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

As the Expedia-Choice Hotels contract battle enters the next phase, their strategies are emerging as Expedia sought to woo franchisees and Choice accused Expedia of evolving from supplier to revenue manager. In a sort of disintermediation move, Expedia Inc. went directly to Choice franchisees, attempting to woo them in a communique, obtained by Tnooz. It states: "Choice inaccurately lays the blame for failure to reach acceptable terms for working together squarely on Expedia's shoulders." Expedia adds: "While we no longer are offering Choice hotels on our websites, we are hopeful that we will be able to work with you and Choice in a mutually advantageous manner in the future."... Read More

Unseasonably hot news from Finland today as it emerges that mobile handset giant Nokia is busy in the Federal District Court in Delaware, US, with plans to sue Apple over patent infringement. Nokia is taking Apple to task because the company "infringes Nokia patents for GSM, UMTS and wireless LAN (WLAN) standards" - in other words, critical elements of Nokia's technology for handling wireless data, speech coding, security and encryption. At a corporate level this could be quite a scrap, given the enormity of what is a stake (the action relates to every iPhone shipped since 2007!) and the size of the companies involved.... Read More

A new Forrester Research study confirms what we've known for some time: Online travel agencies struggle to differentiate themselves. The study, "The Online Travel Brands that Win with U.S. Leisure Travelers," did conclude that U.S. online leisure travelers find that Expedia.com offers the widest array of destinations and the best customer service, Priceline stands out for its pricing and value, and hotels.com gets the highest marks for its hotel content. But these three OTAs, which bested Travelocity, Orbitz, Kayak and Hotwire in the survey, shouldn't clear space for these honors in their trophy cases because almost half of the survey respondents had no opinion about the respective brands, and the differences, even among the winners, weren't all that dramatic. Where the report gets interesting is where the authors, Henry Harteveldt and Elizabeth Stark, suggest solutions for what they say consumers view as "a homogenous beige mass" of travel intermediaries.... Read More

Taking the professional route to produce online video can be daunting - not least because it is naturally going to more expensive compared to some of the examples from Day One. Crews are needed, locations sourced, permission required (often from government agencies), meaning the whole process feels less webby than that used to produce the supposedly edgy clips found on YouTube.... Read More

Travel companies that dismissed micro-blogging service Twitter ("Why do I want to know if someone is eating a bagel or not?") may well be rethinking their strategy this morning. News initially from Microsoft's Bing and a few hours later from Google confirmed that tweets from Twitter will be included in the search duo's organic results. Bing has a rudimentary service up and running already. Google's integration is expected to begin over the coming weeks. Facebook status updates are likely, too. So what?... Read More

It's heartening to learn that Verizon Wireless has been dispatching generator-powered mobile sites to Angel Stadium in Anaheim, Calif., where Thursday's New York Yankees-Anaheim Angels baseball playoff game will be held. Although, as of this writing, the home-team Angels have lacked for energy, the COLTs (Cells on Light Trucks) units are designed to boost "rapid and short-term network response," says Verizon Wireless, for calls, and text and pic messages transmitted by fans at the stadium or just regular folks in its environs. We hear that AT&T, beset with complaints about lack of adequate 3G network coverage for its Apple iPhones, likely could use some COLTs, too.... Read More

Most popular travel websites in the US for the week ending October 17 2009. Data includes Top Ten travel search terms and the Top Ten Agency, Airline and Destination/Accommodation sites.... Read More