I am a logical fellow, at heart just a code developer, hence when I look at what is happening I tend to analyse from what is possible, regardless of probability.
Code developers have to handle the one in 1,000 chance that a particular section of code will run hence we have to consider everything. That is just how it is.
But our logical minds don't work quite so well when it comes to business.
Business seems to be more about emotion and connections than about whether something works or not.
- A to B - Take for example the humble online travel agent website (OTA). Historically they have been designed around how to get customer/user from A to B. User chooses departure (A) from a dropdown list. User chooses destination (B) from a dropdown list (that may or may not have updated depending upon the choice made in A). Simple. Basically this is how travel agent systems worked so early travel websites were bound to reflect that. Some argue that this meant that consumers were more likely to want to select destinations they knew. Long Tail destinations (that would have been suggested by an experienced travel agent in a human conversation with a customer) were not popular.
- A to anywhere - Next we hear about inspiration websites but, frankly, I haven't seen one that I really like yet. Some local single destination inspiration websites are noteworthy, but no global sites that help with choice of destination in the first place. What is an inspiration website? In essence it is an A to anywhere website. You are in a fixed place where can you go? Most have to earn their income from media or commission from flight sales as with almost unlimited destinations it would be impractical for a company to have interesting commercial deals in every single destination that was in their inspiration tool.
- Anywhere to B - This is the logical combination that my code developer mind keeps coming up with. If you are going to have A to B and A to Anywhere surely there has to be an Anywhere to B option. It's just logical. Except no one seems to be running a service with this combination. Thousands of A to B OTAs, tens of VC-backed A to Anywhere inspiration websites. Can't think of any Anywhere to B sites/services.
Who would want such a service? Well many existing destination based travel companies for a start. Events also.
Imagine you sell tours in Morocco. All you really care about is how to get people to Morocco.
You have customers arriving from UK, from USA, from continental Europe, from Middle East etc. What you want is a really nice iframed content source that you could put in your website and explain how to make your destination attractive (reachable) from all sorts of source markets.
Doesn't have to actually sell the flight ticket (for commercial/regulatory reasons) - just make the end user aware that they can actually get from Paris to Morocco for their 1 week holiday and who to check flight availability with.
The point about Anywhere to B is that there is money here. These destination websites/companies have real customers, real transactions. They are crying out for some kind of clever iframed/affiliate system.
But travel entrepreneurs have gone down the A to Anywhere route - complex, hard to monetise and technically challenging to build something that can come up with great advice to all sorts of different use cases.
Perhaps 2010 should be the year that startup entrepreneurs park the fancy concepts and focus on back-to-basics revenue generation? Anywhere to B would be a great place to start.