Would you book this holiday?! (threadjack on the Tourdust thread)

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Permalink Reply by Alex Bainbridge on January 17, 2009 at 3:18pm

First twitter feedback

http://twitter.com/tomtravel2/status/1126218705
" I'm a #travel agent and liked all 5. The last rich image one moved me most but Im visual."

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Permalink Reply by Ben Colclough on January 17, 2009 at 3:36pm

Hi Dee,
Great exercise, thanks for taking the time. What does t/j stand for by the way?
I guess it is great news for you that you have a number of outlets to promote your business and also that the combined effort of these sites will be pushing forward the voice of specialist travel (for want of a better term?)

I'm looking forward to hear what people have to say. A couple of points I'd like to mention:

I wouldn't see Tourdust as in competition with your web-site - they can be complimentary to each other - we link through to your website so customers can check it out and find out more. We believe buying these kind of experiences is a very personal interaction between the traveller and the provider - and the traveller is going to want to find out as much as they can. For the same reason, we also provide a profile page to give travellers a really strong sense of the personality and passion behind the business.

Tourdust isn't the only one on this list which allows reviews. I'd really like to somehow "open source" reviews. It's kind of ridiculous that you could have reviews about Tell Tale segregated in all these separate places. We're really keen on figuring this one out in the future. Anybody have any ideas on this front - some kind of open source review API? that anyone can contribute to / use. We believe passionately that there is no future in the walled garden approach

Finally at risk of nit picking, I would just like to point out that Tourdust is primarily about small local provides of tours / activities and authentic accommodation. We had a long, long debate about whether to welcome outbound operators like TellTale onto the site (not sure if outbound operators is the right term?) which we wrote about on our blog at http://trailbeater.blogspot.com/2008/12/dilemmas-of-integrity.html . The outcome being that we do have some but only from small scale ethical operators such as Tell Tale or Wilderness Adventures who offer very authentic & local experiences.

I guess I would also (perhaps naively) say that the online travel market is huge and growing, all these sites serve a different insight and do it well. As such there is probably more to be gained from collaboration than old fashioned competitive strategies between them - with the advent of social media, new rules apply!

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Permalink Reply by Dee Edwards on May 22, 2009 at 1:07pm

Hi Ben

I hope you're well.

Just got an email from Anna (as a result of that listing I put up on your site) with details of your new business model. Looks like you are moving away from the anti walled garden approach...

I'm sure that others, like me, would be really interested on your journey so it would be really great if you could give us an update.

Kind regards
Dee

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Permalink Reply by Ben Colclough on May 22, 2009 at 2:57pm

We were starting to all look a bit thin and hungry :-)

We'll blog about it in a few weeks, once we have concluded individual private communications with all our suppliers. All based on delivering a better service to our customers and suppliers.

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Permalink Reply by Mary Jo Manzanares on January 17, 2009 at 3:49pm

I eliminate three right off the bat as being too hard to read -- too small of font size, white type on black background, and unnecessary flash. Those are major turn offs when I'm looking at a site.

It was quickly narrowed down to Tourdust and Tell Tale Travel.

I chose Tell Tale Travel eventually, probably because it was both visually appealing (although I wish the photos would have been clickable through to larger ones) and easy to skim. Online readers will want to skim first, and then read in depth, and this site allowed me to do that.

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Permalink Reply by Dee Edwards on January 18, 2009 at 2:17pm

I'm really surprised on the positive comments on the Tell Tale site! I put it in as an afterthought to the third party sites, I just thought if we're comparing interfaces, for fairness I should include it, but thought I'd have to duck for cover. I am not exactly ashamed of our own site, but the HTML site was only created as 'spider fodder' around a rich media application, both of which we considered 'throw away in 12 months'.

It's a bit hard for me to comment on this thread myself as I can't really be objective as I know which sites generate the most enquiries, conversions, how much/little work they are to update etc. However, I'll try and have a go..

The one that catches my interest immediately is Nature & Kind, the pictures at the top of the page hook me in and make me scroll through them (and I'm not a visual person). However, when I start to look at the holiday more, there's a lot of information to take in and the small white text on a dark background make me think 'I must look at this properly' and I'm more likely to bookmark the page for the future than make an action.

Take the Family has an overall feel of being more mainstream, it seems a bit like a brochure from a high-street travel agent. I think this is partly to do with the type of companies in the adverts. However, the website doesn't claim to be 'different holidays', the text is easy to read and there is a distinct call to action where it's clear you are going to be speaking to the operator themselves. There is only one photograph, which is fine for me but may not appeal to more visual people.

