Media & The Online Travel Story - Why Doesn't it Sell as Well? By Yeoh Siew Hoon Friday, 20th November 2009

Yeoh Siew Hoon attends an Amadeus media event in Bangkok and, talking with fellow journalists, her mind harks back to what former ZUJI boss, Scott Blume, said at WIT.

I made a quick dash over to Bangkok last week to attend the Amadeus Asia Pacific media event. After all, it's not often I get to listen to boss David Brett speak and also get an insight into what this giant of travel technology companies is up to.

Obviously, Amadeus had good news to share - and it did. Its numbers are looking better than anyone, even Brett, thought they would at the start of the year.

From a siege mentality at year's beginning, it seems companies are now breathing easier and freeing up the reins - a bit - as a tough year winds to a close.

The media attending were an assorted crew of faces from around the region - national newspapers, local business papers, specialist airline publications and a couple of Web-based newspapers.

As I listened to their questions and in later conversations with them, I couldn't help but think back on what Scott Blume, the former CEO of Travelocity/ZUJI, said at WIT - that the general media in Asia still does not get the online travel story. I'd also be bold enough to include specialist publications in that.

Well, it's hard, I suppose, for online travel to compete with the glamour of airlines and the nuts and bolts of travel agencies. Their two story plots are more familiar and are easier to grasp.

Airlines fly us from A to B (to use them is to know them), they are losing money bigtime (make great headlines) and a lot of them use tax payers money (it's our money too, even better headlines).

Travel agents have always been there, people are always talking about their demise but still they survive and all the major GDSs keep talking about them because their survival depends on their survival. (Everyone loves a fighter who never says die.)

Online travel agencies - what's that? Well, they have websites - among the gazillions of websites out there. They aggregate stuff. You search on them. You shop on them. Occasionally you buy on them. But there doesn't seem to be anything real or tangible about them.

"I don't book on them because I don't trust them. I am not sure there is anything there," said one of the journalists. It's a refrain I heard from even the group of Singapore Management University students I met last week.

So how does the online travel story get itself out to the media? A question I will leave out in the ether for now ... suffice to say that I think social media is going to be the sex and sizzle that sells the story. Remember, to use it is to know it?

Anyway, back to the steak of this column - listening to David Brett talk about Amadeus growth figures also made me think back on what Dr Amin Khan, Senior General Manager, Network and Revenue Management of Malaysia Airlines, said at WIT. "If I were an investor, I would not look at the airline industry."

Which prompted someone else to say, "You make money from them, not working with them." Hence, better to be a GDS than an airline.

During the WIT Start-Up Pitch, Lim Kim Hai, chairman of Regional Express Australia, who was one of the investor judges, also dissuaded anyone from investing in an airline. Even though his airline is still making money in a tough year, he makes it clear that he wished he hadn't gotten into it. "I was stupid and I was naive," he said.

Asked what his worst investment was, he reiterated, "Airline is bad."

Asked why he didn't just sell it off, he said, "I have not divested. The irony is the current business has such good returns. If I divested, what would I do with the money? If I reinvested the money, would it give much better returns?"

Well, last week, Singapore Airlines, the airline that everyone looks to as a barometer of hope, reported a quarterly loss of S$159 million, compared to S$307 million in the previous first quarter of its financial year which ends at the end of next March. That makes a half yearly loss of S$466 million to September 30, compared to a profit of S$682 million in the first half of its previous full financial year.

"Not good, but no longer dire would be fair comment," observed Ben Sandilands in his blog, Plane Talking.

This week, the Asia Pacific Airlines Association (AAPA) will gather in Singapore. I doubt if the news they have to share will be better than Amadeus' but let's hope that, like Brett says, there's a silver lining round the corner.

And oh yes, the media will be all over that story like a bad rash.

Yeoh Siew Hoon, one of Asia's most respected travel editors and commentators, writes a regular column on news, trends and issues in the hospitality industry for 4Hoteliers.com.

Siew Hoon, who has covered the tourism industry in Asia/Pacific for the past 20 years, runs SHY Ventures Pte Ltd. Her other writings can be found at www.thetransitcafe.com

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