Most popular travel websites in the US for the week ending December 19 2009. Data includes Top Ten travel search terms and the Top Ten Agency, Airline and Destination/Accommodation sites.... Read More

The weekend's chaotic scenes on the Eurostar service from the UK to France and Belgium need little introduction given the widespread coverage in the mainstream media. As it stands, services from London St Pancras International to Paris and Brussels are suspended as engineers attempt to work out what went wrong on Friday night and Saturday amid calls for a full investigation. There was plenty of hand-wringing over the weekend about the failure of Eurostar officials to communicate to passengers what was going on via Twitter - a perfectly acceptable but inevitably and solely Twitter-driven level of outrage curiously not seen on the same scale earlier in the week when FlyGlobespan collapsed.... Read More

Optimisation: Make sure people can find your site by ensuring your homepage is optimised for search engines. Use keywords in your title tag (the text that appears right at the top of the browser window) and in your h1 tag (the main heading of your page).... Read More

Most popular travel websites in the UK for the week ending December 19 2009. Data includes Top Ten travel search terms and the Top Ten Agency, Airline and Destination/Accommodation sites.... Read More

Let’s face it – a seat is a seat is a seat. Or is it? When you think about the motivation you have to choose one airline over another – in the past it was accepted that you would purchase a bundled product. Thus the sale of the final item required an assessment of a basket of features that came bundled with the ticket.... Read More

As revealed on Tnooz two weeks ago - although heavily denied at the time - British Airways and Amadeus have reached agreement to extend their distribution deal until 2013. Press released today, Amadeus says it has achieved a "full content" partnership with BA to give agents access to the same information that consumers going direct to BA.com would have. This includes, according to the release, "fares, schedules and inventory" for bookings will be the same as those offered through any "direct or indirect channel, distribution provider or website".... Read More

Mobile: As more and more users access web content via mobile devices, the need to develop user friendly versions for this medium will become all the more important.... Read More

The collapse of FlyGlobespan and the subsequent focus on credit card processing systems run by companies such as EClear has thrown up all manner of questions. Administrator PricewaterhouseCoopers has singled out EClear as a key third party in the whole sorry saga of the airline's financial failure amid accusations that the technology owes its around £34 million. The issue has gained extra attention when Scottish first minister Alex Salmond waded in late yesterday with a call for a full investigation.... Read More

What you missed on Tnooz this week, Sunday 13 to Saturday 19 December 2009. Read on to see the most commented articles, every other article this week, and the most commented articles of all time...... Read More

Search tools: Complex universal search panels and predictive text used by many travel websites will have a detrimental effect on the speed at which the homepage loads. If they are not implemented correctly most will probably bring up a list of results which don’t mean much to the user.... Read More

EClear, the travel technology company which ran online payment processing systems for FlyGlobespan, has agreed to talk to administrators after coming under intense pressure following the Scottish airline's collapse. PricewaterhouseCoopers says the UK-based tech firm has "confirmed their willingness" to co-operate amid reports that FlyGlobespan was owed around £35 million. Chief executive Elias Elia and other officials are still refusing to return media calls, but the company did finally release a statement:... Read More

Carnival Corp. & plc took in $193 million in profits on a whopping $3.2 billion in revenue in its fourth quarter, which ended Nov. 30, the mega cruise company reported. The profits were down from the fourth quarter of 2008, when Carnival's net income was $371 million, so during a Q & A with financial analysts, the talk turned to belt-tightening measures. Chairman and CEO Micky Arison was asked whether Carnival was planning on trimming travel agencies' commission as an efficiency measure. He said Carnival was "absolutely not" contemplating such a move.... Read More

The festive period in many countries is the calm before the storm in terms of major booking months for summer holidays in the Northern Hemisphere. This doesn't stop travel providers across the world throwing their efforts into major TV advertising campaigns to seduce wannabe travellers as they feast on their Christmas delights. These days, however, the web often has the ads weeks before its TV counterpart does. Here is a selection of some of the new ads hitting the screens this Christmas - and one or two classics.... Read More

Technology provider Discover Everywhere Mobile is pinning its hopes on a combined enthusiasm for social networks and mobile by consumers will be enough to see DMOs embrace the mobile channel. The Toronto-based company has developed a new mobile service for DMOs which it claims has moved the standard travel app beyond content search, mapping and information to an integrated social travel app based on a particular destination. The system works by allowing users to interact with other travellers through the app via Facebook and Twitter and also directly with the DMO.... Read More

A fresh report from Bloomberg that Travelport is plannning a $3.2 billion public offering in the U.K. set off speculation that the company could divest its 48% stake in Orbitz Worldwide in the process and deliver OWW to Expedia Inc. In a note to investors Dec. 18, Jake Fuller, an analyst at Soleil Securities, doesn't come down on one side or another about whether Expedia would scoop up Orbitz in tandem with a reported February 2010 Travelport IPO, but he says a potential "combo points to potential accretion in the 5%+ range" for Expedia. Fuller, who also analyzes this sort of stuff for PhoCusWright, cautions that investors likely would react negatively to such a move by Expedia because the OTA, with Orbitz in hand, would increase its risk in further exposing itself "to the low margin domestic [airline] ticket business."... Read More