight from Asymco’s Horace Dedui:

The longer term test of mobile platform performance will be in the recurring purchase rates. Loyalty must be earned and preserved….So far, the iPhone seems to be getting a passing grade while Android has yet to face the test.

I’ve had an HTC Thunderbolt for a year now and I’m pretty sure my next phone will be the iPhone 5.

Many people talk about Android fragmentation from an OS and application development perspective.  But while many companies are putting the mobile web front and center in their mobile strategies in order to reach as many customers as possible with a unified design and and the minimal amount of investment and effort. However, few look at the difference in how the various browsers available for Android, including Google’s own Chrome for mobile beta, impact the way those sites will be rendered.

Well check out this image by Web designer Brad Frost where he lines up how Google’s own homepage renders on 14 different mobile browsers for Android. The variations are very surprising.

I’m very much looking forward to attending my first EyeforTravel Mobile conference next month in San Francisco.  Mobile is playing and increasingly central role in the travel sector and while we’ve seen amazing impact so far, I think the best is yet to come. I can’t wait to see what people are doing and hear how they’re looking to further integrate mobile into their business. There’s so much potential to reduce transactional friction, enhance traveler’s experiences and change business processes — it’s very exciting.

Even more so I’m looking forward to my role as one of the judges of the Mobile Innovation in Travel awards at the event, alongside execs from AT&T and the Mobile Marketing Association. Should be fun.

Voting is currently taking place online to decide who the lucky 9 finalists who will present at the event to the panel of judges will be.  Don’t forget to cast your vote for your favorite mobile initiative. Vote early and vote often!

If you see me there, please stop by and say hi. Or better yet, give me a shout and let’s make sure we meet.

As we ended 2011 many people were asking me what I thought was next in the world of mobile and whether I had any predictions. My response was that companies should focus on getting the basics right first (develop a coherent mobile strategy, create mobile optimized versions of their websites) before even worrying about “what’s next”.

I’m a big advocate for creating native or hybrid apps, depending on the type of engagement you desire with your customer (a topic for a whole other post), but creating a mobile optimized website is pretty much a must these days, considering how much search and browsing is done on mobile devices.

It seems a recent report from L2ThinkTank bears out my view. The report, focuses primarily on luxury brands, what they refer to as the Prestige100 (though I’m quite sure how Macy’s makes the list; but I digress).  Though the report is limited to luxury brands, it’s my impression that the results are at least directionally applicable to the overall state of mobile maturity across various sectors. Their research shows that many of these brands are not yet mastering the basics, as indicated by this chart recreated by eMarketer:

Takeaways for the Travel Sector

As I am ensconced in the travel sector these days I wanted to highlight the results from hospitality brands.  In many ways the results don’t differ much from what I had noted 10 months ago in a post I wrote over at Tnooz.

The only companies that fit into the Prestige100 were luxury hotels (one might hav thought that airlines like Singapore or Emirates or luxury cruises like SilverSea might have made the cut, but alas, no).While Intercontinental made the “Gifted” class and as a whole, the “Hospitality” segment averaged a score of 86, which falls in the “Challenged” category.

The good news is that it puts Hospitality as the second highest rated industry, behind retail, but also shows there’s still a long way to go. And I would further speculate that the scores for the non-luxury hotels would come up even a bit lower still.

You can find the whole report from L2 available at SlideShare below:

Amazingly investors keep throwing money at companies that are engaging in potentially illegal enterprises (re: local lodging regulations). Couchsurfing is in the same vein as Airbnb and Wimdu although they claim to be more benign (“building communities” rather than focusing on transactions).
The best part of the article: “Evidently, the San Francisco-based company plans to make money at some point, but how remains unclear: Fenton said they’re going to experiment with a number of revenue models in the future to try and find one that doesn’t interfere with the user experience whatsoever.”

Translation: “We have no idea what the fuck we’re doing, but thanks for the money.”

I think it’s now clear that I should make up a fake company idea, say that it’s going to be just like XXXCo (pick any overvalued, stupid idea), take the money and then move to an exotic locale with no extradition rights. You’ll all be invited to visit. Pina coladas for everyone…on the house.

Another stupid idea that devalues the concept of social recommendations. If any of my friends sign up for this I am un-friending and un-following you.

Now, I’m not saying that Meg Whitman reads my blog or calls me for advice, but I’m glad to see they followed my suggestion last month to make WebOS an open source project.

Open sourcing WebOS and HP’s statements of continued financial support to the project, really gives WebOS one last chance to fulfill its promise.  Although it’s hard to really know what the plan is from Whitman’s and Andreesen’s recent comments.

When HP originally bought Palm, I thought it would give WebOS a chance to be embraced by the developer community.  I figured the combination of HP’s resources to both take the product to the next level and make it a mainstream alternative in the enterprise (both via HP’s market position in desktop and mobile devices) plus the strong developer relationships it had accumulated via its other software products would push WebOS into a viable competitor to Apple and Google, or at least to the top of the second tier among RIM and Microsoft.

If I were a handset manufacturer, WebOS could give me cover in case the litigation between Oracle and Google or Apple and the Android OEMs goes the wrong way. Or as a way to differentiate its devices from the other OEMs instead of developing it’s own OS as Samsung has done with Bada. I’m not sure however, as some have suggested, that WebOS would provide any leverage for an OEM in discussions with Google or Microsoft.

Personally I hope the open source community throws its efforts behind WebOS. I think it is at worst the 4th best platform alternative out there (iOS, Android, WP7, WebOS, then QNX). But one of my favorite quotes is “Hope is not a plan” (h/t @michaelombardi), so I hope that Meg and Marc have a plan.

What’s your POV?