There has been some discussion recently about customer dissatisfaction with the online travel buying experience. A call for more innovative solutions has been made, to improve this situation and bring about much needed changes allowing a less time consuming and often cumbersome search and search again, and again, process to get relevant result suiting personal travel preferences. There has been a recent post in these columns by Robert Cole in his series on how Google can enhance online travel research and Timothy Hughes has published articles introducing the idea of EveryYou which includes a new and intriguing take on the Long Tail theory. Both cover some key issues calling for solutions to bring about, maybe not a quantum leap forward but more than incremental improvement in how people search, shop and buy travel on the Web.

The recent line up of companies who will be presenting their solutions, addressing some of these key issues, at the Travel Innovation Summit at the upcoming PhoCusWright Conference is a clear indicator that there is room for optimism on this front. The steady stream of innovators appearing on the scene seems to support the theory, that more technology development happens when economic conditions are tough rather than in boom times. This can be noticed in other industries as well, of course, but is especially satisfying to see happening in online travel.

What will also have to happen, for these ventures to succeed, however, is for them to be not only discovered by many among the growing number of online travel shoppers, but for their solutions being used by large numbers of travelers to generate revenue. As Tim Hughes writes, despite the long tail, there is no automatic guarantee for those at the far end of being found. There is, on the other hand always the opportunity to get on the radar screen of the major industry players who might be on the look out for acquisitions helping them to improve their own competitive advantage. Or, maybe, as is now rumored for Kayak there might always be that $ 1 billion IPO!

For these reasons alone, there is ground for optimism that the evolution of travel 2.0 continues and will get another boost probably sooner than many think.

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