Internet and e-business research analysts, eMarketer, recently reported a drop in online travel customers. At first glance, I was a bit concerned - given that our business depends on travellers researching and booking online.

But when eMarketer senior analyst, Jeffrey Grau, applied his nouse to the findings - which came from the Internet-savvy US, he discovered that it’s the large online distributors and agencies who are seeing the drop. This fits exactly with the trends we are both observing and predicting.

“Online travel distributors’ booking tools were made for mass consumption of uniform goods,” Grau said. “They have yet to switch to to an era of individual consumption of unique goods.”

Quoted in the latest eMarketer newsletter, Grau said that the personalised service offered by traditional travel agencies had revived their popularity, posing a real challenge for large online distributors.

Significantly, Grau said that online travel distributors “must become more flexible by allowing travellers to put together travel packages that fit their unique needs.”

Here’s the point

The point is that while the Internet has enabled mass distribution of information, we are rapidly becoming - and regarding ourselves as - a global collection of very individual people, able now to fulfil our unique and specific needs through searching for exactly what we want - online.

If travel distributors respond with a faceless, mass marketing approach to travel, then online browsers will simply switch off.

And here’s the opportunity

The opportunity for smaller, niche operators is to offer exactly what travellers - or the best travel agents - are looking for: authoritative collections of information around a niche area, with easy links to enable a full tailored holiday to be researched and booked online.

Travel agents know this because it’s only the niche agencies with specialist knowledge and experience that are surviving. Those who do this well online will not only survive but thrive.

The new online travel distributors are also smaller and focused around a niche travel experience or location.

Travellers now make travel decisions based on where they want to go and the experiences they want to have. Get together with industry affiliates (partners) to market online, and you have a powerful marketing too.

This is backed up by tourism strategist and consultant, Anna Pollock of Desticorp. She describes these new online distributors as ‘brokers’, who will be ‘element-focused’ (e.g. accommodation), ‘destination-focused’ or ‘activity-focused’.

So if you’re looking at putting together a site that draws together operators in your destination or travel niche, you’re on exactly the right track. Think about what your visitors are looking for, and help them find it.

The recent Tourism Directions & Distribution Conference in Sydney brought to light some important changes taking place in the tourism industry, which put you as a small tourism operator in much bigger shoes.

Giving the keynote address was Anna Pollock of Desticorp, whose views caught my attention and led me to read the white papers published on her site.

In describing the rapidly disintegrating travel distribution model of the 20th century, she lists three groups of providers:

1. Large global and national distributors, including wholesalers, ITOs, airlines and hotel chains
2. Systems providers and intermediaries, such as Galileo and Sabre, which include only the larger corporate suppliers in their databases, and
3. “The rest! Hundreds of thousands of small to medium-sized enterprises [SMEs] located throughout the globe that offer both direct travel-related services (accommodation, dining, transport, recreation and entertainment) and ancillary services (insurance, software, content, finance, weather, news, maps etc).”

I put the last point in quotes because these are Anna’s words, and it’s this large group of providers who are putting together the new model of distribution, which functions primarily online.

Anna goes on to say that this group is “waiting and ready for affordable, flexible, practical solutions that can connect them to a global market of demanding, capricious and valuable consumers hungry for the new, the unusual, the unique and boutique” (my emphasis).

If you sat up and said to yourself - that’s me - you’d be right. Small tourism enterprises have a huge amount to gain from the new distribution model that’s emerging across the world.

Says Anna: “There’s a revolution brewing that threatens to crumble the edifices of the corporate world.” (Don’t we all love to hear that?)

She’s talking about the same revolution described by Chris Anderson in “The Long Tail”. Chris explains that the ability you now have as a niche business to sell directly to prospects across the globe via the Internet means you can siphon off your corner of the market from larger businesses without depending on centralised distribution channels.

The problem for wholesalers translating a top-down model onto the Internet is that large, faceless sites, which are little more than a directory-cum-booking-engine, can’t interact, respond quickly to change or engage users with their personality and depth.

The threat to wholesalers comes from you - and others like you - the more focused sites and distribution systems (the brokers described by Anna Pollock), which are able to:

• beat the generic sites in the search rankings through authoritative content in a niche area,
• build trust and engage users through strategic blogging,
• maintain a personal conversation through targeted email marketing, and
• provide a fuller service through partnership with industry affiliates.