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Welcome to TTI Europe’s leading travel technology initiatives and standards organisation

A word from the chairman

As I write this month’s newsletter the sun is shining and there is not a cloud in the sky. What joy spring time brings. A new start, the thoughts of the warmer days to come and an overall enthusiasm that comes over all of us at this time of year… So a very warm welcome to all of you, new and older TTI members alike… Last month I had the pleasure of speaking at the WTM Vision conference in Moscow. Although I was only there for 2 days, I was reminded that for a country the size of Russia, the idea of travelling overseas is something that is still relatively new and for a select few. Yet despite the economic situation and the falling value of the Russian rouble, there is a great deal of optimism amongst the young entrepreneurs over there for all of the developments taking place within the electronic travel market place generally. It made me realise that, in many ways, travel and tourism development overall is still a relatively new industry for many people and for many developing countries throughout the world. There is no doubt that in terms of upcoming technical trends the talk at the moment is about wearable tech. With the advent of the Apple Watch and various other wearable gadgets to monitor everything from your health to the number of steps taken in a day, our imminent

future is about the ‘Connected Age’ and the ‘Internet of Things’. These trends, together with the ongoing roll-out of cloud computing, mean that our industry, along with every other industry in today’s modern world, must remain focused on what our guests and customers are really looking for when it comes to travel; particularly when it comes to the five steps of travel as conceived by Google… i.e. Dreaming, Planning, Booking, Experiencing and Sharing. This became very evident at TTI’s Spring Conference earlier this year where the subject being discussed was ‘The Mobile Customer’. We had a great event as usual with some excellent speakers. Peter Matthews from Nucleus kicked off the day with the results of their recent web survey of January 2015 which noted that we are fast approaching the 50% mark (actually 44.6%) when it comes to mobile hitting the majority of web traffic. The survey also noted that the number of mobile transactions grew 70% year on year to 28.81% of all online revenue. Nucleus very kindly sponsored the event so our thanks must go to Peter and his team for doing that and to all of the other speakers who once again contributed to such a great event. Presentations from the day are now available via the website. Looking ahead to TTI’s programme of events for the rest of this year, our TTI Summer forum will

be held on the morning of Tuesday 2 June at the Strand Palace Hotel. This year we will once again be holding a joint event in conjunction with ETOA (European Tour Operators Association) with the subject entitled ‘The Hotel Distribution Revolution’. This is likely to draw a big audience and is a subject, as many of you will know, that is very close to my heart. With Metasearch rising, Google adding streamlined navigation from its hotel search results pages to its hotel ads and Amazon now entering the fray with a new hotel offering, this is an event not to be missed! Our full day TTI Autumn conference will then follow on Monday 21 September, and finally our Winter Forum which once again will be held in conjunction with World Travel Market – entitled the WTM Travel Innovation Summit in Association with TTI, will be held on Monday 2 November respectively. Details of these events and venues will, as usual, be posted on our website in due course. In the meantime, I trust that you are all looking forward to the summer with friends and family and that business is looking good and prosperous for you all. I very much look forward to catching up with you at one of our events as detailed above later this year.

Happy holidays to one and all!

The Hotel Distribution Revolution

Lennert de Jong, Commercial Director citizenM Hotels Sharon Doyle, Vice President Product Management GTA

Yahya Fetchati, Chief Operating Officer Bookassist Jutta Moore, Managing Director Moore Hotel Consulting

The quarterly TTI newsletter Issue 58 May 2015

TTI Shareholders:

by Peter Dennis, Chairman

full details & registration at www.tti.org/forum

Speakers:

Summer Forum Tuesday 2 June - London

The tools and techniques that are in play for

the distribution of hotel accommodation have

changed out of all recognition to pre-internet

days.

There are other new entrants moving into

hotel distribution. The channel managers

that offer hotels the opportunity to distribute

across many online outlets, all from one

connection, the meta-channel managers that

will connect hotels to more than one channel

manager, the ultra-last minute mobile players

and, recently into the fray, comes meta-

search. Is this just another channel that

needs its commission? How does the recent

judgement on best rate guarantees affect the

marketplace? Are intermediaries the hotel’s

friend or enemy? These questions and many

more will be addressed by our expert

speakers. This Forum is being held jointly

with European Tour Operators Association.

