The Conquistador and the Fragile Kingdoms

A while back I had written an article talking about how Google had started taking the online travel industry by storm. Ever since I published that blog, I’ve been thinking further around which ‘kingdoms’ in the travel e-commerce realm will start falling first as a result of the relentless onslaught from travel domain’s new-age conquistador originating from mountain view! While the G-Monster will be severely disrupting the overall space in general, some of the players are well-entrenched and sitting on critical assets that will probably help them weather this storm. But the same thing cannot be said about the unfortunate few who are sadly situated right in the path of this steamrolling juggernaut of technology. This blog is my take on which sub-categories and players of the travel industry will get wiped out in the first wave of the disruption. These predictions might seem quite bold, but like I said they are just my personal forecasts. 

1. Metasearch Platforms

Before the advent of Online Travel Agent platforms (OTA’s), the old school offline travel agents had a “lock” on vacations and travel bookings in general. This was because, without a centralized booking platform, it was nearly impossible to find cheap fares yourself. The “do it yourself” approach was a huge hassle compared to hiring a knowledgeable travel agent who could assist you. Then, disruptors like Expedia (along with the companies it gobbled up) and Booking.com shook up the old model forever. With a few clicks, you could compare any flight or hotel in the world and better yet – book them online yourself!

But this evolution resulted in a gold-rush of sorts leading to a dozen OTA’s popping up every month across the globe wanting to cash in on this sector of ecommerce. As a consequence, the user agony morphed into a different form. The users now had to visit multiple websites/applications to compare the prices and select the best option! This created an opportunity for a new round of disruptors – called Metasearch - to foray into this territory. They seemed to solve the problem of being a one-stop-shop to compare the prices across various websites. While a lot of players attempted to cash in on this prospect, only a few tapped into this successfully – and even got bought out by the bigger corporations. Examples include Trivago, Kayak, Skyscanner, Kiwi, WeGo, etc.  

But like they say, “Nothing lasts forever”! So, as we get ready to ring in a new decade the next disruptor is already knocking on the doors of these incumbent disruptors! If I were to pick a slice of the online travel pie that Google Travel Platforms are going to devour first, it would be the Metasearch platforms. I am sorry Kayak/Skyscanner/Trivago/Kiwi – you had your chance and spent way too much time trying to get out of the ‘Click-and-Redirect’ model! Integrated bookings should have been part of your strategy starting from last decade and you guys reacted way too slowly and didn’t spot G-Mon in your rear-view mirror soon enough.

Now, everyone is starting to rush into the ‘Book with Google’ model, and why not! A huge majority of the Travel Planning Customer journey starts with google (not surprising as 88 out of every 100 searches typed into the internet flow through Google!) And when it comes to sorting out huge piles of information (and presenting it in a highly relevant and personalized way, nobody can match Google. And now they are using those skills to conquer online travel. The Search platform is already experimenting with replacing even the ads and organic blue links - in what used to the holy section at the top of their search results pages - with their own Flights and Hotels results for Travel related queries, functioning as a metasearch by default! The prime top-of-page real estate that commands 10X more attention now belongs to Google Flights & Hotels. So, there is no way users are going to jump over this ‘great wall of google’ to reach the metasearch sites as the platform matures more and more!

I travel extensively and indulge myself in hundreds of searches every week to find the best Flight itineraries and Hotel rooms, among others. And so, this opinion is deeply tied to exhaustive personal experiences – through which I have witnessed Google gradually overtaking a lot of established players like Kayak, Skyscanner, Kiwi, WeGo, etc. at the task of fetching the best flight connections and routes - and that too at blistering speed! So, even for personal usage, I have stopped using most of the metasearch apps (except a couple like WeGo) and solely depend on Google Flights/Hotels for finding the best deals and options.

And to make the user experience even more sweet, in the Hotel Booking flow, Google even rolls up the taxes and charges into the Prices displayed, whereas in other platforms you always end up with a ‘sticker shock’ at the last stage of the booking process where the prices can bloat up to 25% more -than what you were presented earlier – thanks to the additional taxes and fees! That is wickedly sweet! So, why would a user want to do multiple click-throughs from a metasearch marketplace to discover the real final price, when they get it with a single click on Google?!

Of course, they have a lot of room to grow still - but they will get there eventually. So, it is just a matter of When, and not If the nails on the Coffins for these metasearch platforms will be hammered down.

2.Review Platforms

Let’s admit it. TripAdvisor – as a review platform - is aging and a bit dated already, even as it tries to reinvent with a radical new look and position itself as a socially sourced travel feed & community platform! And in parallel, as Google is starting to choke off the flow of customers to travel websites, TripAdvisor cannot help but feel the squeeze too. On its latest earnings call, their management announced: “Our most significant challenge remains Google pushing its own hotel products in search and siphoning off quality traffic that would otherwise find TripAdvisor.”

