In addition, FairSearch contends that Google Flight Search may be moving toward a CPA (cost per acquisition) advertising model, which allegedly could be anticompetitive.

ITSA is a travel trade group representing major global distribution systems and online travel agencies, including Amadeus, Travelport, Orbitz and Priceline, all of which sat on the fence (publicly, at least) during last year’s US Department of Justice antitrust review of Google’s now-consummated acquisition of ITA Software.

But, ITSA’s joining the anti-Google forces signals growing unease in the GDS and OTA sectors as the latter so far have been largely shut out of Google’s flight metasearch solution.

Brian Ek, Priceline spokesman, says “ITSA’s joining was discussed with ITSA membership and we supported it.”

That statement is a far cry from past comments by Jeffery Boyd, CEO of major Google customer Priceline, arguing that Google Flight Search would be likely to deliver more qualified leads to the OTA and thus could be beneficial.

When asked about ITSA’s new membership in FairSearch, Orbitz spokesman Chris Chiames played both sides of the street.

“We are still evaluating our options with regard to FairSearch,” Chiames says, “but are supportive of ITSA’s participation on behalf of the industry.”

And, asked whether ITSA’s new FairSearch ties mean Travelport is now joining the anti-Google forces, too, Travelport spokeswoman Jill Brenner stopped short of expressing that sentiment.

“ITSA is involved in many issues, and not all member companies agree on all issues all of the time,” Brenner says. “We continue to monitor Google in the space and welcome all new entrants, as long as there is a level playing field.”

Until now, FairSearch members included Microsoft, Kayak, Expedia, Sabre/Travelocity, TripAdvisor and others. In addition to ITSA, FairSearch now counts adMarketplace, Twenga and ShopCity.com as new members.

The lobbying organization — FairSearch, that is — is trying to keep a lot of heat on Google, with activities ranging from an ad campaign to blog posts and a position paper, Google Flights Search: Is Google Keeping Its Promises on ITA Software?

In the paper, FairSearch claims Google Flight Search may be violating consumer protection laws by failing to adequately to disclose airline code-sharing arrangements and bag fees.

A Google spokesman declined to comment on this issue.

In addition, FairSearch argues that Google Flight Search may be moving toward a CPA (cost per acquisition) model with airlines in which Google would receive a percentage of ticket sales.

“And, if Flight Search ads are being sold as CPA units, then Google benefits when consumers pay more for airfare,” the FairSearch paper contends.

And, by extension, this line of reasoning also holds that it would be in Google’s interest to fill its Google Flight Search pages with its own CPA-based product and to exclude less lucrative CPC links to OTA sites and those of other advertisers.

There are some possible gaps in these arguments, however.

First, FairSearch member Kayak uses the CPA model for a portion of its business. Kayak notes in its IPO filings that it uses both the CPC model for referrals to OTA and supplier sites, and the CPA model when consumers book on Kayak.com.

And, second, would Google really have an incentive to show higher airfares than the competition even if Google theoretically was taking in greater revenue using the CPA model?

Who would want to book these flights if lower fares would be available on competitors’ websites? Displaying higher airfares wouldn’t be a marketshare play for Google Flight Search.

FairSearch’s theories on Google using the CPA model — or how Google would use the CPA model — likely are speculation because it doesn’t seem like final decisions have been made.

Google is experimenting with various monetization modes on Google Flight Search, says a spokesman, who declined to get into any detail.

All concerned realize that Google will eventually monetize Google Flight Search pages in a variety of ways.

It is not difficult to envision sponsored ads framing the core flight search links in Google Flight Search before long.

And, if Google does opt for a CPA model for its airline booking links, would it be set in stone that Google would receive one flat percentage rate based on the ticket price?

Perhaps the CPA percentage rates could be tiered or, then again, maybe in some scenarios Google could charge a flat fee regardless of the ticket price.

And, what if Google decided to charge a lower CPA percentage rate for popular routes based on greater volumes of ticket purchases?

Might that even be financially beneficial for Google and consumer-friendly?

FairSearch does raise a valid point regarding Google’s statement during the regulatory process that Google Flight Search would benefit the entire travel ecosystem. Google stated at the time:

The acquisition will benefit passengers, airlines and online travel agencies by making it easier for users to comparison shop for flights and airfares and by driving more potential customers to airlines’ and online travel agencies’ websites.

But,  online travel agencies have been relegated to links on the bottom of Google Flight Search pages for now.

Google insists that it wants greater OTA participation in Google Flight Search, but that the airlines have stomped their feet, protesting that OTAs are not welcome dance partners.

Regarding dance partners of the business variety, one thing is clear — Google and FairSearch will not be whispering sweet-nothings to each other any time soon.

These services have all been good, but they are much like getting travel advice from a white-shirted accountant. Good, solid, reliable information but very flat and uninspiring.

What makes you want to go to a place to begin with? When you have chosen a place – what makes you want to explore further? The inspiration phase of leisure trip planning research has been by far the hardest for tech-based services to master.

Google has announced (and started sending out Beta invites to) a new service, known as Schemer, which attempts to compete in this gap.

Effectively it is local destination ideas based on tips from your (Google+) friends, celebrities (oh yes!) and professional destination content producers (ie. travel writers).

It uses content with the likes of Zagat, the review service it purchased in September this year.

From first look there doesn’t seem to be any commercialising of these experiences (nothing has an obvious price or is bookable) but it is as yet unlaunched and booking would be easy enough to add on later.

The travel industry companies most at risk from this move by Google are the 30 or so nascent person to person (P2P) tour guide marketplaces (that I reviewed back in September).

Many of these P2P services are based on individuals providing and consuming interesting destination experiences together.

With Google already having a Google+ social profile acting as the central glue, Schemer could move into this P2P tour guide area as the user could essentially see who it is booking from (and build trust).

Tie that in with Google Checkout and you have a powerful combination which most existing P2P tour guide marketplaces would struggle to compete with.

The second group of companies at risk from this move by Google is, well, everyone else.

If destination research moves to starting at Google Schemer rather than Google Search, then Google will be able to pitch flights, hotels and other travel services, without having to necessarily work within the confines of their existing web properties.

We are a long way from this though, of course – the service is yet to fully launch

Here is a walk-through by a writer from TheNextWeb:

And Google’s own, rather peculiar introduction to the service:

Google is mapping plans for international flight search, but it isn’t there yet.

But that hasn’t stopped ITA Software, which is owned by Google and powers much of Google Flight Search, from striking a couple of new international deals.

ITA recently signed on Turkish Airlines, which agreed to a multi-year arrangement in which it will use ITA’s QPX airfare shopping and pricing system for “revenue and reward redemption pricing and shopping, as well as ticket exchanges and refunds,” according to a post on the ITA Software by Google blog.

The initial phase of the launch is slated to take place in the third quarter of 2012, ITA says, and eventually Turkish Airlines customers would be able to use the tools on TurkishAirlines.com, THY mobile apps, travel agencies and in ticket offices.