The Mobile Customer

Conference Report

Setting the scene at TTI's recent

conference 'The Mobile Customer' Peter

Matthews of Nucleus shared research

showing transaction growth on mobile of

70% year-on-year.

Drawing on the Nucleus Mobile Web

Survey Wave 8 study, Matthews

revealed that mobile revenue is now

29% and that responsive sites are

performing well.

Further trends highlighted in the

research include that

Android devices are still

slow when it comes to

mobile browsing with

Apple devices still

dominant.

Matthews urged travel

companies to take

mobile seriously and

take action, revealing

that one brand had

received a $11,000

hotel booking via a

smartphone.

"Looking towards the

future, 80% of internet

users now also own a

smartphone. There is

one smartphone for

every five people on the

planet so we're moving from a mobile

world into a smartphone world."

Providing some insight on the

challenges and opportunities for tour

operators was Marco Ryan, chief digital

officer of Thomas Cook Group.

He said travel was ahead in some ways

but behind in others and added that

company directors need to be

comfortable with developments and

investment. A few years ago there

wasn't a business case for mobile, now

the data shows there is.

"It is clear we are catching up today as

tour operators. Companies such as

Airbnb have raised the game. They have

a niche, it does not mean we can afford

to stay still and the level of investment is

night and day from where it was a year

ago.

When it comes to mobile Ryan believes

the industry should not get too hung up

on the devices consumers use but focus

on creating a cross device approach.

Ryan

challenged

research from

Phocuswright

showing that

app usage is

decreasing

and added that every single person on a

plane and in a hotel has a phone -

including the kids.

"It is an extension of their lives while on

holiday."

He also said app usage

should not be confused

with mobility and

connectivity.

"For me everything around

mobility starts with the

customer. What we do in

each phase is different,

you can't have one app

that does everything, you

can't have one approach.

Let's not get too excited

about the device."

Ryan added that it's about

providing a seamless

experience for consumers

who might start their

research from the sofa at

home via a tablet and

continue on a desktop.

He pointed to research from Google

showing that 40% start planning from a

mobile phone and continue on a

desktop.

(Continued on page 3)

by Linda Fox

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis, Peter Dennis and Paul Richer with Bournemouth University students who attended the conference.

Kindly sponsored by:

More than half of Thomas Cook

customers still want to go to a travel

agent while in Germany, 80% still book

via the travel agent.

Ryan said that when it comes to mobile

the tour operator

needs to be thinking

about the different

stages for travellers

- pre-booking and

inspiring consumers,

the anticipation

stage when there is

the opportunity of

offering upgrades

and other services

and while they are

on holiday and being

able to capture how

they feel - excitement or frustration.

"There are things you can do to help

people, drive efficiency, create

stimulation at different points."

Thomas Cook is involving the customer

more in developments through A-B

testing and getting consumers to tell the

operator what works, what is relevant

and how it affects the customer

experience.

The operator has been developing its

companion app giving travellers access

to their trips and details of excursions.

Booking is deliberately not part of the

app because of the preference towards

visiting a store or using the desktop.

"Booking a holiday is a three-month

journey. Mobile bookings are going up

and up so we will add the functionality."

Head of TUI's mobility hub Deepak Jha

said its mobile strategy was built around

two pillars - the fact that the operator

owns the entire journey and its scale.

"They are welcomed at the airport by

our own staff, fly on our aircraft so there

is the opportunity to amplify the

consumer experience."

Jha added that the operator has a reach

of 30 million customers, with a retail

network larger than Starbucks in

Europe.

He also said the operator has 32 touch

points with consumers and that it needs

to identify those that matter and use

those to improve the consumer

experience.

Recent developments include opening

up its digital assistant

app to everyone as a

means of driving people

to the operator's mobile

site - previously it was

just for those with a

booking.

Jha stressed the

importance of the app as

a customer acquisition

tool and to help reduce

some of the marketing

spend with the search

giants.

The app initially started with pre-

departure

information and

TUI is now

focusing on the

'on holiday' part of

the journey and

providing online

flight and hotel

check-in.

"It's about taking

away the pain

from the six or

seven buses

arriving at the

hotel on change-

over day."

During the question and answer

session, presenters were asked about

apps versus responsive websites with

Ryan saying that it really comes down to

the use case.

