Small travel company reservation system technology doesn’t capture the imagination (nor the headlines) as much as other sectors attracting online travel entrepreneurs such as metasearch, consumer reviews or mobile/location services. But bubbling under the surface there are products launching that are changing the way small travel suppliers work with their customers and suppliers. Hotels have long had web based PMS systems but niche tour operators and activity companies are fast catching up.... Read More

What you missed on Tnooz this week, Sunday 29 November to Saturday 5 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

News this week that Microsoft's fully functioning Bing Travel will not be hitting Europe in 2009 means that another site from the US with air price data prediction tools at its heart, FareCompare, might make it first. Bing says the complexity of gathering historic data about fares over any given period is time consuming and has affected its ability to launch the Farecast system overseas. FareCompare faces similar issues on the number crunching front, but has a roadmap which could see it outside of the US sooner than Bing Travel.... Read More

Bosses at the UK's biggest travel metasearch engine TravelSupermarket will be left scratching their heads this week after learning that the frontman for its sister brand's TV campaign is a big and very public fan of a rival travel site. Peter Jones, a star of the BBC's wannabe entrepreneur show Dragons' Den, is the current face of MoneySupermarket's £14 million push on national TV in the UK. But in his regular Money & Work column for Skymag, the customer magazine for Sky TV subscribers, Jones says the following:... Read More

Worrying developments from Spain with news that online travel agency TerminalA has lost its IATA licence in a row over payments through the Billing and Settlement Plan (BSP). The company is currently only selling air tickets to low cost airlines such as EasyJet after also being removed from the GDS. The BSP acts as a clearing house for payments between intermediaries and suppliers.... Read More

I caught up with Rob Torres, managing director of Google Travel, following his Center Stage slot at the recent PhoCusWright Conference in Orlando. Appearing alongside Suzie Reider, chief marketing officer and head of advertising for sister company YouTube, Torres stressed there are no plans for Google to do a “Troogle” – a bookings site for travel. The Next Big Idea to share, however, is video and the travel category.... Read More

SEO tip #5 - Link Building: As an ongoing element of your SEO strategy, link building needs to be budgeted for accordingly and managed carefully in-house or by a reputable SEO company. If you are recommend your own products, content or website on social media platforms, disclose who you are and your relationship to the company to avoid reputation management issues.... Read More

Just as consumers - and the travel trade itself - thought regulation and insurance issues around bundled online holidays couldn't get any more of a mess, European regulators today stepped into the furore to launch their own new set of guidelines. In a statement released late this afternoon, officials in Brussels (headquarters of the European Union) said the existing Package Travel Directive would be extended to include dynamically packaged holidays created over the internet. The original guidelines, created in 1990 and pre the explosion in online travel, did not include "liability for sub-standard services and protection for insolvency" for holidays.... Read More

Travel planning website NileGuide is using a new commissioned-based payment system that it hopes will attract beleaguered journalists and writers from destinations around the world. The programme works by paying each writer a flat fee (undisclosed) but then rewarding them further with additional payments depending on traffic. NileGuide has so far recruited around 100 writers - including journalists, concierges, freelancer travel writers - to its content creation programme.... Read More

BigMouthMedia recently carried out a survey in conjunction with Tnooz. The questionnaire was framed to gauge the opinion of industry professionals and their company's plans for marketing spend online into 2010. Here are the full results:... Read More

Disappointment for those eager to see the Farecast system on Bing Travel hit Europe and elsewhere with confirmation Microsoft will not be able to roll it out to territories outside of North America in 2009. Microsoft is believed to have originally wanted to launch the Farecast technology behind its Bing Travel portal in at least the UK by the end of this year. Officials in the UK office said this week that the metasearch engine and price prediction technology associated with the Bing Travel brand in the US would remain under wraps elsewhere for the time being.... Read More

Not a day goes by these days that we don’t get something in our mail box about social media. If it’s not another article telling us how to incorporate it into our business strategy, it’s another webinar featuring experts in the field. And, oh yes, it’s the most discussed topic in boardrooms.... Read More

PPC tip #5 - Know and engage your audience: Inspire interaction with your ad by making it stand out from the competition. Research what competitors are doing and make sure your ad is different.... Read More

At 13:34 EST yesterday, I ranted in a post that Continental Airlines' social media response to the Aug. 8 Rochester, Minn., tarmac incident, in which passengers on Continental Express flight 2816 were marooned for almost six hours overnight on board the aircraft, was lame. Within 30 minutes, without referencing the Tnooz post or providing any context that the U.S. Dept. of Transportation had just tagged the airline and two others carriers with precedent-setting fines, Continental tweeted: "We continue to work with our partners & others to reinforce our Customer First commitments. We will comply with DOT’s consent order." What does this impersonal, legalistic tweet, brimming with marketing-speak, actually tell Continental customers about the airline's approach to customer service and passenger rights? Not much.... Read More

Ian McCaig, CEO of European OTA lastminute.com, is arguably one of the more upfront and realistic executives on the travel circuit and his latest appraisal of the industry isn't for the faint-hearted. He was recently quoted widely as saying 2010 will still be a tough year for many companies in travel, despite a chink of light at the end of an extremely dark tunnel of recessionary gloom. Spain will struggle next year, France and Germany are best placed of all European countries to emerge quickly, while the UK will attempt to soldier on.... Read More