This month it's the 1st anniversary of Trade Me's accommodation website, Travelbug
On 9 September 2007, Travelbug launched with more than 1500 hoteliers and moteliers signed up, assisted by a labour intensive campaign of reps signing up operators throughout the country.
Trade Me chief executive, Sam Morgan predicted to double the number of operators within a year. However 12-months on, it would appear that this lofty target has not quite been reached - but he was close, with growth to "more than 2,400" property listings.
It is unclear how many of Travelbug's 2,400 listings are active and "live." There still appears to be many operators only choosing to advertise "on request".
It will be interesting to see if Sam Morgan's long-term target of 5000 to 10,000 operators is still achievable. After the initial uptake of accommodation operators, further growth within the accommodation industry will be difficult. Any further growth of any significance could well come from planned expansion into other areas such as holiday homes and tourist activities, then later, rental cars and flights.
It was predicted that Travelbug would quickly establish itself and emulate the success of its big brother TradeMe. It was assumed that the two-thirds of all Internet users in New Zealand that use Trade Me would simply start using Travelbug. This clearly hasn't happened, but it's still early days!
The online travel market remains as competitive and crowded as ever. Wotif has been running in New Zealand for five years and is still setting the benchmark. AA travel has invested heavily into it's online accommodation offer and has partnered with big spending Roamfree.com. New Zealand owned, Ezybed.com have been quiet achievers and Jasons are utilizing their marketing expertise to further polish their acquisition of Holidayguide.
