China Travel Conference happening in Beijing 9/15-16
I’ll be attending the annual China Travel Distribution Summit in Beijing September 15-16. First of all, if you have any interest in online travel in China, this is *the* event of the year to attend. Charlie Li, founder of TravelDaily.cn the organizer of the event, has put together a great program of global innovators and the most important players in online travel in China.
Special 10% discount for CNReviews readers and friends
As a moderator and media partner of the event, I can access a 10% discount off of the current rate of RMB 3800 from the event. Use the code “CTS555″ when you register and you should get a $50 discount, or 10% off. Use this link: http://www.traveldaily.cn/go/74.html
TripIt founder Gregg Brockway
Earlier this year, I discovered that Gregg Brockway, founder of itinerary management Web service TripIt, would be speaking at the event. TripIt is the travel application I use more than any other, to coordinate on average 1 trip a month. I highly recommend the service!
With permission from China TravelDaily, below is a excerpt of an article by Maggie Rauch:
What is TripIt?
TripIt, based in the Bay Area and founded in 2006, gives users one place online to organize their travel details. If travel providers are TripIt partners, then users can have their flights and hotel reservations automatically sent to their TripIt account. When they use non-participating travel services, they have to e-mail their reservations to TripIt, which then adds all reservations to an itinerary. Users can also choose to share their plans with others, a function which Brocway says gave rise to TripIt’s corporate offering, TripIt for Business.
How does TripIt make money?
“We saw one of the most common uses of the share function was sharing fellow employees,” he says. “So we created a corporate group function.” For $399 annually, companies can give employees access to TripIt Groups (available for free) and can also create their own subgroups for their travelers. Employees at companies with TripIt for business accounts also can use TripIt Pro services (which would cost $49 if bought separately), including flight-alert notifications, information about alternative flights, frequent flyer mile tracking and hotel rewards point tracking. Its business services and individual subscriptions are key revenue streams, the others being advertising and working with travel agencies to create e-itineraries for their customers.
In its efforts to beef up business offerings, TripIt recently announced a partnership with Orbitz for Business. The deal will allow travelers using Orbitz for Business to seamlessly sync their travel plans via TripIt, and to access additional planning tools like maps and online check-in.
Why is Gregg Brockway coming to China? Is TripIt expanding to China?
With the Orbitz agreement inked and 300% growth year on year, Brockway’s trip to China comes at a time when the entrepreneur (a co-founder of Hotwire in 1999) has a little more freedom to look at new markets. TripIt is already used internationally, he says.
“With our mobile app, we see people using it pretty much everywhere,” he says. TripIt has mobile apps for Android, Blackberry and iPhone. Brockway emphasizes that it does not seek to be a one-stop travel shop, and has not invested heavily in destination-based content. If the company looks at expansion into a new market, he says that factors it will consider are the maturity of the travel market; e-connectivity for hotel data, and tour and flight information; what is the equivalent of a GDS in a given market; and how much travel activity takes place online.
“I’m very curious to learn more about the state of the travel market there,” Brockway says about his trip to China. He already has some experience in the Far East, having worked in Hong Kong for five years in the mid-90s.
He’s well aware of the pitfalls of charging into a new market without soberly evaluating the opportunity or finding good local support. “Even when I was working in Hong Kong, people would come in with misguided preconceived notions about how they could bring their business model there.”
“I’m looking forward to meeting people doing innovative things in travel, and perhaps help someone as an adviser. That’s not something I had time to do the past couple of years, but now that the company is really up and running, it’s something I would consider.
Please let me know if you’ll be at the event. I’ll look forward to meeting up!
