Erik Blachford, the second CEO of Expedia joins Gregg Brockway, founder of Hotwire and Tripit, and Brad Gerstner, founder of Altimeter Capital and Room 77 in the latest investment round.

The value of the round is not being disclosed, but is understood to be significantly less than the $13.6 million Ostrovok raised in July 2011.

That particular round also saw a string of big names decide to play in the burgeoning Russian online travel sector, including General Catalyst Partners (backer of ITA Software and Kayak) and Accel Partners (HotelTonight and others).

Others supporting the round included Peter Thiel and Founders Fund (Facebook), Niklas Zennstrom and Atomico (Skype), Mark Pincus (founder of Zynga), Esther Dyson (Yandex board member) and Fritz Demopoulos (founder of Qunar).

Among the new wrinkles is a Leaderboard, which gives a controller or department head additional information about spending and trip expenses, as well as the most efficient and spend-happy travelers.

Travel coordinators can track travel spend to date; travel spend in the books over the next month, two months and three months; and the company’s most frequent and efficient travelers, TripIt states.

The previous incarnation of TripIt for Business provided some visibility into travel spend, “but it required manual calculations,” says Thomas Marks, director of product marketing.

Launched in December 2010, TripIt for Business targets companies with 25 to 500 employees with lightly managed business travel programs.

Among other features of TripIt for Business, travel coordinators can track a company’s travel spend to date; the amount of travel on the books over the next 90 days; and most frequent and efficient travelers.

The new features don’t require a fee, but come as part of the premium TripIt for Business service, a spokesman says. All other non-premium TripIt for Business users get the rest of the Leaderboard functionality, which is free.

The itinerary management service, owned by Concur, handled users’ trip plans to the tune of more than 5 billion miles in 2011.

And, that would be the equivalent — sorry, no rewards miles offered — of a trip to Pluto (the planet), TripIt says.

Here’s a TripIt infographic detailing its users’ cumulative sojourn:

Meanwhile, separately, TripAdvisor chimed in with some year-end statistics, as well.

TripAdvisor’s happiest reviewers in 2011 were travelers to Russia, who gave ratings of 4.2 out of 5, on average.

The “chattiest travelers” on TripAdvisor in 2011 were those from the UK, who submitted 223 million words in reviews.

And, that would translate to about 400 copies of War and Peace, TripAdvisor says.

Holy Tolstoy.

The least succinct reviewer on TripAdvisor in 2011 was hrrmph of Las Vegas, who wrote a 9,166-word review of Kandholhu Island Resort & Spa, TripAdvisor says. Under the headline, “Best snorkeling trip I’ve been on,” hrrmph rated the experience 5 out of 5.

Enough said.

Meanwhile, MilanAAP of Madrid, Spain, was the most prolific reviewer in terms of points of interest, having penned reviews of 113 locales in 11 countries, TripAdvisor says.

Thus, at both TripIt and TripAdvisor, the statistics were off the charts — because users weren’t static.

Note: Carousel photo courtesy of Shutterstock

A unit of Concur, TripIt now offers free and paid apps available on Kindle Fire and in Amazon’s Appstore for Android.

The free app contains advertising and the paid app, available for $3.99 per download, offers TripIt’s itinerary management service without advertisements cluttering up the works.

With tablets all the rage, TripIt’s new Kindle Fire and Android apps join earlier travel-related Android entries from Kayak, FlightTrack Pro, Yelp and others in the Amazon app store.

Meanwhile, the Brussels-based Global Videoconferencing Network and TripIt have completed some integration work.

TripIt now recognizes travelers’ GVN videoconferencing appointments when they email their confirmations to TripIt.

This is the first time that TripIt has recognized videoconferencing virtual-meet-ups as part of its travel-itinerary organizing.

“Currently it is working via the email confirmation, which allows our customers to visualize their virtual face-to-face meetings integrated with all their other ‘travel’ information,” says Glenn Wastyn, CEO of GVN. “We are also working on applying the TripIt button on our website so this happens directly without having to send the email.”

Wastyn says GVN’s telepresence services are available through online booking tools, travel agencies and hotels.

Videoconferencing is certainly beginning to attract the eye of others in the industry, with Sabre recently launching a global reservation system.

Meanwhile, top Amadeus consultant Brian Beard last week outlined why videoconferencing will not kill business travel.

Sabre says these new features, slated to be introduced starting in the first quarter of 2012, would enable leisure and GetThere corporate customers to shop and book travel, access their travel itineraries, contact their travel agents by email or calling with “one-click” functionality from their smartphones, and view messaging from their agency or corporation.

In addition, employees working for GetThere corporate customers would be able to make air and hotel bookings within corporate policy, and access expense reporting and trip eInvoices, Sabre says.

