Three-way content deal sign of things to come?

Face it, most folks on the content side of the interactive travel equation are always looking for new ways to peddle their product.

But a recent three-way deal between a travel content provider and two A-list consultants suggests they might be trying to accomplish the wrong thing.

Instead of finding new customers, perhaps they should be searching for new partners.

That’s the bottom-line implication of last month’s deal between Craighead Publications, Arthur Andersen, and The Economist Intelligence Unit. The three companies launched a service called CountryNet, which is billed as an online information service designed to give expatriates and business travelers the information needed to relocate and operate knowledgeably, safely and effectively in new markets.

The project effectively completes a transition from dead wood publisher to information provider for Craighead Publishing, the Darien, Conn., service that offers guides with country-specific relocation and corporate travel
information.

“What we’re doing here is taking content that used to be available on paper and repackaging it,” says its president, Scott Craighead. “We’re using a different medium, and now instead of one person getting a book, we can have an entire company with access to this information.”

To his company, the deal represents the final phase of a metamorphosis and a new way of thinking about the information it has compiled during the last decade. Data is now revised weekly instead of annually. For example, its
Indonesia section now reflects the political turmoil in that island nation, which is something a guidebook bought in a book store can’t do.

While this is hardly Craighead’s first foray into electronic publishing (it did disk-based project called the Essential Expatriate with Andersen last year) it is, to date, its most significant one.

It probably wouldn’t have happened, says Rob Thomas, a technology consultant for Arthur Andersen, unless clients had demanded more than a disk. “They wanted a place where they could go to get all of this information at once, a kind of one-stop shopping experience,” he says.

That’s what Andersen is trying to give them with CountryNet. Andersen adds its information about taxes and immigration to the info-mix. Customers can access the data through a password-protected Web site maintained at its Chicago office.

Most of the paperwork, by the way, is handled through Andersen and The Economist Intelligence Unit, both of which market the service to their respective customers. Craighead brings only its information to the deal. Neither party will discuss the revenue-sharing model, except to say that they are splitting the profits.

Louis Celi, managing director for The Economist Intelligence Unit’s electronic publishing division, agrees that customers drove the partnership. His part of the trio contributes data about politics and business practices.

“We’re finding that more international executives are becoming road warriors in the sense that they are traveling more and they are going overseas more and they are increasingly wired. In the marketplace, there’s a fundamental shift into the digital age. Companies are globalizing and doing business in this market,” he says.

Celi found that these executives needed to access information about countries “in a new way” — whether it’s from an office in Manhattan or the airport in Rio.

For the Economist, CountryNet fits its philosophy of publishing “outside the covers.” Says Celi: “The old publishing model is changing. The concept of having just one publisher write a book in linear fashion, start to finish, is tired. The new, wired way, is publishing outside the covers byproviding information that new market sections want.”

Which brings us back to partnerships. In this new age of digital publishing, it’s clear that neither the Economist Intelligence Unit, nor Arthur Andersen, nor Craighead could have done this alone without incurring big costs. None of them had the resources to offer their clients all of the information they wanted. Collaboration became essential to staying competitive.

How does this apply to other travel content developers? Granted, business intelligence is more likely to fetch a premium in the information market than, say, data about adventure travel. But still, the CountryNet dealmakers suggest, all is not lost for companies developing leisure travel content. If you look hard enough — outside the borders, if necessary — there are partners to be found.

One more thing. All three parties in the CountryNet coalition agree that this is the first of what will be many other transactions pairing content developers with consultants. Stay tuned for more.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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