Meanwhile, in Japan, H.I.S., described as “one of the largest Asia-Pacific multinational travel agencies,” last month began using QPX on its consumer website.

Of course, Turkish Airlines and H.I.S. aren’t necessarily receiving the same ITA flight-search technology that Google Flight Search uses, and that will become more of an issue for ITA customers as Google Flight Search evolves.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

Superfly is a team of consumer internet and mobile travel pros, founded by Jonathan Meiri and Zviki Cohen.

• Jonathan is Superfly’s Co-Founder CEO. He started out as a product manager at eBay and was part of the team that launched PayPal Mobile. He then worked with companies that focus on digital travel, first as a director of mobile at Rearden Commerce and after that as VP product of WorldMate.
• Zviki Cohen is Superfly’s Co-Founder and CTO. Before Superfly he spent several years at Amdocs, most recently as Chief Architect of its consumer platforms.
• Kenneth Esterow is a Superfly advisor and the former CEO of GTA by Travelport.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

We’ve raised just under $500,000 from an A-list of Israeli Angel investors.

What problem are you trying to solve?

Consumers do not have access to online personalized travel services. Travel agents offer a personalized service, but they are harder and harder to find. Online flight search has not changed in the past ten years and results are often not relevant to you.

Other industries have leveraged personal data or interests to enhance search results so that individual consumers can really find the best flight for them, but travel has not.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Superfly helps users organize their miles. Our personalized flight search is at the core of our platform, helping consumers see the subjective value of flight options out there.

We also enable the personal management of travel rewards and provide a forum for social networking between travelers with similar backgrounds and interests.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

Our initial focus was travelers like the George Clooney character in hit movie Up in the Air, really heavy travelers who on the road all the time. We’re now expanding beyond that to a much wider group of travelers because there are over 80 million people in the US who collect miles (150M worldwide).

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

Yes, we surveyed a few hundred people before launching in order to see whether they would find our service worthwhile. We asked them the following questions (original results below):

• Help me organize all my frequent flier miles in one spot
• What is the current value of my miles?
• I’m looking at various tickets, which offers the best value?
• Help me get Elite status faster?

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

Our goal is to help travelers find the right flight (we will add hotels and cars in the near future), so we’re already seeing some revenue from people who book a flight through Superfly.

We are also considering a premium tier, to help elite travelers with just about anything that can think of.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• We are using a number of providers, including Everbread, we have a bigger flight inventory than any player out there
• We are making more revenue per user than it costs us to bring that user in

Weaknesses:

• We have yet to reach regional critical mass.
• We are a startup with limited resources.

Opportunities:

• Huge potential to create marketplace for elite travelers. Everyone, including the airlines will be able to better target travelers with individual offers.
• Google’s recent acquisition of ITA Software and the direct connect they offer with airlines essentially disintermediates many of players in the existing travel value chain. Online travel services are now scrambling to differentiate themselves, and tech innovation is the best way to do so.

Threats:

• If a large travel company enters our space.
• Google cuts off access to flight search

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

We launched at TechCrunch Disrupt in September of last year. One of the panelists was Sean Parker and he was concerned about our ability to reach large volumes of consumers.

We did listen to him! His point was well made and is a challenge we deal with every day. That being said, we’ve been very effective by using Parker’s Facebook properties to acquire users via guerilla marketing tactics.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

Our initial targets for the beta we launched in May 2011 were based on the number of miles we’d have under management. We are now at close to 10x that number.

Our success metrics moving forward will be based on look to book ratio, which we believe is already better than Kayak.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

Speaking at the PhoCusWright conference Nov. 16, Wertheimer, the longtime CEO of ITA Software when it was independent, made one of his first public appearances since “a little regulatory process” took place and he detailed some changes in Google Flight Search.

Introduced Sept. 13, about 115 days since Google acquired ITA Software, Google Flight Search now covers “three times” the number of city pairs in the US and added a one-way flights feature, Wertheimer said.

And, Google Flight Search will go international soon.

In addition to the international focus, plans call for Google Flight Search to integrate with Google+ to enhance social trip-planning, personalization features will be added, and mobile apps are in the works, Wertheimer said.

Google Flight Search, which provides flights and fares from a handful of US airlines only, has been widely criticized for its lack of comprehensiveness and pundits have wondered why Google chose to come out with such an incomplete product.

“The idea was to get something out there,” Wertheimer said, adding in classic Google fashion, “we’ll keep iterating.”

When Google Flight Search launched in September it included booking links from airlines only, but added online travel agency and Kayak advertisements at the bottom of flight search pages about a month later.

Wertheimer drew some criticism when he explained that “our airline partners were very clear” that they wouldn’t participate in Google Flight Search if online travel agency booking links were included in the core flight-search results. 

“We will work on the model,” Wertheimer said, and referring to airline demands, he added, “and we work within the parameters” set.

That airline behavior and Google’s acquiesence to it could potentially raise anticompetition concerns.

After the PhoCusWright talk, in his first press interview in almost a year-and-a-half, Wertheimer was asked if the airlines’ demands and the OTAs’ absence in core flight search results in Google Flight Search raised any antitrust concerns.

Wertheimer playfully replied that he isn’t an antitrust lawyer.

One person who wasn’t smiling about the issue the next day was Orbitz Worldwide CEO Barney Harford, who noted that his company provided testimony to the US Congress several months ago related to anticompetition concerns about Google’s role and search dominance.

“We are always concerned that someone in such a dominant position in core search takes that position of dominance and uses it to favor its own travel search results that exclude a major part of the market,” Harford said Nov. 17.

Back in the PhoCusWright conference a day earlier, Kayak CEO Steve Hafner was among two travel executives up on the stage who had a chance to publicly ask Wertheimer questions about Google Flight Search.

Kayak is an ITA Software customer and a vocal critic of Google’s acquisition of ITA, and Hafner started his questioning of Wertheimer like this: “I think you made the year a bit difficult for a lot of people,” Haftner said. “Hopefully we did the same with the FairSearch alliance.”

Kayak has indeed experienced a difficult year, having announced its IPO intent a year ago during the PhoCusWright conference.

Kayak’s hope to become a public company has been stuck at the starting gate, with Google’s purchase of ITA Software and market conditions being huge factors in the impasse.

Wertheimer shot back to Hafner:  “I don’t think I’ve ever actually aspired to make anything difficult for anybody,” Wertheimer said.

Wertheimer added that he saw Google’s acquistion of ITA as an opportunity to do so much more in flight search with Google’s resources.

Hafner also noted that Google Flight Search, which relies on a combination of Google and ITA technology, produces very fast results and he asked Wertheimer whether Google would be making the same technology available to its customers.

Wertheimer answered that QPX code can be used by partners in a variety of ways and the speedy results hinges in part on whether partners want to invest in the computing power necessary to save people time on search.

“We’d be happy to sign up Kayak again,” Wertheimer said.

In the interview after the conference session, Wertheimer was asked whether Google will soon integrate Google Flight Search and Google Hotel Finder.

“There’s always experimentation going on,” Wertheimer said.