From a travel agency standpoint, TripCase would recognize trips imported from travel agencies, who would receive booking credits, Sabre says.

Taking a cue from Sabre’s longtime itinerary information and agency marketing service, Sabre Virtually There, clients would receive agency-branded confirmation emails.

“Our global research of all traveler types shows travelers are demanding increasing levels of personalization, convenience and functionality from their mobile devices,” says John Samuel, senior vice president of Sabre Studios, which developed TripCase, and Traveler Solutions. “The data tell us that travelers increasingly mix business and leisure trips. As such, TripCase provides travelers the ability to do so by allowing attractions, business meetings and restaurant reservations in their itineraries.”

Samuel argues that TripCase is “smart” and will help agents anticipate travelers’ needs.

“Agents can also use TripCase to proactively respond to anticipated requests like a flight change from a missed connection, often before the traveler has requested it,” he says.

In a presentation at Sabre headquarters several weeks ago, Samuel sought to differentiate TripCase from its more successful rival TripIt, which is now owned by Concur.

Samuel said TripIt is more dependent on receiving travelers’ emailed confirmations while TripCase can sync updates from agency bookings made in the Sabre GDS.

Au contraire, says a TripIt spokeswoman.

“Concur is capable of automatically synchronizing any trip — booked traditionally through the travel management company or online through Concur Travel — booked in any of the six GDSs we support, including Sabre, with TripIt,” the spokeswoman for TripIt says. “There is no emailing of itineraries required. This was launched in May 2011.”

Meanwhile, Samuel said, TripCase focuses on “anticipating, as much as possible, travelers’ needs” during the trip as opposed to organizing itinerary information up-front.

TripCase intends to message travelers with information about baggage claim and policy reminders, for example, under the assumption that people are more receptive to such information when traveling.

“You’re are a little more of a sponge for travel information” during the trip, Samuel said.

Travelers can expect more messaging from TripCase partners, as well, Samuel said.

Users of the rival TripIt Pro premium service also get “baggage claim updates and flight delays and have for some time,” the TripIt spokeswoman says.

The “Wait” was due to slow dial-up lines, clogged service provider servers, and let-it-all-out heavy graphic/flash websites.

In 2011, the same label could be refreshed for mobile apps, in particular travel mobile apps. In part because of similar network speed reasons, but also because of wrong decisions in app design.

Here’s a summary of the most common problems with mobile travel apps today:

1. Assuming always-on data connection.

It’s not always on. Full stop.

Because it’s mobile, users constantly lose coverage: metro/tube stations, inner buildings, car parkings, cathedrals (yes), rural areas.

And obviously, when it comes to traveling abroad, roaming forces data networks off for most users. Also let’s not forget in-flight situations, where data is off and you’d still need to access data in your apps.

The fact is that as soon as coverage is lost, some apps stop working.

I’m not talking about features which obviously need remote access, like checking live availability, or bookings: even simple static data or previously downloaded items disappear.

Case in point with the Eurostar or the AirFrance apps. No connection? The apps are virtually dead. Even the phone number list, which might be the only way to get in touch with the airline in case of problems abroad, is not accessible.

The return mobile boarding pass so efficiently downloaded before departure? Gone, right when you need it to board the train back home.

Good cases: American Airlines and Delta apps at least provide a simple static tap-to-call contact screen, to get in touch even if there’s no connection.

Don’t assume always-on, build standalone apps with good caching.

2. Assuming high speed network access.

Despite what you can read on theoretical data speeds, truth is mobile bandwidth is far from fast and predictable.

Tons of factors can influence the actual speed, such as number of people in the area, architectural structures of nearby buildings, weather conditions, and even the position of the hand on the device.

It’s a good thing that our phones can transmit faster, but if everyone wants to transmit at the same time in a busy area, no one gets enough bandwidth and we must all keep retrying until everyone else is silent.

Take for example small femtocells used in underground metro stations. These can typically accept two concurrent connections. That does not mean that only 2 people can use the network, because statistically each device will just need access for a few tens of seconds.

However, with 100 devices in the approaching train all trying to connect at the same time, and 100 other devices on the platform, things start getting very busy.

Whether the app pulls data from the network, or you have a mobile optimised web site, keep data transfer very compact. It’s really the size that matters.

Don’t use a big CSS with loads of effects and scripts that might be used only once. Don’t build big XML APIs with tons of data “just in case” (forget SOAP, go REST). Cache everything you can to avoid reloading the same data multiple times.

3. UX design too small and packed.

Some designers seem to forget that a finger is a finger. Every action button or dropdown list should be not only large enough that it can be hit with reasonable success, but also spaced away from other active items to avoid tapping the wrong one.

Selecting items in predictive search lists can be difficult if the results are too small and squeezed one next to the other.

