Expedia spinoff comes at tough time for sector. The online travel game got harder. Especially for Expedia. Not only is the company under pressure by airlines and hotels to lower its fees, it is also loosing market share to Travelocity and Priceline as it cuts advertising expenses to maintain profitability.

For someone who’s long advocated more of a focus by the online travel industry on value rather than price, this latest research published by PhoCusWright Survey: Travelers shop online to save time is an indicator that customers will increasingly demand just that and expect more than only to find the cheapest price on a travel […]

is the headline of this interesting article in EyeforTravel pointing to a number of issues developing in the online travel industry. While nobody seems to dispute that continued growth is a reality in this already significant category, the jury is out on who the fastest growing players are going to be. With the fast pace […]

This headline based on a new study of retail site conversion rates ForeSee makes me think how long it will take until this will hold true in the totally price focused online travel industry, dominated by meta search engine as the hot new development. I can imagine a future when online travel sites will offer […]

Is the thought that occurred to me while reading this story by Hitwise on the rising traffic by the meta search engines, the hot topic of the day. Of course, they would report rapid growth – as a baby usually grows in the first months of life! The important factor is: “how much business are […]

A full-page Travelocity ad in today’s Wall Street Journal caught my eye. It introduces what the online travel company calls “The New Travelocity Guarantee”….that says everything you book will be right, or we’ll work with our travel partners to make it right. Right away. A strong statement, especially in today’s totally price focused online travel […]

Here’s an interesting take on what is innovative integrated marketing applied in today’s multi-channel world of buying. What I consider especially relevant in a tourism destination marketing context is the following part: Web sites should be ‘lifestyle’ destinations. With today’s increased Internet use, this is an effective strategy. A ‘lifestyle’ site focuses on providing appealing […]

Nearly 64 million travelers — 30 percent of the U.S. adult population — used the Internet in the past year to get travel and destination information. Of that group, 44.6 million actually booked at least one travel service or product online in the past year.”The Internet has put consumers in control of their plans and […]

The immediacy of the web is truly amazing with theability to post to blogs from mobile phones aka Moblogging – of course also the risk is serious mistyping on my tiny Treo 650 keypad. But I’ll get the hang of it to bore some of you even more frequently…..!

This looks like one more sign of the shift to more supplier control over their product distribution and the move to direct online sales. What’s surprising to me is the low percentage of sales Thrifty/Dollar derived from the Expedia channel. Makes it easy to hold out for better terms when an intermediary only produces 7% […]