This is a roundup of product news and announcements for travel MARKETING in tourism and hospitality for February 2015.
Friday 27 February 2015:
Olset launches HotelMatch.me
- HotelMatch.me is a concept site that is intended to show off many of the things that Olset have learned in the past 2 years while working on hotel personalization, traveler preferences, on-boarding (the cold start problem), algorithms, and user experience.While Olset remains mostly B2B focused, HotelMatch is a consumer platform that enables testing for the development of white-label and other B2B solutions. Says the company:
"After you've filled out your preferences, you'll get 3 concise hotel recommendations, and a complete “match breakdown” of the details.
The recommendations include labels such as the hotel that best matches your preferences, the closest hotel to your exact destination (if you gave us an exact address we take that into account) and the most affordable hotel."
Olery now offers hotel review summaries
- The reputation management firm has created a application that scans all guest reviews for a hotel and gives you the highlights in a brief and very customizable summary, thanks to natural language processing and sentiment analysis. At this moment it is primarily meant for all kinds of travel sites, apps, online travel agencies, etc. Here's a sample page.
Wednesday 18 February 2015:UTrip gets validation from Visit Dallas
Thursday 12 February 2015:Trip4Real to London and beyond
- Social travel startup Trip4Real (TLabs here) is planning a launch in London. The community platform hopes to add more local experiences from the capital to its existing bank. Trip4Real raised $1.45 million in funding last June.
P&O Cruises launches social wall for holiday snaps
- In partnership with social content specialist Stackla, P&O Cruises has introduced a social wall on its website as part of its 'This is the Life' campaign. The wall aims to show off cruise holidays through the eyes of real travellers.
Monday 9 February 2015:Wanderu places third in Richard Branson's ExtremeTech challenge
- Bus and train metasearch platform Wanderu was one of three finalists to pitch their companies to a group of investors on Sir Richard Branson's private island, as part of the Extreme Tech Challenge. Wanderu came in third after two non-travel companies (Breathometer and Doctor on Demand). Branson offered to invest, CEO Polina Raygorodskaya tells Tnooz. The event is a marketing coup, and could help the travel startup recruit staff.
Thursday 5 February 2015:CWT to mentor startups
- Carlson Wagonlit Travel is to help startups as part of its role as a founding member of Paris-based incubator, Welcome City Lab. CWT, through its recently unveiled corporate innovation team, will support and help pilot startup projects. Other founding members of the specialist travel incubator include Air France and Amadeus.
CheckMyBus rolls into the UK
- Intercity bus search engine has launched a service in the UK offering long distance coaches to and from the UK and well as connections between cities. Information includes journey duration, timetables, pricing and availability. The UK is the fifth destination country launch for the startup which was founded in Germany.
Wednesday 4 February 2015:Clem Bason, a former top marketer at Hotwire, has spun out GoSeek from DealBase
Tuesday 3 February 2015:Criteo puts value on online shoppers
- Criteo is helping travel advertisers target higher value customers through enhancements to its Travel Engine. The company assigns a predicted value to customers based on the analysis of data and uses this to bid more effectively on ads. Criteo says travel companies are already benefitting from an average increase in booking values of 20%.
Travelport helps promote Beijing stopover
- Travelport has sealed a marketing partnership with Beijing Tourism which aims to promote the city as a stopover destination. The partnership will use Travelports digital solutions to put Beijing's campaign in front of some 67,000 travel agencies.
Yapta uncovers hotel savings
- Yapta claims its RoomIQ hotel price tracking technology is saving corporate customers an average of $109 per booking of 2.4 nights. In addition, companies using RoomIQ are saving on about 12% of bookings tracked.
NB: Marketing image via Shutterstock.