2009 November

Travel tech can be an odd-size area

November 20, 2009 By Dennis Schaal 2 Comments

I was waiting for my suitcase this afternoon in Terminal C at Newark Airport, having just arrived on a Continental flight from Orlando, where I attended the PhoCusWright conference, when I saw a sign on the luggage carousel.

It cracked me up.

If you want to retrieve “odd size items” like skis, boxes and car seats, you’ll have to meander over to the “odd size area behind carousel 9,” the sign reads.

Hey, it sounds like a lot more fun than walking over to a normal-size area to retrieve your odd size items.

Filed Under: Mobile, News Tagged With: boarding pass, Continental Airlines, Newark Airport

TripAdvisor fixes review overload issue with new summaries

November 20, 2009 By Dennis Schaal 3 Comments

TripAdvisor next year plans to introduce summaries of a hotel’s reviews – a way to provide a quick highlight of the gestalt of the property and its amenities – as a means for consumers to avoid having to wade through hundreds, even thousands of user critiques about a single hotel.

That news came from TripAdvisor president and CEO Stephen Kaufer as PhoCusWright president and CEO Philip Wolf conducted an “executive interview” with him on center stage on the final day of the PhoCusWright conference in Orlando.

Kaufer noted that the Bellagio, for instance, has some 3,100 reviews on TripAdvisor, a daunting read for consumers interested in the hotel.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: expedia, tripadvisor

Is this the most bizarre yet useful iPhone travel app yet?

November 20, 2009 By Kevin May 10 Comments

Dubai-based airline Emirates is behind an amazing new Apple iPhone application which acts as a translation tool by taking a picture of the handset users mouth and then animates to produce a range of phrases.

Built to translate English into French, German and Arabic by Lean Mean Fighting Machine in London, the app is a bit rough around the edges and difficult to set up – but it works.

Here is a demo video.

Filed Under: Gadgets, Mobile, News Tagged With: Apple iPhone, emirates

Day Four of Ten – Online marketing tips for travel

November 20, 2009 By Special Nodes Leave a Comment

SEO tip #2 – Outsourcing and cheap SEO:

Although it may seem an attractive prospect, cheap, outsourced SEO options often lack the skill and knowledge required to produce results.

Outsourcing link building can be dangerous as links built too fast or from “bad neighbourhoods” can damage your visibility in the search engine results.

Filed Under: How To Tagged With: digital marketing

Amadeus Affinity Shopper may well spearhead the change but others are trying already

November 19, 2009 By Kevin May 12 Comments

The Affinity Shopper project by Amadeus IT Group won the PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit top prize after beating off competition in the final round from Translations.com, Gliider and EveryTrail.

A reasonably worthy winner, some are saying, and an unusual one given that many believe innovation comes primarily from smaller companies who have to throw their efforts into creating something new in order to challenge the status quo.

Affinity Shopper is a classic skunkworks project from within one of the largest travel technology firms on the planet, so kudos to Amadeus for attempting to create something it, and some others, say is a game-changer.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: amadeus, PhoCusWright, travel innovation summit

Expedia CEO on chain deals, OTA consolidation, Booking.com, TripAdvisor, media business

November 19, 2009 By Dennis Schaal 8 Comments

I caught up with Expedia Inc. President and CEO Dara Khosrowshahi this afternoon, a couple of hours before he was scheduled to appear on center stage before all the attendees at the PhoCusWright conference in Orlando Nov. 19.

I asked Khosrowshahi, who was decked out in a pinstripe suit as we sat outdoors in the Florida sun, whether he expected to be breaking any news in his “executive interview” with PhoCusWright President and CEO Philip Wolf later in the afternoon.

Referring to a recent contract battle with Choice Hotels, Khosrowshahi said he didn’t think so because “we’ve made enough news lately.”

Khosrowshahi declined to get into any of the contract details, but said the Choice contract is similar to deals with other chains, adding, “I was confident we’d get it done.”

He said he didn’t expect to see any major disruptions as larger chains’ contract renewals come up.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Dara Khosrowshahi, expedia, hotels

Hold on to your hats – Cheapflights developing metasearch engine

November 19, 2009 By Kevin May 10 Comments

Cheapflights has stuck rigidly to its price comparison model for over a decade but it turns out that the UK-based firm, which has established successful websites in the US, Australia, Canada and elsewhere in recent years, is diving into metasearch at last.

Tnooz understands chief executive Chris Cuddy will reveal his company’s surprise move in a session at the PhoCusWright conference in Orlando later today.

At this stage the company is remaining tight lipped as to exactly how it will move into what is already a busy metasearch arena, countries it will target, technology strategy and any associated marketing campaign.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: cheapflights, metasearch

When the Facebook mothership sneezes and everyone catches a cold

November 19, 2009 By Kevin May 2 Comments

Traxo, one of the companies featured in the PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit this week and a fledgling trip planning and itinerary management service, is one of many firms that suffers when the tech-heads at Facebook fancy a change.

Founder and chief exec at Travo, Andres Fabris, fresh from unveiling his new company to the wider travel industry, says Facebook notified Traxo a few weeks ago that it would be changing the protocols associated with its Connect tool.

Now this might sound a bit trivial to some but, as Fabris admits: “It’s a pain the butt.”

Filed Under: News Tagged With: facebook, PhoCusWright, traxo

In stealth mode, Travelocity looks to global hotel expansion

November 19, 2009 By Dennis Schaal 2 Comments

Hugh Jones, president and CEO of Travelocity Global, and Barney Harford, his counterpart at Orbitz Worldwide, shared a stage at the PhoCusWright conference in Orlando Nov. 18, outlining their companies’ growth strategies.

Harford talked a lot about hotels and firing up OWW employees to focus on international hotel growth, where Orbitz is pursuing a modified retail model [consumers pay a deposit up-front as commission and the remainder to the hotel at checkout] in some Asia-Pacific markets.

Jones told the gathering that Travelocity’s focus would be to become a better retailer. He hardly mentioned hotels.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: hotels, Hugh Jones, Travelocity

My sleeper pick from the PhoCusWright innovators

November 19, 2009 By Stephen Joyce 9 Comments

I have to admit that I was pretty much underwhelmed by most of the innovations at this year’s Travel Innovation Summit at the PhoCusWright Conference.

Although I have written about a couple of innovations that I really like, there is one innovation that seemed to get very little attention during the tcamp and post summit discussion is SpeedRFP.

In a nutshell, here is why I like what SpeedRFP has done.

Filed Under: Event Tagged With: PhoCusWright, speedrfp, travel innovation summit