Through an exclusive partnership with Expedia, Local.com now offers: “the ability to book flights, hotels, cruises, rental cars and other travel-related services…”
I’ve always argued that Travel (or some part of Travel) belongs in the local category. While Travel is substantially e-commerce at this point, it’s about place and there are lots of things that surround travel bookings and trips that are the stuff of local search. That’s why it’s interesting that Local.com has added travel.
I’ve talked about the evolving “product definition” in local. People that really want to compete effectively need to think beyond the yellow pages database and start thinking about real-world consumer behavior. Local search is about a lot more than finding service businesses, which are an important component of an overall offering.
Alternatively, there’s a highly verticalized approach that breaks each use case into a category and builds content and community around that. The challenge there is brand development and traffic. If resources are an issue: Is it better to build a niche site (or sites), relying heavily on SEO, or is it better to build a consolidated destination that attracts more use cases and users?
That’s a little like the question: “How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?” 🙂
Screenwerk 
June 19, 2007 at 10:05 pm
Greg….it takes 5….the owl never wanted to work that hard for the prize!……Good to see Local.com forge such a good relationship…what good for them si good for the industry…ofcourse we have been selling travel for 5 years… but innovation is in the eyes of the writer!