To coincide with the mammoth Tnooz Predictions 2010 article, Tnooz asked people around the industry to gaze into their own crystal balls to forecast some of the key developments for the next 12 months.

The final article in this five-part series features Andy Owen-Jones (chief executive of Traveltainment), Ben Jackson (chief executive of TourAbout) and airline consultant Al Lenza.

Andy Owen-Jones:

• From website to web presence – The internet is now multi-dimensional. Travel brands will adopt a richer web presence. As social media, self service tools, etc become important web presence is more complex.  OTAs, Tour Operators, Search and new models will all “mash” together in new and unforeseen ways. This will change the boundaries of companies and expose the strengths and weaknesses of business models, culture and technology. Communication will be immediate and direct with customers increasing creativity but making “control” very difficult.
• Some tour operators will be transformed by social media – Customers will become overwhelmed with data and will seek out a combination of interpretation, selection and editorial reflected through the shopping process. Recommendation brands will grow and may reinvigorate tour operators. The tour operators have the chance to extend the “social” interaction and learning from customers during a trip in the way pure retailers cannot. Those who do not hear the messages of their customers (reviews, interaction, rich data) will turn into commodity, price driven players fighting in dynamic packaging wars.

Ben Jackson:

• The year mobile becomes main stream – People have been talking about the mobile web for 10 years and 2010 will be a tipping point. The percentage of searches and bookings from mobile apps will become significant. Kayak is moving into mobile transactions and allocating 20% of its development resource to mobile. Companies need to be serious about addressing their mobile users with dedicated mobile apps and not just skinning their html apps. The iPhone will be the #1 platform. A major cell phone manufacturer will close or post significant losses.
• The rise of the Semantic 3.0 Marketplace – Whilst companies continue to try and engage in the social web more startups will emerge that interweave the social and commerce webs. These will be vertical communities that include Context, Personalization, Search and Commerce, allowing consumers to control and engage directly with companies. Brands will move from reactive monitoring of Twitter like streams to more proactive and contextual engagement with potential customers.

Al Lenza:

• Ancillary product/service transactions will have double digit growth, most of it sold outside GDSs, leading to increasing dis-aggregated content.
• Mobile is going to overtake laptops/netbooks/PCs for procuring travel and other key industry transactions.

Amadeus and Fourth Dimension Software integrated some of their tour operator offerings and entered into a co-marketing pact that could give FDS a larger footprint in Europe and fill in some technology gaps for Amadeus.

And, oh yeah, the partnership could make things more efficient for tour operator customers, enable them to better package scheduled, charter and net-rate flights using the two companies’ integrated services, and provide them with broader options through TravelTainment’s multi-channel distribution platforms.

Several things drove the arrangement. TravelTainment provides a desktop solution and booking engine for tours, but many tour operators still are using decades-old technology for back-of-the house kinds of things such as inventory management, so there was a need to fill that gap. As Amadeus, like other GDSs, looked to diversify leisure offerings, it went looking for a tour technology partner.

Amadeus is tight with Thomas Cook and I have to believe that it knew months before Tnooz broke the story that BlueSky’s days were numbered. And, from the looks of it, another major provider, Anite, appears to be bogged down with the labor-intensive task of migrating existing customers to a new version of its platform.

The genesis of an Amadeus arrangement with FDS, based in Redwood Shores, Calif., had to be in the works for some time, given that their tour and desktop technologies are now intertwined.

Nouvelle Frontières’ apparently successful integration of FDS’ Contour platform earlier this year must have been a confidence-builder for Amadeus and, coupled with the exit of BlueSky, likely provided the backdrop for the announcement of the Amadeus-FDS marketing agreement.

Under the partnership, Amadeus will market Contour to tour operators, and FDS will push TravelTainment’s booking and distribution solutions to FDS’ customer base.

With the technology integration, Contour can be tied into Amadeus Web Services, Amadeus Master Pricer and TravelTainment’s distribution front-ends.

A partnership with Amadeus, and the access that it provides to tour operators in Europe, is one that FDS must have had high on its priority list for some time.

GDS and travel technology supplier Amadeus is to place a major emphasis on providing inspirational tools and intuitive user experience for inclusion in third party websites.

Two projects have been developed within the Madrid-based giant – at the Amadeus IT Group and leisure division Traveltainment – and will be launched

Traveltainment’s system is currently being trialled by STA Travel in Germany and is a front-end search and booking platform for consumer websites.

Internet Booking Engine v.3 allows for a wide ranging of multi-dimensional search parameters to be included such as location, price parameters, holiday type, accommodation requirements, duration and by review – aggregated on a single user page.

Other features include around 400,000 images of destinations and a growing number of 360-degree view pages (currently 5,000).

