October 24th, 2008 | By Anthony
What a week! I never knew conferences can be so tiresome! Yesterday, after three days of conferencing, I was completely knackered!
So what happened? As I mentioned in my last post, EnTrip attended the Web in Travel conference in Singapore, a 2.5 day event about and around … well … online travel.
Asia’s Transformation
The conference, held at the SunTec Convention center, kicked off with Karthik Siva of ‘Global Brand Forum’ talking about the transformation of asia. What really got to me was that he was (rightly) saying that the single biggest need for asian companies was the ‘Quest for Authenticity’, since nothing is real anymore. He sais that e.g. China and India have to reconnect with their own authenticity and be themselves, instead of copying ‘the west’: Better to be a first class indian than a second class frenchman.
Tim Donnelly
The next notable point was made by Jim Donnelly, who sold IgoUgo about 4 years ago. He said that ‘We have to put the fun back in travel. It shouldn’t have to be so brutal’. I couldn’t agree more, I’m sure EnTrip can and will contribute to that!
The Asian Consumer
Meranda Chan of Visa shared with us what kind of trips their consumers are increasingly planning: Nature, experience travel and remote locations. 5% of consumers used online (travel) blogs, and 4% of consumers used forums, as part of their research.
Ken Mandel, MD of Yahoo! South East Asia, shared Yahoo!’s insight into consumer ‘tribes’ with us, and described the following five tribes:
- Socials: Live life online, communicate and connect
- Embracers: Influencers, which do online transactions and use the internet for its efficiency
- Fun Explorers: Seeking entertainment online
- Utilitarians: Functional internet users
- [forgot the name he picked]: basically people who don’t really use the internet much
I think I’m an internet social…, and there’ll be a continuous drift from 5 -> 1.
The Web Landscape, transformed
A panel on the web landscape noted the following:
- Don’t get ahead of the consumer (EnTrip: Watch out!)
- Personalisation will be key
- Marketers should distinguish carefully between different countries and individuals, different markets and their demographics
- Focus on the addressable market
- Meta search engines have only really gone down the ‘price sensitivity’ route - there are still other opportunities down other alleys
- Travel has survived so much, it will be able to survive this crisis easily - just a question of time
- In tims of crisis: Cut costs, focus on product, create a solid process of innovation
The First WIT Challenge
From first WIT Challenge, where moderators throw quick questions at panelist, (a format I quite enjoyed btw) I noted the following:
- ‘Hard times create ingenuity’
- Mobile: It’s not a transaction channel, but can be a great service channel
- ‘Long Tail’ is not a form of company, but a company strategy. Anyone could execute that strategy
- The losers in the online space are those who polarize around abstract business models and have bad management teams
Wow & How
From a session on the how-to of some wow effects in marketing, I learned about ads that work as content. It was quite interesting to see an example of a completely unobstrusive ad (by some hotel), which, when clicked on didn’t take a user to a new page (which a user rarely wants anyways), but instead just opened as dynamic content on the page. It inspired a ‘dialogue/conversation’ with the user, by being engaging, and giving him information about the hotel. Makes sense, doesn’t it?
The first day was concluded by a party at the ‘Helipad’, themed as AbbaMania -> Panelists and other teams actually dressed up in 70’s clothes, and performed ABBA songs on stage. Crazy - but fun!
Day Two
The second day started a bit less relevant for me, with lots of stuff about online travel markets in individual countries in SEA - not exactly something we’re currently focusing on. Neverthless, the session on India moderated by Ram Badrinathan of PhoCusWright and attended by the heads of Yatra, RedBus and MakeMyTrip was probably the most entertaining one!
A refreshing break: Ideas from the Streets
Probably my favourite part of the day was the session on ‘Ideas from the Streets’ - Ketna Patel, an Indian Architect, shared her story about Life, photos of SEA and her vision of Asian Street Culture. I could totally relate to her messages, how SEA is just unique, the people, the stories told by life, everyday, the life found in the streets, etc. Maybe it’s because I’m a foreigner to India and could related to a lot of her amazing and amusing photos, but I totally DIG her session!
The Startup Pitch
Then came the WIT Startup Pitch, but I think I’ll write a separate post on that one! Bottom line: I’m happy.
Concluding
The rest of the day was filled with generally interesting panels and discussions, which I failed to take notes to. They talked about Ideas, Execution and Action, business models and distribution; and listened to a lot of high calibre industry experts.
The evening was rounded up by a drinks event for speakers (which I considered myself one since I presented) hosted by Google in the Majestic Bar. That was a great evening, I would say, partly because thanks to my appearance on stage, I was able to talk to a lot of interesting people in a more casual and less ’speed-date-please-give-me-your-business-card-networking’ type of way. From EnTrip to India, from Business to Politics, nothing was left out. Big thanks to Google, and all the ather panelists who were there!
The last day…
… was only a half day, which I used to meet some people following the startup pitch. Great meetings, great interatctions (which of course I don’t want to post here, publicly), and great lunch with Ana!
Bottom line
So what’s my take on WIT? I am so glad to have attended, it was both interesting, relevant and a great platform to meet interesting people and companies. I hope WIT enjoyed EnTrip as well - but from the responses I got, I guess WIT did!
Now I just have to reply to all the people who’s cards I got………
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