Southwest Airlines makes much out of its Bags Fly Free campaign, but JetBlue, which doesn't charge for the first bag, is relatively silent on the topic. One reason for JetBlue's lack of marketing about its baggage policy is that it may not make sense to tout a policy which you soon could abandon. JetBlue President and CEO David Barger told financial analysts last week that the airline is almost in "lock-down" mode at the moment when it comes to introducing new products to boost ancillary-services revenue because the carrier is in the process of switching from Navitaire to Sabre as its internal reservations-system provider, and the transition is slated to be completed in the first quarter of 2010.... Read More

Nobody likes a show-off, but when a travel company has a dedicated department for creating what can be loosely described as "other cool stuff", then online video is clearly the best way of showcasing it. Take lastminute.com and its Labs department. The division within the UK-based online travel agency has spent much of the past year developing a handful of neat applications for mobiles and some interesting user experience work under the Pronto brand.... Read More

The airline industry is in tailspin, hoping for a recovery some time maybe next year. It will take years to make up for last year's losses. But it’s basically always the same story; losses in bad times wipe out the profits of previous fat years. In good times the airline bosses get obese and act like there is no tomorrow.... Read More

Fledgling metasearch engine fly.com will launch in Germany later this year as part of its ongoing expansion programme outside of North America. Although up and running for a month or so in the UK, Travelzoo-backed fly.com officially announced its arrival in the country via a press release this morning amid a tightening of the metasearch market in recent weeks. The addition of fly.com and TripAdvisor's flight search into an already crowded sector is raising the stakes for new entrants as the likes of TravelSupermarket, Skyscanner and Cheapflights have a reasonably firm stranglehold on the market.... Read More

Adventure travel anyone? VholdR just began shipping the ContourHD1080p wearable camcorder. It seems to be perfect whether you are jumping off a cliff or biking along the boardwalk. Check out the specs: The company says: "ContourHD1080p offers several unique features including four HD settings (1080p, 960p, and two at 720), two frame rates (30fps and 60fps), lighting you can configure (contrast, exposure, metering, and sharpness), an adjustable microphone, and a new feature not previously announced: Three bitrates (default, high, and max)."... Read More

The most successful marketing campaigns seem inevitably to always feature some kind of mascot - whether it's a logo, animal, celebrity, or simply an object. Perhaps one of the more bizarre yet effective mascots of recent years is the Travelocity Roaming Gnome. Simply weird to some, cute to others, ironic to a few, Gnome has headed the Sabre-owned online travel agency's marketing drive since 2004 when its Where is the Gnome campaign launched.... Read More

What you missed on Tnooz this week, Sunday 18 October to Saturday 24 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

User generated content isn't just negative reviews, edgy opinions and often poorly put together multimedia - contrary to the still reasonably popular belief of many travel companies. But while text reviews of products and destinations are now pretty much a given, with relevant protocols and checks in place, open and unedited video reviews on travel sites are far less popular. This is an interesting challenge for travel brands and tourist boards: firstly, they often want to be seen to embrace the openness of the web and user-led technology, but control is arguably more important because video has a greater impact than words.... Read More

A provocative headline, admittedly, but data from the Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2009 report has shed some light on the aspirations of bloggers, a sizeable number of which write about travel. Although some say that Technorati has lost its importance over the years, its annual sweep of the community attracts a wonderfully vast range of opinions from corporate, part-timers, self-employed and just-for-fun bloggers. Personal musings (45%) still account for the largest share of digital outpouring from bloggers, followed by technology (41%), politics (32%), news (30%), business (28%), computers (25%) and music (24%).... Read More

The Internet may or may not be ruining travel journalism, as Tnooz mused, but the Web and user-generated content sure leave corporations and their leadership with no place to hide. That's evident from Glassdoor.com's "Q3 CEO Watch List Report," which enables a company's employees to anonymously rank their boss. United Airlines' Glenn Tilton, chairman, president and CEO, was Glassdoor.com's third-lowest rated CEO -- among all the CEOs evaluated -- and the worst in the eyes of employees among travel companies ranked in Glassdoor.com's latest report.... Read More

The Expedia-Choice battle could be a tipping point for the hotel industry and online travel agencies as hotels seek to retain control of their inventory and Expedia, the most powerful U.S. online hotel distributor, desires to get access to as much of that inventory as possible at the highest margins in anticipation of the years ahead when consumer demand likely will recover. Five years ago, after InterContinental pulled its inventory off Expedia websites and best-rate guarantees came into being, the hotel industry and OTAs found themselves at a sort of grudging comfort level after an earlier era when Expedia and hotels.com dictated the terms. "The hotel industry and the OTAs are trying to find a new equilibrium," says Robert Cole, a hotel marketing-strategy consultant for RockCheetah in Milwaukee, Wisc.... Read More

Long Tail of Travel in its full glory here with the launch of SnowCarbon - a new European website dedicated to showing ski fans how to reach the slopes of the Alps and Pyrenees in what it claims is most environmentally concious way, by rail. The brainchild of Daniel Elkan and co-founder Mark Hodson, both seasoned consumer travel journalists with years of experience penning articles about the ski industry, SnowCarbon is primarily an eco-driven content site which provides tips and advice on rail routes, hotels and destinations. Only destinations with a reasonable connecting rail route - not always certainty in Europe - are featured on the site.... Read More

Google Wave may not be setting the world on fire as much as Google hoped given that its current lack of integration into Gmail is an annoying stumbling block and invites are taking a while to filter through. But this hasn't stopped some inquisitive types playing around with it during its closed beta phase and integrating existing functionality and tools into the system. Lonely Planet is one such travel brand which has given it a serious look and has come up with quite an interesting proposition.... Read More

It has taken a while but the idea that TV and the web are fundamentally different channels is narrowing. With this in mind it is imperative that travel brands using TV for advertising create their own presence on portals such as YouTube - as indicated on Day Three. These branded Channels should then be used to aggregate the adspots shown on TV - simple, right?... Read More

Eric Savitz of Baron's, citing a Credit Suisse research note, wonders whether Orbitz Worldwide could be a takeover target. I've speculated about this before, and the possibility that someone might buy Orbitz still makes sense to me. The company weathered the booking-fee storm, seems to have found its bearings, and its stock price is still relatively low and trending upwards.... Read More