The largest travel and lifestyle social network on earth, WAYN, has gone live with a brand new platform, designed to enable its users to raised discover where to move, what to do and who to satisfy.
The new site helps users on a journey of “destination discovery”, provoking inspiration on where to travel to next in addition to what to do whenever you get there and who to connect to to profit from your experience.
Members of the platform can now search or browse any destination and filter it by their WAYN, Facebook and Foursquare networks with the clicking of a button, to be able to quickly find tips about where to move and what to do, in keeping with what others have already experienced.
Users also can filter the consequences by people or content type, making it easy in finding what they’re on the search for , by destination.
Content that they prefer could be pinned to their profile and finally, they are going to be ready to create customised collections in their favourite things and share them with others.
Breaking Travel News: These are exciting times for WAYN, with the re-launch of the location. Could we begin by just getting an update with where we’re on that
Peter Ward: We’ve got rebuilt the positioning from the floor up, having taken a very good period of time to hear our existing users, perform some user testing, and beta test with our more prolific users.
We have matched this with our ten years of expertise inside the social media space to aim and serve up what we are hoping is far more of a next generation platform on the way to far better allow our users to find where to head, what to do, and who to fulfill.
Up until recently our focus was a great deal on connecting people on where they’re, where they’ve been and where they’re going.
I think we’ve become very successful in doing that. But where we now have perhaps lacked the time and resources to develop is to construct round the where to head, what to do aspect.
The new platform, the brand new site, while still being ten per cent of the vision of what we intend the location to be, is getting some very positive feedback from our partners, our advertisers. People desire to be involved with the project. It’s a lot more aspirational and contextual.
From a user standpoint the feedback has also been very positive.
We are seeing a variety of engagement with the positioning, relating to page views per user, time spent online and a discount on churn, in line with those that have access to it.
It was important for us to get this right. We’ve got taken lots of time to ensure here is best in school and intensely representative of where the industry is true now.
This greater than only a brand re-launched. While we’re also refreshing the emblem to make it more in tune with our strategic focus, we’re staring at rather more than that.
The idea is to take the most efficient valuable of what we have already got; the meeting people, the international travel, making friends and tasty around photos, and fusing that with the contextual content, based around travel and lifestyle.
In time we’re also trying to integrate third party networks, if you want to ultimately do better what they do than we are able to, but serving that up like an a la carte menu to user.
If you consider Facebook with its Timeline, or the Twitter feed, in our case we wish to create something like a travel timeline – according to your experiences.
People could be ready to view that on a wall view, that’s very visually led, or on a map view, where you’ll find your entire friends, recommendations, tips, everything.
Very quickly users might be capable of see where people was around the globe, what they recommend, who they know – and take that forward, make connections with people and plan.
BTN: You latterly signed a big take care of India Today Could you let us know a bit in regards to the thinking behind that
PW: They seem to be a larger media conglomerate based in India. They have got various publications, some offline, some online. What they didn’t have was a powerful presence inside the online travel field.
There is a huge offline presence, travel magazines for instance, but not much online.
But they do have developed ad placement capabilities and a variety of websites, relationships with tourist boards, airlines, hotels, and blue-chip companies.
The time it might have taken for us to begin that from scratch, against partnering with them, was such that we have got launched a co-branded version of the location.
If you presently log-directly to in India you’re going to get a WAYN/Travel Today co-branded site. It’s the exact same site as we’ve here and in other markets, but integrating a few of there on and offline content to WAYN users in India.
What this permits them to do is visit the likes of Lufthansa or British Airways, as an instance, who’re seeking to advertise to Indian consumers, and use our platform as another in their many distribution channels to serve that advertising.
It gives them a media presence in online travel in India. They’ve 100 million+ consumers they’ve access to, whereas we’ve got four million users inside the country, so the deal made sense.
Profile pages on WAYN
BTN: How did this deal occur Did the corporate just have the suitable fit for WAYN, or is it component of a much wider technique to move into developing markets
PW: We grew virally and of course, through word of mouth, in India. It is partly all the way down to market forces.
If you take a look at the craze of the Indian consumer moving onto the net, having access to mobile internet, and the broader rise of the center class, which was once traditionally non-existent, while it’s now over 150 million people strong, these have all worked in our favour.
But in the event you also consider travel, it appeals to everybody worldwide, not only India.
This allowed us to develop an enormous footprint in India, and it made sense for us to work with the various leading commercial advertising partners in the market.
It simply so happened that the India Today group was probably the neatest there has been for us to try this.
On your wider point, yes, developing markets are going to be important, not only for us, but for all businesses within the western world.
