Become a Home Based Travel Agent

Google Wave and the Travel Industry
By: Tom Ogg

I woke up just like every other morning. I had my coffee and then went to my computer and opened up the forum in HBTACommunity.com. There were several new topics, but one posted by Ron Stiles of Majestic Vacations in Portland, Oregon really caught my eye. It read “Google Wave….History in the Making in How We Can Do Business”. Huh? I thought to myself. I immediately read the post and clicked on the links to find out about it. WOW! I watched the video bites and then the entire presentation that was just made at the Google I/O in front of 4,000 developers. Because the Wave is open source, Google projects that there will be thousands of add-on applications that will do just about everything under the sun when it is released out of Beta later this year. Rather than go into details about its features and benefits, here is a look at our future with Wave.

To show you how it might be used, here is a hypothetical example using some of the Wave's functionality. I am renting our condos in Punta Mita, Mexico to a group of professional surfers. I received a lead from a form on my website and am going to communicate with him via e-mail, only I will use Google Wave (GMail on steroids) to do it.

I open a wave (create and send an email) and he joins the Wave (responds). He clarifies his request and starts asking me questions.

“What is the surf like right in front of the condo?”

Hey, a picture is worth a 1,000 words, so I drag 6 pictures of the break on various swells into the Wave.

“Wow! Are there any other breaks around?”

I have put together a 5-minute video of all of the surf spots on Punta Mita and in Nayarit, so I insert the video into the wave.

The potential renter is now looking at text, pictures and video.

“Shoot, I wish my friend could see this.”

We invited him to join the wave and he joins us.

“Great surf, but what are the condos like?”

I insert some pictures of the condos. I don’t have to worry operating on the fly like this because the Wave includes a spell checker that automatically corrects misspellings, not by using the traditional online spelling dictionary, but contextually by evaluating the environment that the word appears in. “I have bean there” would automatically be corrected to “I have been there.”

One guy says to the other, “man I wish the other guys could see this.”

“Let’s invite them to join us” I say

"Well, one only speaks Italian and the other guy is the surfing champion in Germany, but only speaks German." the one guy says.

“No problem,” I say. The Wave automatically translates to basically every language in the world, so when they join us, they see the conversation in their language. When they want to comment, they enter their responses in Italian or German, and the English speaking individuals see them in English.

After looking at the pictures, the German guy asks “How far is it to that El Faro Break?”

“Let me show you.” I launch the Google Maps App inside the Wave and drill down to the specific condo unit they are interested in and then back up so that the break and the condos are in plain view in the same image. I then drill down on the break giving them exactly where it is located and the distance to it from the condo.

Now, a couple of the guys are sending private messages to one another that I can’t see, talking about the trip. We continue on discussing the condos, the surf, the area’s restaurants and night life. I continue to provide pictures, video, maps, Links to other websites and so on.

I have collected a good amount of surf art over the years and it adorns the walls of the condos. I upload a picture show of the surf art for their enjoyment. That does it every time.

When we were all done, they said that they wanted their girl friends to see the pictures, so I invited all four of them to join the Wave. Unfortunately, none of them were online so Wave left a message inviting them to join the conversation. I said goodbye.

Later that day I receive a message that two of the ladies had logged onto the Wave. I joined the Wave immediately and told them to press the “replay” button if they wanted to see the Wave from the very first post. They also asked some questions about how safe it was in Punta Mita and if the water was safe to drink.

The question became if they wanted to rent 2 or 3 condos, so I used the poll application and structured a poll for each individual to express their opinion in the Wave. By the time we were done, the group decided to rent two of our condos for 10-days. I processed the payment from euros and pounds to dollars through PayPal and then uploaded the “Welcome” .pdf to the Wave for all of them access. They wanted to edit the Wave so that their friends could see the pictures, maps and videos, so they took out much of the chit chat and invited all of their friends to the Wave, who could then log onto the Wave and enjoy the pictures of the surf, the videos, the maps and the overall experience. However, because I created the Wave, I was able to see everything; the original comments, the changes, the edits...everything. The best part will be the business their friends will bring me in the future from being exposed to the Wave.

Does this sound too good to be true? I encourage you to visit http://Wave.Google.com and watch the videos there. There is an 80-minute demonstration of Wave that will blow your socks off! EVERY travel professional should watch it at least once. Ron Stiles, you have made the understatement of the year and thank you for sharing it!