Manchester Airport in the UK is hitting the headlines today as a result of a trial taking place of a security scanner which produces 'nude' images of passengers. The system, developed by Rapiscan Systems, works by sending electromagnetic waves at the body which are then reproduced and sent to an operator for analysis. Omitted from the coverage today is news that a successful trial of the system - of which there have been many - doesn't automatically lead to mass adoption by airports around the world.... Read More

Suddenly, it's Android, Android, Android. Apple iPhone-smitten AT&T reportedly is close to signing a deal to offer an Android phone manufactured by Dell, which would mean that all four major U.S. wireless carriers would be marketing smartphones smart enough to run the Google mobile platform. T-Mobile revealed it will soon be hawking a couple of new Android-powered devices, including the Samsung Behold II and the Motorola CLIQ.... Read More

I keep being struck about the lack of differentiation among the online travel agencies, although they battle furiously to get an edge. The latest reminder was Priceline.com's introduction of a policy where people who lose their jobs after booking trips can get refunds. My immediate thought was: OK, nice twist. How long before one of the other OTAs copies it? A little while after I noticed this Priceline Trip Protection feature, I happened to run a flight search on TripAdvisor Flights, and in the metasearch grid, there was Hotwire, Expedia, Travelocity and Continental all with the identical fares. Not a buck difference.... Read More

Travelport and Apple Vacations, among the largest tour operators in North America, announced today that Apple Vacations had dumped Sabre and completed the conversion to Travelport's Worldspan, with all of its bells and whistles. In the deal 5-year deal, Worldspan becomes Apple Vacations' preferred GDS and in addition to getting air, rail and hotel content, the tour operator gets the "added ability to book low-cost air content," the companies stated. But if you read between the lines of the release, Sabre and Apple Vacations must have had a big falling out.... Read More

Or, keeping in line with much of Twitter's usage, this service from Lufthansa could also be targeting those who want to show off where they are (and think their followers care). Jokes aside, Lufthansa has tapped into the social media zeitgeist by creating a tool which allows Twitter of Facebook members to send a status message to their profiles mid-flight.... Read More

CarRentals is plotting the next stage of what appears to be a quest for global domination by throwing its affiliate-metasearch car hire model at the Australian marketplace. The move is as a result of the UK CarRentals site attracting its own Australian audience and management deciding a dedicated portal was necessary.... Read More

The creators of 101Holidays are launching 101ShortBreaks this week as part of a wider programme to expand the business into niche areas of the travel industry. The original 101Holidays site launched in January this year and uses a unique and widely praised interface to publish details of 101 different trips, hand-picked by its team of travel journalists. 101ShortBreaks features a mixture of deals provided by tour operators and hotel owners. The founders are hoping to unveil a further three new portals within the next 12 months, with another niche site expected in January 2010.... Read More

What you missed on Tnooz this week, Sunday 3 October to Saturday 10 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

Travelzoo, a pubicly traded company controlled by founder and Chairman Ralph Bartel, has agreed to sell Travelzoo's Asia-Pacific division, including Travelzoo Hong Kong, Travelzoo Japan, Travelzoo China, Travelzoo Taiwan and Travelzoo Australia, for $3.6 million to companies controlled by -- Ralph Bartel. You'll notice I used Bartel's first name, Ralph, twice in the preceding sentence. That's because I don't want to get you confused with Holger Bartel, Travelzoo's CEO, who's Ralph's brother. You may see where I am going with this. Apart from the coziness of the pending transaction (which could still be upended by a rival bid, but I am not holding my breath), the deal actually could be a clever move by Travelzoo -- not to mention Ralph Bartel -- and fuel Travelzoo's expansion in Europe and Asia-Pacific.... Read More

Amadeus UK and Ireland boss Tim Russell didn't hold back when he said recently that the airline sector had a major problem on its hands because the fundamental technology on which it operates is old and in dire need of an upgrade. On the one hand this is a rather predictable comment from a company which just happens to provide technology to the travel industry. But the underlying premise of his comment - "some airline systems are close to breaking point" - is probably true, and many do agree to varying degrees.... Read More

It took a while, but the idea of using travel agents to write online reviews of hotels and destinations did finally catch on, and now seems like a bit of a no-brainer. So while a plethora of review sites jostle for position in the increasingly busy B2C space, it has been left to a select few to try and harness the apparent collective experience and wisdom of the retail travel agency community.... Read More

Some brief news this week from price comparison site Cheapflights as it plays around with some of the functionality it introduced at its big relaunch in the summer of 2008. The redesign from August of last year dramatically improved the overall user experience of the site and added a number of new tools. Much of the relaunch was also to incorporate some major changes to the back-end of the site and ad serving capability.... Read More

The game of gotcha between U.S. cities and the online travel agencies continues and it's almost a full-time job just trying to keep tabs on the whole thing. It sort of reminds me of my visit to the Orbitz TLC Center last week, where about nine people, including three former air traffic controllers, were on duty, monitoring plasma screens filled with gridlocked jets and typhoons. Somewhere, undoubtedly, a team of lawyers is hunkered down in a corporate boardroom, monitoring a torrent of hotel-tax motions, city audits and new ordinances across the country. Anyway, here's what's been going on in the last few weeks as municipalities seek to force the OTAs to pay occupancy taxes on retail rates when they sell hotel rooms on a merchant basis, and the OTAs fight back.... Read More

This just in: ITA Software picked up another airline customer for its QPX airfare pricing and shopping system: Southwest Airlines. The press release hasn't dropped yet, but the functionality is now live on Southwest.com. The use of ITA gives Southwest a bunch of new capabilities, including calendar-based search and air search using flexible dates. One key element of this whole thing is that it doesn't seem to alter the airline's distribution strategy. You can't find Southwest flights in any of the metasearch engines, including the crowd powered by ITA (including Kayak, TripAdvisor and others) and Southwest's absence in metasearch will remain in place. It also doesn't change Southwest's availability status in the Sabre and Apollo GDSs. Another important aspect of this relates to international codeshares.... Read More

TripAdvisor's foray - US and now the UK - into flight metasearch appears to have triggered plenty of musing by executives and pundits alike. According to Bryan Salzburg, general manager of initiatives, TripAdvisor is finally becoming the more general travel portal it always wanted (perhaps needs?) to be. Salzburg stresses that the business model for its hotel review section "will not be re-invented any time soon", dampening any suggestions that a hotel metasearch could be configured along similar lines to its new flight engine.... Read More