Travolution Awards 2008

A long and fascinating day at the Travolution Awards 2008 in the Royal Garden Hotel in London, hosted by the irrepressible Kevin May. Plenty of pointers and opinions as to the future of online travel from a procession of movers and shakers - highlights of which were:

- Philip Wolf from PhoCusWright and his parable of the rusty nails and the red apples.

- Two new buzz phrases bandied about: the ‘perfect storm’ of travel website and consumer convergence; and the ‘mass premium’ market.

- A wonderfully arrogant Steve Hafner from Kayak who said he was going to blow all those poxy European competitors (competition? Hardly) out of the water. Travelsupermarket? Not bothered. The big news was that he is planning to launch a travel search vertical advertising network to rival Google adwords - and that he didn’t believe in buying companies. “The morsels that we would find tasty,” he purred “would be technologies, teams or audiences.”

- A sleepy BA presentation which came to life once the visuals broke down with a glimpse of a breathtaking new beta interface for inspiring users where to go next on holiday, based on Microsoft’s new Silverlight technology. Marianne Sammann from Lufthansa appeared bemused as what that had to do with being an airline website.

- Brent Hoberman flapping his arms and ‘winging it’ and lauding the virtues of risk, chaos, and not knowing anything.

And then the awards, after hefty helpings of Malteser Parfait with chocolate beignets - awards for a number of the usual suspects like Trip Advisor and Kayak, but also one for Dorling Kindersley’s DK Travel, Small Luxury Hotels, BA.com (running jokes about T5 all evening), Voyages Jules Verne and many others - including the delightful and blinking Darren Cronian who looked like he’d just emerged from some bloggers lair deep underground, to our own World Reviewer in the best newcomer category. Mind you, it was right at the end of the evening and I had to wait until 11pm for it. But what a worthwhile wait! A kiss on the cheek of Claire Balding…

I walked home from the awards clutching the heavy glass phallus thing that was my trophy, willing for the first time in my life that a prospective mugger - if they exist in my part of Kensington - would just try their luck.

It’s 2.52am. And now I’ve got indigestion.