I have nearly finished the
book “The Long Tail” by Chris Anderson, Chief Editor of the magazine Wired. I
know it took me a while to open this book since I have heard about it in January 2006
on Loic Le Meur’s podcast.

Whilst reading, I am
thinking how the Long Tail could be applied to the online hospitality industry.
There are quite a few similar patterns.

If you look back early in
the 21^st century, there were few choices to make a hotel booking
online (note that I am looking at booking a hotel and not searching). Or at least few highly promoted and publicly known online brands
(Expedia, Hotels.com, Travelocity, Lastminute, Priceline).

In 2007, we have seen that
the market share of online revenue between the big guys is shrinking against
niche players. Have a look at the latest PhocusWright European report and you will see
that niche players qualified as "others" represent a bigger share of the pie in 2006 vs. 2005. Today, the big 5  in Europe (Expedia/Expedia, Lastminute/Travelocity, Opodo, Priceline/Booking.com, Ebookers) are still dominant but will expect to see fierce rivals competing with them on seach engines.

Examples?

If you look in Europe, the
big head of online hotel bookings is represented by Booking.com, Hotels.com, Expedia, HotelClub who are
general hotel booking engines.

Followed by hotel chains /
hotel owned websites with online booking capability powered by IT companies
like Pegasus, Synxis or TravelClick.

Then you have the “last
minute “ inventory model with companies like Lastminute, Rates2Go, LateRooms.

You also have the corporate hotel booking sites (managed business spending) like HRS, Hotel.de/ Travelres,
Expotel.

Followed by the group hotel
booking sites like Groople, HotelPlanner

The B2T (Business to Travel agents) bed banks designed for travel agents like YouTravel, LowCostBeds, Hotels4U, HotelConnect…

The auction model hotel sites like RoomAuction, Ebay

The alternative
accommodation specialists for BBs, Guest Inn, Appartments & Villas,
Hostels, Castles

The customers types
specialists for pets friendly hotels (like PetsWelcome), Wedding (like WeddingVenues), Gay (like GayFriendlyRooms), Family, Backpackers and more

The destinations specialists like Paris Hotels, LondonTown, VeniceHotel and plenty more

and I am sure we could find more niche categories because the Tail is nearly endless.

I am not too pleased how I have drawn the chart below. I try to do better next time.

If you want to further study the Long Tail in travel, have a look at these Travolution articles. PhocusWright has also titled their next conference "Braving the Long Tail".

As always, any comments, suggestions are welcome.

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