Fledgling UK travel start-up PitchUp has secured what could be an interesting partnership in its early days after collaborating with TomTom, Europe's biggest satellite navigation firm. Vistors to the site with a TomTom device can send the location and details of any of the site's 5,000 properties (such as campsites, caravan parks) or an equal number of points of interest from around the UK and Ireland. The "Add To TomTom" functionality works by opening the user's satnav's desktop tool on its host computer and automatically placing the relevant content onto the device.... Read More

Whenever a new tech product comes out, you always wonder whether it lives up to its promises. I wrote several months ago about the rollout of Travelport's Agencia desktop for Canadian travel agencies. In a post earlier today, Graham Wareham, Air Canada's senior director of product distribution, says progress has been slow in the integration of agency bookings through Agencia with the Apollo GDS. This is what Travis Christ, president, The Americas, Travelport GDS, has to say on the issue: "Travelport Agencia integrates neatly with the Apollo GDS, aggregating all Air Canada and GDS content into one display. [It] integrates the profile, and creates a PNR with all passenger and fare information.... Read More

Video portals such as the omnipresent YouTube have allowed travel companies and organisations of all shapes and sizes to push their identity to run alongside their content. So whereas in the past a marketing message might have been restricted to a 30-second spot on TV or down-page ad in a newspaper, companies can create a wider, all-encompassing, (mostly) subtle message by using and dressing the real estate alongside the core content.... Read More

The U.S. Dept. of Justice inquiry into Sabre's termination of its developer's agreement with Farelogix in March and allegations of anti-competitive practices has headed into Canada. Graham Wareham, senior director of product distribution for Air Canada, says the DOJ recently interviewed him "with a big series of questions" about Sabre's market position in Canada, and the tack that the airline is taking with travel agency customers. Wareham says the DOJ reserved the right to return with further questions for Air Canada, which distributes its inventory through both Sabre and Farelogix. "I personally see this as a huge negative for the customer," Wareham says, referring to the Sabre-Farelogix dispute.... Read More

There is another way beyond simply guessing whether extra charges will be incurred at the airport check-in desk. Time to test the No-More-Excess Digital Luggage Weighing Scales then...... Read More

In the third of a series of exclusive interviews, Tnooz Node Claude Benard meets chief executive of Swiss start-up HouseTrip, Arnaud Bertrand. He discusses funding, partnerships, business models and wider travel trends in Europe.... Read More

It has been a busy day for the beancounters at Thomas Cook Group with news that not only has it spent a rumoured £20 million to become a second tier sponsor of the London 2012 Olympics but has also parted with a sizeable amount of money to shore up its software development. Tnooz has learned today that TCG has acquired some elements of the former BlueSky Technologies business in a package that could reach around £1 million. A spokeswoman for the company would only confirm that a deal had been completed for "certain assets" of the company following BlueSky's collapse into financial administration in late-September.... Read More

What's next for ITA Software? The Cambridge, Mass., travel technology firm has a thriving airfare pricing and shopping business, as evidenced by its recent QPX deals with Southwest Airlines and Air Canada. But with half of ITA's employees working on its fledgling airline reservations and departure control system, one technology consultant, who closely follows the company, terms ITA's loss of the Air Canada reservations system project "a debacle" and says it is an open question whether ITA, now without any customers for this product, has a place in the airline res system market at all. ITA Software co-founder and CEO Jeremy Wertheimer says the reservations system "is working" at full scale and "we're talking to all people who want a system and we're looking to a brave few who want to be early adopters."... Read More

A solitary Tweet from the ether yesterday signalled the launch of Kumutu, a London-based start-up that says it will distribute products for adventure and activity tour operators to the wider travel trade community. Kumutu is the B2B end of consumer portal WorldAdrenaline - a pretty typical activities OTA - and is headed by two Americans based in the UK capital, Tim Dever and Ryan Off. The initial proposition is simple enough: Kumutu acts as a distribution channel between suppliers and intermediaries, with an intriguing set of commission rates and multiple payment schemes.... Read More

Perhaps a blindingly obvious approach when thinking about online video to push a travel brand is to partner with someone with a reasonable amount of success already under their belt. But it isn't that simple...... Read More

Some might say it's a storm in a negotiating teacup, but at the moment the stand-off between Expedia and Choice Hotels looks pretty serious given that both parties have lost the ability to work with another to sell rooms in about 6,000 hotels around the world. The current state of play is that the worldwide deal to put Choice's portfolio of properties on the Expedia platform, including hotels.com, was terminated last Thursday (October 15) and neither side looks like it will back down.... Read More

It is good to remind ourselves occasionally about what makes technology tick – humans, and not the other way round. That thought came to me in Hong Kong last week, listening to the Honourable Sir Michael Kadoorie, chairman of Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels, when he accepted his Lifetime Achievement Award at a hotel investment conference. Here’s a man who knows what it’s like to run a business long-term, and one that is all about family and relationships.... Read More

Travel-planning website TravelMuse is looking for some inspiration and more monetization as it promotes CFO Russ Lemelin to CEO and assigns co-founder and CEO Kevin Fliess to a board position. In separate interviews, both Lemelin and Fliess say Fliess several months ago broached the subject to the board of making a change to get the company, launched in beta in September 2008, to profitability. I haven't see any board minutes so I can't say whether or not this is merely well-coordinated spin.... Read More

If you are tired of the lack of differentiation that seems to permeate travel start-ups from time to time, then you might appreciate New York City-based Jetsetter, which started a beta test last week. Jetsetter's founder and CEO is Drew Patterson, a former vice president of marketing at Kayak, who presumably knows a thing or two about metasearch and the advertising/media business. But Jetsetter is a hotel-booking website that uses the merchant model and has no metasearch or media business. In fact, Patterson, who generally has great things to say about Kayak, says Jetsetter works with luxury hotel partners and avoids the alleged pifalls of websites like Kayak and DealBase, where he says advertisers offer low lead-in prices with the aim of securing higher-priced conversions.... Read More

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to overcome is that of high expectations. YouTube et al have secured a place in the hearts of marketers and other brand specialists by virtue of their ease of use and ability to create a buzz around a product or initiative with often no effort whatsoever. But every eureka moment of enthusiasm should be tempered with remembering some of the basics.... Read More