Thomas Cook has said a recently signed partnership with Expedia is not the motivation behind a decision scrap its policy of allowing offline retail agents to compete with offers online. The discovery last week that Expedia is powering Cook's online dynamic packaging capability led some to ask if this is one of the reasons behind the curtailment of the web match programme. Under the old scheme, UK agents were able to secure a lower level of commission in return for matching the discounted online price for customers.... Read More

By every available measurement, the global penetration of smartphones is unstoppable. With a direct correlation between frequent travelers and smartphone adoption, it is essential the industry pay attention to the growth of this new platform and be sensitive to emerging smartphone capabilities coming to the market. It is important to keep in mind that we are at the early stages of this mobile revolution.... Read More

News emerging from Madrid, Spain, that current chief executive and president of Amadeus, David Jones, is to move aside in early-2011. Jones will be replaced in January next year current chief financial officer - and the new deputy CEO - Luis Maroto.... Read More

Thomson says that last week's website error which saw incorrect insurance information sold against build-your-own holidays was a mistake only its main website. Officials now say terms and conditions for BYO trips on sister site HolidayHypermarket are actually correct and holidays are not covered under the company's ATOL financial protection bond. Initially it was said that an error had taken place on both sites, with an investigation taking place as to why the wrong T&Cs had appeared.... Read More

Budget Center, a Las Vegas-based company seeking to leverage its portfolio of budget-oriented domains, launched hotel metasearch site BudgetHotels.com through a white-label affiliate agreement with Hotels Combined. Budget Center is developing the following URLs: budgethotels.com, budgetairlines.com, budgetentertainment.com, budgetresorts.com, budgetravel.com, budgetskiing.com, budgetadventures.com, budgetcenter.com, budgetcharters.com, budget-cruise.com, budgetfishing.com and budgetinteractive.com. Budget Center's strategy is to launch these websites and build them through search engine optimization, search engine marketing and e-mail campaigns; develop an advertising/media business; and to strike affiiliate deals with travel websites.... Read More

Herbert Hoover, during the 1928 U.S. presidential campaign, promised "a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage." Oceania Cruises isn't running for elective office. The cruise line merely is readying the Marina -- which it describes as "the first-ever vessel purpose-built for the upper-premium segment of the leisure market” -- for a 2011 debut, and Oceania promises a laptop in each stateroom. All 629 of them. A spokesman says a laptop in every cabin with wireless access is a cruise-industry first.... Read More

Kayak's upcoming Private Sale offering will be separate from its metasearch feature and will be available to Kayak account holders only, the company says. Kayak's web page seeking seeking registrants refers to Private Sale inventory as "exclusive hotel deals for Kayak users," but Brian Harniman, executive vice president of marketing and distribution, says, "We'll start with hotels, but I anticipate offering air and vacation deals shortly. Discussions with suppliers are happening right now." Kayak's Private Sale venture has some parallels to the operations of Jetsetter, founded by former Kayaker Drew Patterson, although the business model is different. Jetsetter is a hotel booking site for upscale properties and shuns the media business.... Read More

The U.S. Dept. of Transportation completed a review and found that Virgin America remains in compliance as a U.S. citizen, and the two agreed that the airline would make some changes to ensure that it remains in good standing. From a marketing perspective, you have to love Virgin America's press release headline trumpeting the DOT finding: Virgin America Cleared for Take-Off in 2010: U.S. Airline [my italics] Applauds DOT Decision Reaffirming Fitness and Citizenship... Read More

Most popular travel websites in the US for the week ending January 9 2010. Data includes Top Ten travel search terms and the Top Ten Agency, Airline and Destination/Accommodation sites.... Read More

Travel social network WAYN has been through a number of incarnations over the years and is now considering a move to add gaming functionality as a result of seeing FourSquare's early success. WAYN completely overhauled its user interface and proposition in April 2009 as a result of a wide-ranging review of the entire business in the face of competition and growth from the likes of Facebook. Now, co-founder Jerome Touze admits that the concept of adding some kind of gaming element into the WAYN system has become attractive following the rapid growth and broadly positive critical reaction to FourSquare in late-2009.... Read More

Germany-based user review site Trivago says the average price of a hotel room across European is falling dramatically with some cities selling nights for almost half the price of January 2009. The continental hotel room price is around Euro 100 per night, down 12% year-on-year as hotels slash rates to help keep properties occupied. The massive drop demonstrates the difficulty the hotel industry is still seeing in terms of getting customers to book during what is still a serious global economic upheaval and widespread disruption to existing travel plans as a result of bad weather across the continent.... Read More

The FlyGlobespan saga continues apace - credit card payment firm E-Clear is in the High Court this week - and administrator PricewaterhouseCoopers clearly needs to find some money for creditors. Running alongside the various financial shenanigans surrounding the case is news that PWC is trying to sell the Globespan's "wonderful customer details". PWC is so excited that it even sent out a tweet.... Read More

Most popular travel websites in the UK for the week ending January 9 2010. Data includes Top Ten travel search terms and the Top Ten Agency, Airline and Destination/Accommodation sites.... Read More

Not a typo - just an illustration of the lengths companies such as Travelocity will go to in order to snap up domain names needed for when users mistype a brand name. The Sabre-owned online travel agency has just won a case through the National Arbitration Forum in the US to get its hands on Traveolcity.com. Officials argued that the existing owner Enom was using the domain in "bad faith" and trading links to Travelocity competitors.... Read More

Recently I have been looking at the user experience with a lot of online travel booking engines and other search tools. Frankly they mostly suck. This is in the main because this is not simple or easy. There are too many dimensions to the process. But that doesn’t mean that we have to put up with poor user experience in the main today.... Read More