Viator is launching its mobile platform this week, as chief executive Rod Cuthbert hinted at in an interview a few months back. The dedicated mobile platform will be available on Apple iPhones and other smartphone handsets and will allow users to search across 5,000 activities by destination or keyword. Perhaps most importantly for the platform, Viator is allowing users to book products via the handset - a critical element of destination-based services so that travellers can select tours and activities when on location.... Read More

SEO tip #1 - Creating page titles: Ensure your page titles are completely unique to each page and describe the page content in the right way. Too often titles are not specific or relevant to the page, and search engine visibility will suffer as a result.... Read More

Perhaps it symbolizes a passing of the torch or maybe it's merely a temporary phenomenon, but Priceline.com, perennially a little guy when compared with Expedia Inc., has overtaken Expedia Inc. in the size of their respective market capitalizations. As of today, Nov. 17, 2009, Priceline's market cap stood at $9.17 billion. Expedia Inc.'s market cap registered at $7.21 billion. Priceline downplays the significance of the market-cap numbers, while others tell me it's a big deal in terms of investor confidence.... Read More

The Travel Innovation Summit took place on day one of the annual PhoCusWright Conference in Orlando, Florida on Tuesday 17 November 2009. Thirty-six ten-minute presentations from early stage start-ups to skunkworks in large travel organisations were made over the course of the day. We reviewed each participant...... Read More

I've seen the light and I now can share with your travel company how to crack the nut of international expansion in as little as 30 days. So, Bing Travel, are you concerned with how to expand into Europe? And, Fly.com, does a launch in Germany whet your appetite? The simple answer to all of your needs is Translations.com, which specializes in website localization and translation services.... Read More

Many hotels on TripAdvisor have long felt ripped off because reviews of their properties make TripAdvisor and its advertisers -- often competitors of the hotel -- big bucks, but there are no direct links or contact information for the property itself. TripAdvisor announced today that the policy will change on all its global websites beginning Jan. 4, 2010. At that time, hotels on TripAdvisor will have the option to pay a flat-fee annual subscription for TripAdvisor Business Listings and will be able to display their properties' URL, telephone number and e-mail address.... Read More

It would seem that least a couple of the innovations in this year's list of thirty-four innovators presenting at PhoCusWright's second Travel Innovation Summit have some application to long tail travel companies. For me, this is an important indication that perhaps the industry in general is starting to pay some attention to this important, yet highly under appreciated segment of the travel landscape. The two innovators are Goby and TourAbout. Let's take a quick look at why I think these two could really add value to small tourism companies.... Read More

PPC Tip #1 - The travel buying cycle: Take the travel buying cycle into account and structure your PPC campaigns around it to ensure your brand is visible at the research, comparison and decision stages.... Read More

Most popular travel websites in the UK for the week ending November 14 2009. Data includes Top Ten travel search terms and the Top Ten Agency, Airline and Destination/Accommodation sites.... Read More

Most popular travel websites in the US for the week ending November 14 2009. Data includes Top Ten travel search terms and the Top Ten Agency, Airline and Destination/Accommodation sites.... Read More

GDS and travel technology supplier Amadeus is to place a major emphasis on providing inspirational tools and intuitive user experience for inclusion in third party websites. Two projects have been developed within the Madrid-based giant – at the Amadeus IT Group and leisure division Traveltainment – and will be launched Traveltainment’s system is currently being trialled by STA Travel in Germany and is a front-end search and booking platform for consumer websites.... Read More

There is a small division in the giant that is Sabre Holdings whose workers might argue they have a travel technology equivalent of the so-called Best Job in the World in Queensland. Created a few years back, Texas-based Sabre Travel Solutions exists solely to develop tools for its sister departments around the company and for the wider travel industry. The team was behind the widely praised Cubeless online community system in 2008 and, for its pet project in 2009, created the TripCase mobile application.... Read More

Tourism Queensland is still revelling in the praise from a kowtowing advertising and PR industry for its offline-online-social media push earlier this year. The eventual winner of the Best Job in the World “competition” – Brit Ben Southall – is two thirds of the way through his tenure on Hamilton Island and coverage in the mainstream media, blogs and social media channels continues. Those behind the project deserve the gushing of their peers – most notably with the second place at the Cannes Lions ad festival behind the Barack Obama election campaign – for almost single-handedly writing a new rule book for how to manipulate and prod the media into covering what was actually a rather simple idea.... Read More

Doubts continue over the long term relevancy of Twitter as a meaningful tool to promote product or engage customers - but travel firms across the world have embraced it with open arms. So what happened when 50 of the world's travel firms joined the Twitterati? Find out here...... Read More

In a blockbuster move, Pegasus Solutions, the hotel technology and distribution services company, signed a 7-year deal to outsource the day-to-day management of Pegasus's applications, data center services and network management to HP Enterprise Services, the company formerly known as EDS. The two sides declined to tell me the dollar value of the deal leading up to today's announcement, but I expect those figures to emerge later today. One of the most important aspects of the agreement is that Pegasus's RezView NG, which enables the melding of CRS, property management and Web functionality for hotels, would be integrated into HP's Travel Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) platform.... Read More