Suddenly, with the credit and stock markets thawing a bit, a slew of travel companies may be talking to investment bankers and testing the IPO waters.
Consider that the Boston.com reported that Kayak is talking to investment bankers about going public.
And, Reuters disclosed that the private equity and airline owners of Amadeus, the global distribution system and technology company, hired an investment bank to mull taking the company public.
Bing… incoming press release from HotelsCombined, a Sydney based hotel reservation company.
They have launched a new scheme to guarantee 100% up-time to their affiliate partners.
Is this for real or just a wacky plan that has been dreamt up in a marketing meeting in order to achieve a quick PR buzz boost?
A new service which aims to provide super-cheap, bandwidth-wide telephone calls in hotels was unveiled today – though bosses admit they are to some extent at the mercy of mobile network providers.
Clasix is an ambitious project run out of Toronto, Canada, but with a focus on European hotel chains to give owners what it says will be a 100MB pipe into properties.
The consumer pitch is a competitive 60 minutes of talk time for Euro 5.99, with Clasix (chaired by Adrian Science in Toronto and biz dev handled by Michael Lacy in London) throwing a free installation proposal at prospective chains and hoteliers.
Google Sidewiki, just introduced in beta and accessible through an updated Google toolbar, enables anyone to publish and share comments about almost any web page.
Viewable in a window that opens alongside Web pages, you can also read and rate others’ comments about those web pages.
Formed in 1995 in Sydney, Viator, with its Paris Chocolate and Pastry Food Tours, as well as the traditional Moulin Rouge gawking fests, is all grown up.
Headquartered in San Francisco, with regional offices in Las Vegas, London and Sydney, the privately held global tour and activities provider is expected to do about $87 million in sales in 2009.
And, that’s not peanuts for a company that acts as an intermediary for suppliers ranging from big guys like Paris Vision, but more commonly for a disparate legion of mom-and-pop ground operators around the world.
I caught up with Viator CEO and President Barrie Seidenberg, and founder and Chairman Rod Cuthbert, to see where this whole thing is headed.
What is my agenda for the site, what do I say, what is my voice, my goal, my cause, what will I write about?
Those of you who know me well are already aware of what drives my personal ambition as well as my writing: travel, technology and the environment.
And while future posts, articles and theoretical ramblings will present a stronger focus on tourism technology, I felt it appropriate to address a larger subject. Global, if you will.
Twitter has become an interesting playground for brands of all shapes and sizes to test their marketplace – or at least their followers.
Travel brands are no exception, throwing out links to new pages and products on their websites. It’s a quick and dirty approach which yields next to no fantastically empirical results yet can give some indication of enthusiasm – or not – for a new offering.
Step forward TripAdvisor, the hotel review site everyone loves to have an opinion on.
Tourism New Zealand is probably recognised as one of the more progressive DMOs out there with its use of social media to tap into the search phase of the booking cycle.
It was one of the first to realise that YouTube is a far cheaper way of distributing video content to a wide audience on a global scale – rather than or alongside expensive 30-second TV adspots.
And now it has put its faith in Kevin Bowler, a techhead through and through, to spearhead the organisation’s next phase.
Radisson Hotels & Resorts has become the latest in a long line of hotel chains looking to boost their responsibility to modern CRM by launching a consumer mobile platform.
Created and operated by Dublin, Ireland-based Mobile Travel Technologies, Radisson will allow customers in the India, Australia and the UK to book rooms and browse through pages of information and images about individual hotels.
The importance of Rome-based Venere to the wider Expedia Inc empire is becoming more apparent by the month following its acquisition of the brand in July 2008.
The streamlining of the Expedia businesses late last year indicated a need by chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi wanted to position its myriad of brands in a more efficient way, with accommodation-based services such as hotels.com and Venere falling under the auspices of David Roche, who became a president of the business.
As the always-connected traveller turns to mobile and other devices to search and book products, travel brands must finally grasp the importance of providing a seamless multi-channel customer experience.
Another year, another 2,500 articles published on Tnooz. But which stories attracted the most traffic or moved readers in their dozens to add their comments?
Tnooz is lucky and privileged to have some of the brightest minds in the industry reporting and contributing to its service almost every single day of the year.
With the rapid advancements in mobile and social media, travel companies often find themselves struggling to separate hype from fact.