In today's edition: CFOs ahoy at Kayak, Travelzoo and Rearden, Revinate satisfies 2.0, Online Travel Training and TravelChat get the message.
This is the regular Tnooz roundup of product news from around the travel, tourism and hospitality industry, all with a technology, online and digital twist - Thursday 19 May 2011.
- There must be something fiscal in the air because three travel brands, Kayak, Travelzoo and Rearden Commerce, brought in new chief financial officers. Kayak, which is poised for an IPO, created a new position and appointed Willard (Bill) Smith as its CFO. Smith most previously served as vice president of global finance at Novell. Travelzoo hired Glen Ceremony from eBay, where Ceremony is corporate controller, effective June 15. C urrent Travelzoo CFO Wayne Lee will depart the company at the end of July. Meanwhile, Rearden Commerce appointed Rick Simonson to a newly created CFO postion and as president, business operations. Simonson previously filled the CFO slot at Nokia. All three companies believed they are positioned for growth and hope the new CFOs will help them get there.
- More social monitoring and power to hoteliers through a major upgrade to the Revinate social media management tool. GS2 (Guest Satisfaction 2.0) was launched this week in a bid to improve a hotel's capability to understand what is being said about a property across multiple online channels. The new service aggregates and analyses data from review ratings, review volumes, the TripAdvisor Popularity Index and others. [Further details]
- TravelChat and Online Travel Training unite to give 45,000+ travel industry agents, operators and suppliers with an instant messaging system for desktops. The system is already used by the likes of Travelport and allows users to have a secure chat system on desktops that ordinarily may have restricted web access.