Travel tech focus for industry TV channel

Travel technology is the focus in January for industry online TV channel Decisionmakers.tv.

Travel technology is the focus in January for industry online TV channel Decisionmakers.tv, launched last year by the organisation that operates World Travel Market, Reed Travel Exhibitions.

Some of the sector’s most senior executives are lined up to including Peter Matthews, Travolution’s regular author of Siteseeing – in which he casts his critical eye over three sites competing in the same sector – featured today (Wednesday Jan 16).

The series will be kicked off with John McQuillan, co-founder and president of OpenJaw Technologies, and will include contributions from Travelport UK and Ireland regional director Simon Ferguson and TourWrist boss Charles Armstrong.

Other technology leaders due to appear on Decisionmakers.tv include Roberto Da Re, chief executive of Dolphin Dynamics, Travel Technology Initiative chairman Peter Dennis and Craig Dean, chief executive of Web Applications, the Travolution Rising Star of the Year 2012.

Others due to appear later in the year include Amadeus UK managing director Diane Bouzebiba and Travelport president and chief executive Gordon Wilson.

The technology focus is in support of the new Travel Tech Show at World Travel Market, running alongside the main exhibition on November 4-7 at ExCeL in London.

Reed Travel Exhibitions WTM head of marketing and communications Micaela Juarez said: “The importance of the travel technology sector continues to grow which is why Decisionmakers.tv is focusing on the travel technology leaders throughout January and World Travel Market is this year launching the stand-alone The Travel Tech Show at WTM taking place alongside World Travel Market 2013.”

Reed Travel Exhibitions launched decisionmakers.tv to offer insight from the industry’s most senior and influential professionals.

McQullan discusses the role of personalisation and champions the introduction of ‘big data’ within the travel industry.

Big data is an industry data clearing house, which all companies would be able to give their data anonymously to help the wider industry make business and marketing decisions.

He proposes Iata as the potential host of such a data clearing house.

“We tend to think of our data as a competitive advantage, but there are ways we can share data anonymously. We have been doing this for years through the GDSs with airlines’ data and it is used as a decision making point,” McQuillan said.

“Then companies can compare themselves against industry trends, for example, how many people book holidays to Spain a week before departure? It will allow companies to make decisions based on am much larger data set.”