Traditional Marketing Becomes
Digital
By
Dr. Natasa Christodoulidou, Ph.D.
California State University
nchristodoulidou@csudh.edu
E-Tourism Forum 2009

Background
• Born in Nicosia
• Moved to the US in 1992
• Received B.Sc., M.Acc., MBA and Ph.D.
• Worked for various companies in the United
States
• Currently a faculty member at CSUDH in
Marketing and keynote speaker for conferences
around the world
• Resides in Las Vegas, Nevada

Our world is changing!
• Let us take a few minutes to watch the following
video.
• Sony played this video at their executive
conference this year. Caution: It may leave you a
little breathless.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY

SO WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?
• China will soon become the #1 English Speaking
Country in the world
• China should be a target for promoting tourism
and travel in the English language
• Top 10 demand jobs did not exist in 2004
• This shows that we don’t know what type of
professionals we want to attract in our tourism
and travel market
• Text messaging
• Total number of messages sent and received every
day exceeds the total population of earth
• 1 out of 8 couples in the United States last year met
online
• Advertising space
• There are over 200 million users in My Space
• Potential advertising and exposure

Reaching your audience
• To reach 50 million customers it took:
• The Radio – 38 years
• TV – 13 years
• Internet – 4 years
• Facebook – 2 years
• So this question leads us to the bigger one which is
how do we reach our audience for the Cyprus
Market?

Travel Intermediaries
• An online travel intermediary is an online travel
agent that sells direct bookings with hotels,
airlines, car rentals, etc.
• Examples:
• Expedia.com
• Travelocity.com
• Orbitz.com
• Hotels.com
• Studentuniverse.com

Travel Meta Sites
• Travel meta search engines are a new
generation of travel search engines
• Examples:
• TravelAxe.com
• SideStep.com
• Cheapflights.com
• Kayak.com
• Opportunity or threat to online travel agencies
(OTAs)?

Metasite example

Popular Travel Meta Search Players
Sidestep Kayak
• Most established player • Fastest growing in space
• Side-by-side comparisons • Goal to be comprehensive (all
• Downloadable toolbar of the earth’s hotels)
• Partnership with • Multi-city itineraries
Amazon.com • Kayak Network marketing and
• Established relationships advertising service
with leading hotel • Buzz (history of user searches)
companies • AOL/Pinpoint Travel alliances
• Flight plus hotel (dynamic • Consumer-contributed content
package) searches • Integration with AOL Instant
• Search by activities Messenger
• Affiliate and co-branded
programs

Electronic Travel Distribution Pyramid
Adapted from Brewer, Christodoulidou, and Rothenberger
?
E-Meta Travel Sites
E-Travel Sites
Traditional Sales Channels, GDS,
Group Sales, Consolidators
Travel Products
(hotel rooms, airline seats, rental cars etc.)

Looking at Travel Meta Search from a Hotelier’s
Perspective
PROS CONS
• Another way to increase reach • Semi-direct model
and visibility, especially with
increased relationships forming • Increases threat of
between meta search engines commoditization with added
and popular Internet portals focus on price and comparison-
shopping
• Opportunity to attract
unbranded customers • Distorts look-to-book ratios
• Alternative to GDSs, GNEs, • May have adverse impacts to
and OTAs, shifting power to RevPar
brands (i.e., customers trading down)
• Book direct allows brand to • May influence customers to
build, own, and manage book with competitors and
customer relationship third-party sites
• Potentially cheaper
distribution option (depending • Segment is still immature and
upon contract terms) evolving
• Segment is gaining interest • Still unclear if meta search is
and some traction producing incremental
• Opportunities to up-sell bookings or just redirecting
customers when they arrive at bookings
brand site • Consumers continue to shop
multiple sites/services
(upwards of 5 on average)

Summary
• Use the power of E-Marketing to:
• Attract new customer markets
• Enhancing existing ones
• Customer retention
• Travel suppliers, Online Travel Agents, and Meta
Search Engines will be fighting for control of the
distribution process and ultimately the consumer
• For more, on the details the customer side, please
attend tomorrow’s presentation!

Thank You
Follow-up questions or presentation requests can be
emailed to (business cards also available):
nchristodoulidou@csudh.edu
Las Vegas Mobile number: +1 702 292 3952
Nicosia Mobile number: +99 55 49 49