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There's nothing more disappointing than carefully selecting a holiday resort, based on a beautiful photo and the blurb in a brochure or on a web site, only to find that you are, in fact, staying in the middle of a building site and you're surrounded by cockroaches.

In the past, consumers had no choice but to book their trips on the basis of basic promotional material in a brochure or online, and whatever photos might be available. But, the web is changing all that. It is allowing brands to take the travel brochure much further and provide consumers with a wealth of interactive content - from videos and podcasts to blogs and online communities - that enables them to make a genuinely informed choice.

Travel has been one of the biggest-spending sectors online for some time and the web is now a key sales channel for most operators. The growth in online travel has largely been down to the fact that it offers more competitive pricing than the high street, and it's often quicker and easier to book via the internet.

Early travel sites were simply an extension of the offline brochure, providing standard content such as pictures and basic text, combined with a direct-booking facility. However, Graham Donaghue, head of new media at TUI UK, which owns the Thomson brand, says consumers now demand much more.

This is driving the creation of a wealth of new multimedia travel content. "The thing about the web is that it doesn't have any physical boundaries like shelf space in a retail outlet," says Donaghue. "It's quite limitless in terms of what you can do. You can't just stick a site up with a bit of HTML, make it look decent and hope it works. We're way beyond that now. Customers expect a real, rich experience and to get stuff online, be it differential pricing or content that they can't get elsewhere."

Mark Watkins, managing partner at agency Euro RSCG 4D Digital, which works with travel brands such as airline BMI, agrees there has been a shift in the way consumers find and book travel online. "The behaviour behind a travel purchase is now quite complex. It used to be that you would go to a web site like Expedia and find the best price," says Watkins. "There's always going to be a volume of the population that's price sensitive, but travel firms can give people a good deal and content to enable them to purchase the right travel plan."

With broadband penetration continuing to grow - it accounts for about 55 per cent of all UK internet connections - more people are able to view high-quality video content. Package holiday giant Thomson has added about 1,800 videos of its properties to its site over the past 15 months, and now attracts at least 250,000 views per week, peaking at 350,000 in January (see box, p38). Meanwhile, Lastminute.com launched Travel TV in October last year, in partnership with Holiday TV, and offers broadcast footage of leading destinations such as Florida, Kenya and Dubai with voice-over commentary. It can be viewed via the site's 'Holidays' pages.

TUI's Donaghue believes video content is popular because it allows people to get more of a feel for a place before booking. "A picture says a thousand words, but a video says many more. It allows people to experience something different and see what is around that corner," he explains.

The great thing about multimedia, such as audio and video, is that it can also be made available for download to portable devices such as MP3 players and games consoles, meaning that consumers can view them on the move. So, travel operators can provide content that is more akin to a guidebook, rather than just content on their own properties and services.

Podcast guides

Virgin Atlantic was one of the first travel brands to create podcast city guides for all its flight destinations. These include information such as the top 10 things to see if you're visiting a place for the first time, and guides to restaurants and bars that users can download and listen to at their leisure.

"Adopting new technology, such as podcasts, can help to advance our customers' experiences and enable them to get more out of their trip," says Simon Thorne, ad manager at Virgin Atlantic Airways. It appears to be successful, as more than 100,000 podcasts have been downloaded from its site since last summer.

Thomson has also added podcasts to its web site in the form of short audio guides on destinations. It is now planning a major project that will see it roll out podcasts up to an hour-and-a-half long. "We've found that, while it has been quite popular, what customers really want is detailed information," says Donaghue. "An example could be that you're visiting Paris, and it could be a podcast all about going to the Louvre and talking about each of the paintings, so it's almost like a tour guide. It's not the death of the guidebook. It's just another way of providing this information for travellers."

However, the growth in multimedia content is only a small part of the shift taking place in the online travel market. The biggest change has been the explosion of user-generated content, driven by the growing popularity of review and community web sites. For example, TripAdvisor, which asks people to review places they've visited, is now the second most-visited travel site behind Expedia, attracting more than 18 million visitors a month, according to ComScore Media Metrix.

Michele Perry, director of communications at TripAdvisor, believes the reason for the site's success is simple: it provides travellers with unbiased reviews that are written by other like-minded travellers. And, when it comes to marketing, word-of-mouth has more sway with public opinion than any multi-million-pound TV campaign. "People want the inside scoop, not the marketing hype," Perry adds.

This trend is forcing travel operators to experiment with new ways of adding consumer-generated content to their own sites, such as blogs and reviews, to meet demand. Lastminute.com has launched a blogging site that enables customers to post their own blogs and search those of other users.