There seem to be some design legacy from older WAP/text based sites, where we used to scroll from (small) item to (small) item just with the phone up/down buttons, or even with the dial pad, but we’re now in the smartphone era.

Forms can reveal huge problems.

• Each field should be easily tappable without touching nearby fields;
• Remember the virtual keyboard will open up filling half of the screen, make sure the rest of the form and in particular the submit buttons still remain accessible!
• Moving the device from portrait to landscape mode can mess up the layout big time, and what was easy to tap in a mode might become weird in the other mode: test in both scenarios.
• Calendars… make them full screen, simple, with large arrows to move from month to month. Make the number big. As with usual localizations, some countries start the week on Sundays and others on Mondays. If you can’t make it dynamic, at least make sure the Saturday and Sunday columns have a very different background color to limit risk of confusion.

Test your app using leather gloves to make sure it works for everyone.

4. Poor data synchronization with the cloud.

Some apps seem to require a login every time they need to be used, and expect to have data connection for login verification every time.

For example the AA app loses the session if there is a loss of data connection, hence all stored trips and boarding passes disappear until the next succesful login – which requires data connection.

This approach finds some rationale with data privacy, but it does not meet expectations. If I download an item to my mobile to have it accessible on the road, I need to have it accessible in all situations.

Take for example, TripIt and other itinerary management apps: they are born mobile, and are handling this well.

You install and register your account once, and then forget it. Every plan you send by email will appear automatically in your device.

Every trip you add or remove manually on the web is then perfectly synchronized with the app. You can simply trust that your itinerary app will always have all the useful data you need on your trip.

5. Requesting too many permissions.

We are getting used to being able to happily install any app, without checking who is the developer and the actual permissions we grant to access our phone data and functions.

But sometimes the requests are very surprising.

Why does TripCase need the address to my whole address book? Why does Expedia need access to my phone (including the list of numbers I call, apparently)? Orbitz doesn’t, for example.

I believe in the future users will get wary of malicious apps and will learn to pay more attention to permissions.

In social, an empirical rule for Facebook apps is that every additional permission requested decreases the app installation rate by 2-3%. We will probably get into something similar with mobile.

+1 (Android specific bonus) App cannot be moved to SD card.

This is a legacy problem for Android, probably the only serious architectural problem, with long term consequences.

Internal phone memory for many mid-range smartphones is only 128 or 256 MB. It’s small, and it fills up quickly. Many native apps like Google Maps, Contacts database or Flash already eat up a good chunk of the internal memory.

Since Froyo 2.2, apps can be moved to an external SD card of potentially any size, thus freeing up the internal storage. However, app developers must include the ability for their apps to be moved to the SD card.

Many don’t.

If a travel app cannot be moved to the SD card, it will have to fight for space in the small internal memory and it will only be kept if it’s really, really useful.

Expedia Hotels by Mobiata is 3.8 MB and cannot be moved to the SD card. Orbitz is 2.5 MB and cannot be moved to the SD card. Sooner or later, one will have to go.

Please, please, please make sure your Android apps can be moved to the SD card.

Southwest hopes to be able to code share with AirTran — exchanging passengers and bags in a single itinerary and fare — by the first half of 2012, officials say.

Southwest’s current internal reservations system is a hybrid TPF solution, including programming capabilities from Sabre and using HP for data center services.  And AirTran uses a Navitaire platform for its reservations system.

Southwest officials have said that Amadeus and Sabre are on a short-list of candidates to provide the airline with a new reservations system when it gets around to making a decision.

Speaking during Southwest’s third quarter earnings call yesterday, CEO Gary Kelly talked about the code-share challenge. Kelly said:

We don’t have classic code-share technology in our system. Importantly, neither does AirTran. And, so that’s why we are leading you that way, that we’re constructing that technology to enable the exchange of passengers and bags, and therefore [we] expect to be in place by the first half of next year.

Kelly added that the code-sharing would include AirTran domestic and international flights.

Given Southwest’s ties with Sabre, it wouldn’t be surprising if Sabre was working with the airline on the code-share capability.

In other news, Southwest confirmed that TripIt and Traxo were among the mileage trackers that it sent cease and desist letters.

Southwest has been cracking down on such sites.

“We have asked them to discontinue to protect the security of our [RapidReward] members data (date of birth, credit card etc.) We have no way to ensure sufficient data security for third party sites,” says Brandy King, Southwest spokeswoman.

King says the airline’s legal department is overseeing discussions with the third party sites and she is not aware of any websites still tracking RapidRewards accounts without authorization.

Meanwhile, Southwest has recently been offering vouchers on Groupon Getaways with Expedia for discounts on some of the airline’s Wanna Get Away flights.

On certain Portland-Los Angeles roundtrips, for example, Groupon users could pay $10 for a Groupon voucher for a $40 discount on the airline’s fares.

