eTravel Project

The PhoCusWright Conference 2009 in Orlando was a truly great event last week. Once again, it confirmed to be the Must Go conference of the year if you are involved in the online travel market. Before I keep on writing, I have to disclose that I was there simultaneously as Web Executive for Monaco Government Tourist Office and Italy Analyst for PhoCusWright. Here are some of my quick observations about the conference:

1)  The organization of the event is awesome. Every single detail is taken care of. The conference was briefly disrupted by a fire alarm, but this had very little effect on the schedule of the event. The PhoCusWright team is phenomenal and I am not saying this because I am part of it. I had very little to do with the organization of the conference at all. Philip Wolf’s insights are top-notch and entertaining at the same time. Read the rest of this entry »

Lots of good presenters at Phocuswright 2009 Innovation Conference. Here is the demo of Localyte, a growing community of 40,000 local experts who actively help travelers at their destinations. Doug Renert, CEO of Localyte, is presenting here (video min. 10:50).

The collection of markets that represent the foundation of the European travel industry has undergone significant change since the onset of 2008. Along with the rest of the globe, the economic softness that began to appear through the course of the year worsened abruptly in 4Q08. The prosperous early months of 2008 were followed by a summer of astronomical fuel prices and a fall season starved of the usual business travel swell, which left travel worse off than many other industries.

While EU gross domestic product (GDP) grew, the European travel market declined very slightly. Also, while common recessionary trends such as weakened consumer confidence have affected all nations, individual characteristics have exposed the strengths and weaknesses of each market (and its players) differently. Business/leisure mix, rail infrastructure, currency fluctuations, inbound/outbound tourism and unemployment rates are just some of the factors that shape how various travel markets are reacting to the downturn.

For more information or buy the full report (disclosure: I wrote the Italy section), please visit www.PhocusWright.com

According to Bits, the technology blog of the NYTimes.com, WhiteHouse.gov is built in Drupal, a free and open source Content Management System (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License (Wikipedia).

To some, the White House shift to Drupal from a proprietary software package represented a serious seal of approval for open-source software. [...] Companies like Nike, Warner Bros. and Yahoo use Drupal for various parts of their Web sites. All told, close to 500,000 Drupal-based sites are on the Web, according to Thomas Erickson, the chief executive of Acquia (Bits).

To me it is no surprise and this should ring a bell for some web development companies that charge big money to their clients for their services. Drupal and other open source software allow a scalability that it is hard to achieve with some customized products without breaking the bank.

Do not be intimidated by the White House embracing the use of open source. Yes, you can too. Actually, look at this as an endorsement.

This coming October 13-14, I will be attending the 10th edition of the e-Tourism Summit at the Marriott Marquis in NYC with the Monaco Government Tourist Office. I am very excited to meet colleagues of other tourist offices across the US and share best practices. The program and the list off attendees sound interesting. I plan to tweet a lot, the hashtag for the event is #etsnyc. Follow me at www.twitter.com/etravelproject.