Asked whether he was personally involved in integrating the two products, he responded: “I have oversight for everything in travel.”

Wertheimer indicated that Google remains committed to ITA’s side business — passenger services systems for airlines — and a deal will soon be announced.

Many have speculated over the years that Google could one day become an online travel agency or even a global distribution system.

ITA years ago had also worked on developing — and then abandoned — a travel agency desktop.

Asked about the OTA idea and possibility of renewing development of a travel agency desktop, Wertheimer said there are great needs in the market and no one can predict how things may develop.

“We’re open to anything,” he said.

Google says the international roll out of Flight Search is “coming soon”, although it is expected to be a staggered launch in individual markets rather than a simultaneous unveiling across the rest of the world.

In his first media interview since Google announced its intention to buy ITA Software for $700 million in July 2010, former-CEO of Massachusetts-based ITA, Jeremy Wertheimer, now vice president for travel at ITA Software by Google, would not disclose an exact timeframe for the launches.

One option would be to begin with relatively limited functionality in terms of the cities and airlines covered by Flight Search, similar to how the US launch was introduced in September this year.

This would depend on any agreements Google is able to negotiate over the course of the next few months, Wertheimer says.

It is not known if the policy of only carrying search results from airlines will be used in other markets as it was in the US, once again excluding online travel agencies from participating in results.

But there are now also the first significant signs that other travel products are also being lined up for launch, with car hire appearing to be an obvious contender.

Nothing is off the table as yet, is the impression being given by Wertheimer, although in true Google fashion the emphasis is on “testing” and “experimenting” with ideas, rather than confirming one way or the other that a particular product line in the industry will be next on the list.

Other likely areas considered might be tours and activities or vacation rentals, for example, although Wertheimer declined to divulge precise plans.

How to address one of the most significant challenges with expanding Flight Search outside of the US, where the general perception is that ITA’s coverage is weaker, is still unclear.

Wertheimer says Google will secure partnerships with both airlines or “data providers” to introduce Flight Search in other markets, although he refuses to disclose any further details or if any of fare shopping providers or the GDSs (Travelport‘s ePricing or the MetaPricer product from Amadeus, are just two of a number of sources) will be involved.

“We will work with whoever we can in order to get the data,” he says.

And, Google Flight Search? Amadeus doesn’t envision Google becoming a pseudo global distribution system or even a travel agency.

Luis Maroto, president and CEO of GDS services and airline-IT provider Amadeus, said as much during the company’s third quarter earnings call today.

ITA Software has an airline IT business and Amadeus, which owned a piece of ITA years ago before the two companies had a falling out, doesn’t see Google leveraging ITA to make some kind of airline IT play.

“It is not our view that Google will become a competitor with us on the IT front,” Maroto said.

He said Amadeus has seen no impact from Google Flight Search, but will be watching.

“We don’t expect anything to change dramatically in the coming situation,” Maroto added.

Despite financial analysts asking Maroto about competition from Google, the idea that Amadeus would be worried about Google as a major competitor in airline passenger services systems is relatively absurd.

Just consider Amadeus’ pipeline of announced airline PSS migrations: Air Berlin, BMI, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines, SAS, all in 2012; Thai Airlines and Asiana in 2013; and Korean Air and All Nippon Airways in 2014. Amadeus says it also has other signed deals which have not been publicly disclosed.

And, if anyone believes that migrating airline reservations systems is for the feint of heart, Maroto said Amadeus already is working on the 2014 migration of Korean Air.

And, many of the migrations slated for the first half of 2012, including those for Air Berlin, BMI, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines and SAS, have already been tested, Maroto said.

Of Amadeus’ two business lines, distribution and airline IT, the latter is still very much the junior partner, although the projected growth is substantial.

Through the first nine months of 2011, airline IT at Amadeus took in euro 471.4 million ($640 million) compared with euro 1.6 billion ($2.2 billion) on the distribution side.

But, Amadeus projects its number of passengers board will grow about 95% to more than 725 million annually from 2010 to 2014 because of airline migrations and organic growth.

On the distribution front, Amadeus says its travel agency airline bookings increased 4.8% this year through the Sept. 30, outpacing the GDS industry as a whole by 2.6 percentage points.

Growth in Amadeus air bookings through Sept. 30 was especially strong in Latin America (10.1%), Asia-Pacific (7.2%) and North America 6.7%, the company said. In Amadeus’ largest market, Western Europe, its travel agency booking climbed 3.4%.

Don’t expect a major push for Amadeus to increase its marketshare in North America as Maroto said it is not Amadeus’ strategy to pay travel agencies increased incentives to capture share.

Instead, he argued that technology and content improvements will drive gains in North America.

Maroto said Amadeus “has not yet been able to break the [US] market,” adding “we hope the results of our investments will start to pay off.”

Google’s “other revenues” — meaning everything but advertising revenues — increased 51.6% in the third quarter to $385 million and an official attributed much of the boost to the “year over year impact of ITA.”

Google acquired ITA in mid-April so Google’s third quarter results, which were released today, included the first full quarter with ITA in the fold.

The $385 million in other revenue amounted to a $131 million increase compared with the third quarter of 2010, and one analyst surmised that about $75 million to $100 million of that increase might be tied to the presence of ITA and its revenue, largely from airlines.

Of course, a $75 million to $100 million quarterly revenue contribution from ITA is just a drop in the bucket when you consider Google’s $9.7 billion in total revenue for the third quarter.

Considering that the third quarter usually is a relatively strong one on a seasonal basis for travel, it isn’t hard to extrapolate that ITA’s annual run rate could be in the $200 to $250 million ballpark.

That might make ITA’s airline search business an even larger enterprise on a revenue basis than Kayak’s travel metasearch business, which recorded about $171 million in revenue in 2010 and nearly $110 million in the first six months of 2011.

Or at least the two, albeit different, businesses would be in the same conversation when considering their relative size.

Google may have considered buying Kayak at one juncture several years ago, but settled on ITA and its technology for $700 million, and rolled out Google Flight Search in mid-September.

In a conference call today about Google’s third quarter results, Susan Wojcicki,  vice president of advertising, rehashed a familiar refrain about the “speedy” flight-search solution, saying the launch was “the takeoff and not the final destination.”

Meanwhile, CEO Larry Page defended Google’s approach in various verticals, including travel, when asked about Google’s strategy in light of the company getting much closer to the transaction on several fronts.

Page said Google merely is trying to improve users’ search experience, as it has done throughout its history.

Coincidentally, Tom Barnett, counsel to Expedia, submitted answers to questions posed by the US Senate Antitrust Subcommittee, meeting today’s deadline to respond to the committee.

Asked whether “there is an antitrust problem with Google favoring its own services in light of Google’s dominant market share,” Barnett replied, in part:

By artificially promoting its own products, Google deprives competing sites of traffic and advertising revenue, raises their costs as they are forced to spend more on paid search ads to make up for part of the lost traffic, and reduces their incentives ability to innovate.

