31 October 2009

Long Tail Getting Fatter ? Lets Look

I am not a fan of the Long Tail theory. Nor are some of my fellow bloggers.

PCW however has an interesting analysis out on the trend data. Have a look here at the summary information.

What I continue to worry about is that the model for OTA in any environment based on GDS searches results in a train wreck. I call the Online Search (aka the Look to Book) problem the Achilles Heal of our time.

Until something is done about search's interaction with the way that availability and pricing are linked then we will be at an impasse. The problem is defined as either the powershopper/masterpricer type entries vs the brute force transactions.

Neither is acceptable and both are problematic in both quality and practicality.

With the big 4 OTAs falling traffic now become more and more apparent - the demand for the second tier players to develop solutions that are competitive is apparent. These players need to deploy solutions that are smarter than the traditional GDS based search offerings.

Perhaps the next gen killer app is the combination of Facebook and Search. If one of these guys cracks it before the big players do - then we could definitely see a re-ordering.

Cheers

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