Travel Industry

The PhoCusWright Conference Travel Innovation Summit takes place in Orlando on Nov 17, 2009. In Part I, we took a look at the first ten travel innovators. This is the second part of an introduction to the 30 odd companies taking part in this year’s Travel Innovation Summit. 

Goby

Goby (www.goby.com/) – Boston, MA based Goby (pronounced Go-be) is a search engine that helps people find fun new ways to spend their free time. Goby creates an information model that provides semantic organization and lends structure to unstructured data. It can search, sort, filter, map, and contextualize heterogeneous web data.

GuestCentric

GuestCentric (www.guestcentric.com/) – Stamford, CT based GuestCentric Systems provides an integrated platform for hoteliers that includes website design, a dynamic booking engine, reservations platform and internet hotel marketing. It gives you your own branded specialty store on the Internet where you have full control over the content, inventory and pricing.

iPerceptions

iPerceptions (www.iperceptions.com/) – New York, NY based iPerceptions offers solutions which allow companies to collect feedback from actual customers in self initiated, real situations. Their webValidator Continuous Listening Solution and the iPerceptions Satisfaction Index (iPSI) help you get inside the hearts and minds of your visitors to discover the issues that matter most to them.

Language Weaver

Language Weaver (www.languageweaver.com/) – Los Angeles, CA based Language Weaver offers solutions and products for automated language translation. Their translation solutions are designed for organizations that need to translate large volumes of information into one or more languages, at high speed and high accuracy.

LuggageTag

Luggage Tag (www.luggagetag.com) – West Chester, PA based LuggageTag.com offers a design tool for you to personalize designs for luggage tags, which the company will then manufacture and ship to you.

Milestone Internet

Milestone Internet Marketing (www.milestoneinternet.com/) – Santa Clara, CA based Milestone Internet provides online hospitality marketing and consulting services, with complete soup-to-nuts solution for hotels, resorts, and hospitality industry for enhancing internet presence.

Mondial Assistance

Mondial Assistance (www.mondialusa.com/) – Paris, France based Mondial Assistance offers specialty insurance and assistance services. Their US offerings – based out of Richmond, VA – include Access America travel insurance and Event Ticket Protector insurance. Mondial also offers worldwide medical assistance and concierge services.

Tourabout

Tourabout (www.tourabout.com/) – Sydney, Australia based Tourabout offers a travel platform called ‘The Social GDS’ where community and commerce are merged in a marketplace and organisations connect and engage directly with travellers. It exists in the Facebook and mobile environments and is integrated with Twitter.

Translations

Translations.com (www.translations.com/) – New York, NY based Translations.com offers website localization, software localization, GMS (Globalization Management System) software products, and enterprise-level, professional translation services.

TravelGuard

Travel Guard (www.travelguard.com/) – Stevens Point, WI based Travel Guard is a travel insurance plan provider, specializing in providing travel insurance, assistance and emergency travel service plans which are distributed through virtually every distribution channel in the travel industry.

The rest of the PhoCusWright Conference Travel Innovators are introduced in Part I & Part III.

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The PhoCusWright Conference takes place Nov 17-19 in Orlando, and the highlight on Day 1 – Tuesday, Nov 17, 2009, is the Travel Innovation Summit. Attendees are expected to rate all 30 innovators in real-time, based on their demonstrations.

Over the next few days, we’ll introduce to you all 30 travel innovators. In this post, we take a look at the first 10 companies.

10Best Solutions

10Best Solutions (www.10bestsolutions.com/) – Greenville, SC based 10Best Solutions  provides search engine optimization, content management, content creation and design/development services to an impressive roster of clients including major hotel chains, cruise lines, airlines and travel sites. 10Best Solutions is a division of 10Best, Inc.

AboutAnywhere

AboutAnywhere (www.aboutanywhere.com/) – Miami, FL based AboutAnywhere.com offers a direct-to-consumer travel website, with a low-cost online travel agency business model with major innovations in e-marketing services and improved functionality for both hotel partners and consumers.

Amadeus

Amadeus (www.amadeus.com/) – Madrid, Spain based Amadeus IT Group SA is the leading Global Distribution System (GDS) and the biggest processor of travel bookings in the world. From global network airlines to low cost carriers, from multinational travel agencies to independent hotels, Amadeus provides IT solutions to everyone in the tourism and travel industry.

CarTrawler

 CarTrawler (www.cartrawler.com/) – Dublin, Ireland based global car rental distribution company CarTrawler offers large selection of car rentals from over 500 car rental suppliers in 135 countries in 15,000 city and airport locations. 

CheapLimoRates

CheapLimoRates  (www.cheaplimorates.com/) – Phoenix, AZ based CheapLimoRates.com claims to be the first comparison shopping and booking engine website for the limousine industry, and matches millions of consumers with nearly 10,000 limousine companies who offer discounted rates to book their unused vehicle inventory.  

