With Priceline releasing its new commercial featuring the omnipresent William Shatner as The Negotiator, metasearch engine Kayak is also in quickly with its latest effort. The ad, known simply as Kissing, features two insatiable office workers who struggle to contain themselves during an important meeting.... Read More

Plenty of praise for a major development by mobile handset manufacturer Nokia to produce what some believe is a serious threat to the sat-nav GPS systems but is probably more of a rearguard against recent similar moves by Google. The upgraded Ovi maps are being touted as a personal sat-nav (it uses similar tracking technology) coupled with trip planning and other travel-friendly features such as location and activity search and networking. Missing from the announcement was any mention of Dopplr, the travel social network and trip planning business that Nokia acquired in 2009.... Read More

Significant moves in Scandinavian online travel with news that TravelStart has sold its European business to Swedish rival eTRAVELi, a consortium of web-based travel brands. TravelStart founder Stephan Ekbergh will retain the rights to the South African division of the company and continue to operate the business as the market leader in Africa with a view to expanding in other emerging markets. The undisclosed deal gives the eTRAVELi group a major presence in the Nordic market through its portfolio of ten consumers brands including TravelStart, FlyBillet, Seat24 and GoToGate.... Read More

Continental Airlines provided an update Jan. 21 on the status of various onboard technology services. The airline will begin this summer installing Gogo Inflight Internet service on the carrier's 21 Boeing 757-300 aircraft. Powered by Aircell network, the Wi-Fi service will be available in the lower 48 states -- the continental U.S. -- starting at $4.95, depending on the flight length. Around these parts -- North America -- Air Canada, AirTran, American Airlines, Delta, United and Virgin America offer Gogo Wi-Fi at least on some flights. US Airways plans to introduce Gogo Internet service on its 50 A321 aircraft "early in 2010."... Read More

Two travel companies - HostelWorld and Teletext Holidays - have joined the frantic rush to develop Apple iPhone applications. The Dublin-based HostelWorld app is a major attempt at replicating much of the functionality on the main website onto the handset including hostel bookings, ability to view photos and read reviews of accommodation and pinpoint a user's location on a local. The free app also allows users to store favourites and personal preferences for later use.... Read More

In the fifth of a series of exclusive interviews, Tnooz Node Claude Benard meets Klaus Kohlmayr, director of IDeaS Advantage. Kohlmayr discusses how hotels can improve their yield and revenue management systems, ancillary revenues and takes questions from readers via Twitter.... Read More

Major U.S. online travel agencies picked up a victory on the hotel tax issue Jan. 20 when a district court judge issued a summary judgment, dismissing hotel occupancy tax claims brought by the City of Houston, Harris County and the Houston Sports Authority. The defendants' argued that the complaint should be dismissed because the OTAs do not control hotel inventory and the judge apparently agreed by dismissing the suit. The ruling in Houston stands in contrast to a decision last fall in San Antonio, Texas, in a class-action lawsuit brought on behalf of 173 of the state's municipalities. In that ruling, Expedia Inc., Priceline.com, Orbitz Worldwide and Travelocity were socked with a $20.6 million hotel occupancy tax tab as a federal jury concurred with the plaintiffs that the OTAs were "controlling hotels" when they offered rooms on a merchant model basis.... Read More

Some five months after American Airlines' parent company AMR Corp. signed a letter of intent with HP for it to develop a new passenger service system, Jetstream, for the airline, AMR chairman and CEO Gerard Arpey said Jan. 20 that the two parties have yet to sign a definitive agreement. During AMR Corp.'s conference call about its fourth quarter 2009 earnings, in which the airline recorded a net loss of $344 million, Arpey said that the two parties have held detailed conversations about a definitive agreement, but haven't "pushed it over the finish line." Arpey said AMR Corp. expects to reach a definitive agreement with HP in the "near future."... Read More

In changing its traditional metasearch role, Kayak's plan to facilitate bookings by collecting customer information highlights the transformation of various travel industry segments into a sometimes-seeming amorphous mass. After all, Kayak, a travel metasearch and media company, intends to dabble in part of the consumer transaction, heretofore the turf of suppliers and travel agencies. And, by the way, Kayak also is getting involved in itinerary management -- the fiefdom of TripIt, TripCase and Traxo, among others -- with Kayak Trips. Kayak actually is playing a leadership role and is differentiating itself in its plan for "assisted bookings" through its mobile app, in Private Sale and on its websites, but if it is successful and the other metasearch players follow, then we'll begin to see a further blurring of roles among online travel agencies, suppliers and metasearch companies.... Read More

Father-son startup RoomAtlas has unveiled another highly practical piece of functionality to its site as it looks to build on its early and startling success. The duo have built a tool which lets users select a location for an event, create a dedicated URL for the occasion and produce a customised map with hotel availability during the selected dates. RoomAtlas launched in November 2009 and was praised not only for its inventiveness but ability to combine rates and availability from Expedia with TripAdvisor reviews on a single, Google Map-hosted page.... Read More

Another week, another trip and itinerary management website announcement - this time with bragging rights going to TripIt which has launched its Blackberry app this week. The company says the new app will be free and its launch follows testing around the user base for a few months. The app joins TripIt's existing products for the iPhone and Android platforms.... Read More

A quirk of fate and the intricacies of search engines has seen scandal-hungry web users probably bitterly disappointed to find themselves on the pages of a hotel revenue management and optimisation company. RateTiger, part of the eRevMax hospitality technology business, is reporting a surge in traffic to its web site after details of Tiger Woods and his various dalliances with other women were revealed to the world in December 2009. With Google searches for the golfing great increasing by 5,000% between November and December 2009, RateTiger has inevitably benefited from such frenetic activity.... Read More

A year is a long time in travel as well as politics - especially for Ryanair which has agreed today to publish its its fares on the Kayak metasearch engine. The surprise move comes not so long after the low-cost airline's widely publicised anti-screen scraping stance against online travel agencies, price comparison and metasearch sites. The deal will see Ryanair fares, availability and schedule information included on the Kayak site.... Read More

A survey which may surprise many at the sharp end of usability and web design has found travel sites ranking behind only news and media sites for overall usability by consumers. The poll by usability agency Webcredible of 1,000 consumers (around 40% US, 40% UK, 20% RotW) revealed just 9% found travel sites difficult to use, 2% behind news and media sites. Languishing in last place were government and local authority websites with 34% of respondents slamming the sector's range of websites for ease-of-use.... Read More

Expedia Inc. -- the parent company of Expedia.com, hotels.com, Hotwire, eLong, egencia, TripAdvisor and Venere, among others -- launched a Twitter account Jan. 13. In its first week, expediainc has tweeted three tweets about Haiti relief, why hoteliers should view online travel agencies as marketing vehicles [not mere booking engines] and an upcoming Expedia Media Solutions appearance at the American Lodging Investment Summit. There's not much excitement here yet, but Expedia Inc. is first dipping its toes into the water. Individual brands in the Expedia Inc. portfolio, including Expedia.com, which has more than 23,400 followers, have had Twitter accounts for some time.... Read More