Travel tech updates from TripZilla, Travelmob, LoveHolidays, Southwest Airlines, Cathay Pacific, PT Telkom, Zomato, Avis, Thomas Cook, No Vacancy Australia have made it to our shortlist for March 21.
Trip Planning Websites:
TripZilla, Singapore-based online travel portal that launched in November 2010 has now expanded its service to Malaysia through its my.tripzilla.com portal. TripZilla aggregates tour packages, itineraries, travel promotions and deals, airfares and hotels across all major booking channels in a country. The Malaysian portal has 69 travel agencies on board with 3,000+ packages and itineraries.
Travelmob, the Singapore-based vacation rental company that aims to be Asia's Airbnb has established a partnership with NASDAQ listed HomeAway. For the US company, Travelmob is its third Asian partnership, with the other two being China's TuJia and Wego Singapore.
LoveHolidays is enabling customers to spread the cost of a holiday via interest-free monthly payments. The OTA newbie (TLabs here) now offers four payment options including low deposit, standard deposit and full payment.
Airlines:
Southwest Airlines' new ad campaign is "bland" and "lame" and shows the airline no longer knows what it stands for, according to Brett Snyder at the Cranky Flier.
Cathay Pacific is now delivering mobile boarding passes via SMS or email to passengers from London Heathrow who check in online. The boarding pass includes a lounge invitation where applicable and details of how to proceed. Mobile boarding passes are now available for 21 of the airline's destinations.
Hotels, Restaurants:
PT Telkom, Indonesia's billion-dollar giant, has created a hotel application that makes it easy for 100 hotels in Bali to create Internet booking sites for their properties. It's aimed to help level the playing field for smaller properties, rated three-stars or below, and includes billing and businesses’ management on the back-end, says the Jakarta Post.
Zomato, India-based online portal for restaurant reviews has expanded its service to Manila, Philippines. This marks the first South East Asian expansion for Zomato. The Manila portal already lists 9000+ restaurants. In January and February this year, Zomato launched its service in London and Doha respectively.
Misc:
Avis long-term car re-leasing service launched in Singapore.
Thomas Cook North America has been bought by Canada-based RedTag. The deal, which is subject to clearance by the Competition Bureau of Canada, is expected to close by May 31. RedTag is a deals specialist owned and operated by Red Label Vacations, which was involved in takeover talks for Travelzest in 2011.
AT No Vacancy Australia, a conference promoted by Travel Trends, speakers shared some startling statistics about the rapid growth of mobile usage among travellers Down Under. We'll soon have to stop calling it the Mobile Web. It's just the Web.