Real experiences

"Sharing our customers' experiences of holidays is important as it builds their confidence in us," says John Bevan, director of holiday and flights at Lastminute.com. "The public wants to hear about other people's real-life experiences and have access to a community where they can find specifics about certain countries or resorts. Creating a blog seemed the most natural way of allowing customers to do this."

Other brands look certain to follow in Lastminute's footsteps. Thomson has launched a 'review' section and now offers a company blog and web chats, while Virgin Atlantic says it is considering new web services around communities and blogging. But, those going down this route will have to be willing to lose a certain amount of brand control. As Matt Rooke, senior manager of e-business and direct marketing at long-haul operator Kuoni, points out: "Customer reviews and blogs are easy to doctor, if you wanted to, and are intensive to control."

Therein lies the dilemma for brands, says Watkins. If brands try to control what people are saying about them, it could have a negative impact on the business. But, if they give into consumer demand and give their customers free rein to say whatever they want about a brand, they have to be willing to accept that not all the reviews will be positive.

Donaghue argues: "The internet has given consumers so much power and freedom, and we pretty much have to embrace it. Anyone can easily write something about our brand or properties and post in anywhere on the web, so it's probably better for it to be on our web site than elsewhere."

Rooke says that, in his experience, most people will visit a number of sites when booking and planning a holiday. "The brand itself doesn't have to provide all the information. Just because a site has got reviews and blogs and so on, doesn't make me trust it any more or choose it over another site," he says.

But, Lastminute's Bevan believes that adding consumergenerated content helps to build customers' confidence in booking a holiday with your brand and, in turn, increases conversion. There is also, according to Thorne, a brand benefit from being seen to be innovative and an early adopter of new technologies. "There's a halo effect to the activity," he explains. "Even if customers don't download our podcasts, if they hear about them, they know we're a forward-thinking company."

So, does this new technology help to drive bookings? "We've seen an uplift in sales for properties that have video content associated with them," says Kuoni's Rooke.

Thorne says he doesn't see podcasts necessarily driving traffic to the booking engine. "Are people booking the fares and then getting the podcasts or are they downloading the podcasts and then getting the fares? We think it's likely to be the former," he says. He believes it's more about brand experience and loyalty; providing consumers with content that will improve their experience. Of course, if they have a good experience, it's more likely that they'll book with Virgin again.

Inspire people

Donaghue believes such content can also help to inspire people. So rather than visiting the Thomson web site with their chosen destination already in mind, users can browse the customer reviews and videos to help them choose.

"We're finding videos are quite influential from an inspirational point of view. You may not necessarily know where you want to go, but watching a video can inspire you," he says. "You can get that inspiration from a brochure, but not to the same degree as a video."

With the focus on expanding content and innovation, it could easily create new barriers to entry and make web sites more complicated to use at a time when more first-timers are experimenting with online travel. Peter Matthews, chief executive at Nucleus, a web design and brand consultancy that works with a number of travel firms, including Orient Express, explains: "There's a trend towards too much content and being too clever. It's right in some parts of the market and, in other parts, it's purely about convenience."

He adds: "At the end of the day, there's still an awful lot of travel sites out there that don't do the basics right. All the bells and whistles are a waste of money if you can't complete the minimum requirement, which is to find what you're looking for, see whether there is availability and book it."

The trick is to not over-complicate things. Travel sites need to be able to provide rich content on a destination, along with a simple process for enquiring about availability or booking. But, with the amount of multimedia and user-generated content almost certain to keep expanding, the successful sites could well be those that manage to do both.

THOMSON VIDEO LIFTS SALES FIGURES

TUI UK started adding video content to its Thomson.co.uk site about 15 months ago, but according to Graham Donaghue, head of new media at TUI-owned brand Thomson, the company didn't really "take it seriously" until eight months ago.

"We realised customers really like it and that a lot of people were watching the videos, so we embarked on a programme last year to get as many of our properties on video as we could, which has been a massive project," he explains.

When the company started promoting the videos in the offline brochure, the number of people watching them "went through the roof", says Donaghue.

"In January, we were getting up to 350,000 people a week viewing videos, and we are still getting 250,000 views a week at this time of year," he adds.

"It's safe to say that conversion of those units with video is significantly better than units without."

Thomson now has about 1,800 videos on its site, which Donaghue claims is the largest library of travel videos online in Europe. The company has also made all its videos searchable through Google video and Yahoo!.

The next step for Thomson is to make video content available for download on video iPods. "We are doing a lot of work with video iPods at the moment, so customers will be able to download a whole collection of clips," he says.

"They might not know where they want to go on holiday and could download a collection of videos on the top 10 destinations to their iPod, and then watch them on the train or wherever, and this could give them inspiration on where to go."