10 years of Online Travel - A History Lesson

Many of you have probably already seen this article from Travolution that describes in detail, the history of online travel. It was the first time I’ve gone through it and I have to say, it was delightful (in a scary sort of way). It is interesting to see how the attitudes to online travel have changed, especially from the supplier stand point and how predictions made 5 or even 10 years ago were totally off base. For example in the article about 1996, there is a notable statement… “the Internet will lose its mystique in two years and problems with security and speed will be... Read more »

Suppliers Winning the Battle for Online Travel

An interesting article on Travel Industry Wire about hotel and airline suppliers who are bypassing intermediaries by selling directly to consumers. For some reason, this seems to a hot topic today even though this has been around for many many years. During the first Internet bubble, when OTAs first started to appear, airlines were cutting commissions all over the place in the arrogant belief that consumers would flock to their online booking sites. The result was disastrous, especially in Canada, where traditional travel agents started unofficially boycotting airlines who were actively cutting... Read more »

Offset your travel carbon emmissions

My good friend Tatsuya Nakagawa over at Atomica Creative sent me a link to an post on 21st Century Citizen over the weekend. It was timely considering I just blogged about Carbon offsetting recently. The post is about how you, as an individual traveler, can offset your carbon emissions by using the Sustainable Travel International Carbon Offset calculator. The calculator lets you choose your departure and destination and then calculates the amount of carbon produced as a result of your trip. The calculator then uses a formula to determine a dollar amount associated with programs that would... Read more »

The hunt for online travel bargains

My business partner June was watching King 5 news last night and saw a re-broadcast of this piece about online travel. It is an excellent example of how technology is changing the way consumers search for and purchase travel products. The blog post about the segment states that 71% of those surveyed purchased their airline tickets online directly from the airline. When you combine this with the 70+% who do their research using social networking technologies, you can begin to see the impact that the web is having on the already competitive travel marketplace. Although the segment didn’t... Read more »