He also stressed the importance of

customer relationship marketing and

beginning to segment and personalise

to consumers.

"You may want very different

experiences and content from the same

app so we have to find a way to start

making it more contextual. It has been

very broad brush and now we're starting

to make it more personal and targeted.

It's part of the glue that has not been

right in most companies."

From trying to provide many elements to

many travellers, the theme moved to

just one hugely important element -

maps.

While Google has done a huge amount

of development in making them more

intuitive, the UK's Ordnance Survey has

been quietly digitising its data in the

past couple of years.

Its head of interactive experience Ben

Scott-Robinson said the Government-

owned organisation had not been good

at opening up the information to the

general public but was beginning to

address this.

"Our maps are accurate down to 20cm

and we know the audience is all about

going outdoors so we want to create an

emotive mapping experience in the

digital space."

Ordnance Survey has been

working to map the UK's

national parks and will release

an app in the Summer to help

consumers get a better

experience when they are out

and about.

Google's travel industry head

Sam Smith said the search

giant was also focusing on more

relevant recommendations

based on the huge amount of

search data it collects.

The final session was given

over to Jeroen van Velzen, from

Sound of Data who is now working

on developing Roadmap - a B2B white

label itinerary app for the corporate

travel market.

He said that the industry was beginning

to understand the 'loyalty effect' in travel

but acknowledged the challenges of the

transaction heavy environment with

minimal interaction with the customer

and the huge investment in marketing

just to get a booking.

Van Velzen believes there is huge

opportunity in the 'spending' phase of

consumers i.e. when they are on the trip

as opposed to the 'saving' phase when

they are shopping around for the best

flight or hotel deals.

(Continued from page 2)

Marco Ryan, Thomas Cook

Fabrizio di Martino, IHG

Why your business is now your mobile brand

Every travel brand needs to consider the

implications of the Mobile era, and how their

brand must now adapt.

Mobile advertising is already the fastest growth sector in marketing. Programmatic buying is disrupting the traditional agency media model. But what happens when a user links from the relatively easy-to-produce mobile ad to the not-so-easy-to-re-invent brand website? More often than not, you leave the Mobile era and regress to the PC-world of Web 2.0. This is not the brand experience customers expect, or will put up with. Recent research from IAB suggests 73% of users turn to a competitor site rather than change devices.

This is why Google recently changed its algorithms to favour mobile-friendly sites, and has labeled mobile-friendly search results for some time. Mobile-unfriendly sites are now suffering in mobile search results.

At Nucleus, we’ve been intrigued by mobile - especially the Mobile Web - since pre-iPad days and have scrutinised its growth with our own six-monthly surveys (all of which are available to download). We consciously focused on the Mobile Web rather than apps, because we believe this is where most mobile users are initially won or lost - the first brand touchpoint, directly connected to the world of social media: someone on Twitter says David Beckham is having a birthday party in Marrakech; amanresorts.com spikes with hundreds of thousands of new browsers, most of them mobile.

Mobile devices now drive the majority of website traffic for a growing number of brands, with the luxury sector, in particular, showing very high smartphone use. Mobile data is also growing exponentially as more and more smartphones are used to view video; a trend that is bound to continue as bandwidth increases and the cost of

connectivity drops. Consumers like browsing their favourite brands impulsively, when it suits them: while out and about, commuting or watching a TV show. This change in user behaviour will inevitably drive new models of brand engagement.

Mobile commerce is growing, too; 47% year-on-year to 11% of all ecommerce, according to Mary Meeker’s latest Internet Trends Survey. Our own research findings suggests m-commerce growing 198% with a mobile share of e-commerce already close at 30% - but only for brands that have optimised their websites, booking engines and shopping carts for smartphones. Those that haven’t are already losing out.

And this isn’t just a US and European phenomenon. In China, more people are accessing the web through mobile than PC and in Africa smartphones are forecast to leap-frog PCs. What’s common to all these new online communities is that they will only engage with mobile-friendly brands.

So what about apps? Apps still account for 68% of all mobile monitisation according to Meeker, but the balance is again changing fast. Apps currently offer superior functionality, but in most cases are not customer acquisition tools in the same way websites are; they are better at sustaining brand engagement.

So how does a brand re-imagine itself as a mobile native?

