15 February 2008

New bid to cut brochure wastage

Agents and operators have been urged to support a 'green' initiative designed to cut down on the use of printed brochures.

The scheme has been set up to distribute brochures online, reduce brochure wastage in agencies and cut the cost of sale.

BrochureMaps and BrochureRack have been established by Travelwhere, a company founder by Ian Champness, former marketing director at FSS Travel & Leisure Systems.

BrochureMaps show operator brochures by country and region. The user can see brochures in the regions featured on maps of the destination country and link from the brochure icon on the map to the brochure content overview, or view or search the full e-brochure online in page-turning format.

BrochureRack (www.brochurerack.travelwhere.co.uk) is an online travel directory of brochures, with the two services designed to complement each other.

The concept of holiday BrochureMaps and the Travelwhere BrochureRack directory of operators' details and their published brochures are two digital publishing solutions that might 'tick the boxes' as being innovative, useful and green, Champness said.

"The appetite within the trade to cut brochure wastage has not gone away. It remains as big an issue as ever, and operators are under pressure to reduce brochure production and distribution costs," he said. "It's just possible that we might have a solution that could help operators, agents and the environment.

"I am looking to get the trade's support behind an industry 'green' campaign to improve tour operators' online brochure distribution and reduce retail travel agent brochure wastage."

As an affiliate 'marketing' partner there is a charge of

~· 50p for click throughs from the Travelwhere website to the operator's website

~· a charge of 60p when a travel agent (or consumer) opens the operator's online e-brochure or 3p per page viewed, whichever billing is preferred.

~· There is no additional click-through charge if the visitor deep-links from any page of the operator's e-brochure to the operator's website

~· Travelwhere provides monthly analysis of pages viewed and/or unique visitors to a brochure publication

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Your Comments (3)

Expensive. I don't think so

In response to Paul and Kathy's comments. The cost will depend from where the visits originate. We have two charging options, by unique visitors who open the e-brochure or by pages viewed. We track the IP address so on the unique visit option access by agents could be as low as 60p per agent for the life of the brochure and there is no charge to the operator for processing their brochure into a function-rich page turning e-brochure. First edition brochures can be replaced with the later versions, again at no charge, so errata free brochures with the latest up-to-date price panels are available to search, or view online and selected pages can be printed on demand for agent customer personalisation. Others are offering e-brochures, but no one, to my knowledge, has put them on interactive Maps. BrochureMaps are visual and simple. Maps are popular. Look at the number of Map sites that feature in Hitwise’s top travel websites. Tell me how quickly most retail counter staff will be able to show a customer the 50 plus brochures of Operators who feature Brittany in France. Yes, getting the brochure PDFs takes time from Operators, but our service might be an effective online "File Copy" distribution service that’s green and provides instant brochure and tour operator product knowledge for retail counter staff.

By Ian Champness, Monday, February 18, 2008
Its seems a little expensive

On average a tour operator can expect around 300 visitors to its online brochure per month if there is a link to it from their own website. (Data taken from Onlinetravelberochures.com). If you take a comparison between this model and for instance onlinetravelbrochures.com a 75 page brochure (about average) would cost &#pound;187 for the life of the brochure, no charges for click through on http://www.onlinetravelbrochures.com and approximately &#pound;180 per month using this pricing structure. At the beginning onlinetravelbrochures adopted a pay per click policy, it proved unworkable as it is open to abuse.

By paul green, Friday, February 15, 2008
green brochure? yeah, right.

Firstly, imho this is more advertising feature an article:/ Secondly, it is nothing new as there are already companies providing exactly the same service. Thirdly, I would seriously question "the appetite within the trade to cut brochure wastage" statement. We have tried to implemented e-brochure on our website; free of charge to customers, free of any (!) costs to operators. All we required was an electronic version of the brochures. Unfortunately from all the operators we contacted, we received only two positive responses and only Kuoni actually acted on our proposition (as we speak, we are waiting for their pdfs, so we can host them on our website). Nobody else was interested. Therefore imho only very few support the idea. Even though tt cuts costs, it helps branding, it helps reaching wider customer audience. From travel agents' perspective, we have richer website content, better service for our customers, we are positioned better. It is win win situation. Why operators are not interested? If there is an obvious answer, it totally eludes me.

By kathy stewart, Friday, February 15, 2008