Information Discovery Process of Travel
Many of my friends including myself have contemplated creating new business models in the travel space over the years. This is an interesting area that resonates with many people's personal experiences and something that almost everyone can relate to. We often feel there is something missing here or there, and it's not easy to articulate exactly where and what. Travel business, unlike movie and other business, is very hard to determine what is the basic element for a single data entry point.
From the perspective of a database (which is the backbone of every Internet business), if the data point cannot be universally defined and understood, then there is no database to speak of and no business to be built upon.
For movies, it's easy - every movie or TV episode is uniquely identifiable on IMDB.com and everybody agrees that's how they should be indexed in the database. Likewise for books, every book has an ISBN number that makes it uniquely identifiable, which lays down the foundation of Amazon's early success. For music, it's a bit tricky - we can index music by artist, song or album. Among these three elements, only artist can be easily indexed. Albums is becoming increasingly irrelevant (which is sad). Songs, unfortunately, can have multiple versions (studio, live, bootleg) that adds layers of complexity to all the music Internet startups.
The case for travel is confusing at best. Should we define the basic data point as a destination (Yosemite National Park), a location (California), an attraction (Half Dome), a route (Pacific Highway 1), a photo album (Flickr), a travel package (Expedia), or some sort of hybrid? All seem to be fair games.
A random conversation with a friend who was en route to Yosemite prompted me to sort out the information discovery process of a typical traveler in a logical sequence, with specific objectives and needed information for each stage. The right-most column in the below table lays out the source of information at each stage, which is essentially the landscape of the travel industry as we know today. I call this "AESPA" framework.
| Stage | Action | Main Questions | Info Needed | Source of Information |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | A - Aware | What are the possible destinations? | List of recommendations | media, friends |
| 2 | E - Excite | Which one looks most exciting? | Images to arouse interest; Reasons for must-go | Herbert's Guide to ...; Google Image Search |
| 3 | S - Select | Are there any show stoppers? | Seasons of tourism; Visa requirement; Safe issues; Physical requirement; Advanced reservation; Cost | Official sites; Wikipedia; fragmented info on Internet |
| 4 | P - Plan | How to make it happen? | Transportation; Accommodation; Ticketing; Itinerary; Budget | Expedia; Kayak; TripAdvisor; Airbnb; Lonely Planet; Frommer's Guide; Fodor's Guide; Ticketmaster; Blogs of walkthroughs |
| 5 | A - Anticipation | How to make the most out of it? | Stop-by-stop details; restaurants and bars; Knowledge of history and culture | Books; Yelp; TripAdvisor; Wikipedia; Flickr photos; Pinterest; Instagram |
Herbert's Guide to ... will serve the needs for the second stage "E" to excite travelers, arouse interest and build conviction that this is a must-go destination. My guide has a few features:
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All from my personal experience. I only write about places I have been to myself.
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All represent my recommendation. I only write about things that I think worth my friends' consideration.
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Each guide will contain no more than 10 photos. I don't think any human being today has attention span for any photo album of more than 10 images unless it's from a family member.
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Each guide will have a google map marked with all the recommended attractions.
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My guides will not contain lengthy walkthroughs with many logistic details/reviews/advice, which are for stage "P" and "A". I wish I could do that but always found I could never afford that much time to complete a full walkthrough. Thus, I just do what I can.
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Obviously, every photo was taken by me.
To all my friends who are thinking about starting a business in travel space, may this serve as a sparkle to stimulate additional thoughts and inspirations.