The discussions and ideas about Web 2.0 rage on...and the travel and hospitality sector seems to be listening too. Traditionally slower to jump onto the tech and web trends bandwagon, some hospitality companies are making an active effort to embrace Travel 2.0. John Bray of PhoCusWright discusses the initiatives taken by TripAdvisor, Yahoo! Travel and Starwood Hotels & Resorts (Four Points Website, The Lobby SPG Blog).

Definition: Web 2.0 is a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users. Ultimately Web 2.0 services are expected to replace desktop computing applications for many purposes.

The jury's still out on an acceptable definition of Travel 2.0, but it has to do with going beyond traditional web offerings and embracing user-generated content and social media.

"Still, like the winter itself, online travel distributors and suppliers seemed dormant in the Web 2.0 area, perhaps grappling with the potential disruption of complete transparency that these products and services portended. Ironically, as online travel agencies and suppliers were spending more and more on traditional and first-generation Internet marketing for customer acquisition, in hopes of gaining loyalty at some point, consumers were conversely abandoning these channels for word-of-mouth, peer-driven recommendations."

Read: Hospitality Net - Industry News - Web 2.0 Begins to Sprout in Travel | PhoCusWright FYI By John Bray

PhoCusWright Presentation by Cathy A. Schetzina from TRAVDEX 2006 : Download here

tags: hotel, hotels, hospitality, travel-2.0, web-2.0, user-generate-content, social-media, e-commerce, online-marketing, phocuswright, starwood, four-points, trip-advisor, yahoo-travel