Interestingly, Barnett worked closely with the FairSearch coalition, which opposed the ITA acquisition and included Microsoft as a member.

Barnett raised the spectre that Microsoft could decide to shut down its Bing search engine, further entrenching Google as dominant in search.

Said Barnett: “Further, the large losses suffered by Bing each year raise the distinct possibility that Bing will exit the market, leaving Google as the only general search engine in the US.”

It was, unfortunately, bound to happen. PLUS ONE NO MORE. We removed the option to “+1″ our front page today.

Why? Today we received yet another complaint from a user that said our page was loading really slowly for her. This is bad news, you only get so much time until a user gives up and goes elsewhere, so loading time for our front page is crucial.

After debugging her issue, we saw that it was the loading time for the Google+ button that was holding the rest of the site back.

This, a product from a company that says website loading speed is factoring more and more into their search algorithm, just wouldn’t do.

But that is not the only reason we are removing it.

When Google announced the +1 button, we were eager to install it as soon as we could, hoping it might give us a boost in the rankings, with only a handful of +1s versus more than a hundred tweets and five thousand Facebook “likes”, it just wasn’t doing anything for us.

Even Google insiders admit this:

Google+ is a knee-jerk reaction, a study in short-term thinking, predicated on the incorrect notion that Facebook is successful because they built a great product.

Social media as a boost to SEO

A company of our size, with a very limited ad budget, has to rely on social media for help in getting the word out. Twitter has served us very well, as has our Facebook page, but we had not a single indication that Google plus was, or would, be of any use.

Even our employees, a bunch of nerds if there ever was one, were not using Google+, not seeing any point. And with no tangible clue as to when companies would be able to join the network the decision was easy.

When a social network is starting to hurt your business (via the slowing of our front page loading time), it is time to take it down.

We have been using SEOmoz to help us with SEO recently, and they suggested using social media to rank higher. The take away message is: get Facebook shares. We agree.

It is important to note that this is nothing to do with Google’s entrance into flight search.

As we wrote previously, there are numerous reasons we don’t really worry about Google flight search fumblings:

We know it is using ITA’s technology, and this relieves us greatly. Why? Because our technology is simply superior.

For example, Kayak (read ITA, its software supplier) just released something they call Hacker Fares. This means that Kayak now presents the user with the possibility of buying return tickets in two bookings. We have had this option for, oh, about six years.

Our decision to remove the +1 button is purely because of its complete lack of use. We might put it back up if Google really does manage to make the network to work, but until then, we will only give our users the option to tweet or share on Facebook.

In fact, why don’t you head over to our front page right now and flex your social muscle… give Google a little slap.

And for added irony, please +1 this post on Tnooz

NB: This is a guest article by Johann Thorsson, social media manager at travel search engine Dohop.

On these occasions it is probably best left to people that actually knew or worked with him to put forward the best profiles of a person described in various quarters today as “visionary”, “game-changer” and “a pioneer”.

But, fittingly, it is Jobs himself that probably produced the best obituary anyone will read or see in the days ahead – a recording of his commencement speech to Stanford University in 2005 (it is well worth the 14-minute viewing time).

This article, however, isn’t about Jobs – it’s about what Apple has managed to do (albeit under Jobs’s stewardship) to the travel industry, a timely reminder that it is companies from outside the sector (such as Google) that often appear to have the most impact and drive forward the “innovation” which inevitably affects how existing companies operate and evolve.

Apple doesn’t have a travel division per se. It doesn’t sell product on a supplier’s behalf. It isn’t even in search (although the otherwise underwhelming iPhone 4S announcement this week showed moves into that area with the integration of its 2010 acquisition of voice search tech provider Siri).

What Apple has given consumers is a new means to experience travel – not the actual going away bit, but how they research products, interact with brands, use devices in-resort.

Non-voice communication on mobiles was restricted to SMS and the dreaded WAP before the Apple iPhone came along and made the web an infinitely easier thing to use on a handset.

Others were starting to do this on mobile devices, of course, but the power of Apple’s marketing (a unique skill in its own right, alongside the technology and design), triggered for many the rush to embrace the “always connected” aspect of everyday communications.

As this evolution kicked in, travel brands the world over realised that they had to do at least one of two things: make their websites mobile-friendly or develop an application for existing and enhanced services.

The “launch of an iPhone app” has become a regular strategic move by a travel brand in recent years, demonstrating the power that Apple has wielded over a sector it has no official relationship with.

That is a powerful position for Apple to have found itself in. To adapt a well-known phrase: when Apple sneezes, everyone catches a cold.

The iPad tablet is another example of a product nobody REALLY thought they needed until it came along and the marketing and support of the tech media kicked in.

Now an iPad application, or iPad-configured website, is yet another strategic decision travel brands are being forced (yes, forced) to make.

Many now consider the iPad a far more superior device to the iPhone when it comes to portraying what travel is all about from a discovery and research perspective.

“Annoyingly, the online travel experience was made for the iPad,” was one phrase uttered jokingly by a frustrated exec earlier this year when asked what his company’s strategy would be around new devices, knowing that his development team would have to do more research, spend more money, create more products as it looked to maintain its position in every conceivable consumer channel.

Apple isn’t alone in all this – other brands such as Amazon are going head-to-head with Apple on tablets or have developed mobile operating systems (such as Android), on some occasions better than the original Apple products.

But, once again, it is the power of Apple as a brand that drives so much of the development in the wider technology sector, and drives changes in the consumer marketplace by triggering a need by people to simply try out something new.

Now, perhaps most interestingly, we haven’t even got to iTravel yet.

Yes, Apple is a peripheral player when it comes to product and pure-play travel functionality. But this is almost likely to change.

For the best part of 18 months, Apple has been busily filing technology patents in the US for essentially what is a series of tools for handheld devices, known as iTravel.

These range from search and booking and location information tools, to hotel and airport concierges and cruise trip services.

They have yet to see the light of day on iPhones or iPads, but the motivation for positioning itself further into the travel planning process and experience is clear to see.

Native, Apple travel tools and functionality, right at the heart of a device, alongside the calendar, calculator, mail and other core functions.

Powerful stuff, again.

For many of these tools, Apple will need partners in the travel industry. As an “outsider”, Apple – in the same way that Google had to splash out $700 million to buy a travel tech company – will require massively important partnerships to make such tools work, whether its product feeds, fulfilment services, content, etc.

Apple will remain on the outside of the industry, but its impact will be felt in many ways in the future, whether its through new devices or steaming ahead with services such as iTravel.

Many believe (as the thousands of RIP messages on social media and coverage elsewhere indicates) they have a lot to thank Steve Jobs for when it comes to his legacy at Apple.

Execs in the travel industry may have on occasion cursed Jobs and Apple for steering their strategy in unexpected or unwanted directions – but it is people that ensure the industry ticks over every day, and they as travel consumers that are motivated and inspired by technological evolution.

In the original story we forgot to mention that other site attempting to stake a claim as a disruptive influence on the travel search sector – Hipmunk.