And if this wasn’t enough of a crippling blow, Google has also started investing aggressively into their own reviews’ platform in the last few quarters. So much so that they have already managed to power their way to the top of the pack along with the likes of Yelp, TripAdvisor, Facebook, etc. A recent Localized Social Marketing benchmarking study revealed that Google already has twice the number of local reviews than Facebook and 10 times more than Yelp!

Given all these trends and G-Mon’s tech muscle, it is only a matter of time by when Google is going to drain out a predominant volume of TripAdvisor’s user base like how it killed Microsoft’s Internet Explorer(almost) with Chrome! If you think I am exaggerated in this prediction, below are some reasons why I Believe Google Reviews is going to overtake and topple TripAdvisor in the long run:

• Leaving a review on Google is super simple – driven by seemingly endless (sometimes spooky) prompts via Google Maps, Local Guides Initiatives, Search Results Page, Gmail, Photos and almost every other Google app that makes sense. So, a user doesn’t have to ‘visit’ a platform like TripAdvisor or Yelp to leave their review, but instead just ‘tag’ their content (like photos) with a location and rating with just a few taps of their thumb!
• Google has also indicated that reviews play a role in their ranking algorithm, encouraging accommodation providers (and other travel-related business owners) across the globe to jump on the bandwagon of asking their customers for Google reviews. Also, an independent study suggests that bad Google reviews are a lot costlier to businesses than Yelp or Facebook. So these guys are going to push their users more towards Google for reviews - than anywhere else - as time progresses
• Google reviews are relatively more reliable because, being a user-focused company, they treat the accuracy and authenticity of all content a lot more seriously. Also, managing feedback is better on Google as hoteliers can flag a review and ask for proof of stay (receipt), etc. Au contraire, TripAdvisor is really falling short on using smart algorithms to battle fake reviews.
• When it comes to Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning there are very few in the tech landscape that can compete with Google. And I am sure they are going to apply all kinds of NLP(Natural Language Processing) and Image processing techniques — among others — ingest, analyze, parse and extract every bit of smart information from the Photos, Text, and input received from the users. And they will translate this into easy-to-digest snippets and metadata that will speed up the decision-making process for the deliberating users. Companies like Yelp, TripAdvisor or Facebook cannot match that horsepower that google can apply on this front. And this is going to only delight users more and more who are having a hard time parsing through a huge load of information that exists already(and it is only going to grow).
• From a contributor perspective, TripAdvisor doesn’t feel rewarding enough anymore. I might sound very opinionated here, but this comes from very meticulous personal experiences. I have been writing Hotel Reviews on TripAdvisor for a few years now, and already have a few hundred reviews to my credit – distributed over at least 100 countries! However, I feel like this is not even getting recognized anywhere in any form – apart from getting a few meaningless badges. But I started migrating most of those into Google Reviews recently, and within just a couple of days, I’ve received such overwhelming responses from Hotels directly (most of them from General Managers!). This is just an attestation of the fact that Hotels are treating Google reviews with as much importance already (if not more) as TripAdvisor. Even it was their staff and not the GM writing these acknowledging notes back to me, it still means a lot and definitely a lot more than the reactions I have received from the same number of reviews posted on the elderly TripAdvisor platform!

And on top of this, Google is taking a non-territorial approach by even displaying reviews from other sites along with their own. Something that none of the others do. In the battle to be the biggest repository of reviews, each of the OTA’s (like Booking.com or Agoda or Expedia) are fighting to attract their guests to add UGC (User Generated content) on their sites instead of their competitor and so, will naturally not display the other content. Being able to see all the review content in one place – on Google – is a user experience that no travel planner can easily resist!

3.Direct Booking Platforms

These might probably be the last set of soldiers to fall, but it is a strong possibility. By Direct Booking Platforms, I am referring to the websites created by Individual Hotels (and Hotel chains) or Airline companies that have the full capability to make a booking. Until recently the big battle has been between Direct Vs OTA, in which the OTA’s were crushing the Direct websites, thanks to their Tech muscle and huge budgets they had for Advertising on Google.  Now, the rules of the game have changed completely. In a world, where even Tech-heavy OTA’s are struggling to siphon traffic from Google into their websites, Direct booking platforms would become more and more helpless in a losing battle trying to get more attention & visits from users.

If a traveler can perform all aspects of their travel planning - like Searching, Discovering, Analyzing Content, Reviewing Social Capital, and Comparing prices – in one place(including viewing data from the direct website itself!), why would they even want to leave this comfortable couch and make the effort of visiting other channels?! So, they might potentially end up doing all these on Google, and even make the Booking within Google! I agree this might sound like more of a farfetched prophecy, but you never know what might happen in this wild west world of online travel!