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Travel
Lite is expected to sell to 'Net savvy travelers who are
interested in a slimmed-down convenient version of a travel
guide. Rather than load down a pack with a travel guide,
intended to appeal to as broad an audience as possible,
these travelers can tote a guidebook of their own creation
based on their specific interests and needs.
People
who use the Internet are travelers and use the 'Net to research
and implement their travel plans. The Travel Industry Association
of America (TIA), reported that the number of travelers
using the Internet for information and communications has
increased 190% from 1996 to 1999. According to their report,
93% of Internet users took at least one trip of 100 miles
or more in 1999. Travelers are using the Internet to plan
and book their travel, as well as to use it while on the
road for communication and research. According to this research,
the demographics of travelers who use the Internet heavily
tend to be younger, have an annual household income above
$75,000, be college-educated and work in a professional/managerial
occupation.
The
use of handheld computers or Personal Digital Assistants
(PDAs) has also increased in past years. According to a
report by NPD Intellect, the retail sales of handheld computers
went up 62% in the first nine months of 1999.
While
our intention is to package information in a form that can
be interpreted by multiple devices, for this project we
plan to focus on devices that user the Palm OS. Palm controls
70 percent of the PDA market. It has sold more than 7 million
branded devices so far, with an established user base of
5 million, which is more than all of its competitors combined.
Even so, the market is poised for growth as this number
comprises just 1.5% of the number of people who own personal
computers. Sales are expected to rise to 13 million by the
year 2001. Palm is also heavily entrenched in the developer
community with 100,000 developers as of September 11, 2000
and over 5,000 applications already written for the Palm
OS.
Our
contention is that this increased use of handheld computers
and familiarity of digitized information on the Internet
will intersect in travelers who will, as a population, quickly
realize the advantage and convenience of storing personalized
travel information on hand held computing devices.
Currently
the travel guide publishing industry generates approximately
$168 million a year with most of the leading publishers
(Fodor's Frommers, Lonely Planet, etc) reporting 15 to 25%
growth per year over the past four years. Books sales in
the Travel/Regional category have increased 54.2 percent
since 1991. 14,332,000 units were sold in 1998.
Travelers
are, in general, extremely curious people who enjoy meeting
new people, interacting with new cultures and in general
finding new and interesting people, places and things to
explore. They also rely on word-of-mouth as both a means
of information dissemination and also to learn about the
credibility and value of different information sources.
For
the pilot of this project, we plan to use travel information
from Lonely Planet publications. Lonely Planet has a very
strong and loyal audience consisting of middle-aged and
young adults, primarily interested in adventurous, independent
travel to less popular destinations. These individuals have
quickly learned the advantage of using the Internet to research
and book their travel (when possible) and also use the Internet
(through cyber cafes) to research on the road and also maintain
contact with family and friends.
Many
of these people are veteran travelers and strive to pack
only the barest of necessities when they travel. They have
complained in the past about purchasing heavy guidebooks
that either provide a great deal more information than they
need or else do not cover the precise destinations they
plan to visit, necessitating the purchase of more than one
guide. For example, an individual traveling to Vietnam,
Laos and Cambodia for a month would have to purchase a guide
to each of these countries. The creative travelers have
learned to slice and dice the physical book and leave the
unnecessary pages at home, or else simply bring only one
book and hope to trade or purchase the others on the road.
By
providing customizable guidebooks for download to hand held
computers, Travel Lite will solve both of these problems:
heavy guidebooks with excess information and guidebooks
that do not contain all the information needed for a trip.
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