Travel technology in 2011 - most popular, most commented and other highlights on Tnooz

Another year, another 2,500 articles published on Tnooz. But which stories attracted the most traffic or moved readers in their dozens to add their comments?

We've been going over this list of articles as we prepare to say goodbye to 2011 and head into 2012, another leap year in the calendar and perhaps, yet again, in the travel industry.

The year was dominated in large swathes by Google. Its deal to buy ITA Software for $700 million was finally approved in April, with some conditions attached.

The first unveiling of the fruits of its acquisition came in September, to extremely mixed reviews... inevitably.

It wasn't all about Google (thankfully). The year also saw the continued rise of the often controversial Airbnb, Facebook come ever close to having one billion members, and more travel startups than ever before attempting to muscle in on the sector.

But examining the Tnooz data often throws up some surprises, as the most popular story of the year reveals (a seemingly ordinary piece about William Shatner's latest effort for Priceline), illustrating that some articles simply hit the decks of Google News, forums and social media at exactly the right time. And just fly.

Ten most popular stories by traffic on Tnooz in 2011:

One of the things Tnooz has always been proud of are our levels of reader participation, with often dozens of comments on stories, showing that we have an audience as passionate about the subject matter as us.

Some subjects just seem to capture the imagination (or irk) readers, especially bloggers, as two of the top three below illustrate, while other articles have, frankly, improved as a body of work with the reaction of readers.

Ten most popular stories by number of reactions (comments and pingbacks) on Tnooz in 2011:

This year also saw Tnooz continue its programme of allowing travel startups to have a platform to demonstrate to the industry why they think they are the next big thing.

Almost 200 new companies were featured in TLabs Showcase over the course of year, with some already appearing to have modest success such as Room 77 and ReviewPro.

Interestingly, the types of companies entering the sector changed in 2011, with the social trip planning sites being matched by a growing number of person-to-person marketplace brands, illustrating that technology and the trust factor has collided in a very interesting way.

Finally, for fear of navel gazing (sorry, bloggers), Tnooz also had a little makeover in September to celebrate our second birthday, but also to introduce new sections on the site to house all the webinars we've produced, content from the THacks we ran in London, Las Vegas, Boston and Singapore, and our own, ahem, blog.

This particular part of the site captures some of the things going behind the scenes at Tnooz, including winning our first award - Online Travel Trade Publication of the Year at the British Travel Press Awards in November.

Next year (Tnooz Predictions 2012!) promises to be even bigger and better for Tnooz, with a number of exciting projects already under way and due for launch in the coming months.

Anyway, on behalf on the entire team and Nodes, we wish you a Happy New Year and an exciting and rewarding 2012.

NB:Image via Shutterstock.