First base is to transform your digital presence and put smartphone users at the centre of your marketing world, recognising the growing power of mobile search. Responsive Web Design (RWD) is the key, enabling a single website design, CMS and SEO for all your audiences, or the same individuals using multiple devices. Adaptive Web Design (AWD) achieves the same ends but is specific to different devices and less flexible in a world of ever-changing screen sizes.

It’s easy to spot a responsive design, even if you are using a laptop. Grab the bottom corner of your browser and shrink it diagonally. If the design reformats and reflows into a single column, it’s responsive. If the content remains static and becomes illegible, it’s not.

Because instant messaging, texts and image sharing are predominantly mobile, social media is also inextricably linked to smartphones. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, WhatsApp, Tencent and Snapchat account for billions of user hours a day. If brands want to seamlessly integrate to these channels, mobile is the key.

The brands at the forefront of defining the Mobile era are reinventing services and disrupting business models. They also have a different aesthetic to Web 2.0 or offline brands. ‘Appy’ iconography ensures that they can be recognised instantly in the confined real estate of a smartphone screen, while old world brands find it more of a challenge to adapt to this confined environment. Their brand identities were designed for a different age, when print media, signage and packaging ruled the day. So, when planning a mobile or omni-channel strategy it is not just the website that needs to be re-thought; sometimes the whole brand system needs attention.

Your or your competitor’s brand in the customer’s hand?

To some, mobile feels like a dark star exerting its expanding energy field around marketing, creating new billion dollar enterprises from the ether and threatening the very existence of others. So why have so many brands ignored this opportunity until it has become a threat? Travel is a good example; according to IAB 32% of UK travel companies have no mobile presence whatsoever, and only 2 of the top 50 UK travel companies have a responsive transactional website. Contrast this with the largely US-based online tour operators and metasearch websites, where all the major players have already made the transition. Guess who is growing market share fastest?

If the goal of marketing is to get closer to customers than your competitors, mobile provides today’s biggest brand opportunity – and if it’s not your brand in customers’ hands, it’ll be your fiercest competitor’s.

Mobile is more than just another channel in an

omni-channel strategy. If your brand really is

your business; your business needs to be a

mobile brand.

by Peter Matthews Nucleus

If the purpose of branding is to win and sustain relationships between businesses and customers, then mobile is the latest arena where hearts and minds are won, or lost.

Social Media Corner

Essential Tactics ….

Suddenly summer feels like it’s just round the corner. After a few dry weeks and some welcome sunshine here in the UK, day trips to the beach or long weekends in town and country are on many people’s minds. But summer can be challenging for marketers, with customers distracted, outdoors or absent all together in foreign climes.

A traditional solution for some is to turn down their effort, saving budget for a rainier day, but if what you sell is connected to the outdoors or travel – this is the prime time for promoting your offer or USP. Whether its sun cream or showerproofs, tents or sheds, books or hotel beds, train trips or even travel insurance – now is the time to grab attention and secure market share for a long hot summer of sales.

Here are 5 key tactics to consider for your summer social media sales campaign:

Images People love to tell stories of their travel in pictures and people travel more in the summer – so it stands to reason that people take more pictures in the summer and if they are taking more pictures, they’re sharing more too. Fact: over 85% of the content shared from people’s Facebook timelines are images!

Photo contests are a great option for engaging an active audience and there are plenty of social options for these kind of promotions. Having run many campaigns of this type, we’ve shared a few relevant learnings below.

Despite Instagram’s popularity, most people aren’t great photographers so be careful not to make your contest too demanding. Make it easy for people to either share an existing picture or take one that doesn’t require too much effort. For broad engagement ask people to have fun participating – smiling customers look great on your Facebook page.

If you want to raise awareness for future sales or visitors, a great tactic is to ask people to take a picture of something emotionally connected to the use of your product, destination or experience. Here are a couple of examples! If you want people to buy family travel insurance or visit your seaside destination – get them to take a picture of their expression when they first dip their toe in the sea! If you want them to buy the latest range of summer clothes – ask them to share a picture of their summer colour inspiration.

For both you’ll get some lovely personal pictures that make potential customers really think about the experience of buying your clothes or travelling to your summer beaches.

