Uncapping The Internet's Possibilities

<B> Uncapping The Internet's Possibilities</B>

By Malcolm E. A. Kaufman

During these months of summer business travel, I've been keeping an extra bottle of water tucked into my briefcase. And as tempted as I've been--especially sitting on the boiling tarmac in Dallas--I've been able to resist drinking it. If I did, I would be out the most effective tool I own in illustrating the future of Internet travel.

Like water, destination information is something every business traveler needs. Different types of travel necessitate varying amounts of information. Some business travelers are in-and-out visitors--they head from the airport directly to their meetings, and eat within walking distance of their hotel at night.

Most business travelers needs, however, are more complex. They need the name of a restaurant with presentation facilities that can be reserved on short notice. They want front row seats to see Al Pacino in Hughie or Kevin Spacey in The Iceman Cometh. They need the city's most prestigious florist for a thank-you gift a client will remember. However simple or complex business travelers needs may be, though, the role the Internet will play in fulfilling them is contained in that extra bottle of water I've been lugging around.

What's the value difference between a glass of filtered water and that same water in a portable, plastic bottle? The answer seems obvious--both quench thirst, but one is convenient. The bottle can be taken to the gym, on a hike, to the beach, whatever. A glass of water satisfies our thirst needs. A bottle of water satisfies our convenience needs.

<B>Water, water everywhere...</B>

Right now the Internet offers a deluge of information for the business traveler. Conventional guidebooks and newspapers have been stumbling over themselves trying to set up outposts on the Web. The results have been decidedly subpar, as anyone who has read write-ups for long-closed restaurants on Fodor's or Frommer's Web sites can attest.

Their approach of dumping their existing product onto the Web just doesn't work in the up-to-the-minute, fast-paced world of the Internet. They haven't shed their old packaging mentality. Guidebook information is usually a year out of date, and the newspaper won't tell us what's happening in four weeks when we plan to travel.

Enter sidewalk.com and citysearch.com. Both have had a great impact on raising the stakes for up-to-date information for the traveler. Go to either site (or the other sites like them), though, and you are flooded with thousands of overviews, events, and tips.

Information is useless without filtration. Everything-but-the-kitchen-sink online city guides and other forms of shovelware only slow users down in the end.

<B>It's The Packaging, Stupid!</B>

The pendulum has been swinging back and forth on the usefulness of content in increasing a site's revenue. The jury may still be out, but when I hear content dismissed as a viable path to revenue, I think water, and how, 15 years ago people would have scoffed at the idea of Americans paying for water at the grocery store. Why buy what you can get for free?

The answer, again, comes back to the value inherent in portability and convenience. In the case of the bottled water industry, those two factors have spawned a multibillion dollar a year global industry.

Whether travel content sells on the Internet or not depends on the packaging. A site must filter the sea of information into a usable form. Business travelers need their info reliable, speedily delivered, up-to-date, and in bite-sized modules that work with a desktop, laptop and palmtop.

Tomorrow's online travel success stories will be those who fully grasp the message in the bottle.

<I>Malcolm E. A. Kaufman is CEO of San Francisco-based ontheroad.com, a company that packages restaurant and event information for business travelers.