Twavl

Twavl (www.connectme360.com/) – Twavl is a city-specific community service based on twitter which offers answers and provides insider tips in the form of tweets. Twavl is run by Connectme 360 – a Denver, CO based answer logistics company which helps employees of travel and hospitality companies locate the perfect response to customers’ queries in less than a minute. 

Dapper

Dapper (www.dapper.net/) – San Francisco (and New York) based Dapper provides technical solutions for quickly creating widgets, Google gadgets, and Facebook apps — leading to its flagship product, Dapper Dynamic Ads, which pull live product and inventory from your site, bringing the right offer to the right consumer at the right time.  

Exalead

Exalead (www.exalead.com/) – Paris, France based Exalead is a global software provider in the enterprise and Web search markets, and the maker of CloudView, one of the top platforms for search-based applications (SBAs), which uses advanced semantic technologies to bring structure, meaning and accessibility to previously unused or under-utilized data. 

Expedia Media Solutions

Expedia Media Solutions (www.advertising.expedia.com/) – Bellevue, WA based Expedia Media Solutions is the world’s largest travel lifestyle media company, which leverages the nearly 30 million customers that visit the Expedia, Inc. network of sites every month. 

Gliider

Gliider (www.gliider.com/) – Based in Brooklyn, NY, Gliider offers a browser plugin and travel tool which helps you to collect travel information from around the web in one place by simply highlighting and dragging and dropping the part you like.

The rest of the PhoCusWright Conference Travel Innovators are introduced in Part II & Part III.

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The Travel Promotion Act (S. 1023 & H.R. 2935), having been passed by both the US Senate and the House, is on the verge of being enacted into law, awaiting the formalities of one more vote and the President’s signature. So now would be a good time to look into the nuts and bolts of how it is going to work.

US Capitol

Most of you already know what it is going to do – “establish a non-profit corporation to communicate United States entry policies and otherwise promote leisure, business, and scholarly travel to the United States.”  The corporation’s activities will be funded by a matching program featuring up to $100 million in private sector contributions.

Makes you wonder whether the travel industry – which is just getting up off the mat after having taken a thrashing from the recession, is capable and motivated enough to raise $100 million.

The second question arises from the language in the bill which says that the private sector cannot contribute more than 80% of it’s share of the matching funds in the form of goods and services.

This means that for every $1 raised in cash, the travel industry needs to contribute upto $4 in kind – this could be in the form of free travel services offered to the executives and officials of the Travel Promotion Corporation, and free promotion/advertising for the corporation and its website, among other things.   

The success of the enterprise now depends on how well the corporation’s officials carry out their duties. If they raise, say, only $20 million from the private sector, then they’ll get another $20m from the matching fund, the total comes to $40m – which would be a damp squid, to say the least, considering the hype and the amount of money the corporation will be spending on itself.

The contributions are voluntary, to start with. But if it doesn’t work, the corporation has the power - after a referendum – to “impose an annual assessment on members of the US travel and tourism industry represented on the Board in proportion to their share of the aggregate international travel and tourism revenue of the industry.”

And this is where it gets really interesting. While members explicitly represented on the board include hotels, restaurants, travel distribution, passenger rail , the shocker is that the airline industry – even though it is represented on the board, has been specifically granted an exemption from an assessment. 

U.S. Travel Assoc. Senior VP Geoff Freeman told Travel Weekly that the airlines lobbied Congress separately without consultation with U.S. Travel and got themselves exempted form having to pay anything into the Travel Promotion Fund.

It should be no surprise, therefore, if the airlines also refuse to volunteer to pay cash or make contributions in kind.

Car rentals and tour companies are not specifically mentioned in the bill, so they could, in theory – opt out of having to pay their share. To make things worse, it is the Corporation which gets to decide who owes how much of the share. This is all a recipe for tearing the travel industry apart – if it comes to a situation where members are forced to pay.

Bottomline is that the travel industry needs to pony up the dough and make it easy for the Travel Corporation to fund its activities. If that doesn’t happen, there’s a whole can of worms down the road which will make things really difficult for any future efforts to promote the US as a tourist destination.

Photo by cliff1066

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The Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) recently surveyed the travel managers of 109 international companies, and the results of this survey indicate that the business travel plans of a majority of these companies have not been impacted by the H1N1 flu (swine flu) virus.

Swine flu

In the survey, 91% of those surveyed said that H1N1 is not stopping them from scheduling meetings and conferences. And and even more impressive 96% said that their business travelers were not asking to postpone or cancel scheduled trips during the flu season.

The study was released by ACTE at a conference in Prague. The change in attitude towards swine flu by business travelers is remarkable, given that back in May 2009, a similar ACTE survey had found that 37% of companies worldwide were either canceling meetings or restricting travelers from attending them.

