Saturday, May 28, 2005

Airline Web Sites, Poised For Takeoff?

Key pointers for competitive success: Airline Web Sites, Poised For Takeoff?: "Many carriers have started offering price guarantees. American and United are the latest, joining Continental and Northwest, to promise that no third-party site will undercut their own Web site prices. The guarantees offer to refund the price difference, plus provide a $50 voucher for future travel, to travelers who can prove that they found on the same day the same flight for at least $5 less elsewhere...

But they're walking a fine line as they try to sell more tickets directly while continuing to work with outside companies that bring in lots of business. According to PhoCus- Wright Inc., a research firm that studies tourism trends, 39 percent of the airlines' online ticket sales are made through third-party agencies, such as Travelocity and Expedia.

"On the one hand, it's clear that many airlines are trying to compete directly with third-party sites via their own branded Web sites," said William J. McGee, a consultant on online travel for the nonprofit Consumer Reports WebWatch, who has conducted several studies of booking sites. "At the same time, an awful lot of airline bookings continue to come through third-party sites."

Keynote Systems Inc., a San Mateo, Calif., company that studies e-business performance and management, recently conducted a survey that asked 2,000 consumers to use and evaluate four third-party sites and 12 airline sites. The study concluded, "Online travel agencies are outperforming airline Web sites in terms of customer experience and that is impacting their booking success."

The study ranked Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity as the top three sites in terms of the best overall online experience for customers. Among airlines, Southwest was tops "because of its industry-leading price satisfaction and because it possessed the industry's best online booking process.""

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Travelocity, Expedia aim to prove their differences

USATODAY.com - Travelocity, Expedia aim to prove their differences: "Travel suppliers like Expedia and Travelocity are often mentioned in the same breath. As consumers become increasingly savvy about shopping around, though, these online agencies are growing more intent on differentiating themselves from each other...

..Sure, Travelocity might have a nifty flight search tool, and Expedia might negotiate exclusive hotel rates in bulk. But that's not enough to keep you from comparing prices. Instead, Travelocity is banking on customer loyalty, hoping its customers will be so impressed by the agency's willingness to go the extra mile that shopping around becomes secondary rather than second nature.

It remains to be seen whether consumers will ultimately make their purchasing decisions based on convenience and loyalty, or whether the lowest price will continue to be king. Regardless, for those consumers who are focused primarily on getting the best deal, the lesson remains the same: shop around."

Orbitz group hotel bookings

Travel Weekly: "Online group booking may get greater traction as Orbitz introduced group hotel bookings in partnership with Group Travel Planet (GTP).

From the Orbitz hotel page, consumers can select a Need 5 rooms or more? option. They then are transferred to a co-branded Web site, where they can access discounted group rates from more than 10,000 properties in the U.S. and Canada, according to Group Travel Planet."

Travel distribution seminar

eyefortravel.com: "The European Tour Operators Association (ETOA) and the Hotel Electronic Distribution Network Association (HEDNA) are collaborating to discuss how hoteliers and tour operators can work together more effectively in the field of automation and distribution. The two organisations have agreed to exchange a number of member privileges and to hold a joint seminar on travel distribution next month...speakers will include:

· Expedia – Bruce Redor, Director of Key Accounts
· Marriott Hotels – Mike Burns, Director of Ecommerce
· OctopusTravel.com - Daniela Wagner, Managing Director
· Opodo - John Ryan, Director of Hotel Product Strategy
· Pegasus Solutions - John Seaton, Regional Director, Sales and Account Mgmt,
· Pelican Systems - Hartono Liman
· Traveljungle – Hans-Josef Vogel, Co-Founder
· Jacob Online - Mario Bodini, Managing Director


This event is part of the Eye for Travel Distribution Summit, taking place at the same venue."

Monday, May 23, 2005

eyefortravel.com - Travel Distribution News, Events and Analysis

eyefortravel.com HitWise trends report: "Websites for commercial airlines have experienced explosive growth, with a 24% increase in market share regarding visits made to the sites in April this year when compared with April 2004. It appears that this growth is driven by smaller players in the category, several of whom are experiencing double digit growth in market share."

MyTravelGuide.com launched

:: Travel Weekly ::: "Priceline officially unveiled its trip planning and research Web site, MyTravelGuide.com which will enable the company to tap into the advertising market from suppliers and agencies.

The Web site, which isn't branded as a Priceline entity, features user reviews and destination information from Mobil Travel Guide and WCities and articles from major publications about cities and properties around the world."

Friday, May 20, 2005

Active Hotels & Reporo - mobile hotel bookings

travelmole.com: "Active Hotels and Reporo team up to enable users to make instant hotel reservations on their mobile.

