After more than 15 years of online travel, we are still looking for the perfect travel search engine. But do four Australian startups hold the key to unlocking the future of travel search?
About Tim Hughes
Tim Hughes is an online travel industry executive who has been blogging since June 2006 at the Business of Online Travel (the BOOT).
The BOOT covers analysis of online travel industry trends, consumer and company behaviour and broader online/web activity of interest to online travel companies (with a bias towards Tim’s home markets of Asia and Australasia and with the odd post on consuming and loving travel thrown in).
In late-2010 the BOOT clocked its 1,000th post, 200,000th visitor and 300,000th page view.In his work life he is the CEO of Getaway Lounge - a premium travel deal site based in Australia.
Tim has worked for both Orbtitz and Expedia. Prior to the travel industry Tim was a commercial lawyer and venture capitalist. Tim’s views are his alone and not necessarily the views of Getaway Lounge or any of its investors.
The future of travel search lies on a Silicon Beach (not in a Valley)
March 26, 2012 By 10 Comments
Jetsetter: No worries about Expedia, we are different from Groupon, mobile not a web replacement
December 13, 2011 By 4 Comments
High end flash sale retailer Jetsetter is celebrating hitting 500,000 room nights since launch and two million people in its database.
Qantas Twitter storm on #qantasluxury highlights when NOT to use social media
November 24, 2011 By 14 Comments
This week, someone in the Qantas PR team had the great idea to run an experiment with a competition on Twitter to promote the luxurious nature of its first class product.
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Unhappy Fourth of July – Why summer 2011 is a big moment in Chinese online travel
July 4, 2011 By 11 Comments
The investment by Chinese search leader Baidu into local metasearch company Qunar can be proclaimed a data point on China becoming the largest economy in the world.
HomeAway and the real life Home and Away soap opera
April 6, 2011 By 2 Comments
We heard this week vacation rental market leader HomeAway was charging into the Australian market through the acquisition of Realholidays.
Social media is either overhyped, underhyped, or somewhere in the middle
March 29, 2011 By 19 Comments
Glenn Fogel’s well reported comments on social media from the No Vacancy conference highlighted the vastly divergent views in OTAs and suppliers on how much if any to invest in social media.
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Question and Answer sites – another piece of the online travel search revolution
February 2, 2011 By 26 Comments
Q&A is the new search. The old search was typing in questions and hoping that technology could find the answer among the millions of pages floating on the InterTubes.
Is travel ready for the Google Page Rank overhaul?
December 15, 2010 By 31 Comments
As predicted, search is changing. In fact, search has changed more in the last six months than anytime since the introduction of Google Adsense.
Moderately successful predictions and feedback on travel innovators
November 17, 2010 By 2 Comments
Democracy has spoken and the Travel Innovation Summit 2010 finalists are SilverRail, Hipmunk, Goby Technologies and Kony Solutions.
