It is good to remind ourselves occasionally about what makes technology tick – humans, and not the other way round. That thought came to me in Hong Kong last week, listening to the Honourable Sir Michael Kadoorie, chairman of Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels, when he accepted his Lifetime Achievement Award at a hotel investment conference. Here’s a man who knows what it’s like to run a business long-term, and one that is all about family and relationships.... Read More

Travel-planning website TravelMuse is looking for some inspiration and more monetization as it promotes CFO Russ Lemelin to CEO and assigns co-founder and CEO Kevin Fliess to a board position. In separate interviews, both Lemelin and Fliess say Fliess several months ago broached the subject to the board of making a change to get the company, launched in beta in September 2008, to profitability. I haven't see any board minutes so I can't say whether or not this is merely well-coordinated spin.... Read More

If you are tired of the lack of differentiation that seems to permeate travel start-ups from time to time, then you might appreciate New York City-based Jetsetter, which started a beta test last week. Jetsetter's founder and CEO is Drew Patterson, a former vice president of marketing at Kayak, who presumably knows a thing or two about metasearch and the advertising/media business. But Jetsetter is a hotel-booking website that uses the merchant model and has no metasearch or media business. In fact, Patterson, who generally has great things to say about Kayak, says Jetsetter works with luxury hotel partners and avoids the alleged pifalls of websites like Kayak and DealBase, where he says advertisers offer low lead-in prices with the aim of securing higher-priced conversions.... Read More

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to overcome is that of high expectations. YouTube et al have secured a place in the hearts of marketers and other brand specialists by virtue of their ease of use and ability to create a buzz around a product or initiative with often no effort whatsoever. But every eureka moment of enthusiasm should be tempered with remembering some of the basics.... Read More

News last week that TUI Travel is launching its own user review and recommendation site across mainland Europe indicates yet again that large travel companies are keen to get their hands on unique content. TUI's new Cheqqer service is interesting in that it is planning a two-tiered approach to getting content - starting from the bottom up in terms of attracting new reviews to the platform and also aggregating reviews from TUI's myriad of brands. Nothing wrong with that, except that two years is a long time in the world of user generated content and those with longish memories will recall how TUI's Thomson division bought the well regarded (and well-SEOed!) Holidays Uncovered site in September 2007.... Read More

The Times reported that Amadeus and Travelport, which operate three of the four major global distribution systems, have abandoned merger talks and will pursue separate public offerings in Madrid and London, respectively, in the interim. Hey, the two travel distribution powerhouses, owned by private equity companies, can always get back to their wooing later, The Times reports. Asked about the report, Travelport GDS spokeswoman Jill Brenner says: "We never comment on market rumor or speculation." In my decade of writing about travel distribution, perhaps there has been no greater sport than speculating about GDS mergers, but I am not buying this one.... Read More

Most popular travel websites in the UK for the week ending October 17 2009. Data includes Top Ten travel search terms and the Top Ten Agency, Airline and Destination/Accommodation sites.... Read More

Sabre has been marketing cubeless, a social networking platform and knowledge base, to corporations inside and outside the travel industry, but now, it turns out, chairman and CEO Sam Gilliland has abandoned the corner office for a cube. OK, no real connection between cubeless and Gilliland's cube decision other than the fact that both symbolize a sort of opening up and a laudable democratization of sorts. And, I wonder how Gilliland's cubemates would have reacted to a Dallas Morning News interview over the weekend and, specifically, to the following spin about Sabre's loss of its American Airlines' hosting contract to HP.... Read More

There is clearly something in the air in GDSland, perhaps fuelled by the apparent green shoots of recovery appearing in the ground. Now it's the turn of Sabre to shed a small chink of light on its corporate plans for the next year - and it includes a possible invitation to the GDS IPO party also being planned by each of its rivals. This latest twist follows reports about Travelport seeking a public listing and Amadeus doing nothing at all to deny rumours of an Euro 8 billion potential floatation in Madrid.... Read More

What you missed on Tnooz this week, Sunday 11 October to Saturday 17 October 2009. Read on to see the most commented articles, every other article this week, and the most commented articles of all time...... Read More

When considering an online travel startup you tend to think about three approaches. Taking on the incumbent, creating a whole new category that you can dominate, and assuming that the market must be massive so if you only capture 1% you're doing ok. Hence a great deal of an entrepreneur's time is taken by active consideration of building or bypassing barriers to entry. So, take TripAdvisor's primary barrier to entry...... Read More

The BlueSky-Thomas Cook saga is potentially entering its final days as administrators juggle with five bids for the Intellectual Property Rights of the beleaguered company's iTour software system. Tnooz understands that although the bidding process is officially still open, administrator MCR is already evaluating the five bids on the table and is expected to make a decision "far quicker than normal", a source says. The five companies are believed to be technology shops Comtec, Traveltek, Partners Software and another unnamed tech firm, alongside Thomas Cook, as revealed earlier this week.... Read More

When the Google behemoth speaks about travel, as one official did during the company's third quarter conference call yesterday, we listen. But, all we got were more generalities and little substance about Google's intentions in the travel vertical. Jonathan Rosenberg, Google's senior vice president of product management, was discussing chrome [not the browser] toasters and Google's efforts to improve the shopping vertical. "Real estate, finance, and travel are also other areas that we're going to get quite focused on and obviously we will also continue to improve Google horizontally," Rosenberg said.... Read More

UK-based Simonseeks made a reasonably big splash in June this year when it launched, mostly because it looks better than your average review site, got a decent run with the PR, and is the brainchild of the co-founder of Moneysupermarket. Four months on and its latest initiative is to aggregate and review flight meta search providers, each of which provides a revenue stream to Simonseeks, as well as having an exclusive white label widget from another provider (currently Kayak). Confused? Probably.... Read More

Southwest Airlines gets a lot of love for its Bags Fly Free Campaign. which enables travelers to check two bags for free. Here's the Southwest marketing message: "While bag fees have become the norm amongst our competitors, we don’t believe in springing unpleasant surprises on our Customers. Staying true to our reputation as the maverick of the airline industry, this is just another way that we dare to be different." But, actually the airline is more myth-maker than maverick in some respects because it is busy strategizing about optimal ways of attracting ancillary-services revenue in a host of other areas.... Read More