Business users and leisure seekers alike will soon be able to make instant hotel reservations on their mobile with Reporo and Active Hotels.

With location the biggest driver for choosing a hotel, this service is a convenient tool for people looking for a place to stay whilst on the road or in a location without internet access. "

Ex-ebookers staff set up Allcheckin.com -comparison website--

travelmole.com: "New travel comparison website Allcheckin.com has attracted 12 suppliers for its launch.

Launch partners include Opodo, lastminute.com, ebookers.com, British Airways Holidays, Intercontinental Hotel Group, cng-hotels.com, Hotelclub.com, RatestoGo.com, octopustravel.com, Holiday Autos, Advantage Rent-a-car and Enterprise Rent-a-car.

Allcheckin.com has been created by former senior executives at ebookers.com and BT Looksmart and claims to offer prices and itineraries for more than 500 airlines, 80,000 hotels and car hire firms.

The company says it sophisticated internet technology enables users to refine their search criteria and see immediate results which, unlike many other comparison sites, are presented in a genuinely objective and agnostic order."

Flights, Cheap Flights, Airline Tickets, International Flights, Last Minute Flights - Allcheckin

Google Search: Allcheckin Results 1 - 100 of about 315 for Allcheckin

Web to replace newspapers for travel advertising

Lowcostbeds.com adds cities

travelmole.com Report by Phil Davies : "Lowcostbeds.com has moved into the cities sector with 40 locations added to its beach and flights offerings...

CEO Paul Evans said: “The independent market accounts for over 50% of total overseas holidays and is growing all the time. It is now a significant market in its own right, challenging and I suspect shortly to overtake the growth of the mainstream package.

“Travel agents are already making the most of this shift by packaging their customer’s ideal holiday using arrange of sources, mixing and matching elements of the holiday from different suppliers. Lowcostbeds.com provides a one-stop shop for both travel professionals and customers...

Lowcostbeds is looking significant growth over the next three years as it builds, offering the full range of options, sold separately or as a package."

'Consumers know more about destinations than agents'

'Consumers know more about destinations than agents'-20-May-05.:

"What the traveller is looking for is information and content, said Clarke."

"Almost a third of holidaymakers believe they know more about their chosen holiday destination than a travel agent.

This is according to recent research undertaken by Galileo International. Jason Clarke, country manager Galileo UK told TravelMole: What our survey shows throughout is that travellers feel they know more about their trip than the travel agent does. The agents must change this perception...

The survey found that 35% of respondents thought agents were only able to book flights and accommodation while 29% said they normally know more about the destination than the agent."


Contact Hitwise for UK Quarterly Travel Research Note

Hitwise releases its UK Quarterly Travel Research Note

The travel industry has enjoyed explosive growth over the past few years and is one of the top e-commerce industries. A handful of players have dominated the industry over the past year, but things appear to be set to change as smaller players snap up market share.

Hitwise has just released the first edition of its UK Quarterly Travel Research Note which provides insights into the trends affecting the sector, the practices of the leading players, and analysis of Sabre's proposed acquisition of Lastminute.com.

Click here to request a copy

Key Findings of the report are:

Websites for commercial airlines have enjoyed explosive growth, with 24% increase in market share of visits in April 2005, compared with April 2004.
easyJet, RyanAir.com, and British Airways have been the top three airlines for the past twelve months based on market share of visits. Over that same period, smaller players have enjoyed significant growth in share of visits, narrowing the gap to the leaders.

Travel Agencies experience the highest level of comparison shopping among the leading e-commerce sectors, with one quarter of visits to travel agency websites coming from another site in the same category.

Travel websites receive more visits from search engines than average for other sites on the internet, but receive fewer visits from e-mail services.

Travel websites attract a wealthy demographic, with wealthy families, empty nesters and young urban professionals most likely to visit travel websites. These groups are also most likely to book three or more holidays a year, based on an offline survey by Experian.

Expedia.co.uk maintained its hold on the #1 spot among online travel agencies in April in terms of market share of visits. The site also enjoys an above average session time and share of pages viewed. These factors combined indicate strong audience engagement among Expedia.co.uk's many visitors.

There is a strong link between the share of visits to travel agency websites and the number of search terms sending visits to the sites.

travelmole report that Hitwise warn: "against complacency in successful search marketing despite travel websites receiving more than average visits from search engines than other sites on the internet.

Managers of travel websites need to keep abreast of the search terms sending visits to their site and those of their competitors, the report says. As more people visit your site, the variety of search terms used to reach your site will also increase."

