Billund Airport, IHG Hotels, Emirates, TravelRepublic, Best Western, Unisys, Zero Controls, and JT Touristik all appear in our roundup of the stories making news and driving opinion on 5 October.
AIRPORT TECH
In a world first, Danish airport Billund and Thomas Cook Airways have installed a new innovation: home-printed luggage tags. Passengers print their bag tags, fold the paper, slip it into a plastic cover, attach it to the bag, and then drop it off at a dedicated airport desk.
After six months of testing the Unisys solution, the program is now permanent. Billund, the country's second largest airport and close to the original Legoland theme park, says adoption is at 15% of passenger traffic so far. See video, here.
Meanwhile, Singapore's Changi Airport has upgraded to global IT provider SITA's newest version of BagManager. It's the first airport to deploy the upgraded solution; earlier versions of BagManager are used at 120 airports worldwide.
AIRLINE TECH
Emirates unveils the first mobile phone service onboard A380 aircraft. Fliers can use the mobile data link on their personal phones, says the company. Meanwhile, US airlines balk at the tech upgrades required to allow in-flight calls, reports Hugo Martin.
HOTEL TECH
IHG Hotels has launched an electric car network for five of its Australian hotels. In partnership with electric car charge network Better Place, Crowne Plazas and Holiday Inns in New South Wales will have charging stations and 20 vehicles, to start.
SEARCH/DIGITAL MARKETING
Online travel agency TravelRepublic reached a listing landmark this week. The European OTA, purchased this year by Dnata Worldwide Travel, now features more than 500,000 verified hotel reviews (meaning, reviews made post-booking). About 120,000 reviews were added this year.
DISTRIBUTION
Tour operator JT Touristik signs up for Anixe’s hotel distribution platform. The Resfinity platform lists 188,000 hotels from 21 wholesalers. JT Touristik, which supports about 9.600 travel agencies in Germany, will also implement an API of off-line pricing and availability data, to be used with price comparison systems like TT-BistroPortal.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Best Western has a social media hit on its hands. It has unveiled the winners of its first-ever Fan Awards. About 30,000 Facebook users cast votes to pick favourite hotels on the Best Western Facebook page.
ACQUISITIONS/PARTNERSHIPS
Zeno Controls has acquired Verve Living Systems. That makes Buffalo-based Zeno "the only hospitality energy-management system and in-room controls provider to operate on both ZigBee and EnOcean technology platforms." Control lighting, temperature and energy usage wirelessly.
The Tnooz team hopes you'll have a fun weekend. Feel free to e-mail your tips and theories to us.
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NB: Image of bag tag courtesy Unisys.