EU Passes Anti-Flogging Law

Flogging is not only a form of punishment but now also refers to a form of blogging known as “commercial blogging” or “fake blogging“. Travelmole reported today that the EU has passed a law which makes it illegal for hotel (or other companies) to write false reviews on sites like TripAdvisor. The article further states that: The new law includes two categories of unfair commercial practise - misleading practices and aggressive practices. Whether a practise is deemed unfair will be judged in light of the effect it has on the average consumer’s consequent decision to... Read more »

Boarding Pass on your Mobile - Don’t forget to Charge

Continental Airlines is now testing the use of electronic boarding passes on mobile phones as part of a pilot project. According to the New York Times, the technology being tested uses a two dimensional barcode stored on a mobile phone which is scanned by a TSA (Transporation Safety Authority) agent and cross referenced with photo id. There is strong support for this technology because the two dimensional barcode uses a much higher level of encryption than the standard 1D barcodes (like UPC codes). The two dimensional barcodes can also store a much larger amount of data including (but not... Read more »

Blogger Summit @ ITB Press Coverage

 I was really happy to see that we received some great press coverage during ITB including this half page spread in the FVW Daily, a leading German travel trade magazine. The following is the rough translation of the German text: America is the pioneer - Once Again - when it comes to the Internet. Dozens of bloggers watch the tourism industry in the USA and Canada. Whether it is exciting websites, the latest Rumours about Google or the latest trends in the hotel or cruise market: industry bloggers miss nothing. “In the B2B sector is will still a while until the American wave hits Europe”... Read more »

Are you a Jetsetter?

I was commenting on some photos on Facebook when I noticed that a couple of my fellow blogging friends, including the Happy Hotelier and Chris Clarke, had added a new application called Jetsetter, developed by VibeAgent. Although the interface is nothing spectacular and the profile candy is a little large for my liking, the application itself is very simple and fun. In their words… Are you a Jetsetter? See how many miles you’ve traveled this year, and how you stack up against your friends! Let your friends know what trips you’re going on and see which of your friends will be... Read more »

Online Revealed Educational Exchange a Big Success

The Online Revealed Conference (ORC) Educational Exchange in Vancouver was a big success. I was quite honoured to be invited to present as the keynote speaker for the session and I’m happy to report that the session went extremely well. My presentation was “Once Upon a Blog: Marketing Travel by Telling Stories”. It was a new presentation for me and I was a little bit concerned that the subject matter might not resonate with the audience. Fortunately for me, the combination of strong visuals and a compelling story resulted in a great presentation. The feedback from the audience... Read more »

Overview of Global Reservation Systems Tomorrow - Today

This is a subject that really interests me, primarily because it takes some of the new paradigms of web 2.0, social media, and user generated content and combines it with the underlying reservations model. Tina Fitch, CEO of EzRez even mentioned that bloggers were the pioneers in the space of aggregating information and providing user specific knowledge for their readers by digesting and re-interpreting information in a way that is attractive for their readers. The same holds true for the next generation of reservations systems. Ms. Fitch describes a system that aggregates data from a variety... Read more »

Feedback on the Blogger’s Summit

Both sessions for the workshop went very well. We had over 150 participants in the audience who were, from what I could tell, very engaged with the subject matter. One issue that came up during the feedback session was whether or not the topics was relevant. One blogger argued that the subject matter of the workshop was not really relevant to the consumer blogger or to the consumer in general. My counter to that argument however is that the subject was originally developed for the travel industry and so it does not necessarily apply to the consumer audience. That said, I think there is a huge... Read more »

Second Day @ PhoCusWright ITB - OTAs Speak Out

An interesting session with the leaders of some of Europe’s leading OTAs including: Alan Josephs, MD ebookers.com, Ignacio Martos, CEO Opodo, Ian McCaig, CEO Lastminute.com, Jens-Uwe Parkitny, VP & MD Expedia.com Gmbh, Javier Perez-Tenessa, Founder eDreams Inc. During the session Philip Wolf conducted an informal survey to determine whether the audience felt that the OTAs were doing a good job of differentiating themselves from each other. The resounding response from the audience was that they were, infact, NOT doing a very good job of differentiating themselves. So what can the... Read more »

Isango - Ranjan Singh

Ranjan Singh, CEO and Co-Founder of Isango! Mr. Singh joined online travel with Expedia and then become Managing Director for EBookers. What he found is that companies like Expedia and other OTAs are focused on the logistics of travel versus the destination products or the reasons why people go on trips. A recent survey stated that 66% of search is for things to do and attractions. For end consumers, there are many choices for booking the logistical pieces of travel but there are very few choices for the attraction and thing to do products. Therefore, a consolidation model works very well... Read more »

Mobile Travel Technologies - Gerry Samuels

Gerry Samuels, Founder & Executive Director, Mobile Travel Technologies Ltd. Who are MTT’s customers? Hotels, airlines, and intermediaries. Their core technology enables certain aspects of the customer’s mobile services. The technology can do things like deliver travel information, select seats, and even have boarding passes sent to the phone. The technology connects on the back-end with the customer systems and cherry pick the information that needs to be delivered and modifies or smart edits the information in order to be viewed on both high-end users and basic mobile devices. Do... Read more »