Travel Agencies
Whilst Travelocity is the term which sends the largest volume of visits to Travel Agencies in the US, this is not the case in the UK. In contrast, it is the 23rd most popular search term sending visits to Travel Agencies in the UK.

For volume of searches, "lastminute" is a much stronger brand in the UK but "expedia" has a significant lead on this measure and is the 2nd most popular search term.

Top search terms sending traffic to Travel Agency sites in the UK, for the 4-week period ending 7/5/2005:
Search Term Share (%)
1. cheap flights 1.88
2. expedia 1.64
3. holidays 1.36
4. cheap holidays 1.17
5. thomas cook 1.00
6. flights 0.91
7. first choice 0.67
8. thomson holidays 0.65
9. airtours 0.56
10. teletext holidays 0.55

Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Travel spending surges online

Travel Weekly : "Researchers say travel buying in the U.S. has turned a corner: Excluding corporate travel, more travel dollars in the U.S. will be spent online this year than offline.

And in 2006, with corporate travel in the mix, the travel dollars spent on the Web will have eclipsed those spent offline in the U.S., as well, the prognosticators say.

In the U.S., some $66 billion, or 58%, of leisure and unmanaged business travel will be purchased online in 2005, according to PhoCusWright projections. And that figure climbs to $78.5 billion, or 66%, in 2006."

SideStep vacation packaging - article

:: Travel Weekly ::: "SideStep jumps into the vacation packaging ring (05/16/2005) By Dennis Schaal"

Travel Weekly quotes Forrester Researchanalyst Henry Harteveldt who "thinks the entry of the metasearchers -- Kayak is working on packaging functionality as well and Yahoo's FareChase can't be far behind -- may be an important factor in pushing reluctant agencies like Travelocity and Expedia to start working with the metasearchers. “What SideStep and the other metasearch sites want is a compelling way to convince the major Web agencies to participate with them,” said Harteveldt, Forrester’s vice president of travel research. “Since dynamic packaging is such a key business line for the Web agencies they may feel substantially threatened or paranoid if they don’t participate and then see competitors enter the fray.” "

Kayak introduced a developer program

:: Travel Weekly :: Press release: "Kayak introduced a developer program, at http://developer.kayak.com, to enable software developers from third-party companies to add travel searches to their Web sites or applications.

The developer program also helps suppliers facilitate the search of their products through the Kayak network.

Through an affiliate program, which is free, third parties can incorporate travel search into their Web sites.

'The fastest and easiest way to implement Kayak.com travel search is to add a search form to your Web site which redirects to Kayak.com after your visitor provides search criteria,' a Kayak official said. "

Tuesday, May 17, 2005

SideStep Launches Vacation Package Search

prnewswire.com Press release: "SideStep, Inc., the traveler's search engine, today announced the Beta release of its new vacation package service, which enables consumers to search multiple sites at once for vacation escapes to more than 90 popular destinations worldwide.

SideStep is the first travel search company to offer consumers choices from a variety of providers with a single click. This new service
significantly simplifies a traditionally complex process. According to Gartner Group, while travelers check an average of 4.2 sites before booking a flight, they check 5.8 sites before booking a vacation package. With SideStep, travelers can now turn to a single site to explore and book travel packages...

"With more than 4.2 million unique monthly visitors, SideStep gives us access to an audience that is both sizeable and well-qualified," said Aaron
Gowell, President and CEO of Vacation Outlet's parent company, NLG. "We're confident that our partnership with SideStep will yield a large volume of new customers for us and are excited to be part of the launch of this valuable new
service."

"SideStep created and leads the travel search space, and this launch confirms our continuing commitment to innovation," said Russ Lemelin,
SideStep's interim CEO. "Vacation packages offer notable savings to consumers and better margins for travel suppliers. Our new service serves both groups extremely well, and we anticipate rapid adoption among travelers and the companies that want to reach them."

PhoCusWright projects that online package sales will reach $10.3B by 2006, a 368% increase in three years. By that time, the research firm anticipates that 13% of all air, car and hotel sales booked online will be booked as part of a package.

SideStep helps consumers find outstanding travel values through SideStep.com and the SideStep(TM) toolbar, as well as through TravelFinds Specials(SM) and TravelFinds Spotlight(SM), the company's popular email newsletters."

Monday, May 16, 2005

Brent Hoberman on why he sold Lastminute.com

Telegraph | Money | 'This is not the end of the journey': "Brent Hoberman tells James Hall why he has sold Lastminute.com and that he remains motivated even after pocketing 26.5m...

