2009 October

Sam Gilliland says HEY! Maybe add Sabre to that GDS public offering party

October 18, 2009 By Kevin May 6 Comments

There is clearly something in the air in GDSland, perhaps fuelled by the apparent green shoots of recovery appearing in the ground.

Now it’s the turn of Sabre to shed a small chink of light on its corporate plans for the next year – and it includes a possible invitation to the GDS IPO party also being planned by each of its rivals.

This latest twist follows reports about Travelport seeking a public listing and Amadeus doing nothing at all to deny rumours of an Euro 8 billion potential floatation in Madrid.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: amadeus, IPO, sabre, travelport

The Week in Travel Tech – October 11-17 2009

October 17, 2009 By Kevin May Leave a Comment

What you missed on Tnooz this week, Sunday 11 October to Saturday 17 October 2009.

Read on to see the most commented articles, every other article this week, and the most commented articles of all time…

Filed Under: News Tagged With: weekly roundup

Google helping TripAdvisor to maintain barrier to entry

October 16, 2009 By Alex Bainbridge 28 Comments

When considering an online travel startup you tend to think about three approaches.

Taking on the incumbent, creating a whole new category that you can dominate, and assuming that the market must be massive so if you only capture 1% you’re doing ok.

Hence a great deal of an entrepreneur’s time is taken by active consideration of building or bypassing barriers to entry.

So, take TripAdvisor’s primary barrier to entry…

Filed Under: How To, News Tagged With: Google, isango, tripadvisor, viator

BlueSky latest: Closing Stages and Ten Important Questions

October 16, 2009 By Kevin May 6 Comments

The BlueSky-Thomas Cook saga is potentially entering its final days as administrators juggle with five bids for the Intellectual Property Rights of the beleaguered company’s iTour software system.

Tnooz understands that although the bidding process is officially still open, administrator MCR is already evaluating the five bids on the table and is expected to make a decision “far quicker than normal”, a source says.

The five companies are believed to be technology shops Comtec, Traveltek, Partners Software and another unnamed tech firm, alongside Thomas Cook, as revealed earlier this week.

Filed Under: Jobs, News Tagged With: bluesky travel systems, thomas cook

From Google more hocus-pocus travel focus

October 16, 2009 By Dennis Schaal 2 Comments

When the Google behemoth speaks about travel, as one official did during the company’s third quarter conference call yesterday, we listen.

But, all we got were more generalities and little substance about Google’s intentions in the travel vertical.

Jonathan Rosenberg, Google’s senior vice president of product management, was discussing chrome [not the browser] toasters and Google’s efforts to improve the shopping vertical.

“Real estate, finance, and travel are also other areas that we’re going to get quite focused on and obviously we will also continue to improve Google horizontally,” Rosenberg said.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: CPC, Google, travel

SimonSeeks and the meta-metasearching for flights – can it make money?

October 16, 2009 By Kevin May 8 Comments

UK-based Simonseeks made a reasonably big splash in June this year when it launched, mostly because it looks better than your average review site, got a decent run with the PR, and is the brainchild of the co-founder of Moneysupermarket.

Four months on and its latest initiative is to aggregate and review flight meta search providers, each of which provides a revenue stream to Simonseeks, as well as having an exclusive white label widget from another provider (currently Kayak).

Confused? Probably.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: simonseeks

Southwest Airlines more myth-maker than maverick on ancillary services

October 15, 2009 By Dennis Schaal 3 Comments

Southwest Airlines gets a lot of love for its Bags Fly Free Campaign. which enables travelers to check two bags for free.

Here’s the Southwest marketing message: “While bag fees have become the norm amongst our competitors, we don’t believe in springing unpleasant surprises on our Customers. Staying true to our reputation as the maverick of the airline industry, this is just another way that we dare to be different.”

But, actually the airline is more myth-maker than maverick in some respects because it is busy strategizing about optimal ways of attracting ancillary-services revenue in a host of other areas.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: ancillary services, bag fees, Southwest Airlines

Why the next big thing often isn’t

October 15, 2009 By Dennis Schaal 12 Comments

Sometimes I have to calm myself down and reel myself in.

I was thinking about that in the days following stories I wrote about how “Google Sidewiki could be a sideshow for review sites” and “Why TechCrunch is wrong about Google Sidewiki.”

Will consumers really take advantage of the ability to comment about a publishers’ website in a side window visible only to fellow Sidewiki users?

I have to admit that I haven’t opened Sidewiki, which sits in my Google Toolbar, since I wrote those posts. It takes an extra step and who has the time.

Filed Under: Gadgets, News Tagged With: android, Google Sidewiki, google wave, start-ups, TripWare

Travel Gadget of the Week: The Grid-It tech tidy

October 15, 2009 By Kevin May Leave a Comment

Need somewhere to keep the MP3 player, batteries, camera, leads, DS, USB keys and mobile phone tidy when travelling?

Filed Under: Gadgets Tagged With: gadget of the week

A two-sided tale for ResponsibleTravel and its axing of online carbon offsetting

October 15, 2009 By Kevin May 6 Comments

Responsibletravel.com has today given its online carbon offsetting programme the chop – a move almost guaranteed to inspire differing opinions about how to highlight climate change with air travel-hungry travellers.

One of the first organisations to do so, the site proudly launched its offsetting programme in 2002 and spearheaded a round of soul-searching within larger travel firms as to how they should deal with the thorny issue of selling or promoting travel at the same time as appearing to be aware of its impact on the global environment.

Fast forward seven years and ResponsibleTravel has abandoned the programme, citing a Friends of the Earth report into the wider offsetting issue.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: climate change, environment, responsibletravel