The system also allows for flight, hotel, packaged and self-bundled holidays to be included in the results.

Traveltainment chief executive Andy Owen-Jones says the new service will hopefully allow companies to see users selecting holidays based more on personal requirements rather than price.

IBEv3 is also being developed for integration into a Microsoft Surface application and follows the company’s existing foray into the touch-screen world with its pilot product for travel agents.

Sister division Amadeus IT Group is jointly spearheading the group’s push into inspiration-led web tools with the launch of its Affinity Shopper system.

The first version of the platform is a tool for travellers looking for fares on airline websites.

Amadeus has abandoned the traditional departure airport, destination and date elements of a product search in favour of what it calls “natural” parameters such as budget limit, trip type (single, return), geography and activities.

The Ajax-led interface plots search results on a map and allows users to reconfigure their requirements as they move through the process.

Users are able to select fares for the booking area of the platform through a range of formats including a traditional list form or bar calendar display.

Amadeus has already secured three partnerships for the system, including one with a major European airline to be announced shortly.

The other two agreements will be revealed by the end of the year, says Amadeus IT Group vice president for product development, sales and e-commerce platforms, Denis Lacroix.

Over a year in the making, Affinity Shopper was developed to integrate data from a partner’s existing back-end and sit alongside existing search and booking functionality.

Lacroix says Affinity Shopper is aimed initially at airlines but will be available and targeted at online travel agencies and business travel agencies in 2010.

NB: Affinity Shopper and the TravelTainment IBE system will be showcased at PhoCusWright’s Travel Innovation Summit on Tuesday 17 November 2009.

A couple of Tnooz posts about Microsoft Surface have me reaching for the reality-check button.

The reason? Most travel agents, in the U.S. at least, still prefer to use DOS-like linear commands and time-worn scripts on their green-screen desktops (the screen on Sabre’s actually is blue, I believe) as their preferred user interface. GUIs? Nah, too inefficient.

So, TravelTainment is constructing a Microsoft Surface application for travel agents, and Sheraton apparently has one of the best Microsoft Surface applications in any vertical.

At some of Sheraton’s U.S.  locations, including the Sheraton New York Hotel and Towers and the Sheraton Boston Hotel,  guests apparently can run their fingertips along those cool-looking Surface tables and book restaurants and map their car routes.

Great stuff and I’d bet that many folks would swap the ping-pong table in the basement for one of those Microsoft Surface tables any day.

Microsoft Surface could and will (I hope) transform the way consumers shop for travel.

We’re already seeing so much visual stuff in travel.

Bing recently launched visual search for destinations and Priceline this week introduced Hotel Price Maps as a visual way to make Name-Your-Own Price bidding less opaque.

Meanwhile, ASTA’s Director of Research Melissa Teates says green-screen usage has not been a question on the organization’s recent travel agency technology surveys, but she believes that a majority of U.S. agents still use green screens as their preferred user interface.

There are plenty of GUI desktops out there in GDS land and many travel agents are hip to social media and new technologies.

But, as the emergence of Microsoft Surface symbolizes, the travel agency community increasingly is becoming a world of technology haves and technology have nots.

And, financial questions aren’t always the primary driver in this regard.

Some agents embrace new ways of doing things, and some just don’t.

Forget for a moment the toe-curling commentary and soft-lighting in this promotion clip, many still consider this effort from Sheraton Hotels to be the best example of Microsoft Surface in action.

The reason? It combines all the concierge facilities that a typical hotel would include offline (at a desk, in other words) into a single interactive application.

Developers and Surface engineers in the UK and North America agree that very few applications in any vertical market have come close to reproducing this as yet.

Perhaps the worrying conclusion from that is the fact that the Sheraton app was built almost 18 months ago and, as yet, nobody has taken it on further.

Nevertheless, TravelTainment’s Surface app for travel agents, revealed here yesterday, might give it a run for its money, at least in terms of integration with an offiline environment.

TravelTainment, the Amadeus-owned technology brand, is well known for its focus on research and development - an area of the business championed by its enthusiastic chief executive, Andrew Owen-Jones.

Add Microsoft Surface into the mix and the result is a rather exciting interesting technology prototype for travel agencies.

TravelTainment purchased a Surface table earlier this year and started developing a number of applications over the summer.

The result is an retail agency-based tool which allows customers to browse a Google Earth mashup featuring 400,000 photos of hotels and points of interest in the TravelTainment system.

Customers can select individual properties to learn more about availability and facilities.

Once a product is selected the Surface table sends the information to the agent’s desktop computer to finalise the details.

Owen-Jones says the table has the ability to “change the way people look and book travel in hte retail environment”.