PhoCusWright 2009

I was not able to attend the PhoCusWright Conference in Orlando this year, but I kept more or less informed by following comments on Twitter and Twubs. Now that the conference is over I can recommend UpTake's Elliott Ng's summary for those who want more details as to this year's conference revelations. Elliot's takeaways:

• Mobile will open up new opportunities for in-trip planning, shopping, and booking.
• Sensors, system data, and geolocation-tagged data will be everywhere
• An Epic Battle over the social web is ensuing between Facebook and Google, creating opportunities for all
• Online search and discovery is still the biggest problem in travel planning and shopping (in other words plenty of need for the kind of stuff UpTake is doing)
• The industry continues to focus on using data to drive better ad targeting and site conversion.
• Social media is changing travel marketing, distribution, and customer service, and new tools are being created to help companies monitor and manage this new channel.
• Many consumer-oriented startups still seem to be in the “build it and they will come” approach toward traffic acquisition. C’mon, don’t do that to yourself. Stop it. Now.

Read Elliot's complete wrap up on UpTake's Travel Industry Blog

Cheers,

Jaime