Oxford, UK-based meta site Zoombu is almost ready to reveal all to the wider world with the launch of an overhauled micro-version of the main site for skiiers.... Read More

US TV executives will be delighted that the new and final season of trippy drama Lost is getting so much attention ahead of its premiere next week.... Read More

Kayak quietly introduced its Private Sale exclusive hotel deals, where Kayak, in an apparent travel-metasearch first, collects the booking and credit-card details from the consumer.... Read More

This upcoming weekend will be a really big one for JetBlue because it expects a degree of disruption and delays as it transitions its internal reservations systems from Navitaire to SabreSonic Customer Sales & Service.... Read More

One of the most glaring omissions from the coverage of the hotel partnership between eBay and Octopus Travel in recent weeks is how far the auction giant is willing to go in travel.... Read More

Little things -- like finally getting your waylaid luggage -- mean a lot and Twitter CEO Evan Williams sounded almost ecstatic this morning when his bags, checked in on a United Airlines flight from JFK to Frankfurt, finally found their way to his final destination in Zurich 42 hours late. Williams, in Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum, issued the following tweet this morning: Luggage arrived! 42 hours later. Never been so happy to see a suitcase. (Thanks, @unitedairlines, Swiss Air, and anyone else involved.) In tweets that were undoubtedly duly noted with trepidation in United's boardrooms, the CEO of the impactful social-media site tipped off the twitterati to his plight starting on Tuesday morning. Williams tweeted: "Aaaaand now we're in Zurich, but our luggage is not."... Read More

I am completely stumped with what ABTA, the UK official travel body that represents the interests of a large proportion of the UK travel industry is up to. Seems they want to regulate airline websites in a way I don't understand at all. Now I admit I don't understand what they are doing. Last week when I wrote about it I got back-channel comments saying it was perfectly obvious what they were doing and I shouldn't be writing about if it I was confused.... Read More

The New York Attorney General's Office says it is investigating and subpoenaed 22 online retailers -- including Priceline, Expedia, Hotwire, Travelocity and Orbitz -- for links to discount clubs which allegedly deceptively collect unauthorized fees from consumers. New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo says the investigation found that retailers were linking to discount programs offered by Webloyalty, Affinion/Trilegiant and Vertrue, all of which allegedly buried in fine print the fact that consumers were authorizing the transfer of their credit or debit account information from the retailer to the discount club. The discount club then took "small and recurring charges" from the unwitting consumers, the attorney general's office says. Incidentally, Trilegiant formerly was part of Cendant. All of the online travel agencies subpoenaed say they are cooperating with the Attorney General's investigation, but apparently are adopting varying approaches to the issue.... Read More

Today's long awaited and widely speculated announcement from Apple to launch its new tablet-style iPad product has set the tech world's tongues wagging furiously. It will probably be also causing a few furrowed brows in the higher echelons of Google and Microsoft, given how irritatingly successful Apple appears to be at marketing almost everything it produces. Indeed, Amazon and those behind its Kindle product are probably shifting extremely nervously in the seats.... Read More

United Airlines and AirTran Airways released their fourth quarter 2009 financial results and there were a few tech items immersed in all of the news. United, which narrowed its loss to $240 million for the quarter, revealed that increases in fees for first and second bags, ticketing and reservations changes accounted for a 0.4 percentage point uptick in PRASM (passenger revenue per available seat mile) in the fourth quarter. However, overall PRASM declined 5.2% in the quarter. United recently named Thomas O'Toole as its chief marketing officer. Part of O'Toole's responsibilities will be to further develop the airline's mechandising strategy, which includes bag fees and Economy Plus seating.... Read More

TripAdvisor launched its flight metasearch engine almost a year ago to the day in the US, triggering much chattering in the industry as to whether it could successfully integrate it into its existing product. A UK version was finally launched in October 2009 in what was a frenetic period for US-based engines with Travelzoo's Fly.com also unveiling its version for the Brits almost simultaneously. Officials refuse to give away any hard data around the product, only to say they are "very happy" with progress so far and add that 2010 will be "strong" overall for TripAdvisor Flights.... Read More

Fresh from launching a service to allow users to get detailed search results based on their physical location instead of just nearest airport, Travelfusion has also integrated a mapping device. The UK-based consumer-facing and B2B metasearch engine now allows users to select any location on a Google map for the From and To fields of a trip. The map automatically works out the postcodes/zipcodes and then returns results based on the point-to-point parameters.... Read More

From RFID and climate control to HDTV and the ultimate, ever-changing room with a view, what are the best pieces of technology every hotel room should have?... Read More

South East Asian travel content site TravelFish has unveiled its new iPhone app for the Angkor region of Cambodia and launched a thinly veiled attack on bigger travel publishers. The app features guides, recommendations, tours and images for the historic Khymer temple site near Siem Reap and is available from the iTunes appstore. But with a plethora of iPhone travel content apps launching in the store almost on a daily basis, TravelFish managing director Stuart McDonald says publishers need to think carefully about the pros and cons of investing in products.... Read More

Earth.org is beginning a push to hit mainstream audiences as it looks to capture the eyeballs of travellers seeking out new travel-related content. The fledgling site reckons it will "create a reliable travel guide written by you and like-minded travelers from all over the world". On the one hand Earth.org works on the same principle as the well-established WikiTravel system where users add content about destinations and attractions and the wider community edits, enhances or removes.... Read More