Groupon Getaways is powered by Expedia and, of course, Southwest’s flights are not available on Expedia.

Travelers purchasing the Southwest Groupon can’t book the flight on Groupon or Expedia, but have to book it on Southwest.com, where they will get the voucher credit.

“Our participation in the Groupon offers is part of our continuing effort to explore the online space and tools — reaching our customers on the channels they are utilizing,” King says.

On their respective websites, both Traxo and AwardWallet imply that Southwest’s no-tracking policy is hypocritical, given the airline’s self-portrait: “We like to think of ourselves as a Customer Service Company that happens to fly airlines.”

Traxo and AwardWallet provide contact information for Southwest and both ask consumers to gently ask Southwest to enable the restoration of RapidRewards points’ tracking on their sites.

The development occurs as The Wall Street Journal’s Scott McCartney reports that Southwest and American Airlines over the last year have sent cease and desist letters to various mileage and points’ tracking sites, demanding that they halt retrieving such data from the airline websites.

These two airlines traditionally have been the most aggressive in the US in taking steps to protect what they view as their intellectual property.

Consumers generally provide loyalty program tracking sites with their account numbers and passwords and then the sites automatically update changes to program tallies on their respective websites so travelers can easily access all their accounts in one place.

But, according to The Wall Street Journal story, Southwest argues that the tracking sites pose a security risk to passenger information and American Airlines’ objects to AA.com getting scraped for data.

And, to compound matters, many airlines argue that mileage and points account information actually belongs to airlines and not to travelers, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Meanwhile, in a quick survey, Traxo, TripIt, AwardWallet, MileWise and GoMiles all were still automatically tracking American Airlines AAdvantage miles, but none were doing so for Southwest RapidRewards.

Some of these sites, though, enable members to manually post their Southwest RapidRewards points.

A spokesman for American Airlines, citing “pending legal matters,” declined to detail which companies received cease and desist letters or complied or didn’t comply.

Without providing specifics, Michael Komarnitsky, CEO of GoMiles.com, says the company is “comfortable with our current relationship with Southwest and American airlines.”

Komarnitsky argues that GoMiles “delivers a strong value proposition to operators — driving up user engagement for their loyalty programs, driving user transactions in the form of promotion signups, points-based redemption and cash-based redemption, and encourage excitement about loyalty programs overall.”

Meanwhile, Andres Fabris,  co-founder and CEO of Traxo, confirms the company received a cease and desist letter from Southwest “and took action.”

A number of these companies are known to have negotiated or are negotiating data rights agreements with American Airlines.

Not a single session, nor keynote, ended without mentioning these topics several times.

Itinerary management apps, in particular, have been closely scrutinized as they become increasingly popular among business travellers.

Travel managers were spotted comparing TripIt, TripCase and Wipolo to their peers during coffee breaks and workshops, and WorldMate was on demo at a few TMC booths.

For many travel managers, this category of apps seems to be a completely new discovery, but the initial AH-HA moment has quickly been following by questions and concerns.

The positives:

• Travellers love these apps. And this is a huge plus for travel managers, who are spending their time advocating travel policies and corporate booking tools with often cold reaction from the larger employee base. A new technology that travellers are all happy about? Somewhere, there’s a lesson to learn.

• Less paper, less outdated information. All trip details synchronized and stored in the phone during travel, even when roaming without a data connection. Less emails and calls back and forth with travel arrangers/travel consultants. Time savings.

• Opportunity to capture expenses and trip data, even when booked outside of the travel program. This was seen as a big plus for some managers as a way to know where travellers actually are at all times in case of disruption.

• Opportunity to save money with fare drop alerts was not perceived as strong by large corporates, who have extensive fare tracking tools in place, however it can mean a lot for small businesses.

• Sharing trip details with colleagues. Useful to find colleagues on the same flights/hotels for networking, sharing taxi fees, and sharing destination tips.

The negatives:

• Huge concern with sharing confidential information to the outside world. With the ability for users to automatically share their trip details onto Facebook and LinkedIn, competitors, headhunters or investors can gain access to insightful data about company and employees activity. Big red flag for many, with potentially far reaching consequences such as serious breach of employment contract and immediate firing.

• Concerns with sharing confidential travel program data. It was realized that by forwarding booking confirmation emails to a third party, employees are revealing tons of data: preferred suppliers, TMC information, negotiated rates, maybe even other employees personal names, e-mails and job titles, reasons for travel, customer details and more. One travel manager was particularly shocked to imagine that Concur could theoretically access incredibly precious intelligence about any corporate account whose employees use TripIt.

• Worries with policy adherence. For some travel managers, the ability to book travel outside of the corporate program through the in-app suggestions (hotels, rental cars) was an issue for program compliance and employee tracking reasons.

