Rihanna, British Airways, Delta Airlines, Google, ClearTrip, Apple's Passbook, HotelsPro, HRS, Carsolize, Thai Airways, Air New Zealand, TelMap, Tagman, Accelya, and Revera all make today's round-up of travel technology news briefs.
British Airways claims its January sales were helped by celebrities uploading holiday photographs to social media sites about their vacations. The airline says: "The Caribbean was overflowing with celebrities, which may account for the recent spike in holiday bookings to Barbados and St Lucia – both up by at least 130% compared to last year." [E-Tid See Tnooz's earlier coverage of "Rihanna previews her flirtatious, adventurous campaign for Visit Barbados]
AIRLINE TECH
Delta hints as to what's next in its ongoing $140 million tech investment. The airline's
new iPad app and
redesigned website are part of a strategy to add more personalization, partly on the strength of its
direct-connect strategy with Farelogix. In
a release, the company says:
"In future updates to delta.com, customers will see additional service improvements which will include more robust customer alerts, improvements to flight search results, enhanced information displays and greater personalization based on their past travel behavior.
Over time, delta.com and all Delta digital channels will evolve to deliver greater relevancy to the individual customer based on past interaction, new product offerings and customer information. This will result in a highly personalized online experience and improved delivery of existing critical features such as flight check-in options."
DIGITAL MARKETING
Air New Zealand reveals strong performance numbers on the back of adopting a tag management attribution system by Tagman. See the numbers. We've written about Tagman and tag management, before.
DISTRIBUTION
HRS booking functionality has been added by TelMap to its updated release of M8, an app-based guide for UK travel that includes reviews from Michelin, The Good Pub Guide. and other sources. Users can now book hotel rooms direct via HRS on their iOS, Android, or BlackBerry Touch device. [news release]
HotelsPro, a wholesaler with 95,000 hotels worldwide, is now making its resources available to Casolize, a hotel booking engine that integrates multiple wholesalers. The partnership means "no additional connection cost on top of their standard service package" for Carsolize clients.
Australia’s only hotel haggling website, Grays Escape, claims that its bookings spiked 300% last month. The site debuted earlier this year. [More]
LOBBYING
Google spent $25 million lobbying the FTC to decide its way. (See "How Google Beat the Feds.") Coincidentally, the recent decision went Google's way.
OTA TECH
In a first, an Indian travel website has gone fully paperless for customers. ClearTrip has added support Apple's Passbook, including boarding passes and geographic-based and time-based notifications.
Apple's Passbook is being slowly but widely adopted worldwide. ClearTrip's passes are also supported on Android through third-party apps like PassWallet and other third-party apps with Passbook support available from the Google Play store.
REMAINDERS
"Fastest Wi-Fi ever is almost ready for real-world use". It's called WiGig.
Travel insurance startup news: Travel insurance start-up company Flightsurance has been acquired by 2e Systems, a worldwide market leader in online & mobile technologies for the travel industry with main offices in London and Frankfurt. [Release]
Thai Airways selects Accelya’s Revera as a passenger revenue accounting platform. [Report]