Hoberman - who will go from running a medium-sized company to running a division of a much larger group - feel he will be able to retain his entrepreneurial flair under the new owners?

"They wouldn't have wanted me to stay and they wouldn't have bought an entrepreneurial brand if they didn't understand what it is to keep someone like me excited and motivated," he says. "I don't see that the role will be any less exciting, actually - it will just be bigger." He insists that this is not the end of an era. "It's tempting to look at it as the end of a journey but honestly, it really isn't for me. It's the day-to-day job that interests me."

...So why is Travelocity prepared to pay a hefty 57 per cent premium to Lastminute's share price before its bid approach emerged? For some, the deal has shades of the madness of the dotcom boom - Lastminute is still not profitable and made a pre-tax loss last year of £77m to bring combined losses to £250m since the company's launch.

Sam Gilliland, Sabre's chairman, says that the acquisition of Lastminute fits into Travelocity's strategy of expanding its European arm...

Rivals welcomed the deal. "When you've got such a major US player investing almost $1bn in European web travel it is a real coming of age for our industry, and a recognition that the internet has changed the travel business for good," says David Soskin, the chief executive of Cheapflights.com, one of the biggest players in the industry.

The only question is whether a counterbid emerges. Louise Richardson, an analyst at Arden Partners, says the 165p offer is "a little on the miserly side" and doesn't rule out that possibility, given that Lastminute is the "last man standing" in the sector.

Analysts say potential counterbidders could include InterActiveCorp, owner of the Expedia travel website, or Cendant, which bought Ebookers, the UK-based online travel company, last December."

British Travellers Seek Sunny Short Breaks

travmedia.com: "British holidaymakers anticipating a month of showers made Europe's sunniest spots their most popular short-break destinations in April according to figures released by Cheapholidaydeals.co.uk, the UKs leading holiday price comparison website "

Sunday, May 15, 2005

South Yorks new smartcard scheme for buses and trains

South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive Bus Card Scheme Set to Cut Queues
Bus and train passengers in South Yorkshire are to trial a new smartcard scheme which could mean put a stop to searching for change for fares.

South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive news release states: "A new 'smartcard' scheme allowing bus and train passengers to travel without fumbling for printed tickets or loose change is set to be trialled in South Yorkshire next year after a funding package of �7m was provisionally agreed.

The new system - to be known as Yorcard - will test a range of benefits to the travelling public on three busy transport corridors when it is trialled next summer on behalf of the bus and train operators in West and South Yorkshire and the two PTEs.

Passengers along the chosen routes will be able to load cash credit or pre-paid tickets onto the plastic card, which can then be presented at automatic card readers when they get on or off buses or trains on the routes."

The BBC NEWS | England | South Yorkshire | Bus card scheme to cut queues report says : "Passengers will be able to load money onto their card at special machines or buy tickets from their home over the internet for automatic collection.

It is also expected that shops will be able to sell ticket products.

The trial will take place on some of Sheffield's busiest bus routes - the 51, 52 and 60 services operated by First and Yorkshire Terrier, a subsidiary of Yorkshire Traction. "

Friday, May 13, 2005

Selling Britain - Conference report

Selling Britain - it can only get better: TravelMole Comment by Jeremy Skidmore-13-May-05.: "TravelMole FastConference made for a fascinating debate. The subject was 'Selling Britain' and as an industry we have been absolutely hopeless at it. Travel agents have, at best, been disinterested in the UK as a holiday destination...

retailers know it’s a product that can easily be bought direct and so are unwilling to invest time and resources trying to sell a product to a customer who is likely to cut him out of the deal in future.

Meanwhile, marketing by tourist boards and companies with niche products to sell has often been naive and embarrassing...

..concludes with example: Amazingly a three-bedroom caravan through Bourne Leisure can cost £1,100 per week during peak season, so the earning possibilities are considerable. I can’t help thinking a rebrand is in order though, in the same way that the Americans have replaced the word timeshare with vacation ownership. The word caravan just doesn’t sum up the right image for me.

So, there’s hope for the future of selling Britain, particularly short, niche breaks and quality holiday resorts. It certainly isn’t going to be easy, particularly with more people going direct. But surely for some agents it’ll be a nice little earner."

Hitwise: Meta Travel Search Engines Gain Traffic

MediaPost Publications: ".

FOUR OF THE LARGEST TRAVEL search engines--Yahoo! Farechase, Kayak, Mobissimo, and Cheapflights--showed big spikes in traffic in the last six months, Hitwise reported Thursday. The research firm found that Kayak visits were up more than 6,000 percent from October through April, while Farechase showed a 659 percent increase, Mobissimo also had a 350 percent gain, and Cheapflights was up 56 percent.

