It took a while, but the idea of using travel agents to write online reviews of hotels and destinations did finally catch on, and now seems like a bit of a no-brainer.
So while a plethora of review sites jostle for position in the increasingly busy B2C space, it has been left to a select few to try and harness the apparent collective experience and wisdom of the retail travel agency community.
Some brief news this week from price comparison site Cheapflights as it plays around with some of the functionality it introduced at its big relaunch in the summer of 2008.
The redesign from August of last year dramatically improved the overall user experience of the site and added a number of new tools.
Much of the relaunch was also to incorporate some major changes to the back-end of the site and ad serving capability.
The game of gotcha between U.S. cities and the online travel agencies continues and it’s almost a full-time job just trying to keep tabs on the whole thing.
It sort of reminds me of my visit to the Orbitz TLC Center last week, where about nine people, including three former air traffic controllers, were on duty, monitoring plasma screens filled with gridlocked jets and typhoons.
Somewhere, undoubtedly, a team of lawyers is hunkered down in a corporate boardroom, monitoring a torrent of hotel-tax motions, city audits and new ordinances across the country.
Anyway, here’s what’s been going on in the last few weeks as municipalities seek to force the OTAs to pay occupancy taxes on retail rates when they sell hotel rooms on a merchant basis, and the OTAs fight back.
Web design and online user experience moves at a phenomenal pace – and so it should, lest brands rest on their laurels and fail to keep up with the zeitgeist.
Opinions differ depending on the type of site, especially in travel, where some are focused primarily on booking generation or inspiration.
Thinking specifically about the homepage with the red line indicating the page fold, ponder the travel examples below…
This just in: ITA Software picked up another airline customer for its QPX airfare pricing and shopping system: Southwest Airlines.
The press release hasn’t dropped yet, but the functionality is now live on Southwest.com. The use of ITA gives Southwest a bunch of new capabilities, including calendar-based search and air search using flexible dates.
One key element of this whole thing is that it doesn’t seem to alter the airline’s distribution strategy. You can’t find Southwest flights in any of the metasearch engines, including the crowd powered by ITA (including Kayak, TripAdvisor and others) and Southwest’s absence in metasearch will remain in place. It also doesn’t change Southwest’s availability status in the Sabre and Apollo GDSs.
Another important aspect of this relates to international codeshares.
TripAdvisor’s foray – US and now the UK – into flight metasearch appears to have triggered plenty of musing by executives and pundits alike.
According to Bryan Salzburg, general manager of initiatives, TripAdvisor is finally becoming the more general travel portal it always wanted (perhaps needs?) to be.
Salzburg stresses that the business model for its hotel review section “will not be re-invented any time soon”, dampening any suggestions that a hotel metasearch could be configured along similar lines to its new flight engine.
According to Merriam Webster, the definition of fear is: “An unpleasant often strong emotion caused by anticipation or awareness of danger.” Or: “A reason for alarm”.
There is a very marked and prevalent fear of social media in individuals and organizations who have yet to adopt social media in their businesses.
And I doubt that many would actually admit to having such a fear.
Joobili won the right to present at the European startup Seedcamp gig in London recently.
But despite being unsuccessful – as this blog post explains – their pitch makes for interesting viewing.
Take note of co-founder Jared Salter’s remarks on how to tackle the thorny issue of inspiration versus destination choice for online travel information suppliers.
I’m minding my own business and in pops the e-mail pitch from Disney Cruise Line. I went on a Disney Cruise last year, so the cruise line knows where to find me electronically.
Anyway, this e-mail caught my attention, given the fact that social networking and community is all the rage.
So, Disney Cruise Line is doing it the old-fashioned way — organizing house parties. Sort of like an Obama local-campaign gathering during presidential primary season. (I have no idea if Gordon Brown organized the same type of pre-election confabs.)
Elliott Ng, vp of marketing at trip-planning site UpTake, says he’s leaving the company on a full-time basis to pursue start-up passions related to “China and/or social media.”
Ng, a veteran of the technology-conference circuit and an indefatigable podcaster and tweeter on China and travel technology, says he will remain as an active advisor to UpTake, which is “in great shape.”
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.