Moves from the technology providers

Some travel managers wondered why the corporate booking tool providers are not offering such mobile apps if they are so valuable to travellers.

In fact, they are. But there seems to be a wide gap in user experience and functionality with the leading players.

• GetThere has mentioned to be working more closely with TripCase (both Sabre-owned).
• Concur/Cliqbook is obviously working with TripIt, especially stepping into the long tail unmanaged travel market.
• Amadeus’ e-Travel Management suite has mobile companion apps, integrated with the booking engine and hence including European rail and non-GDS low cost carriers.
• Busines travel agency Egencia has developed its own itinerary management app, as opposed to use third parties, to ensure complete policy control to travel managers.
• Many TMCs such as Amex use customized versions of WorldMate, integrating company policies and security requirements.

But what’s next?

It is actually quite difficult to determine, but there is a lot of buzz and excitement about mobile itinerary management.

The big news, for once, is this time it’s about something useful for the traveller, rather than the usual constant battle with reducing expenses.

Avis and TripIt, the itinerary management service, have thus streamlined the car rental booking process on Avis.com, and the company believes it became the first car rental firm to optionally import customers’ TripIt itineraries using TripIt’s open technology platform.

In a nutshell, Avis enables TripIt members to book an Avis car rental on Avis.com without entering any other information.

There is no need to enter the traveler’s name, arrival/departure date, time or locations, email address, airline name or flight number, Avis says.

Here’s how it works:

You can sign up for Avis and TripIt accounts on their respective websites, and then navigate to Avis.com/tripitservice to link the accounts.

TripIt users often email their flight and hotel confirmations to plans@tripit.com and TripIt organizes them into itineraries.

So if you visit Avis.com and authorize Avis to retrieve your current trips from TripIt, then they will be displayed on the bottom right of the Avis.com homepage and also on the Avis’ TripIt service page.

You can then just click on the upcoming trip and begin the car rental booking process without having to input travel dates or destinations.

For example, if you have an upcoming flight to Sarasota, Fla., just click on the upcoming trip and you may see the following display:

There’s no need to enter travel dates or your pickup city or airport.

And, once you’ve booked your car rental, if you have authorized Avis to do so in you Avis.com preferences, Avis will automatically transmit your car rental information to TripIt, which will place it in your TripIt itinerary, too.

“… The partnership brings to life the vision we’ve had for TripIt’s technology since the very beginning: to streamline the travel process and make life easier for travelers,” says Gregg Brockway, general manager of TripIt, which is a unit of Concur.

Avis uses  OAuth to obtain users’ authorizations to access their information from TripIt, and the TripIt API to display travelers’ itineraries on Avis.com.

“The vast majority of people typically make airline and hotel reservations first, before they reserve a rental car,” says Tom Gartland, executive vice president of sales, marketing and customer care for Avis Budget Group, parent company of Avis. “This partnership will help travelers who have completed their air and hotel arrangements and provide them with an even faster way to add an Avis rental to their trip. TripIt members will benefit from not having to remember travel dates, times or flight information, and having their rental car arrangements directly connected with their other travel plans.”

There is no cost to use the service.

We covered Wipolo in a recent TLabs Showcase and, by the look of it, something is working very well. CEO and founder Matthieu Heslouin shares the latest news and vision for their solution.

Starting with social, Wipolo has achieved a very deep Facebook integration in a number of areas – although it was necessary to play around with it for nine months to test, measure, understand and focus on how to do it.

The first step has been leveraging Facebook Connect to ease access and login into the platform, both on web and mobile.

Heslouin says:

“We did not expect this, but the fact that people are permanently logged on on FB makes the transition into Wipolo a login-less process, which is extremely important on mobile where any typo can be a roadblock and frustrate the user forever.”

The second area is with sharing itinerary and updates going on walls semi-automatically, so that friends can be kept posted about a user’s wherabouts, and interact at any time.

And Facebook has also turned out to be a huge source of data – with friends, pictures, places and events being available for enhancing the user’s experience during a trip.

“Facebook wants to replicate the platform success achieved with gaming onto other verticals, like music and travel, and is shaping the platform in new ways to appeal to these sectors.”

The Wipolo team is expected to unveil a newly revamped website later this month, with social integration pushed even further.

Another key area of development is making it easier for partners to integrate with the Wipolo itinerary management service. For example, French OTA GoVoyages (now merging with Opodo and eDreams) now offers an option to seamlessly integrate a booking with the Wipolo platform as a value-add service to users.

The vision is very ambitious. With access to a user’s trip history and preferences, Wipolo can create a “travel graph” linking a user to destinations, friends and travel providers.

This data will soon make it possible to predict the most likely travel needs, and Wipolo’s partners will be able to proactively generate relevant travel offers without the user even having to start a search.

