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

Not to be outdone, the PhoCusWright Conference has released its iPhone app available for download now through the App Store. The PhoCusWright iPhone app was developed by Quickmobile, a firm based in Vancouver, BC who specializes in the development of mobile applications. I have known the CEO, Patrick Payne, for a few years and we have had the opportunity to meet at a number of travel industry conferences during that time.... Read More

What you missed on Tnooz this week, Sunday 8 November to Saturday 14 November 2009. Read on to see the most commented articles, every other article this week, and the most commented articles of all time...... Read More

Private equity has returned to travel with news that Hellman and Friedmann has purchased Dublin-based Web Reservations International, the budget accommodation booking service better known for its consumer brand Hostelworld. WRI is not disclosing the fee paid for the company by H&F but some reports in the Irish media suggest a figure in the region of round Euro 200 million has changed hands. Deals of this size in travel and travel technology have been rare since the major PE-led takeovers of the GDSs.... Read More

Sydney and California-based TourAbout has partially opened the doors to its new social distribution system, launching in private beta and expecting a public beta launch in January 2010. The system works by allowing tour operators and activity providers to interact directly with potential customers through a number of unusual processes. One of the primary ways is through a question and answer platform where visitors can throw a query into the system and any product provide can reply.... Read More

Travel technology beast Amadeus is developing its own consumer flight concierge app for the Apple iPhone after cracking down on an individual app developer who used the company's data to build his own. Amadeus is planning to launch its first flight planning app in the first quarter of 2010 and will include a number of the features included in what it appears to have to considered to be a naughty interloper of a system. MyFlightsApp launched in August 2009 and included such tools as a portal to store booking details, aircraft information, confirmation numbers and the ability to compile lists of multiple trips.... Read More

Hot off the press and UK-only, but some interesting data out of the eDigitalResearch shop this week which reveals the extent of the economic crisis on travel patterns in 2009. The Traveller Attitude and Behaviour survey of almost 1,200 consumers across the UK found that 30% are not intending on making any formal holiday plans - an increase of 7% when a similar question was asked in July this year. A fifth of those questioned in the survey said they decided to take a UK holiday in 2009 and around the same number said they spent less on an overseas trip.... Read More

TravelMuse has broken with convention and appears to be the only travel company this autumn not talking about Twitter. The California-based travel guide and trip planning website today launched a series of new features which utilise Facebook, rather than everyone's favourite micro-blogging service Twitter. The suite of tools include a trip recommendation tool, account syncing system through Facebook Connect and a new Facebook app allowing users to create trips or get advice from friends and connections.... Read More

After a tiff that went public less than a month ago, Choice Hotels and Expedia Inc. reached a new three-year agreement, which should have the hotel franchisor's properties back on Expedia's and hotels.com's more than 80 websites within a week or so. And, Choice-affiliated properties that want to participate in Expedia's opaque channel, Hotwire, will be able to do so a later juncture, the companies stated. From all outward appearances, it looks like Choice Hotels, despite its bluster, is the party that blinked in this skirmish, which seemingly revolved around last-room availability and rate parity.... Read More