What happens when airlines, distributors and agencies come together to talk about merchandising?

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It's official - the debate around merchandising has switched from the conceptual to the practical, perhaps meaning it is finally being taken very seriously.

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Like most travelers, when I book a trip in North America (and this generally applies to Australia and New Zealand, South America, South Africa and a few other regions) I take out my credit card.

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Talking about technology standards can be mind-numbingly boring, and I should know – I talk about them all the time.

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Amadeus recently announced a partnership with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to provide the GDS’s customers information about their air travel carbon emissions.

Given the negative environmental impact of travel coupled with widespread online distribution of travel content (schedules, pricing, images, product details, etc.), I wondered how all the GDS’ were addressing the growing demand for more specific CO2 emissions data, specifically in air travel.

First, some terminology.

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I have followed several conferences in the last few months on Twitter from my desk, but this week I followed my first conference on the go from Tweetdeck on my iPhone, and it was a pretty interesting experience.

The first day of PhoCusWright 2009 found me in transit from Boston to Orlando to get to the venue in time for the opening reception.

Here was my travel itinerary and corresponding Twitter usage:

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PhoCusWright published an article recently with the premise that travel companies in the long tail are taking traffic away from the big online travel agencies.

Certainly that feels true, given all the movement in what I call the “emerging travel segments” – emerging referring to their recent adoption of electronic distribution as a viable sales channel – including golf, tours and activities, timeshares and vacation (villa/apartment) rentals.

Let me say at the start that my definition of electronic distribution is any information provided electronically (to trading partners, distributors, brand.com) about the product (the safari, the castle in France), not just the transaction.

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