Over a year since its high-profile launch, Hipmunk, in the overall travel category, stands in position number 974.

ORIGINAL:

An extraordinary amount of interest in September when Google finally launched its long-awaited Flight Search product, five months after securing approval for buying ITA Software.

So, three weeks since Flight Search was unveiled onto consumers (and a curious/terrified industry), how is the search giant’s first foray into travel metasearch doing?

Audience measurement service Experian Hitwise has given Tnooz some figures to gauge where Flight Search sits alongside other web travel brands in the industry.

Important caveats coming up:

• Figures are for online market share during the entire month of September 2011, Google Flight Search launched on Tuesday 13 September.
• Only US at this stage, where the early version Google Flights is focused.
• Flight Search only shows roundtrip fares from major airlines to a limited number of US cities. In other words, not a fully formed product.
• The product is not fully “unleashed”, meaning that it is not integrated with existing flight-related searches.

But, regardless, Flight Search is the first iteration of a major new travel initiative by a big web player (the biggest, arguably).

Tnooz publishes Hitwise market share data for the top ten travel websites in the US on a weekly basis, covering three categories: agencies (or intermediaries), destination and accommodation sites, and airlines. Hitwise also supplies travel-related search term rankings in the same deck.

The entire travel category in the US includes hundreds of travel and “travel”-related websites, but in September 2011 was led by the following top ten sites:

1. Google Maps
2. Mapquest
3. Expedia
4. Southwest Airlines
5. TripAdvisor
6. Priceline
7. Bing Maps
8. Yahoo Maps
9. Orbitz
10. Yahoo Travel

It is a bit unclear – depends on who you ask – which sites will be Google’s closest rivals in the travel sector, but like-for-like travel metasearch players alongside it include Kayak (probably the most vociferous of the web companies campaigning against Google’s entry into travel), Bing Travel, Farecompare and Mobissimo, amongst others.

So where do they and Google Flight Search sit in the list of travel websites?

• Kayak – 17.
• Bing Travel – 30.
• Farecompare – 111.
• Mobissimo – 1,359.

And Google?

• Google Flight Search – 391.

Hitwise says in the initial first week after the product’s launch (coinciding with when not just travel-related media sites, but almost every mainstream and tech service had something to say) there was a “big uplift” in market share, but this has tailed off and it has not seen “exponential growth” in the following two weeks.

Recall the caveats – very early days, not fully formed or integrated. But given the marketplace buzz (no pun intended), worthwhile reproducing.

The travel search site is one of around 200 companies with plans for IPOs filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that have so far failed to reach the conditions which allow them to proceed – approval by the authorities and “market conditions have to be favourable” in the eyes of the company.

Kayak has so far not met one or both of these conditions.

The company told AllThingsD yesterday that in intended on proceeding with its plans when the markets are favourable to IPOs.

It is declining to comment any further this morning, but reports and speculation that the company has pulled its IPO are, at this stage, inaccurate.

The first sign that a company has officially reversed its decision to launch an IPO is when its S-1 filing (registration of securities) is withdrawn.

Kayak’s bid is still active, but like others it is in the logjam of those waiting for the financial markets to calm down, as investment funds lurch up and down on a daily, if not hourly, basis.

The SEC is currently experiencing its longest backlog of IPOs in ten years, without a single one completed since mid-August this year.

Kayak’s bid to IPO is now almost 11 months old and, in previous updates of its S1 to the SEC, has pegged back its chances of fulfilling its strategy.

In May this year the company said the likelihood was around 85%, stating two months later that it had fallen further to 50%.

Looming over the entire process has always been the entry of Google into the travel search marketplace, a process which started with its proposed acquisition of ITA Software in July 2010 (four months ahead of Kayak decision announce plans to IPO).

Kayak – it is worth remembering – is also an ITA customer, with a contract which expires at the end of 2013.

At some point during the discussion at ITA Software‘s offices, Glenn McDonald, a user interface engineer at Google, who was sitting next to me, commented that “innovation isn’t really a tangible thing”.

It’s more a reflection of how we perceive something tangible. Like magic. When we say something is magical, that’s another way of stating that we don’t understand how it works, McDonald surmised.

Real innovation isn’t that much different from magic; it occurs when someone solves a problem by removing a constraint that everyone else had taken for granted.

McDonald’s analogy inspired me to make two far less elegant and much more incendiary comments, such as “APIs are evil” and “XML is dead; we just don’t know it yet”.

This, inevitably, has created a bit of a stir, and I can understand why I need to provide some further explanation.

Of course I don’t actually believe that programming interfaces are intrinsically bad, and I’m sure that XML will be around for decades to come.

What I meant is that the ways in which we store, process and exchange data have become obsolete.

Almost everything in online travel today was engineered under this constraint: data costs money, so we need to be as efficient as possible in handling it.

This has defined how our products and companies have evolved. Data has been locked away in silos. Applications talk to the outside world through throttled peepholes that are only capable of answering specific questions with specific answers.

Big Data is the next frontier. Jim Gray called it the Fourth Paradigm, “analogous to when the printing press was invented”.

It has already revolutionised Internet search, social media, astronomy, atmospheric science, genomics, biochemistry, and military surveillance.

In Big Data there are no requests, no predefined parameters and no structured responses. You are free to intersect anything with anything. You can analyse, mutate, group, split, reorder in any way you can imagine.

There are no limits to what you can ask and how often you can ask it. The only constraints are your imagination and the number of computers you have at your disposal.

Suddenly, like magic, anything is possible.

Big Data is not just a set of technologies that can be used to solve hard problems, it is a new way of looking at the problems themselves. And those who master these technologies gain an unfair competitive advantage.

Consider this single example: speed is one of the most important ingredients of a good search experience. In the last fifteen years, no travel company – startup, OTA, airline or GDS – has been able to build and launch an airfare search that returns results in under a second.

One company, a pioneer of Big Data that we all know well, coming from outside of the industry, has just achieved it in less than six months.

We as an industry, and as a community, should consider this our wake-up call. We need to learn the craft of Big Data. We need to invest in the technology of massively parallel processing and scalable storage systems.

Until recently, these technologies were locked away in the IP vaults of big search companies.

But the rise of social media, which has produced more data than had been previously created in all of history of mankind, has forced engineers to re-invent storage, processing, communication protocols – everything.

And Open Source has made these technologies available to any and all of us. Today, they include Hadoop, Disco, Cassandra, HBase, CouchDB, MongoDB and others.

These will evolve over time, but what matters is that learning how to use them will forever change the way we build products and companies.

We also need to take a hard look at all the historical and real-time data that we control, and identify what we can release to the world. We need to create large, open and free data-sets and we need to start publishing real time data streams.

We will be giving up some control and the outcome might appear uncertain. But we cannot not err on the side of excessive caution, because the rewards outweigh the risks. And the cost of doing nothing is greatest of all.

If we do this, others will be inspired to do the same. And this will lead to unpredictable and extraordinary things.