You can collect data from Facebook only submissions and use a simple follow up email with a targeted offer as a simple and effective way to generate sales. This isn’t an option using popular image only platforms like Instagram, where you’d use a unique hashtag to collect entries. The value here is audience reach and brand awareness and the possibility that (with the right hashtag) you might trigger viral sharing – boosting participation massively.

Mobile It’s summer and everybody’s outdoors – not tethered to a computer right? But many are still connected on mobile and tablet and the great user experience with native social apps on these devices means people are even more likely to engage through Facebook, Twitter and Instagram whilst out and about.

To make any outdoor focused promotion effective, build it around simple-to-use functionality like hashtags for entry via Instagram and Twitter. For Facebook make your applications super mobile-friendly, with clear calls to action and bold, uncomplicated messages.

Influencers Coverage with blog influencers is an excellent way to connect with potential customers, especially when they are researching travel or purchasing decisions, looking for recommendations and peer reviews.

Articles, features, product reviews, photo galleries, interviews, competitions and coupon offers can all do a great job at raising awareness for your offering at key times – and drive some sales too.

One strategy we’ve had great success with is taking seemingly niche content from our clients (let’s say a crime novel) and using it with influencers and bloggers from another seemingly un-related interest area (…say travel).

The article we’d pitch here could be, “Your Top 10 Travel Reads this Summer” or “Perfect books for Perfect Holiday Views”. Because the content is featured on a travel blog, it secures great stand-out on the site and often generates better than usual comments and engagement from readers. This impactful, thought out contextualised coverage is a

winning formula for raising awareness and driving a some high quality traffic – and quality traffic converts!

Partnerships When activation of your big summer social media campaign is the challenge, ambitious commercial partnerships offer a great way to maximise your organic reach, save media spend and increase sales with highly relevant niche audiences.

Plan summer partners who can offer you a sizeable audience and strong engagement on their own social media channels. For example: popular surf clothing company for a train company’s summer resort campaign, a major sun cream brand for a cruise company promotion, children’s travel luggage supplier for a holiday insurance campaign

Incentives Our final tactic is an obvious one for driving sales – but in social nothing is quite as straightforward as it seems. We’ve had great success with offering discount vouchers and coupons on campaigns selling everything from high end outdoor wear and travel insurance to spa breaks, but there’s sometimes real value in offering a low cost prize that’s just right for the promotion and audience.

One of the best examples of this was for a global car hire brand who wanted to increase awareness with UK holiday makers for their brand. We ran a simple “everyone wins” promotion – giving away branded beach balls for people to take away on holiday with them – in return for their email address.

We used a simple Facebook sweepstake mechanic to gather names and our influencer network to get word out with family bloggers and travel communities. The promotion went viral and our client distributed 10,000 beach balls to holiday makers across the UK at peak booking time for holiday car hire.

Not only was there an immediate benefit in brand awareness for bookings, but 10,000 balls went on holiday with families across the UK and Europe and did a great job bouncing brand awareness up for our client.

For more creative tactics and effective ideas to drive sales and more from social media, visit www.digitalvisitor.com or email info@digitalvisitor.com.

…. for Driving Summer Sales with Social Media

by Anthony Rawlins, Digital Visitor

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TTIcodes Spring Update

It is a well known saying in travel that whether it is business or leisure, it is all about Location Location Location, no matter how diverse they are. 2015 has seen TTI become involved in a number of projects ranging from holiday comparison sites, airport to resort transfers, airport destination services et al with the theme of how can TTI help with standardising Locations. In the past it was all about a place or a resort with most applications built around a legacy structure of City (Resort) – Locale (Resort Area) – Country. In business travel you might throw in the arrival airport as the destination courtesy of the GDS. Today it is much changed when ones talks about a location, a location can mean a multiplicity of entities ranging from the generic, Florida, to the area, Orlando, to a specific place, Kissimee, to a landmark, Disney World or even the activity, Florida Golf. Add into the mix that no two tour operators or OTAs have the same definition of a resort or a resort area, it is no wonder the consumer gets confused when they view the search results page. How often have you been frustrated by the seemingly irrelevancy of search results? Even answering the simple question what airport is nearest to a resort can be difficult. Make no mistake, one of the biggest challenges we find in mapping Tour Operator’s portfolios within TTIcodes is that the address and resort information is, shall we say, variable. Using the base geographic structure of TTIcodes, it can be challenging to group hotels together in a more finite way that will make it easier for partners to provide the consumer with more relevant search results. What is the Turkish Riviera, what is the surrounding area of London, how do I find hotels near Gatwick airport, why when I ask for

Disneyland Paris do you show me hotels in central Paris? 2 years ago we held a workshop for TTI members on the subject of standardising Locations which to be honest has flickered on the back burner until now.