While other itinerary management apps like TripIt, WorldMate and TripCase have focused on business travel as their target segment, Wipolo has quickly embraced social with the goal of becoming the leading leisure itinerary management solution.

Currently available in English and French, the service will soon be available in German and Spanish.

The result is concurforce, a piece of kit that is accessible from handheld devices and the web and allows frequent business travellers to manage their travel and expenses,  interact with colleagues via salesforce chatter and access itineraries via TripIt.

Concur acquired TripIt earlier this year in a deal worth up to $82 million and has since been beavering away on integration.

The idea is that road warriors will save time by having access to the travel and expense, social and sales and CRM technology all on the go thus making them more productive.

Concurforce is not expected to be available until later this year but it is another sign of the demand from the business travel sector for social tools originally associated with the leisure sector.

A study released last week from the American Red Cross showed just how reliant people have become on social media networks for news and information, especially in an emergency.

The Concur Salesforce deal is interesting in light of ongoing debates on corporate strategy on social media  as well as ongoing mobile and data security issues.

Huh?

Would this be like Expedia integrating Priceline?

Not exactly.

In addition to its itinerary management service, Traxo recently launched the Traxo Travel Score, which enables travelers to win perks based on the extent of their past trips.

So Andres Fabris, Traxo cofounder and CEO, says the company tapped into the TripIt API to access data about Traxo users’ past trips recorded by TripIt to ensure they get proper credit to build their Traxo travel scores.

Fabris says Traxo users requested that Traxo access their TripIt data to boost their scores.

Traxo also integrated Foursquare and Gowalla to help build Traxo users’ travel scores, Fabris says.

He says Traxo plans on accessing TripIt, Foursquare and Gowalla data about Traxo users’ past trips and then periodically will get select refreshes to help ensure that Traxo users’ roster of trips are kept as current as possible.

Fabris notes that it is advantageous for Traxo to tap into data from competitor TripIt, which Traxo referred to as a “leading trip information provider” in an email to customers, because TripIt has a “long tail of providers,” touching travel segments such as cruise, rail and boutique hotels, which Traxo doesn’t cover.

TripIt has a much larger footprint with supppliers than Traxo, Fabris concedes.

Traxo and TripIt have somewhat different ways of gathering users’ trip information to build their itineraries.

TripIt users often email their confirmations to TripIt and Traxo scrapes users’ accounts on supplier sites to gather the data.

Fabris doesn’t express any acute concern about Traxo mining data from its much larger rival, TripIt, which has 3 million customers and is growing.

Fabris paints Traxo as more leisure- and social-oriented than TripIt or, as he puts it, an iPhone to TripIt’s more business-travel-oriented Blackberry.

TripIt, of course, has iPhone and iPad apps, 1 million mobile customers (not all of whom are on Blackberrys) and might disagree with Fabris’s assessment of the two companies’ differentiation.

Another aspect of the TripIt, Gowalla and Foursquare integration is that Traxo users will be getting a much richer accounting of their past itineraries as they now will be filled in with check-ins at restaurants and activities etc.

Calling this aspect of Traxo’s service “unique,” Fabris says the integration means Traxo users’ itineraries will includes flights, hotel stays, car rentals, cruises, and rail excursions, as well as check-ins.

All is possible when a competitor integrates a competitor”s magical API.

Those numbers come from Concur chairman and CEO Steve Singh, who says TripIt had 2 million users when acquired and is on track to double that number to 4 million customers by the end of 2011.

Singh says TripIt added 500,000 users in the first three months of 2011 and another 500,000 by the end of June, reaching the 3 million mark.

Parsing the numbers, one in three TripIt users use the service at least part of the time on their mobile devices.

Singh says Concur will make a big push to get TripIt to 10 million users and once TripIt reaches that level, then the service can be “monetized in very interesting ways.”

“And while the revenue contribution from TripIt remains very modest in fiscal ’11, we expect it to become a more meaningful contributor to revenue in fiscal 2013 and beyond,” Singh says.

TripIt, along with Concur’s Breeze expense management platform, enables Concur to target the unmanaged business travel market, although Singh notes that plenty of road warriors in managed travel programs use TripIt, as well.

TripIt recently invested $5 million in Yapta and plans to integrate its airfare tracking and refund service into TripIt Pro, a subscription service.

“Our objective in both products [TripIt and TripIt Pro] is to keep driving more and more functionality into those services to make it invaluable and indispensable to any business traveler,” Singh says.

Toward that goal, TripIt is off to a pretty good start.

Singh’s comments came during Concur’s fiscal third quarter 2011 earnings call.

For Concur’s fiscal third quarter, which ended June 30, Concur’s net income fell 37.6% to $2.26 million on $89.4 milliion in revenue, a 19.3% hike.