NB: Chime in on Twitter: #bringthemagicback

The Wall Street Journal reports that in advance of the Sept. 21 hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, Google successfully arranged that Eric Schmidt, the former Google CEO who now handles public policy issues for the company, would appear first and alone — and not have to rub shoulders with Google critics and others who will testify en masse in a second panel following Schmidt.

The hearing, dubbed The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?, will accommodate appearances by Jeff Katz, the founding CEO of Orbitz and current CEO of metasearch engine Nextag; Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman; Expedia Inc.counsel Tom Barnett; and antitrust expert Susan Creighton of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

Assuredly there will be plenty of testimony about Google Places; Google’s entry into various verticals, including travel; the Panda update, and even Google’s acquisition of Zagat.

The hearing should be a pretty interesting show, given that the FTC, European regulators and now the Senate Judiciary committee are all breathing down Google’s neck.

It remains to be seen, given Google’s connections on both sides of the political aisle, how rigorous an interrogation Schmidt will face.

But, the search engine is taking no chances.

Google has hired 13 communications and lobbying firms to help fend off antitrust challenges since word of the FTC probe emerged, according to The Wall Street Journal.

As I was reflecting, and wondering if my previous prognosis from a few months back was going to prove true or not (clearly verdict is still out, although the best analysis yet is unsurprisingly from Henry Harteveldt and published on Cranky Flier), it occurred to me that what we’re seeing is NOT Google Flights.

What we’re seeing is ITA Flights on Google, and yes, that is a big difference.

The first subtle clue was the response to press questions, which were handled by Cara Kretz of ITA. Since Google is a company famous for its secrecy and control, that struck me as odd. I would think that if any of the departments had consolidated already, clearly PR would be one of the first.

Why would Google allow an ITA spokesperson to be the public voice of such a major product release on Google, its core search functionality? I would have expected Cara to comment on ITA-specific products, but this is far more than that.

Then I was thinking critically about Google’s comment in the press release:

“Like any other partner, Google needs to honor the airlines’ distribution decisions. It has long been known in the industry that the control of pricing data and distribution of the same by airlines is tightly held. That means that we can only show airlines in the booking links.”

Why does Google care? It isn’t a partner with the airlines. In fact, it has major incentives not to care since the online travel agencies and metasearch engines are major customers. Why the sudden shift?

Is it just to throw some salt in the wounds of the FairSearch group, particularly the GDS that tried to disrupt the sale? Is it a bargaining chip since FairSearch is going to continue to pressure the DOJ to make Google’s life difficult during the five-year period when it is under some sort of supervision?

Actually, it’s far more simple than that. It’s ITA that’s running the product and it has airlines as very valued partners. Of course ITA has OTAs as customers also, but remember airlines both supply data to ITA as well as use it for search on their websites.

With the Google acquisition, ITA cares less about the revenue stream from its search customers (that money, rumored to be in the $100 million to $200 million range, is not meaningful to Google in the grand scheme of things).

However ITA does care about maintaining strong relationships with airlines so it can continue to provide its core search functionality, perhaps even in a world where the GDS are pushed aside and the feeds of inventory and bookings become direct.

There’s some irony in how this is unfolding. If Google had just purchased a license from ITA, like the tech firms other customers, it would have no incentive to limit the linking to airlines – it would just go to the highest bidder, exactly as it does in search today for all verticals (including Google’s Hotel Finder).

That would allow Google to be profit-maximizing and clearly extract more value from the product. However, since it bought the whole company, it now has to respect the delicate ecosystem in which it plays, which has made the product more disruptive by encouraging it (at least in the early going) to only link to airlines.

Google would likely argue it would not be able to build the desired product without the full acquisition, and that the revenue from a more capable flight search engine will more than make-up for the customer risk that goes along with it.

That might be true, but it certainly gives us pause and suggests that airlines have far more leverage here than originally thought. Google isn’t doing this out of niceness, it is “honor[ing] the airlines’ distribution decisions” because it feels it has to.

This represents a significant statement about the relative power of the players as it stands today. Yes, Google could shift course and add OTA/meta-search linkages tomorrow, and I personally believe it will eventually succumb and do just that at some point down the road, but by launching this way we are certainly getting an insight into just how tenuous ITA’s relationships are with the airlines.

The irony is that it appears so far that the disruption caused by Google flights is not due to any feature set or implementation novelty, but because of the complex web of relationships and uncertainty about the future of air distribution, an issue that Google inherited with the acquisition.

Here we have a company that has built a reputation and a workforce aimed only at one thing: building great products for consumers. And suddenly it is faced with the same shenanigans that OTAs, GDS, and airlines are dealing with everyday, fighting on all fronts for the rights to revenue and inventory, and dealing with huge uncertainty.

In the end, it’s not yet clear whether ITA’s amazing search capability with significant industry baggage will be a net positive or a liability to Google.

A team of a half-dozen or so Amadeus developers also used Amadeus Master Pricer as air became the default transportation option for Patriots fans who may want to mull their travel choices for away games at the Buffalo Bills or Oakland Raiders on the upcoming NFL schedule, for instance.

“The tool automatically researches air and hotels using the recommendation engines and selects the cheapest flight and hotel based on other travelers’ past trips,” Jerome Petit, Amadeus manager of Software Engineering Product Development, North America, explains a couple of days after the 24-hour THack. “Dates are automatically centered around the weekend of the event so by default the user is not asked for usual search parameters such as city pairs and dates.”

The Amadeus developers added rail options from SilverRail, and activities idea from Goby, which were plotted on a Google Map.

The social element was the “final touch,” Petit says, noting that users could share their trip plans on Facebook.

The application was coded using Google Web Toolkit for the front end, although the Amadeus developers concede they didn’t have enough time to fine-tune the user interface.

THacks’ two judges, Tnooz Nodes Valyn Perini and Glenn Gruber, based their selection on six assigned criteria: originality/innovation; the quality of final product; the explanation of the hack’s capability; the opportunity within existing or new systems; the fitness for the purpose; and commercial viability/funding potential.

Although perhaps a couple of dozen developers may have participated in the THack, only two other hacks were presented after undoubtedly a long night of coding and caffeine.

Daniel DuVal, who leads mobile efforts for Delta Air Lines, created an Android app using the Traxo and Goby APIs.

Duval’s app pushed out in-destination activities to users from Goby based on their Traxo itineraries. The app was designed to provide flight updates and refresh activity options as users ambled around a city.

And Roman Peskin, co-founder and CEO of DealAngel, created an app using the Amadeus hotel API and Goby to graphically display hotel rates and available activities so that users could determine the most appropriate travel dates based on six months of pricing and their desired activities.

Of the three hacks, Perini said the Amadeus hack was the most commercially viable as fans of particular teams would were be interested and the hack could be aimed at particular markets.

Gruber, acknowledging that Amadeus may have had an advantage because six or seven local developers were involved, liked the fact that the Amadeus tool incorporated social media and the potential of the social graph.

The other hacks picked up support, as well.

Perini characterized DuVal’s Android app, which pushes activities recommendations to users, as “really forward thinking,” although she added it “might be a little ahead of the curve.”