From recent experiences we believe that now is the time to revisit the subject and as such TTI would like your participation in a Location Location Location workshop, which is planned for the end of June 2015 @ ATCORE’s offices in Slough. Interested in participating please contact sales@tticodes.org. We NEED your input.

by Peter Hazel

Location Location Location

TTI is associated with a number of trade organisations. Here is a round-up of their news.

News from our Associations

IFITTtalk workshops The International Federation for Information Technology and Travel & Tourism (IFITT) actively supports the organisation of workshops that deal with topics related to Information and Communication Technologies in a travel, tourism, leisure, hospitality and/or events context – eTourism. IFITT invites interested individuals and

organisations to apply for sponsored IFITTtalk workshops. The main motivation of such talks is to spark conversations, introduce new approaches, stay informed, find strategic partners and network, transfer knowledge between academia and the industry, or position an organisation / community / group / person globally. Successful applications will get support for PR activities related to the workshop and a contribution towards the coverage of costs. Impulse workshops will be eligible for a forfeit contribution of EUR 500 and longevity workshops for EUR 1,000. The participation of an IFITT board member can be covered on top of this.

There are three different types of workshops:

Standard workshop type focuses on general-

purpose events.

Student/University workshop type is an event

hosted at a college or university.

Salon workshop type is an event that takes place

on a regular basis (at least twice). To know more, please, visit www.ifitt.org/ifitt-talk or contact Brigitte Stangl b.stangl@surrey.ac.uk .

Fraud awareness campaign In April ABTA launched its annual Holiday

Fraud Awareness campaign, which is intended to educate the public about the dangers of holiday fraud and highlight the importance of booking with reputable travel firms. Some of the common frauds that occurred last year included people paying by direct bank transfers for private rental villas that were never booked or were non-existent. As well as being a massive loss for the victims, incidents of fraud negatively impact consumer confidence in

the whole industry and ABTA is keen to stamp them out. Google Changes ABTA has advised its members about the changes Google is making to the way it displays search results when a user searches for a particular phrase or keyword on a mobile device. Because this is the most vocal Google has been about one of its system (known as algorithms) changes, it implements hundreds on a weekly basis, all those working in the digital world have sat up and taken notice. In a nutshell, all companies that do not have a mobile-friendly website or a responsive website will be penalised when a user searches on

their mobile device for a particular phrase or keyword. This is not expected to affect branded searches, for example a user searches for you using your company name. ABTA appoints new Head of Brand and Business Development ABTA has appointed Victoria Bacon as Head of Brand and Business Development with effect from 13 April. Following a review of ABTA’s current and future needs, the Head of Brand and Business Development will focus on the development of the ABTA Travel with confidence brand, and on ABTA’s commercial activities as well as directing the communications function.

The New AITO.com AITO decided to rebuild its website completely and the new AITO.com launched softly in July 2013. AITO being a trade as well as a consumer

facing association meant the previous website tried to cater for both audiences. This made for a somewhat schizophrenic website which didn’t really excel in any direction. The new AITO.com brief had to satisfy our membership of 120 tour operator stakeholders of all different shapes and sizes and this proved somewhat challenging for the AITO web team. It was therefore decided that the new website’s primary objective would be to sell members’

specialist holidays to consumers. Each tour operator manages their own content on the site and can upload an unlimited number of holidays themselves. With the large amount of ever-changing, organic content, the site has become search engine friendly and is a competitive player in Google searches for keywords such as ‘Specialist Holidays’. Members have embraced the new concept AITO.com and have started seeing results. However, the real success story of the new AITO.com is the Holiday Reviews. Special interest holiday makers are very happy to talk about their trips to far flung corners of the world as well as providing advice and tips for others. Again, this is providing the site with fresh new content, helping

to optimise not only AITO’s website, but our tour operator’s websites as well. For AITO, quality is absolutely key to our ethos and the Holiday Reviews provide an impartial platform for travellers to really express themselves about their holiday and their tour operator. At the same time, it’s a wonderful tool for us at AITO HQ to keep an eye on how our members are performing. We’ve got plans to enhance AITO.com and the Holiday Reviews even further over the next few months so watch this space. It’s fast becoming the ‘go-to’ website for special interest holiday ideas and reviews.

