Book your once-in-a-lifetime experience here

The article "Book your once-in-a-lifetime experience here" (retrieved from http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,10295-2430803,00.html on November the 5th of 2006) deals with the novelties traveling web-sites are now introducing. Not only are they offering the possibility for their customers to easily book a flight, a hotel or a car but they now include what they call "travelling experiences". This means that their customers can also sign-up for travel excursions, tours, trips or experiences (even before they go) such as, for example, a helicopter trip to go wine-tasting in South Africa or swimming with dolphins in New-Zealand.

Isango is one among a few other web-sites such as Black Tomato or Viato that offer these kind of products. There are no credit card fees when booking and refunds or exchanges are acceptable at no charge 3 days before the reservation had been made. Isango proposes over a 1000 products and plans on adding to it a 1000 more each month. Its employees work closely with the local suppliers in order to make sure of the quality of the product.

This article demonstrates that travelling sites are tackling the customers earlier and earlier. They attract them with exciting activities and tempt them to buy at a very early stage. From a revenue management point of view, it allows the local suppliers to enlarge their channels of distributions, knowing beforehands the number of customers they will have on which date. They are hence able to forecast their needs according to the demand and consequently controlling their costs.

I can imagine that there surely is a market for those kind of products as people have less and less time to organise their trips. Moreover, it saves them from the hassle of searching for activities at the local tourism office, travel books or other internet web-sites (indeed everything can be found on the same web-site!!!). From the customer point of view it allows them to maximise their time and making sure they will enjoy their holidays. Moreover they can do group activities without having to be with the same group during their vacation. However, is there any space left for spontaneity then?