The TripIt survey, which elicited more than 3,100 completed online surveys from its user base in late April and early May, found that iPad ownership among road warrior respondents was 51 percent compared with 40 percent for the Kindle.

However the relative popularity of the iPad tablet versus e-Reader may be somewhat skewed because TripIt notes that some 75 percent of survey respondents were men who were married or cohabitating.

But, the relative parity may not last long.

Some 35% of respondents indicated they intend to purchase an iPad while just 15% plan on buying a Kindle, the survey found.

When it comes to mobile devices, 96 percent of survey participants indicated they own at least one smartphone and 23 percent stated they own multiple smartphones.

And, the Blackberry, which certainly was the smartphone of choice for business travelers in a not-too-distant bygone era, has slipped to a 17% share of respondents, the survey found. The iPhone (66 percent) was the top smartphone choice, followed by Android (25 percent).

So, how do road warriors use their smartphones? Here’s the breakdown, according to the TripIt survey:

• Email (96 percent)

• Web browsing (63 percent)

• Conducting business (54 percent)

• Social networking (40 percent)

And the immediate beneficiary is Concur unit TripIt as users of its premium TripIt Pro service, which is geared toward business travelers, will be able to access the Yapta airfare tracking and price assurance services. With Yapta, users can recieve partial refunds from U.S. airlines when the fare drops after a booking.

Yapta had already powered flight-tracking for TripIt’s free service, and now this will be extended to TripIt Pro when the two parties integrate the service.

And, the Yapta-Concur alliance benefiting TripIt is just the beginning of the partnership, the companies say, with both parties looking to integrate Yapta’s service further into Concur’s travel management products.

The companies say the alliance is a natural given Concur’s focus on more efficient travel spend.

For Yapta, the partnership will punctuate its push into being a provider of business travel services, says Jeff Pecor, a Yapta spokesman.

Concur has been on an investment drive in 2011.

In January, Concur acquired TripIt in a deal worth up to $120 million, and in April Concur invested $40 million in India online travel agency Cleartrip.

And, now Concur’s latest move is a $5 million investment in Yapta.

Many of us have become well-accustomed to using our tech gadgets around the house, in our city or across the country.

Once you step foot into another nation, however, the game immediately changes. Data roaming charges, different electrical outlets, power outages and theft complicate the process for even the savviest of travelers.

We have to quickly learn to use our smartphones outside of our comfort zone. So, here are five mobile apps that will come in handy when you find yourself across the border:

1. FindMyiPhome app

You just had a Hangover II style night in Bangkok when you woke up next to a monkey. After you put the pieces of your night back together, you realize something is missing… the phone.

All the apps in the world are useless when your phone is under the table at some Thai club. This app can be a life-saver when your lifeline in missing.

Don’t panic, head to the nearest internet café and sign in to your iTunes account from another computer. You’ll see your device’s exact location on a map and you can choose to have it display a message, play a sound, remotely lock, or wipe data permanently.

2. Skype app

Nothing is more deflating than returning from a great trip to a costly wireless bill. A great way to save on long distance calls is using the Skype app while on wifi.

This is a great alternative to buying a cheap phone with phone cards or (eek!) testing your mobile carriers roaming charges. No need to memorize the international calling code for Tanzania to call Mom, it’s all right there.

Furthermore, Skype for iPhone taps into your contact list and automatically keys in the corresponding country code so you don’t have to. Big money saver!

How is that for a back-up plan?

3. Hotelsbyme or Airbnb apps

Plans don’t always go off without a hitch. That “oceanfront villa” you booked in Costa Rica is actually a back-alley shack in the ‘hood with rodents and no electricity – so it’s time for Plan B.

Hotelsbyme is a great option to book a room based on location. It’s easy to use and provides great filters to sift through options by price, location, rating, etc.

If you are more adventurous, suggest renting a living space on Airbnb. The app makes is easy to rent apartments, lofts, villas, and more. It’s a great way to see a new place more like a local, less like a tourist.

4. Google Translate app

The PC version of Google Translate is every beginner Spanish student’s best friend. The mobile app is a practical real-world tool on-the-go.

You are stuck at a bazaar and don’t know how to say clock in Turkish. When body language and charades don’t do the trick, you fire up the Google Translate App. Just hold the translated word up to a merchant to read.

For many languages, the app can even speak the translated words for you. You save time and stress when nothing gets lost in translation.

5. Kayak’s iPhone app

Similar service to TripIt, I prefer the Kayak “My Trips” tool. Just forward your booking confirmations to Kayak for flights, lodging, ferries, rental cars, and more.

The app neatly organizes the jumbled mess into an easy to read log of each leg of your trip. The best part?

“My Trips” saves the original email so you can access it in a pinch if you happen to stray from wifi. Never again do you need to print out another flight confirmation to Rio or arrival email for that villa you rented in Argentina.

