Same, Same...but Different?

Greetings, Cafe Patrons.

For those of you who have been to Thailand, Cambodia or other parts of SE Asia, you may be familiar with the theme of this week's Cafe. Whether it's a fake Rolex or a hotel room that's not quite as nice as you thought it was on the Internet, you'll hear a common reply from the locals: "yes, it's same same...but different!"

Which is what was running through my mind at last week's Association of Corporate Travel Executives' Asia Pacific Conference in Singapore. And no, it wasn't because someone was trying to sell me a "Louie Veeton" handbag for my wife ("no really honey, it's a real one...same same but different...!")

As I was sat at a roundtable listening to an industry perspective presentation, one of the attendees whispered to his tablemate that "we've heard this all before, has nothing changed in our industry? It's the same thing every year." And that's when it hit me - yes it's "same same" - but quite different than it may seem on the surface.

Take content fragmentation, GDS relevance and online adoption in Asia Pacific, for example. Five years ago when I attended my first ACTE Asia Pacific conference, I was working for a GDS company and was part of a session discussing the demise of traditional distribution due to the "imminent rise of online booking and direct connects in the region." Lots of nodding heads in the audience at that one.

At the conference last week, we heard from several TMC's including HRG and BCD that online booking adoption is growing in Asia Pacific and that supplier content fragmentation continues to be the norm in this region. So there you go - on the surface it sounds like we were saying what was said five years earlier ("same same!")

But listen closer, and you'll start to hear the "but different" part of the old saying. During another industry perspective presentation at ACTE, BCD's Greg O'Neil in particular talked about this subject within a comprehensive white paper called "At The Tipping Point" in which he rightly points out that while online booking has grown significantly in the region (the "same same" part) the BCD white paper also notes that "...a further trend toward the increased use by business travelers of smart phones and other Web—enabled devices should be seen as an interlinked development with online booking." That's the "but different" part.

The great fun of being in this region is that while on the surface sometimes things seem to move quite slowly, the undercurrent is whipping along at a break-neck pace. So while some people may see things as not progressing all that fast, others realise that when you reach the back-end of a period of time in this region you can expect things to suddenly look very, very different.

Many of the GDS pros, TMC leaders and buyers I spoke with last week to various degrees all understand that a big shift is already underway in Asia with respect to travel technology, distribution and traveller behaviour. And that shift is that mobile and hand-held devices are going to drive tremendous growth in self-service in Asia Pacific that will likely put this region well ahead of the rest of the world in this space in the coming months. Note I said months - not years.

Yes, given the plethora of GDS options (TOPAS or TravelSky, anyone?) seemingly endless new online upstarts (excellent IPO, MakeMyTrip) and rapid rise of mobile social media (60% of all tweets globally come from Asia - yowza!) this market may seem to be a madhouse sometimes. But from madness often comes greatness, and it's likely that the corporate travel industry will meet again in Singapore next year and look back on what will likely have been quite a year for travel technology in the region.

And that, my tablemates at ACTE, is very, very different than what you may think it is.

EXTRA SHOT FOR THE DAY

At the risk of taking credit for something I know I had no direct influence on, I still am pleased to know that Virgin Blue is at least thinking the same way I am.

In an earlier Cafe posting I offered up several ideas which DJ could take on board to help them in their attempts to steal corporate market share away from Qantas. This week they've announced that at least one of my points - widebody planes on domestic routes - will become a reality from May 2011 when they introduce A330 aircraft on routes between Perth and the east coast. Flying to Australia's largest state on a large aircraft is just natural, as why wouldn't you want to start stretching out as soon as you possibly can?

And just in case, by some miracle there are Virgin Blue patrons starting to have a peek in the Cafe's windows, I might suggest that they next see about what they're going to do with that useless "Premium Economy" class....

Image courtesy AustralianGamer.com