From the audience, Stephen Joyce, who heads Rezgo and is a Tnooz Node, said he was “impressed” with the hotel pricing aspect of Peskin’s hack, which might be used by consumers to drive decision-making.

Several developers noted they would have been more successful if they had been given some additional time and it was suggested it would be helpful if API providers would provide examples of ways to use their APIs.

Note: Amadeus, along with ITA Software, were sponsors of THack Boston.

At this juncture, at least, it seems to be a worst-case scenario for online travel agencies such as Expedia and Priceline and travel metasearch engines such as Kayak and Bing Travel, which were concerned or fought Google’s acquisition of ITA Software five months ago.

And, Google Flight Search appears to be a clear win – even more dramatic than anticipated — for airlines over their frenemies in the OTA and metasearch sector as they vie for site traffic and bookings.

Of course, it all depends on how the airline-Google economics work out, and for now Google isn’t providing any details on that.

In a blog post today about the launch of Flight Search, Google states: “… Our booking links point to airline websites only. We’re working to create additional opportunities for our other partners in the travel industry to participate as well.”

Google’s official take on the issue is this:

Like any other partner, Google needs to honor the airlines’ distribution decisions. It has long been known in the industry that the control of pricing data and distribution of the same by airlines is tightly held. That means that we can only show airlines in the booking links.

We will be exploring advertising opportunities within the page to showcase the products and services from other relevant partners, including OTA and metasearch partners. We’d also like to give users and advertisers alike the opportunity to provide feedback so that we could iterate.”

Google Flight Search is available on Google.com from anywhere in the world.

You can access Google Flight Search in two ways: from a Flights link in the left-hand panel after doing a flight search in the Google search box or by navigating directly to Google.com/flights.

If you enter “flights from San Francisco to Orlando” in the Google search box, another feature, flight schedules, available since late May, appears below in the search results, but a new Flights link appears in the left-hand panel.

When you click on the Flights link, a Google Map appears displaying a San Francisco to Orlando fare as well as fares to other major U.S. destinations.

For now, Google Flight Search only shows roundtrip fares from major airlines to a limited number of U.S. cities, and will eventually be expanded to include international markets for flights. Google is in the process of rolling out Flight Search today.

There are numerous ways to filter the flight results: by number of stops, flight duration, airlines, airline alliances, connections, outbound times, return times, dates, and price etc.

You can search by date using a calendar underneath the map or select the scatter plot beneath the calendar to filter by price and/or duration.

For consumers looking for a little travel inspiration and a bargain, you can also use the map and filters to see where you can fly from New York, without specifying a destination, within four hours for less than $350, for example.

The flight results, for a San Francisco to Orlando search, appear like this:

Google says flight search results are “not influenced by any paid relationships.”

In other words, Flight Search contrasts sharply with Google Hotel Finder, where hotel results are driven by advertising relationships.

Google has constructed a very simple user experience, which is designed to be very fast, with flight options “chosen primarily based on cost and total travel time, while covering a variety of departure times and airlines,” Google says.

So, in the above example, the $484 American Airlines flight from San Francisco to Orlando via Dallas appears higher in the results than the cheaper $482 Continental Airlines flight via Houston, presumably because of the duration-filter setting and the shorter duration on the American Airlines flight.

And, this is what the Google Flight Search booking link page looks like for a San Francisco to Salt Lake City United Airlines flight, operated by United Express/Skywest Airlines.

Note, that the Book button appears within the search results. When you select Book, Google Flight Search provides a “deep link” to the airline website, says Cara Kretz, an ITA Software spokesperson.

In its blog post, Google characterizes the initial version of Flight Search as “an early look,” adding that it “combines ITA expertise with Google’s technology…”

That comment may have meaning for critics of Google’s acquisition of ITA Software, who sometimes argued that Google could have just as well licensed ITA’s QPX fares, schedules and availability solution instead of buying it and the whole company.

“We can do things really fast with a lot of computers,” says Kretz of ITA. “This was one of the things that was so appealing. Google can do things really fast and handle lots of volume.”

Kretz says Google intends to introduce new features, such as one-way fares and multi-city itineraries, and she adds that the launch today was merely a “first step.”

Google is talking to airlines about adding them as participants — today Flight Search merely shows some major U.S. carriers – and plans to add international markets, of course, although no timetable has been publicized.

Kretz says ITA Software is not currently offering this particular Flight Search technology to its current QPX customers.

“We’re evaluating all opportunities,” Kretz says.

Google’s first iteration of Flight Search may give pause to some major online travel agencies and others which said they were concerned about the ITA acquisition, but were open to the possibility that Flight Search would merely provide them with better customer leads.

Google Flight Search, which was feared by some and speculated about for years, has at long last arrived in its initial and evolving form.

Non-airline advertisers will undoubtedly secure some real estate in Google Flight Search, but for now at least, the airlines clearly have the upper hand.

Robert Birge, chief marketing officer of ITA customer Kayak, expressed confidence in the company’s ability to compete, adding “…We believe our flight search technology is superior.”

Says Birge:

We recognize Google is a formidable competitor but they haven’t been successful in every vertical they entered. We use multiple data sources and proprietary technology, all of which helps us in our efforts to provide people with comprehensive, fast and accurate answers to their flight search needs.

Here’s a Google video about Flight Search:

Some might argue it’s been a year characterised by game-changing startups, disruptive trends, big investments and leaps in both travel technology and consumer behaviour.

In addition, our fixation with the instant and virtual means that it is becoming increasingly rare for us to ‘look-up’ and to the horizon for the next threat or opportunity that lies ahead for the online travel industry.

Which emerging trends will fizzle, and which will pop?

What is the most significant opportunity (or critical threat) that our industry faces? Which disruptive forces will reshape the online travel landscape as we know it in the next few years?

We asked some of the leading lights at Facebook, Google, and TripAdvisor what they think are the supposed “next big things” for the online travel industry?

Rohit Dhawan, lead product manager at Facebook

At Facebook, we’re really seeing that the web is being rebuilt around people – everything is becoming more social.

What used to be an information web where people sought to find the “what” has really shifted to a social web where people are looking to find the “who?”

Today, there are more Facebook profile pages than there are web pages.  This social web really means that people are at the centre of marketing – in all industries, including travel

There is now an even greater opportunity for marketers to create an on-going, two-way dialogue between their brands and their customers.

Because of this connection, we’re seeing that businesses can now achieve effective word-of-mouth marketing at scale for the first time.

We’ve always known that the best recommendations come from your own friends – and now businesses can leverage this natural word-of-mouth using the suite of marketing tools that Facebook has to offer – including ads, pages, sponsored stories, and social plugins.

Barbara Messing, chief marketing officer at TripAdvisor

1. Travel is becoming more social

People are using technology and social networks to tap into the wisdom of friends to make good travel decisions.

We are spending a lot of energy at TripAdvisor facilitating these connections between friends as we think seeing travel advice from your friends is incredibly valuable.

