A TripAdvisor deal to place its facilitated-hotel-search offering, TripAdvisor Check Rates, as well as deals from sister Expedia Inc. company BookingBuddy on Yahoo Travel expands TripAdvisor's advertising network, but can't be welcome news for Travelocity or Shermans Travel.. Travelocity powers air, car, hotels and cruises on Yahoo Travel, but has seen its stature on Yahoo Travel diminish over the years. At one point, Yahoo Travel displaced Travelocity as its default for travel search and gave priority instead to Yahoo's metasearch unit, FareChase, until Yahoo shuttered FareChase, as a non-core business, early last year.... Read More

UK ecommerce and marketing service EConsultancy joined the likes of tech uberblogger Robert Scoble recently by unfollowing enmasse around 19,000 followers of its Twitter account. The company says the move is primarily to clean up its Twitter feed (how can it realistically follow 19,000 people, it says), avoid the overwhelming number of spam DMs and a whole host of other reasons, listed here. Its existing strategy to reciprocate those that followed its tweets with a follow back has been an experiment worth making but one it has chosen to end, editor-in-chief Chris Lake says.... Read More

On the one hand there are a plethora of travel content websites, which obviously allow users to print information, while on the other there are pre-printed brochures on the shelves of offline travel agencies. The area in the middle is where the debate lies as many (probably quite rightly) believe some travel consumers still want to flick through a brochure of some kind as well browse the web. Maligned by the so-called progressives as an Old School travel industry technique for getting product into the hands of prospective buyers, holiday brochures have remained a strong feature of agency retailing.... Read More

TheHotelGuru was languishing in the widening pit of hotel content sites on the web until WorldReviewer came along with a plan to reinvigorate it as part of a wider reorganisation of its hotel strategy. WorldReviewer has taken an undisclosed 50% stake in the company and plans to relaunch the brand in February with a focus on providing exclusive editorial content and consumer-focused lists. James Dunford-Wood, co-founder of WorldReviewer, says relaunching TheHotelGuru on the WR platform will be the start of a series of projects to boost the site and provide a hotel system for WorldReviewer.... Read More

Kayak Private Sale, the travel metasearch company's upcoming offering of exclusive hotel, flight and vacation package deals to registered users, is an interesting product name for a company considering an initial public offering, but I digress. A departure from Kayak's core metasearch business,Private Sale has raised some eyebrows in Australia and the U.S. Fellow Tnooz node Tim Hughes, writing for his personal blog, The BOOT - The Business of Online Travel, pointed out that getting into the exclusive deals' business makes Kayak "a zero percenter no more" in terms of an operational-costs' advantage. And former Kayaker Drew Patterson notes that offering exclusive deals is not part of Kayak's traditional DNA.... Read More

Tim Russell, UK & Ireland managing director of travel technology and GDS supplier Amadeus, says his company is most similar to Microsoft than the arguably more glamorous Apple or Google. Tnooz thought it would be interesting to found out how the boss of a travel tech firm with two major competitors would compare his company to that trio of IT giants, Google, Microsoft and Apple. After much stroking of the chin, Russell went for the stalwart of software and dominating presence on desktop operating systems.... Read More

Well regarded content site Travellr says it will retain its core and free Q&A service as it heads toward an official launch after securing funding from a major travel insurance firm. World Nomads Group bought into the business in September 2009, a mere six months after co-founders Ian Cumming and Scott Woodhouse threw open the service from an internet cafe in the South-East Asian backpackers retreat of Laos. Cumming says the next 12 months will mostly be taken up with working out a wider revenue model for the site as well as increase its distribution.... Read More

I am now a convert to the concept of Ancillary Revenue and it’s a bit like giving into my secret most desires. I want to say NO! but the economic case is compelling. So I have surrendered to the inevitable and accept the concept both as a user and as a commentator.... Read More

Let me take you down under. All the way down under to the online travel market in New Zealand. With a population of only 4.23 million (123rd in the world), NZ punches above its weight in a number of arenas (sports, arts and movies being just a few). Also in online travel. PhoCusWright tell us in their latest Asia-Pacific report that the combined ANZ online travel market is US$6.2billion (2008).... Read More

OK, Apple hasn't much to worry about here because iPhone apps retain their sex appeal, but Cornerstone Information Systems has created a series of discreet applications, "much like iPhone apps," the company says, to consolidate and depict customized parts of the travel procurement process. Let's see, should I download iPhone apps Zipcar or CNN Mobile? Or perhaps instead I should access Cornerstone's Travet Library -- the apps are called Travets -- and drag onto my desktop an app which slices and dices Cornerstone's data management platform, iBank, and provides a colorful, real-time portrait of my company's travel policy compliance. The Zipcar app or even Zombie Pizza for the iPhone may get the most popular user reviews, but Cornerstone, which automates the reservations process for travel management companies and corporate travel departments, is holding out hope that travel managers and travel agents will find Travets portraying a breakdown of spend across travel segments or air policy performance equally as appealing.... Read More

Two former Microsoft/Expedia guys, Rich Barton and Greg Slyngstad, are cooking up a startup and using Twitter to recruit candidates for chief technology officer. Barton, the CEO of Zillow and founder of Expedia while at Microsoft, will be nonexecutive chairman, and Slyngstad, who worked on the Expedia launch, co-founded VacationSpot.com and later ran Expedia's hotel and vacation package business, will be CEO of the new venture, according to John Cook's Venture Blog. When the Expedia founder gets a startup in the works, even if his most recent enterprise is an online real estate marketplace, it gets travel folks wondering about a return to the world of ARC numbers, merchant models and affiliate programs.... Read More

Well, the threat by Google that it may cease operations in China has certainly set tongues wagging in the east. Google announced that it would cease censoring results of its Google.cn search engine, after what it says was a series of hacking attacks aimed at human rights activists. These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered, combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web, have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China," wrote David Drummond, chief legal officer at Google.... Read More

So 2010 has begun and the hiring landscape is starting to take shape. Things are looking up for a number of people on the market today as well as for MBA interns at MIT. MIT MBAs make the trek to Seattle, Washington, every year to discuss employment opportunities with a number of top companies that include Microsoft, Amazon and Expedia, to name a few, as well as down the road in California with Google. Everyone agrees that the job market is looking much better in 2010 but there will still be some hiccups along the way.... Read More

A group of ex-employees from the collapsed BlueSky Travel Systems has launched a class action lawsuit against Thomas Cook Group regarding the failure of the company and treatment of staff. Tnooz understands that the action was handed to the Employment Tribunal in Manchester, UK, on 23 December 2009, three months after the reservation system software supplier to Thomas Cook went into administration. The collapse of BlueSky left around 60 members of staff out of a job - a further 20 staffers went to work immediately for Thomas Cook and another eight have since joined Amadeus-owned TravelTainment.... Read More

News that Google is considering pulling out of the fastest growing consumer market on the planet would leave the Chinese domestic internet with one powerful search engine for travel products. The search giant says it will be forced to change its current strategy in China if a series of so-called cyber attacks continue on the GMail accounts of domestic human rights activists and those outside of the country sympathetic to their cause. Alongside the wider economic and diplomatic implications of such high level shenanigans (US secretary of State Hillary Clinton has already waded into the row) is the impact on the burgeoning travel scene in China.... Read More