Overall, the travel market share of visits to those four meta search engines picked up 304 percent in the last six months, while that of the top five online travel agencies--Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Yahoo! Travel, and CheapTickets--increased by just 11 percent...(but) the online travel agencies see far greater overall traffic than the meta engines. For the week ending May 7, the top five travel search engines accounted for just 3.14 percent of all visits to the Hitwise travel agencies category, compared to the top five travel agencies sites, which accounted for 60.44 percent of all visits...

The study also found that the major search engines like Google and Yahoo! play an important role in driving traffic to meta-search sites. Yahoo!'s Farechase received 39.3 percent of its visits from standard search engines for the week ending April 30, 2005; Cheapflights received 24.3 percent from search; and Kayak 16.6 percent, according to Hitwise.

"What some of the new travel meta-search engines lack in brand equity and reach, they make up for in search marketing and optimization within the landscape of the traditional search engines like Google," Tancer said in a statement. "Their product is essentially robust and sought-after content, and that is the lifeblood of search engine functionality." "

Totaltravel Hotel Rooms? Whois?

Totaltravel Hotel Rooms - Discover discount hotel accommodation at We-Sell-It Totaltravel

Related to those good old ww3 pages that used to spam big style perhaps?

Whats with all the white space?

information.com features Google results & sponsored results are Google AdWords, and the normal results are Google. I reckon it is a Cookie cutter site for ad revenue only.

Expired Traffic - Domains with existing link popularity checker: Bought/ sold as expired domain with link popularity?

I reckon that just these sort of shananigans possibly led to Google introducing the aging delay / sandbox or whatever you want to call it. Thus the witchcraft of using expired domains with new hosts / sites / content is pretty much defunct, MHO. Also, as Google is a legal authorized domain Registrar they can now use Whois data as they wish, plus they will surely get the master lists of soon to expire/expired domain name so to try to trick Google for traffic and/ or rankings using this old chestnut is pretty much equivilent to shooting your site dead in the Googlies.

Online travel market consolidation: Sabre to buy Lastminute.com

NewsFinder: "Sabre Holdings Corp. (TSG) Thursday announced an agreement by its Travelocity Europe subsidiary to buy Lastminute.com (UK:LMC) in cash deal that values the British-based online travel services company at 577 million pounds ($1.1 billion), rising to 606 million pounds including debt. Sabre is offering 165 pence a share. The terms set a 7.8% premium to Lastminute's close in London Wednesday at 153 pence, after the stock rallied 45% on deal expectations. Sabre expects the acquisition to add to its earnings on an adjusted basis in 2006. 'We expect this combination would provide us greater opportunity to profit from the fast-growing European online segment,' the company said in a statement. In the six months to march 31, Lastminute said gross profit rose to 82.9 million pounds from 56 million pounds in the year-ago period as its loss for the period widened to 45.5 million pounds from 39.5 million pounds."

Larger target = larger, softer, underbelly to challenge.

Thursday, May 12, 2005

Lastminute.com shares soar

NewsFinder: "Shares of online travel group Lastminute.com (UK:LMC) rocketed 34% in London as the company said it's received an approach for a bid that may or may not lead to an offer for the company. It didn't identify which company made the approach."

Wednesday, May 04, 2005

TravelMole announce 'Selling Domestic Tourism' Event

travmedia.com "TravelMole Launches 'Selling Domestic Tourism' Event
Making more from selling Britain is the focus of a new travel industry Fast Conference announced by TravelMole today. The panel, which includes representatives from Visit Britain, BTTF and Thomas Cook (amongst others), will be providing their insider knowledge on how to make Britain the next 'hot' holiday location...

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Are hotels paying out too much for online bookings?

My old friend, the caterer-online.com lets Liam tout his site: "An internet entrepreneur has warned hoteliers that choosing the wrong online booking company could leave them out of pocket...Liam Lyon, who runs his own site, hotelscomparison.com, from his bedroom, believes that comparison sites, which pool various online bookers, are a cheaper and more reliable method of targeting customers than a Google search...

Hotelscomparison, which turns over about £8,000 per month, searches 16 online bookers and lists sites in ascending price order. It makes its money by charging an average of 5% per booking...

Roger Smith, director of marketing at Accor UK, was more cynical. "Comparison sites bring another element to the equation but the real question is whether companies will eventually pay for a priority listing on them like they do now on Google."

He also warned that a more transparent booking system could have big implications for the hotel industry. "Consumers will see incoherence between rates at individual hotels," he said."