When price comparison website Cheapflights unveiled its metasearch offshoot Zugu in February it backed the launch with a fun social media competition.

This is nothing new when trying to keep the momentum going around new project and Cheapflights had a good record of engaging with users via its Twitter account.

Anyone curious as to the meaning behind the new Zugu brand was invited to either submit their idea via a widget on the Zugu Facebook page or simply post entries on Twitter – with a very nice prize of free flights for the winning entry.

The first few days following the launch of Zugu saw frenetic activity on both sites as users attempted to establish from where the bizarre name had materialised.

The buzz around the competition was excellent, with even chairman Hugo Burge encouraging people to keep guessing or tell them they might be close to the answer.

Within a week or so, inevitably, the steam ran out and the competition disappeared into the ether of Twitter and the deep conciousness of the players.

Cheapflights unveiled the name of the winning entry last week – @nzbeks on Twitter, a New Zealander living in the UK working in digital marketing and who had previously spent some time at British Airways.

Her winning entry:

Zugu says in its press release: “Zugu stems from the word ‘zugunruhe’, originally a German word.  ’Zug’ refers to movement and migration while ‘unruhe’ refers to restlessness; the compound refers to the migratory behaviour of birds and other animals.”

Unfortunately it has since emerged that someone else was on the same lines – but three days before.

@rtwflights is the Twitter account belonging to flight deals site, RoundTheWorldFlights.com.

When asked about this quirk in the timeline of entries and, more importantly, why @rtwflights did not win, an official from Cheapflights says:

“Whilst it is not explicit in the T’s & C’s that a company cannot enter, or an individual representing a company (in the case of a social media entry), it does state that we have the right to determine eligibility. It was always intended that the prize would go to a private individual which we believe to be the norm for competitions of this sort.  The judges also had to decide who was closest to the meaning of Zugu and the prize went to that person.”

Interestingly, so convinced was Tnooz node Alex Bainbridge (who uses Twitter as an individual) of @rtwflights’s entry as a likely contender that he retweeted it immediately, with what is now a rather prophetic note.

The moral of the story: always get the terms and conditions exactly right and remember that in the transparent world of social media every move is documented.

GAP Adventures is the latest in what is becoming an increasingly long line of travel companies to turn to online competitions to raise their profile.

The tour operator says to celebrate its 20th anniversary it is allowing web users to create a perfect trip itinerary and then ask other users to vote to determine its overall quality compared to other submissions.

Lonely Planet founder Tony Wheeler, Céline Cousteau, National Geographic Adventure Magazine editor-in-chief John Rasmus and Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh are among the judges to determine the final overall winner once the user voting is complete.

GAP’s foray into online competitions follows the success of the now infamous Queensland Best Job campaign, New Zealand’s Peter Jackson-fronted effort, a wacky Finland initiative, and the recent HomeAway Grand Tourismo project.

Using the GAP itinerary builder, entrants must select three countries for a trip, include activities and excursions, and explain why the selection was made.

The winner, inevitably, gets to carry out the dream trip.

Dara Khosrowshahi, the Expedia Inc. president and CEO, was getting downright philosophical about the crisis the company faced a year or so ago, the situation that led to its fee-cutting frenzy.

“I think it was [White House Chief-of-Staff] Rahm Emanuel who said, ‘Never let a good crisis go to waste,’” Khosrowshahi says, drawing some laughs from the crowd at Citi’s 20th Annual Global Entertainment, Media & Telecommunications Conference in San Francisco Jan. 5.

The end result was Expedia eliminated air and reduced hotel booking fees and took a pretty good whack at Orbitz and Travelocity. As Khosrowshahi describes it: “I do think that from a philosophical standpoint, as we scale, we do want, to some extent, to take the air out of the competition. Our cutting air fees hurt some of our competititive brethren in Orbitz or Travelocity a heck of a lot more than it hurt us because of our scale, because of our hotel business. And that allowed us, we think, to gain scale pretty significantly, at least on the hotel side of the business.”

The Expedia CEO provided a lot more color than I’ve heard him give before on what led to the decisions.

Prior to the fee cuts, Khosrowshahi explains, air capacity had come out of the system and there were no assurances that it would expand in the future. Thus, Expedia was losing share to airline websites in a contracting market.

And, although losing share in a growing market might not be great, dropping share in a declining market was “unacceptable,” Khosrowshahi says.

The product wasn’t good enough, he says, in part because of the fees, and the strategy wasn’t working.

Thus, Expedia had to spend more on marketing to get consumers to buy airline tickets and book hotels, and at the same time, with the economy hitting the skids, consumers were getting more price sensitive, he adds.

At the same time, as Expedia was mulling its options, it knew that its competitors’ balance sheets were weak and that eliminating or reducing fees would hurt them more than Expedia, Khosrowshahi says.

So Expedia cut its fees, and is still in the process of trimming more internationally, and dealt a setback to its rivals.

But, it is also taking steps to limit future competitors.

“From a philosophy standpoint,” Khosrowshahi says, “I do think that we have a management team that is very focused on building a business that leverages, that scales and makes entrée into this business on a scale basis very, very difficult.”

Expedia has rolled out a series of fee cuts and that’s in line with its new-found philosophy, he says.

The company wants to eliminate any impediment — any “friction,” as Khosrowshahi calls it — that gets in the way of consumers completing a transaction.

And, he vows Expedia will get there by any means necessary, including by eliminating costs or changing the business model.

Flexibility — and hardball — apparently rule the day.