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

My name is Matthieu Heslouin. I am co-founder and CEO of Wipolo. I am 40 years old, graduated from ESSEC business school in 1995 and worked 12 years in the IT industry for large US companies before starting Wipolo. I am passionate about business and technology and, of course, travel.

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

Wipolo is a self-financed company. Founders invested Euro 900,000 in the project.

What problem are you trying to solve?

Connecting my travels in one place regardless of where I booked.  Avoid having my travel life split by emails, trip books and photo albums.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Wipolo is a web and mobile platform (iPhone, Android, WP7, BB, Bada). Travellers create their Wipolo with a valid email address or through a Facebook connect and they may centralize all their trips details.

Wipolo is easy of use since you just need to forward your booking confirmation emails to upload them on the platform.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

Frequent travellers because we learned a lot from them in terms of the trip structure. It also helped us to design the trip management system and, then, we could create the social layer.

We believe this is the best way.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

We observed our friends and families.

First of all, they had trouble managing their upcoming trip details  (especially printed documents and emails) and keeping track of their past trips.

Secondly, they all were sharing their trip history and plans or passport contents when they meet with friends during dinners or casual discussions.

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

Wipolo is absolutely free. Business model is to provide the best-personalized travel and local deals to users based on the travel profile.

Business users may subscribe to Wipolo pro service to receive notifications and alerts on their mobile before and during their trips.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Strong technical team
• Advisory board with travel and social network experience
• Technical platform
• Starting the service in Europe because of travel complexity (especially for trains and hotels)

Weaknesses:

• Building a tech platform is cash consuming

Opportunities:

• Facebook growth
• Partnerships with large travel companies who want to optimize cross-selling
• Growth of mobile usage in travel

Threats:

• Complexity of platform versus keeping the service very simple for the user

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

First VC we met, because it is difficult for them to think we can do cross selling while we are positioned as a post booking service.

We believe that what’s the most important is building the traveller profile, ensuring there will be opportunities to integrate local deals. For instance: If Wipolo knows your flight, we may propose a hotel, or if Wipolo knows your favourite destination we will offer general and relevant deals.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

We have a 20x ratio on the number of web visitors without any marketing. And now that we have a full Facebook integration (last two week) we expect to exceed it in 2012.

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

Concur integrated TripIt for itinerary management. Business travelers can choose to sync their Concur travel plans with their TripIt account and access a consolidated  itinerary from their smartphones or online, Concur says.

In addition to reservations for air, car and hotel, the TripIt itinerary also can display information about dining, meetings and activities, Concur says.

Concur acquired TripIt in January and previously outlined its integration plans.

In other tech changes, Concur rolled out Travel Expense, a solution which enables travelers to request authorization for trips and expenses prior to the trip.

“Now inforrmation flows freely between a user’s travel request, online booking session, travel agent and an expense report,” Concur says.

And, Concur expanded its rail content in the U.K., adding access to thetrainline.com to the Concur booking tool. Amtrak, Deutsche Bahn, SNCF and VIA rail already were accessible through the booking tool, which enables travelers to compair air and rail choices from a single screen.

And, in other developments, Carlson Wagonlit Travel, in partnership with Rearden Commerce,  began to pilot a mobile solution, CWT To Go, on Blackberrys in June in the U.S.

CWT To Go enables users to access their travel itineraries from their mobile devices and check flight status, view alternate flights, choose restaurants and access weather information.

With the pilot on Blackberrys slated to get going in June, CWT says a global rollout of CWT To Go will begin in August on Blackberry, iPhone and Android platforms.

It’s interesting to note that Concur and Carlson Wagonlit have embarked on their mobile paths with different strategies: Concur acquired TripIt and Carlson Wagonlit has chosen the partnership route with Rearden.

The annual Portrait of American Travelers study from marketing and brand intelligence agency YPartnership uncovered the perhaps shocking statistic despite tablets being the “latest rage” in mobile computing circles.

The findings appear to be in complete contrast to a similar study by trip management company TripIt, which found 70% of members have or want to own an iPad device.

YPartnership’s survey (annually talks to 2,500 US adults with at least one overnight trip in previous 12 months) did shed some light on the activities of the 7% that do actually access the web via a tablet device.

Researching in-destination services such as restaurants and things to do, inevitably, came out on top with 46%, while travel search featured only shortly behind with 42%.

Other notable activities included:

• Air or hotel booking – 37%
• Researching reviews – 35%
• Navigating a destination using GPS – 27%
• Visitor guides – 26%
• Sharing information and images – 24%
• Check-in services (FourSquare etc) – 18%

YPartnerships says one of the trends to note is that the popularity of activities has a tendency to mirror those of travellers accessing the web via smartphones.