To the untrained eye, the recent tiff between the American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA) and the International Air Transport Association (IATA) over a proposed top-level domain for travel may look like a territorial fight between two industry bullies.
But those of us who have been around for a while see more than mudslinging. We see an opportunity to hone our business strategies.
How’s that? Consider the events of the last week. IATA initiated the brawl when it pitched the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) with its idea to create a “.travel” top-level domain. The clincher: It would get to control who could register a “.travel” name.
No fair, cried ASTA. “It is our belief that IATA should not have exclusive control over the distribution of the ‘.travel’ top level domain,” whined Richard M. Copland, ASTA’s president and chief executive.
It’s impossible to predict how this little spat will be resolved. ICANN may deny IATA’s request or it may give someone else – like ASTA – some jurisdiction over the “.travel” domain, if it’s approved. (And if you can keep all these acronyms straight, you don’t belong in the travel industry – you should be working for the government.)
When I first suggested a top-level domain for the travel industry in mid-1997, the idea was roundly dismissed. When I observed that “travel in general, and interactive travel specifically, got the worst domain names,” my comments were greeted with a collective yawn. No one cared.
It’s nice to know my ideas have some merit, even if I’ve had to wait a while for them to be validated. But that’s really beside the point. There are deeper truths to be mined from this week’s news, particularly against the backdrop of the last three years:
It’s not too late to profit from the industry’s ignorance. In the original column, I cited several examples of companies that had badly misjudged the Internet, including Delta Air Lines, Reed Travel Group and American Express. As I recently reported, Delta’s Internet strategy was so ineffective that it resorted to a lawsuit to recover its domain name.
American Express is widely regarded as still having one of the most passive-aggressive online travel strategies, and Reed Travel Group botched its Internet operations so completely that it no longer exists today. I don’t bring these companies up to embarrass them, but to ask: how many other suppliers are three years behind the times? What business opportunities do their lack of knowledge present us with?
Don’t make decisions based on the conventional wisdom. At about the same time I proposed a top-level domain for the travel industry, ASTA, supported by an utterly clueless travel trade press, was busy telling travel agents what they wanted to hear: That the Internet was little more than a passing fad that would go the way of eight-track tapes and CB radios.
They were wrong then and they are probably wrong now, too. Sure, they’ve hopped on the technology bandwagon and are pretending they’ve understood the World Wide Web all along. But consider ASTA’s most recent action – going to war over a top-level domain – in light of its past behavior. If it thinks “.travel” is so important, is it? Probably not. (Actually, I concluded in 1997 that although it would be nice to have a “.travel” nomenclature, the industry probably wouldn’t know what to do with it.) The fight over the top-level domain, in fact, suggests that ASTA and IATA are stuck in a mainframe world that ignores the non-hierarchical, organic, elusive nature of the 21st century Internet. We would be well advised to look beyond their antiquated obsession with electronic property.
If you give a damn, you’re probably missing the action. Here’s one of the most important strategies that this feud has brought to light: if you’re going with the crowd, you’re probably overlooking some of the best business opportunities. It’s not enough to ignore the conventional wisdom.
If experience is any indication in this young industry, the winners are the ones that do the very opposite of what the crowd is doing. The contrarians are the winners – the travel agents who ignore the naysayers telling them the Internet will just “go away” by getting online. Or the forward-looking suppliers that pour all of their resources into a Web site that accepts bookings, even when the pundits predict only a few million customers will want to buy travel on the Web. When industry-watchers tell me that bricks-and-mortar are still where it’s at, I have to look back at where we were just three years ago. All I can do is shake my head and pity the poor clients who take their advice.
This is by no means a comprehensive list of strategies. It only represents the three most important ones.
I hope the online travel industry doesn’t wait another three years before it validates them.
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