2. The travel category is changing (dramatically) with mobile.

Mobile is incredibly exciting – and changing both the travel planning period and the in-trip experience.

Particularly during the in-trip experience there is still a ton of opportunity to make the traveler better informed, allow her to find the right restaurants & attractions tailored to her interests and time, and even provide special location-based features that can only be delivered via mobile.

If only we can get rid of those pesky roaming fees for international trips!

3. The power (and omnipresence) of the review

While TripAdvisor has for over a decade believed that the wisdom of our reviewers helps other travelers have the best trips, we’ve recently seen that the hotel industry has also embraced the benefits of reviews and the importance of that content to their social reputation.

You once had to search hard to find hotel reviews outside of TripAdvisor, and now nearly every OTA has reviews in their hotel path, hotel chains are displaying reviews on their supplier-direct sites, and even Google has begun to collect reviews.

With TripAdvisor having over 45 million visitors last month reading some of our 50 million reviews and opinions, we know reviews are essential to consumers in the travel-planning process.

4. Green-friendly and sustainable travel are gaining importance

Travelers want to know more about the green practices and environmental reputation of the hotels, and travelers seek to understand whether the hotel is part of the problem or the solution in promoting better environment practices.

And a growing set of travelers want to see how their tourism dollars are benefiting the local community in certain destinations.

Rob Torres, Head of Travel, Google

1. Aggressive consumer adoption of the mobile platform as a booking vehicle for travel

The growing adoption of web-enabled mobile devices is revolutionizing how many companies do business.

Travel brands have an opportunity to take advantage of this trend.

• The number of mobile users researching travel is expected to grow 51% in 2012.
• 34% of all US smartphone users research from their mobile device
• 23% of all international travelers use mobile check-in for flights
• By 2012 18% of mobile users will also book from their smart device.

2. 2009 all over again…

Travel shoppers will continue to search for deals and discounts at record levels.

In 2012 consumers will again be willing to invest more time in the research process in order to save money – they will look for the best deals they can find, to get the most bang for their buck.

Flash sale sites will continue to flourish….especially in the travel space.

3. Product innovation will emerge for the first time since the entrance of OTAs in the late 90′s.

When you look across the phases of the travel cycle – Dreaming, Researching, Booking, Experiencing and Sharing – the potential for innovation, particularly in the early stages of dreaming and researching is astounding.

In 2012 you will see quite a few travel startups emerge that attempt to capitalize on this opportunity.

NB: This is a guest article by Marco Saio, director of global research and projects at EyeforTravel.

NB2: Google, TripAdvisor and Facebook are scheduled to present at the Travel Distribution Summit North America 2011 in Las Vegas, on 19-20 September.

THack is Tnooz’s unique event which brings together travel industry APIs and the development community to brainstorm and and create new digital travel products and web or mobile-based tools.

THack Singapore is sponsored by Abacus and Expedia Affiliate Network and produced in association with WebinTravel.

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The event continues and expands on the successful internal developer days held by Abacus in previous years at WIT.

Developers from across the travel, tourism and hospitality industry are welcome to attend, as well as engineers and technicians from local academic institutions in the region.

The events is FREE for developers to attend and participate.

Tnooz is coordinating the collection of APIs being made available to those taking part in the event.

Confirmed so far include (others to be added in the coming weeks):

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Open APIs used in previous THack events include:

• Google Maps
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Wikipedia
• Flickr
• Panoramio
• Android voice control

The event will have the following timetable:

Sunday 16 October

• 9am – Siloso 4, Shangri-La Sentosa Resort.
• Various initiatives will run throughout the day.

Monday 17 October

• 9am – development time ends
• 11.45 – presentation of entries at the WIT Bootcamp, Ballroom 2, Suntec Convention Centre.

Tnooz is also hosting its Appy Hour social event at the end of Day One of the main WIT Conference on Tuesday 18 October, from 6pm to 8.30pm (venue TBC).

NB: Travel companies wanting to provide an API and developers wishing to attend should contact Tnooz editor Kevin May for more information.

NB2: Commercial sponsorship opportunities are available by contacting Tnooz CEO Gene Quinn.

NB3: More information about the WebinTravel Conference, including registration, main WIT programme and WIT Bootcamp.

Google CEO Larry Page says the deal will “supercharge the Android ecosystem”, a pointed piece of rhetoric clearly aimed at the direction of fellow US tech giant Apple.

For its $12.5 billion, subject to regulatory approval by authorities in the US and European Union, Google gets its hands on not only a mobile handset but also a tablet provider.

Google is stressing that Android will remain an open platform, clearly much to the relief of other manufacturers that have thrown their lot in with the operating system.

Promises aside, executives at Samsung, HTC and Sony Ericsson will be watching nervously to see whether Google keeps the so-called good stuff from Android for itself (the same accusation levelled at Google during the ITA Software acquisition saga).

There is also the Blackberry question – will this move also hurt manufacturer RIM?

For the travel industry it is a double-edged sword: fewer platforms is good (easier to develop), but dominance by just one or two players arguably stifles competition.

It could be argued that with Google moving into the the application space, as opposed to their traditional media and infrastructure role, this will cause concentration at a time when such efforts are not benefiting the broader consumer.

This will enable Google to power ahead in integrating solutions that others will find hard to replicate or if they do – in fact, some might argue Google will always have a head start (something it tends to have in search, video and mapping, but less in social, for example).

Where this gets really interesting is around the idea of bringing travel services close to the consumer via mobile.

Blackberry was the first out of the blocks with a dedicated, pre-loaded travel application developed by Worldmate earlier this year.

Apple has also spent the best part of the past 16 months happily filing patents in the US which illustrate what it has in mind for a dedicated iTravel system, included as a native app with each iPhone and iPad.

And now Google has the opportunity to do exactly the same thing.

Until now, manufacturers running the Android operating system have handed the decision making for which apps to use on a handset (travel or otherwise) over to the consumer.

Users would download a metasearch app such as Skyscanner or Kayak, for example, and that would be their product finding tool on a handset. All the other travel-related apps, such as destination guides et al, would happily sit alongside.

But manufacturers do not make a bundle of money from travel-related apps, especially when download volumes can be pretty slim after the initial buzz around a new service.

Product search, however, is another issue entirely.

With a native travel application already on Blackberry, one coming soon no doubt to iPhones and iPads and, now, Google having the ability to ship travel search as a native app on all Motorola devices, the travel search ecosystem will change yet again.

As one mobile exec has been saying in various forms for some time: “The battle in mobile and travel is not about downloadable apps or the mobile web – it is about how devices will make travel tools a core part of their functionality, alongside calendars, mail, weather and images.”

In the same way that Google wants to somehow put travel front and centre within browser search (hey, it didn’t buy ITA Software just to get the inside track on the tricky recruitment puzzles), with a handset under its control the same can now be applied to the mobile space with a native application.

Of course, this deal isn’t all about travel and native applications, far from it – but illustrates more of the wider strategy about how service providers such as Google clearly feel that they need to own more of the foodchain than they did with the browser web.