从Cursus Publicus到Teletext假日：谁将在下一个旅游渠道中获胜

Source: Wikimedia CommonsOnline pre-Google SEOGoogle1996-20022002-2010StrongSEO/branding/AOLContentkeywordsExpeda.comtripadvisorGoogle!could fall back on established (social) networks.Modern tourism, especially for the masses, can be claimed to beinvented by Thomas Cook in 1841. He negotiated cheap fareswith railway companies, sold tickets directly to participants,and managed all logistics, including transportation and eventcoordination.His customersdidnothaveaccesstoa networkand needed the trip organized for them from the start. The first"channel" used by Thomas Cook was community networks,churches, and local meetings, with Cook himself often present toorganizeandpromotetrips.Thechannelshifted in1865whenThomasCookopenedthefirststore inLondon'sFleet Street. Source: TeletextEXHIBIT 3: Different eras of travel distribution have given rise to winners/losersEraTraits ofwinnersWhowins?Whatdoes theproductlook like?Source: Company websites, Bernstein analysisAPOTTEDHISTORY OETRAVELDISTRIBUTIONCHANNELS:FROM CURSUS PUBLICUS,THROUGH CHURCH GROUPSCEEFAX TO APPS 6 AIThe Romans were arguably the original tourists and wealthyofficials would tour the outer reaches of the empire visiting spatowns,coastal resortsandtheSevenWondersoftheWorld (plusca changel). However, the existence of Cursus Publicus, a networkofhorses,carriages,andofficialway-stationsmeantpre-bookingwas not necessary - i.e. no real booking channel. This was much thesame for the pilgrimage tourism of the Middle Ages, and the GrandTours of Victoriantimes-tourism wasthepreserveoftheelitewhoGLOBAL HOTELS & LEISURE BERNSTEINSOCIETE GENERALE CROUP travelers were searching for. Tripadvisor grew ex-Expedia relatedrevenue 60% in 2008, well ahead of Expedia (7%) and Priceline(34%), showing its success in the era of SEO0.More recently there have been two near simultaneous channelshifts1. The rise of the app. Booking's share of app bookings havegrown from 7% in 2011 to mid-50% in 2024.2. Over time, Google's business model shifted to prioritizeadvertising revenue. Today, a significant portion of Google'ssearch results pages-especially for commercial queries-aredominated by paid ads, and advertising is Google's primaryrevenue source.BoththesetrendsfavoredBooking.com,whichrapidlybecamePriceline's key brand and then the dominant OTA globally. It hadthe best app (as shown by the highest review score - Exhibit 9)and would regularly top lists of sponsored ads both by gettinga discount click rate from Google (as it fulfilled more queries)and because it had higher conversion, so could bid more (Exhibit7). Booking.com's high conversion rate is attributed to itssophisticated use of behavioral psychology and persuasive designTechniques such as scarcity messaging ("only 2 rooms left!"), socialproof ("10 people are viewing this hotel"), cognitive ease, andanchoring are deeply embedded in the userexperience -this sitecontains more details: Why Is Booking.com's Conversion Rate SoHigh?.And this is where we are today ... Google and App remains theprincipal top of funnel channels and Booking excels at both, but thislooks set to change...EXHIBIT 4: The first big channel shift in travel distribution -the first physical store in LondonTHOSCOOKSource: Thomas Cook For the next century, travel was predominantly sold in personatphysical stores.Witha lackofrobust information availableelsewhere on quality, reviews and latest pricing the agents (andtheir infamous brochures) were the key channel. There weresomeattemptstolaunchphone/faxbasedservicesaccompaniedby newspaper adverts but these were of little success as theycouldn't drive the visual cues of the physical store. Scale became allimportant, the bigger the physical presence, the bigger the share.As we set out above there were some niche attempts to disruptthe high-street dominance through TV and Videotex (theaboveTeletext plus France's Minitel), with some success but as recentlyas the early 1990s, 90% of travel was booked in person. In 1992,American Express was the biggest seller of travel in the USwith1,700 physical stores.All this changed with the internet...the first online travel agentsemerged in the mid-1990s. The first online travel agency,TravelWeb,wasformed in1994butwasmoreofadirectorythananagent. Expedia (launched by Microsoft in 1996) was arguably thefirst OTA as we'd now recognize it. Expedia gave consumers pricecomparisons for flights, car, and hotels-and the means to easilyand safely book them on the site. The website's first advertisementtouted that everyday people could now use "the same reservationsystem as travel agents".The initial phase of the internet was clunky, Google didn't exist andsearch was rudimentary - often just keyword based with no contextor relevance focus and responses normally listed alphabetically.With the possible exception of AOL keywords, for the early OTAsthe consumer had to know the site was there. This normally meantbrand advertising, and expertise in this defined the early winners:Expedia were big