BTN: In what ways do you hope to profit from these trends
PW: That’s particularly true of travel. In case you examine the shift toward the developing markets, it’s becoming more apparent.
There is a saturation, even a contraction, in some markets, with people taking fewer holidays, not with the ability to holiday for therefore long.
Travel is a discretionary spend, a luxury some people can do without.
We are seeing whilst, an increase within the choice of those who desire to travel from emerging markets.
This is something people in these locations have never had access to before, and it’s much more aspirational for them as it gives them a chance to find the sector, to fulfill people outside in their normal lives.
We, as WAYN, unlike many companies, especially inside the travel industry, were capable of tap into that very effectively, as we’re according to the connectedness of folks, versus us having to broker relationships with local tourism boards.
WAYN has the audience, now this can be a matter of working with partners to monetise that audience and serve them in a technique it’s localised and relevant to them.
BTN: Do you maintain those relationships, with the travel industry, here, in Europe, and in American
PW: 1/2 our revenue still comes from within Europe, so obviously we work with most of the leading tourist boards and a few of the bigger airlines and hotel groups.
Our focus was mainly with the tourism boards, because we’ve got been ready to prove our model to them, how we will really raise the profile of a destinations.
We delivers real information on their return on investment.
I think with airlines and hotels, we’re beginning to see some real traction in those areas. As an instance, we’ve got just done a treat Malaysian Airlines.
Social is usually seen as a space where you don’t get a return in terms of advertising. We’re working to switch that.
The objectives are frequently kind of like with other partners for them; growing their profile, getting ends up in their sites, boosting engagement with their services and products. These are things we are able to do alright.
image[2] align=’right’ border=’0′ style=’padding-left:10px;’ alt=” border=0 >
The new WAYN homepage
BTN: Do you’re feeling WAYN benefits as it is so tailored to the travel industry Does this help against your larger competitors
PW: i believe it’s a huge selling point for us.
We should not all things to every person. Facebook can never be a website which offers enough focus to satisfy the entire needs of a user who’s concerned with travel and lifestyle.
So, similar to LinkedIn or Pinterest, we’re at the map on the subject of interest based social networks.
Thankfully our niche, travel, is likely one of the largest niche areas on this planet, comparable only to music.
Everybody likes a sort of music and loves to share their experiences of music. We happen to fall upon the alternative one, that is a superb place for us to be.
Our niche is incredibly social, allowing our users to make new friends, and share experiences with existing ones.
The travel focus has given us an enormous advantage and partially explains why we have now managed to preserve a market leading position on this space.
BTN: Among the many things that comes up when staring at WAYN is the aspirational nature of the location. Facebook, Twitter, these are sites which can be based within the now, or maybe the past, whereas you try to look to the longer term. Would you are saying that could be a fair assessment
PW: Absolutely. We did a brand strategy some time ago and we found that, while the emblem was one in all where persons are now, what was compelling for our users and advertisers was where individuals are going next.
What people would really like to do someday is essential to our users.
The future is more unlimited. The mission of our company is to aid people take advantage of out of life.
Life is brief and we’ve a specific amount of time left, so we wish to encourage people to be bold, to do stuff.
All this inside the context of travel and lifestyle.
With the information we’re collecting on users, both where they’ve been, and where they would like to head, we are able to connect likeminded people together.
For example, somebody who’s planning a visit to Paris, they are often installed touch with somebody who lives in Paris, was to Paris, or is likewise planning a visit concurrently them.
They can then share recommendations, plan to fulfill up, or simply focus on experiences.
That who prospective side of the equation makes it very interesting for both our users and advertisers who’re trying to target those who are interested in visiting a location or using a service.
BTN: You mentioned lifestyle there, is that a growing part of what you do Looking not just at international travel, but offering suggestions on what to do closer to home
PW: Yes, there’s a lot of activity in this space; you just have to look at the social-local-mobile space, it is seen as a holy grail, with every man and
his dog trying to claim there piece of it.
Foursquare, Google, Facebook, they are all in this space.
We are not saying we are going to be better than what these guys do, but what we are saying is that there is an interest in connecting people, not only in terms of travel, but also where they’re going tonight in their own city.
We have invested in the last couple of years in the interest side of what people want to do, not just where they want to go. This is everything from those interested in football, to people who want to climb Mt. Everest, to people who have a passion for skiing.
With this information we can provide much more relevant information and offers to people.
If, for example, you are interested in skiing, and you aren’t too specific about where you are looking to go, we will work with different destination organisations to make suggestions.
They can say, you’ve always thought of going to Alps, but how in regards to the Rockies in Colorado
I think the approach to life side is very important; from our standpoint that suggests interests from outside of travel.
This includes everything activity based.