Around the World in 80 Clicks

Proving ROI

All these travel content providers claim huge success in terms of financial return for adding streaming video. Visual Data says one-third of its visitors click on video, and up to 47 percent of those visitors click through to book. That number is dependent on the quality of the hotel property, says the company. And Travelocity boasts that year after year, its cruise sales quadruple, in part due to streaming video and 360-degree visuals.

But proving a solid ROI with video doesn’t come without stumbles along the way. All the major players have made their own sets of mistakes.

Travelocity realized late in the game that it should have focused on popular locations. The company wasted time and money on videos of destinations nobody cared about. Today, Travelocity focuses on five key destinations that receive 85 percent of its usage: Hawaii, the Caribbean, Las Vegas, Mexico and Orlando.

TVN, like many others, assumed that the banner advertising business model would make money. Today, TVN has adopted a business services model, and now acquires and hosts streaming video for other sites. Ultimately, TVN wants to make its site a destination for travel seekers.

Unlike TVN, HotelView found trying to serve and encode video was a mistake. The company couldn’t compete with the likes of Akamai or Globix on the cost of these streaming media services, so as a result, the company farms out all its encoding and hosting to third parties.

While working out some of the kinks, the online relationship between video and travel sites has shown measurable success, even at this early stage. All providers claim that the added value of streaming video has increased traffic and stickiness. But concerns over high broadband costs and poor video quality still keep many travel content providers a little cautious. John Bobel, president of Travelago, thinks his company should go back and re-optimize video for the audience he believes will be predominant for at least three more years: the 56Kbps users.