2015 may 5th vienna local searchtoday - vertical succes travel case

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TITEL

Is the “middle man”

essential for vertical

success? – Travel case

Dennis Van Allemeersch

HotelSpecials Vienna, May 5, 2015

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Online

Travel

Agency

2002

~110

Hotel Booker ?

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HotelSpecials is an OTA, focused on

hotel bookings

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Our competitive advantage lies in unique

content, ie. unique deals • Source unique deals (Specials / HotelWeek)

• Sell them also cross-border

Sales op HS.be

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We add value through breath of our

unique deals and our reach & service

Value for hotels

• Differentiation

• International reach, eg. NL

> 15M visits / yr

> 1,2M opt-ins

Value for consumers

• Breath and depth of Specials

> 2,000 hotels participating (45%)

> 7,500 Specials

> 52% of production

• Best Service

> NPS 44 vs 38 branche average

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We don’t do ATL, but specialise in online

marketing

33% of total budget

33%

29%

18%

7%

5%8%

SEA

SEO

Newsletter

Direct

Affiliate

Other

Best in class (2014) !

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Device shift follows global trend

Most scary data point of the day

% desktop traffic HotelSpecials

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The travel middleman vertical is more

mature to start with

Midlleman: linking buyers and sellers

Midlleman added value ?

1. Transparency & comparison

– especially if supply side is fragmented (eg hotels)

– the more diverse/fragmented, the more value there (eg local services such as restaurants)

2. UX (especially booking / buying / quotes)

– starts in less fragmented sectors (eg financials)

– more & more there in fragmented sectors also as comparison is not differentiator any more => take whole value chain

Travel, different ?

• Maturity! (services easier to disclose online) Far ahead => more tweaking / optimizing

• Online mkting: more advanced due to 1) maturity, 2) bigger ticket value

• Meta search more advanced (2nd disruption cycle already)

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The future developments in online travel are

exciting! – 3rd disruption cycle in the making

Vertical & horizontal

value chain integration

Meta 2.0 – comparison

till arrival date

Google power play Chains retaking control