We are down in Austin this week at theBeat.travel live conference - a great event focused on the corporate travel market. This morning we heard BCD Travel senior VP April Bridgeman talk about challenges that corporate travel managers are facing with the continued explosion of social media and other tools that road warriors are using in their everyday lives to enhance their travel experience.
April may have coined a new term in the process: "Fansumerism." Fansumerism is a version of consumerism in which new applications are adopted and utilized by fans in their everyday life, often outside of "official" corporate policy. Great examples she sited were Seatguru.com and, one of our personal favorites, Tripit.com.
And speaking of Tripit, April dropped another great new term: Tripiting. I'm not sure it is quite in the league as "googling" but like where she is heading...
Our big take away is that the traditional "walled garden" in corporate travel is starting to fall, just as it has on the leisure side where you now have OTAs referring consumers to direct competitors. The logic (some) OTAs have adopted is that consumers are going to shop around anyway so they might as well get paid when a consumer does what they know a consumer will do anyway. The role of the corporate travel manager may be starting to morph from controller to influencer....
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
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