There’s no doubt that major players like Google, Facebook, MapQuest, Microsoft and Twitter all have a stake in the travel ecosystem. And there’s no avoiding their impact on the industry and on consumer patterns in all phases of the travel experience, which means travel providers and intermediaries need to pay attention to what they’re up to.
"We’re in an environment again where Google with Google Now and Google Wallet, and Apple with iBeacon and some of their other efforts are really going to be moving at a fast pace,” said Norm Rose, president of Travel Tech 
Consulting and a senior consultant to global research firm PhoCusWright. “It’s interesting to see these two companies battle so much, because it just means good things for us as far as innovation. There’s a lot to look forward to here as far as their impact on travel.”
For most travel businesses, there is simply no avoiding playing nice with the giants. Says Rose, “If you can't work within some of the ecosystems that these players are driving, you're not going to be able to survive.”
At the heart of all the initiatives is relevancy, according to Rose. “In this short-attention-span, multimedia world we live in, you have to be relevant to your traveler at every step of the way, whether it's dreaming or planning or booking or during the in-destination experience,” he said.
This is the second and final installment from a discussion with Rose on the potential impact initiatives by Apple, Google and other major players are likely to have on the travel industry.
Facebook: I don’t care anymore that you just ate a hamburger
“In the last couple of years we’ve seen Facebook integrating with things like TripAdvisor where you can not only look at general reviews but you can also look at what your friends have to say. How that might play out in travel planning is still unclear. They’ve proven that they're able to do advertising on mobile. But I’m hearing and reading about Facebook fatigue, where a lot of users will read Facebook posts but not post themselves. There’s a lot less of that “I'm eating a hamburger now” craziness.
Besides the fatigue, the problem for Facebook is the advertising. When you sign in to an ad with your Facebook credentials you know that means Facebook is collecting all this information about your activities on that site and that they're going to provide that information to their advertisers so they can send you more targeted ads. There’s no free lunch. The reason Facebook is free is that they make money on advertising. We’ve seen it with Google for years, with contextual advertising. Here it’s socially triggered advertising.
That’s where Facebook fits in travel and can have an impact. It’s not just checking your Facebook page. It’s in using your Facebook credentials to log in to a travel application that then brings in your social network as an influence or as part of the planning process, and at the same time extracts all the preferences that you exhibit through your actions while on that application. The big question is how much active recommendation rather than historical recommendation will happen.”
Google: They don’t want to be a travel company. Really.
“There's been all this speculation since Google purchased ITA that they’re going to become a travel company. What they really want to be is an intelligent personal assistant. That’s what Siri wants to be, too. Sure, they have Hotel Finder, and they have the ITA software for flights. They have a lot of elements in the travel ecosystem, and I still adamantly believe they do not want to be a travel agent. But they do want to make travel search easier and more proactive, whether that's searching in the dreaming cycle or the planning cycle or during the in-destination experience.”
Microsoft: Don’t count them out.
“They're starting to gain some traction with their mobile device, and they now have a common look and feel across all their devices. They still have Bing, and Bing still has Bing Travel. The problem with Microsoft is execution. They were very slow with execution, slow with leading trends, when they were this giant monopoly of the desktop. Those days are gone. We've moved away from the desktop. So now we’re in an environment where Microsoft has to compete, and that makes them sharper, too.”
Third-party developers: Creativity and innovation for the asking
“This is the most under-explored area in the travel industry. Here in the Silicon Valley, a major thing happens when you open up your API: You get thousands upon thousands of small developers looking at how to use that information, and that's where true innovation comes in. Every travel industry supplier or intermediary needs to figure out how to work with third party developers, how to allow the creativity and the insight of these people to improve the travel process by building on top of what already exists.”
Twitter: Consider the customer service applications
“Location-based tweeting and mobile tweeting have become pretty standard. That can apply to the travel process based on whom you're following on Twitter, or you can search Twitter for recommendations. It’s similar to what Facebook provides, but it’s very, very short and more manageable.
As a consumer platform for both praise and complaints, Twitter is already embedded in the environment, which has lots of bearing for the travel industry. From a customer service viewpoint, the airline sector is paying very close attention to tweets and where they're coming from. For example, they’re trying to identify those tweets that are originating in the airport, and if that person has a certain level of influence they want to make sure they react and treat them well. So the customer service side of Twitter is very, very relevant for travel.”
Mapquest: Can great ideas and lots of users add up to critical mass?
“They’ve done some great stuff, and they have great ideas and a lot of users, but I'm not sure if their innovations are leading or following, or whether people are paying attention to them. For MapQuest to become a critical player they have to be in an app that says, ‘View this in MapQuest.’ Then they have to add some value that is different to make the map interface more than simply location based. That’s going to be the key for them. It could be worthwhile for travel companies to work with MapQuest because they're hungry and trying to position themselves against the major players. It's a tough road. They're part of AOL, so they have some money behind them. I just don't know if they can recover their brand.”
ALSO SEE: Norm Rose on Apple’s iBeacon. It could transform travel