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

Graphics: Images on a homepage are a great way to get your message across without using lengthy copy and can give the brand a personality. But too many graphics and automatically loading videos can be unnecessary.... Read More

I am a logical fellow, at heart just a code developer, hence when I look at what is happening I tend to analyse from what is possible, regardless of probability. Code developers have to handle the one in 1,000 chance that a particular section of code will run hence we have to consider everything. That is just how it is. But our logical minds don't work quite so well when it comes to business.... Read More

Travel planning and online concierge service TripIt is launching Facebook Connect functionality to allow members to share and create trips on the social network. The tie-in works by posting a user's trip information on Facebook and re-feeding responses back into the TripIt profile of a journey. TripIt says the tool will also be useful for people to get "relevant and timely" advice which, in turn, will flow through the existing Tripit connections into mobile for on-the-move services and assistance.... Read More

Dark clouds are forming around the relationship between the collapsed FlyGlobespan airline business in Scotland and its travel technology partner EClear. In a statement, PricewaterhouseCoopers, the administrator appointed to handle the financial affairs following FlyGlobespan's demise on Wednesday 16 December, says it is "shifting much of their focus" to the business activities of the company. EClear is a UK-based credit card system technology firm which worked with FlyGlobespan to process customer payments, but has now found itself at the centre of growing concern that the airline was owed substantial monies by a number of third parties.... Read More

One month does not a search engine make. But it's clear from the comScore's U.S. search rankings in November that Microsoft's Bing search engine is making market share gains, and Yahoo's share of queries are falling. Google's queries, meanwhile, continue to grow, albeit at a slower pace.... Read More

In recent months there has been plenty of discussion about some of the opportunities that DMOs have when it comes to the mobile space. I also discussed how destinations have the leg up when it comes to aggregating local and regional content. It would seem that some DMOs are actually making some positive steps towards embracing and potentially leveraging the mobile space to market their destinations more effectively.... Read More

The collapse yesterday of Globespan, parent company of Scottish airline FlyGlobespan, saw customers and those in-resort heading to their computers in dramatic numbers. Figures from Experian Hitwise UK paint a sad picture of travellers desperate to find out how they will either get home (around 4,500 are said to be stranded overseas) or those hoping to fly with the airline in the coming weeks and months. As news emerged of the company's dark and unfortunate route into financial administration, visitor numbers to its website soared by 511% on the previous day.... Read More