News

HomeAway is plotting the next phase of its quest for world domination with a gradual rebranding of its sites around the globe. Sites such as the UK's Holiday Rentals, which was acquired by HomeAway in 2007, have seen a makeover in recent weeks to push the HomeAway branding to the forefront. Other sites are expected to follow suit in the coming months as HomeAway slowly pulls all the acquired brands under one corporate roof.... Read More

More developments from the Skyscanner camp - following the BRIC launches earlier this week - with news that its new hotel and car rental search tools will be rolled out to other country sites including Spain and Germany. A total of 20 language sites will take the hotel search tool and 17 will take car rental. The remaining three awaiting car rental will be added shortly.... Read More

Add long term value to relationship: A recent survey from The Loyalty Practice on changing customer loyalty in 2009 found that only 3% of respondents are most loyal to travel brands. This is compared to banks, which received 23% of votes and supermarkets, which received 33%.... Read More

Kayak launched its all-important TV ad campaign Sunday, Nov. 1, and Hitwise tells me that Kayak's traffic increased 3% in the first three days compared with the Sunday, Monday and Tuesday of the previous week. The first three days obviously won't tell the story of what, for Kayak, is a massive ad spend and marketing gamble. Calling those numbers "understated," Hafner adds: "The true measure of lift isn't total traffic but source of traffic (self, affiliate, paid search). You might consider that we could pull back in one channel to see the effects of another."... Read More

Travelport's predecessor company, Cendant, acquired Gullivers Travel Associates for $1.1 billion in April 2005. But Travelport says next week it intends to write-down its GTA businesses, including Gullivers Travel Associates, Octopus Travel and TravelBound, by $800 million to $900 million. Travelport CFO Philip Emery says the company is taking this noncash impairment charge because of GTA's performance "and our expectations for the future performance of the travel wholesale industry."... Read More

Expedia has taken another step to completely annihilating any form of customer charges with news that it has dropped fees for any travel product booked over the telephone. In a short statement Expedia Inc says the decision to scrap phone booking fees in the US is with immediate effect and follows similar moves over the course of the last six months on Expedia.com to eliminate air and cruise booking fees, cancellation and change fees on hotel, car hire and cruise. It is understood that other Expedia regions such as EMEA will follow suit... Read More

Stick to brand position: Understand competitors and what they are trying to do, but don't move away from current brand positioning. Every travel brand has a position in the market and it's important to stick to it as this is what has made them successful in the first place.... Read More

Vic Darvey, vice president of distribution for European online travel agency giant lastminute.com, is leaving the company and the travel industry for good after securing a job in the financial world. Tnooz has learned Darvey will be leaving the agency at the end of year to take up a new role in online trading. A well known figure in the European online travel sector, Darvey was previously group commercial director for the company and joined as part of the acquisition of technology and distribution provider Online Travel Corporation in 2004.... Read More

Streaming photographs from another site onto a Google Map is just sooo 2008 - or at least it will be once users have seen Casper. This mashup from a Dutch firm called Frontier takes a feed from air traffic control in Holland and plots live aircraft movements around Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam. Wondering how they get the data? Aircraft are tracked using a ADS-B receiver located on the roof of the Frontier office in Amsterdam!... Read More

Most popular travel websites in the UK for the week ending October 31 2009. Data includes Top Ten travel search terms and the Top Ten Agency, Airline and Destination/Accommodation sites.... Read More

A half year after major U.S. online travel agencies eliminated consumer booking fees for flights, the sky has not fallen, as some among us predicted. PhoCusWright, with an assist from Compete, studied the fallout, and found that in the intervening months, traffic to airline websites increased, but their conversion rates declined. Conversely, traffic to OTA websites decreased, but their conversion rates increased.... Read More

Most popular travel websites in Australia for the week ending October 31 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 October 31 2009. Data includes Top Ten travel search terms and the Top Ten Agency, Airline and Destination/Accommodation sites.... Read More

MSN apparently began rolling out its redesigned home page to some U.S. users, according to the BBC. In the redesigned home page, making its debut, Airfares & Travel is now merely called Travel, but you won't find it without drilling down. Travel has gone missing, secretly vacationing in some unknown destination. To find Travel -- Bing Travel, that is -- you'd have to mouse-over Lifestyle or More to get at it. Some users won't ever find it and may seek more travel-friendly pastures elsewhere.... Read More

PhoCusWright published an article recently with the premise that travel companies in the long tail are taking traffic away from the big online travel agencies. Certainly that feels true, given all the movement in what I call the “emerging travel segments” – emerging referring to their recent adoption of electronic distribution as a viable sales channel – including golf, tours and activities, timeshares and vacation (villa/apartment) rentals. Let me say at the start that my definition of electronic distribution is any information provided electronically (to trading partners, distributors, brand.com) about the product (the safari, the castle in France), not just the transaction.... Read More