Travel & Tourism Technology Trends

It seems I travel to so many of these conferences now that it is difficult to identify key take-aways from each one.  The thing I enjoy most about these conferences is the collaborating and sharing that comes from an industry that is, in all other cases, extremely competitive.  Here is what I learned from IFITT’s Enter 2009 in Amsterdam: 1. Don’t be afraid to try new things with social media. Many of the sessions, including the DMO (Destination Marketing Organization) ones included this theme. Read more [...]

Continue Reading

The PhoCusWright 2008 Travel Innovation Summit was a showcase for two major types of websites.  The first was Vacation Rentals, undoubtedly because of the recent PhoCusWright study about Vacation Rentals, and the second was trip planning.  There were a number of trip planning tools represented at the show including: Cadabra FoggLight (Home & Abroad) TravelMuse Uptake TripSketch PlanetEye Triporati NileGuide This graph shows trends in popularity (according to Alexa.com) for Read more [...]

Continue Reading

Escapia is a hosted vacation rental management system which includes an integrated booking capable website and distribution platform.  The concept behind escapiaOne, which is the companies flagship product suite, is a fully integrated platform that replaces a PC based property management system, a website, and manual distribution through Internet marketing partners.  The idea is to combine these three critical areas into one unified system which thereby reduces manual intervention and automates Read more [...]

Continue Reading

With the inaugural PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit less than two weeks away, I thought I would take a few moments to outline the demonstrators (as of November 4th) and then go into a little more detail on each demonstrator.  The challenge here is that some of the demonstrators are in stealth mode and are not making anything known prior to their launch, while others are already live and provide quite a bit of information.  To keep it as unbiased as possible, I’m not going to review the demonstrators.  Read more [...]

Continue Reading

Over the last year I have started to see an interesting trend in the adoption of technologies by DMOs, both large and small.  The older and more established the DMO, the less likely they are to adopt newer web technologies.  The younger DMOs or ones that have traditionally been a little bit behind in their access to newer technologies are much more willing to try and adopt technologies that are web 2.0, SaaS, or from smaller companies Worldwide.  One consultant I spoke with from South Africa is Read more [...]

Continue Reading

Be on the lookout for these themes derived from the most creative and innovative minds in the business. The Travel Innovation Summit at The PhoCusWright Conference will showcase the travel industry’s hottest, most innovative Web and mobile-based applications. In assembling this first-ever event featuring innovators from around the world, seven key themes emerge. Following is a preview of the next big wave of ideas that will shape the travel marketplace over the next 12 to 18 months. The growth Read more [...]

Continue Reading

PhoCusWright, in collaboration with Ypartnership, has just released a new survey titled “The NextGen Traveler” which examines the habits and perculiarities of the high tech traveler.  It is an interesting survey because it shows a corelation between the evolution of online travel technology and the effects that this technology has had on the general consumer.  Although it can be argued that this group most likely represents the early adopter component of the population, it is still valid to argue Read more [...]

Continue Reading

I read an article today on Boston.com which I found really interesting.  Firstly, it confirmed something that I have been arguing for a long time, that travel agents can find relevance in the new age of on-line travel and secondly, despite what critics say, travel agents are not going to go away.  The article titled “With help from the Web, travel agents regain relevance” points out that there are new web 2.0 sites that are being developed that are helping travelers connect with specialized travel Read more [...]

Continue Reading

The PhoCusWright Conference, for the first time in its history, will be featuring a special summit dedicated to spotlighting the hottest innovations is mobile and web travel technology. The inaugural Travel Innovation Summit will feature 24 handpicked companies from around the World who want to demo their innovations to some of the most influential leaders in the travel & tourism industry. In their own words: Early-stage, emerging and established companies are invited to apply based purely Read more [...]

Continue Reading

The main topic at this year’s Global Travel & Tourism Summit in Dubai was sustainability and what the travel industry is doing to promote it.  I was really quite surprised at the amount of discussion around how “we” collectively can make a difference and do things on a corporate level to reduce our impact on the environment and make travel more sustainable.  The cost of fuel was of particular interest especially with the large airlines that attended the summit.  What many seem to forget is Read more [...]

Continue Reading