In London 120+ youth, student and educational travel specialists met to network and trade at the BETA Youth Travel Workshop.

The day was packed 2000+ business meetings and industry insights from our sector specialists with the over riding message of the day that youth travel is no longer a niche sector, it is thriving and able to adapt and change to what at times is challenging industry landscape.

Next on the agenda is our Parliamentary Reception on 6th July, with the election just around the corner, this is a not to be missed event in order to mingle and network in the corridors of power! More info via the BETA website: www.betauk.com

We have been working with the European Commission as part of our One Stop Shop

project for digital trading legislation. As a result, we have updated the Digital Trading Policy section of our website to include a summary of a compliance sweep carried out by the EC, high-lighting common areas where travel websites fail

to comply with European law. You can see the results on our website at http://www.etoa.org/policy/regulation-and-taxation . Registration is open for our B2B digital trading workshop, Showcase Digital. The event takes place in London on Tuesday 29th September. TTI members receive an ETOA partners discount of £200 on the technology supplier rate. Register

now for £499 at the event website, www.digital.showcase.travel. Please use your TTI member discount code of TTI15SUP. We look forward to running another joint forum with TTI in June, on Hotel Distribution, and hope to catch up with many TTI members there.

Project Management Committee Discussions

TTIcodes TTIcodes coverage is continuing to go from strength to strength, TUI and Thomas Cook are both involved. Some clients are sending through poor data which is causing issues. Mis-mapping is also causing issues in the Middle East. For instance Hilton send a monthly update on their properties while others don’t. TTI is looking into this. The Affiliate programme is growing, some clients start with the affiliate programme and then upgrade to a full TTIcodes at a later date. The contract with GIATA will be updated to include this product. RESCON2 We have put a lot of time and resource into this project. However unfortunately there has been very little interest. Tony Williams has prepared a document which we have put online for download. The solution is currently only viable for viewdata customers hence the probable lack of interest. So the project will be shelved for now unless there is renewed interest.

Locale Codes We are arranging a workshop at the ATCORE offices. We need a lot of Tour Operators on board to get this moving. We are looking at a date at the end of June. We will send out a one pager to Tour Operators. Spring Conference There was generally very positive feedback. There were a few issues with audio and visuals and refreshments. We will look at radio microphones instead of hand held. We are emailing members to get their views on future topics for discussion at future conferences. Summer Forum—2 June Once again this will be held in conjunction with ETOA who will cover the cost of refreshments for its members. The topic will be The Hotel Distribution Revolution. We are seeking sponsorship of this event Autumn Conference—21 Sept This will be discussed at the next

meeting. However we will talk to P&O as we see Ferry/Cruise as an area of interest Unpaid Subscriptions We will now start final demand chasing of members who have not paid. We will explain that if they do not pay TTI they will have to pay GIATA a higher monthly rate for the TTIcodes. Reed Exhibitions and WTM Update We will once again be running the WTM Travel Innovation Summit in association with TTI on 2 November 2015. AOB We are looking into a TTI API for ground tours. We will be also looking for new projects to champion, TTI is a ‘not for profit’ organisation but needs projects and/or standards to keep going. We are open to new ideas.

by Tim Wright, Codegen

A Warm Welcome to New Members

Nucleus Red7

TTI Events 2015

Project Management Meetings (All members welcome, contact Liz if you would like to take part) Tuesday 2 June - after the Summer Forum Wednesday 16 Sept - by conference call

Conferences & Forums Tuesday 17 March - Spring Conference Tuesday 2 June - Summer Forum Monday 21 September - Autumn Conference Monday 2 November - Travel Innovation Summit at WTM

Travel Technology Initiative Ltd, Registered office: Victoria House, 51 Victoria Street, Bristol, BS1 6AD Company Registration Number: England 2398368

Published on behalf of TTI by Genesys - The Travel Technology Consultancy - www.genesys.net

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If your company wishes to place an advert or an advertorial article in this newsletter, please contact liz.rylance@tti.org

Our last project meeting took place on 24 March by conference call.