The panel consisted of various luminaries from the travel sector and included Justin Cooke, CEO of Fortune Cookie, the event sponsors, or as question master and Travolution Editor Kevin May introduced him quoting Management Today “the internet in human form”. The rest of the panel was formed of Mark Tanzer, chief executive, Abta, Paul Evans, chief executive, Lowcostbeds Group, Matt Cheevers, managing director, Teletext Holidays and Chris Loughlin, managing director Europe, Travelzoo.

There was a great deal of discussion about how the worsening economy would impact the travel sector and most of the panelist offered views consistent with industry research. This shows that holidays are the last area of expenditure that consumers cut back on in a slow down or recession. However stats offered by Matt Cheevers showed that searches for cheap holidays are down year on year. Last year there was a drop in September of -6% for cheap holiday searches whereas this year the drop is -26%.

One of the many interesting points made concerned the positive impact of a recession. One panellist told of the 2001 slowdown and how it had removed the silos in the industry. Our recent research indicated that silos are a real problem in delivering a decent customer experience. With multi-channel user experience becoming increasingly important this could be a real benefit to organisations and in particular to consumers.

Finally, one of the panelists mentioned a website where disgruntled passengers and employees of United Airlines were venting their frustration. The website is called ‘Untied‘ and was created following an incident in 1996. It is well worth a look and demonstrates how delivering a bad customer experience can come back and bite you.