Tourdust looks like there is something wrong with the formatting in the picture sizes and the fonts are sporadic. There's a big block of text to scroll through and it doesn't really grab my interest enough to make me read it. I like the fact there is information split out on the right hand side and there is a clear call to action at the bottom.

(To be fair to Tourdust, it's the only website in the list that's in beta and it may be that the uploading content function needs HTML tags that I didn't think to do. Also, we haven't got a huge range of landscape photos, and I don't have Photoshop on this computer so didn't crop pictures specifically to Tourdust's sizes, but used their in-built cropping tool)

Tell Tale Travel feels a bit simple, you have to scroll, rather than have information in different parts of the screen. I'd expect something to happen when I click on the pictures but nothing happens. The site feels warm and welcoming in design and tone of voice.

responsibletravel.com has quite a lot of information to take in. There's a lot going on the page in the navigation and there's a lot on the holiday. I can see confusion arising on who runs the holiday as both the operator and rt are speaking in the first person, though I like the comment by the member of staff as it makes the website feels more personal. There's a clear call to action and you only have to provide minimal personal information.

I'd have liked to see reviews but didn't see any on any of the sites.

(Ben is right that some of these sites do have reviews, but there aren't any on this particular itinerary. We do have a couple on other itineraries but we should really have some on this one. We will often have an hour phone call from someone or pages of email, but they don't take the opportunity of posting the review online on the website they originally found us through. It may be we need to take a more active role in encouraging this.)

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Permalink Reply by Dee Edwards on January 20, 2009 at 12:07am

Come on, I know everyone's busy but have a very quick look and make a comment It doesn't have to be detailed, just three lines of first impressions would do!

As well as giving feedback that may be useful for Ben to look at in the early stages of his business (when let's face it we all need all the support we can get), I think it would be useful for all of us when thinking about our own websites.

Also, I think the fact that it's essentially the same holiday across different websites really helps make a comparison useful. Though if anyone has got any comments on editorial style and/or tone of voice, I'd be personally very interested as we pitched it differently on each website so I'm curious to know what works/doesn't work... or if anyone thinks none of the text is particularly compelling!

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Permalink Reply by Alex Bainbridge on January 20, 2009 at 12:41am

Hi Dee
Review coming!
Will be worth the wait (and will attract other comments, I am sure)

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Permalink Reply by Paul Hunt on January 20, 2009 at 10:07pm

Hi Dee

Not sure your comparing Apples with Apples i.e. using the Telltaletravel site is the Operator ..Yes ?
And to give you feedback after a quick-look-see of the others: NatureofaKind loaded too slowly : Responsibletravel and takethefamily scored better but favourite was Tourdust . Why ... fresh looks, simple style, good level of info on one page and the wide screen photo of elephants. i.e. something for all members of the family .. info for parents and clarity that establishes expectations of the standard of holiday to come and an image that will be carried on holiday to find the elephants, to enjoy the experience and hopefully take equally as good photographs to bring back !
But I suppose, and here I'm picking up the other thread about Tourdust, the comparison is only half the story. It would really depend on which site is found in the first place from searching the web, and which site is easy to handle for making bookings, and which I have an affinity towards and be prepared to start building a loyalty to.

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Permalink Reply by Dee Edwards on January 20, 2009 at 10:24pm

Thanks for commenting. Yes you're right - it might not be apples and apples, I hadn't intended to include the Tell Tale Travel site when I started the thread, but then added it as an afterthought as the aim of this threadjack was to stimulate discussion on interfaces. And as Ben's said, his site is actually supposed to be more about individual experiences than tours so that again may make it apples and oranges.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Hunt on January 20, 2009 at 11:13pm

Out of interest Dee do you have any analysis of the different third party websites that send you the best prospects/ customers. I've noticed there are different types ...e.g. those that simply provide a route/click through and those that take a booking and in each category there are many new ones setting-up. So as an Operator did you judge which of the websites had best prospects and do you measure their performances to help evaluate their cost effectiveness for you ... or have you simply blitzed as many as you could ?

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Permalink Reply by Dee Edwards on January 20, 2009 at 11:26pm

Paul, yes, I do have an analysis of which third party websites by number of leads and how likely they are to convert (though I tried to be as objective as I could in my own review). None of them do the booking themselves, they all send it through to us, but I think the fact you got the impression some of them do raises questions on clarity of interface.

We definitely haven't blitzed as many as we can, we're just trying and testing the occasional one. If we do decide to do one, we are giving each one 12 months and then making a effort versus return decision.

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