While the new data from the latest ACTE survey suggests that business travel is now immune to the swine flu, don’t shake on it yet. ACTE Executive Director Susan Gurley said that a random polling of ACTE members has revealed it would be easier to drop the traditional handshake, for the duration of the health crisis — should one develop — as opposed to sneezing or coughing into a sleeve.

But travel as a whole hasn’t yet reached a point where swine flu isn’t a factor.  The October 2009 travelhorizons survey – a joint effort by Ypartnership and the U.S. Travel Association, suggests that major outbreaks could have a big impact on a destination’s leisure travel. 

One third of the respondents planning to travel in the next 6 months said they would most likely change travel plans if their destination reported an outbreak of swine flu in the interim. Of those who said they would alter travel plans, 45% said they would postpone the trip and 31% said they would cancel it altogether.

To top it off, President Obama last week declared the H1N1 swine flu a national emergency, which – while considered a prudent safety measure, nevertheless has had the effect of focusing national and international attention on the fact that 46 out of 50 states now have widespread cases of the swine flu virus.

More details about the ACTE surveys related to swine flu can be found on their website – www.acte.org/

And here’s a few tips from the U.S. Travel Assoc. you might want to go through, if you’re a travel company or organization dealing with issues related to H1N1.

Photo by The Artifex

A seemingly harmless franchise fight between the owners of the Quality Inn Vancouver Hotel and Quality Inn (the brand) has spiralled out of control into a giant consumer mess for travelers who booked rooms for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics and got left high and dry.

Vancouver 2010 Olympics

On October 16, the 100 room airport hotel – formerly known as the Blue Boy Motor Hotel – lost the right to be a part of the Quality Inn brand. 

Consumers who made reservations at the hotel months ago through Choice Hotels International – the parent company which owns the Quality Inn brand – were informed that their reservations were no longer valid.

A consumer who booked a room for $79 now faces the prospect of booking similar rooms at shockingly high prices. The hotel owner is offering to rebook the same room for $500. Choice is offering to rebook at one of its other Vancouver hotels for $395 a night.

In short, anyone who booked a room at the hotel through Choice now has to fork over an additional $300 over, if they want a room for the Olympics.

A Choice Hotels spokesman told the Vancouver Sun that “Choice Hotels cannot force a hotel that no longer holds a franchise to honour the room rates guaranteed by its booking agents.”

That may be true, but the question now is, can these consumers force Choice to honor the room rates? There’s already talk of a class-action lawsuit. And it doesn’t make Vancouver look so good either. If this escalates into a full-fledged media uproar, then Choice will have to give in quickly to contain the damage.

Photo by Andy Miah

On Oct 21, 2009, the Clean Cruise Ship Act of 2009 (S. 1820) – which would ban the release of raw, untreated sewage in U.S. waters, including the Great Lakes – was introduced in the US Senate by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL). Nearly identical legislation was introduced in the House by Representative Sam Farr (D-CA).

Cruise Ship

Currently, cruise ships are allowed to discharge waste three nautical miles from shore. The Clean Cruise Ship Act would establish a no-dumping zone in waters within 12 nautical miles of U.S. shores and strengthen standards for treatment of waste outside of this zone.  The bill would also establish an onboard monitoring program to ensure that ships comply with the law.

Three good reasons for the cruise industry to wake up and smell the waste -

A) Sen. Durbin is the Assistant Senate Majority Leader – effectively the no. 2 in the Senate, and he represents Illinois and has excellent relations with President Obama.

B) Rep. Sam Farr is co-chair of the Congressional Travel and Tourism Caucus – which basically means the guy who’s supposed to be protecting your interests is pulling the rug out from under you.

C) The issue is too big to be left alone - the U.S. is close to hitting ten million annual cruise passengers. The average cruise ship produces over 1.2 million gallons of wastewater every week, and there are more than 230 cruise ships operating around the world, generating millions of gallons of wastewater daily.

A single ship can produce over 200,000 gallons of human sewage; one million gallons of graywater from kitchens, laundry and showers; more than 10,000 gallons of sewage sludge; more than 130 gallons of hazardous waste and over 25,000 gallons of oily bilge water that collects in ship bottoms.

Sen. Durbin had put up the same bill in 2008, but the Senate apparently had better things to do at that time. While introducing the bill, he explained why he feels strongly about this - ” Under the current system, these ships can directly dump their waste into our oceans and the Great Lakes with minimal oversight.  Vacation cruises can be a wonderful way to see the world, but we cannot afford to leave the destruction of the oceans in the wake of these ships.”

Sen. Durbin’s legislation is supported by environmental groups including Friends of the Earth; Earthjustice; Oceana; Surfrider; Campaign to Safeguard America’s Waters; and Northwest Environmental Advocates.

Neesha Kulkarni, Legislative Associate at Friends of the Earth, added that “Advanced technology is available to treat this waste, but the cruise industry has failed to install this equipment on a majority of its ships.”

And Rep. Farr chimed in with his own recriminations – “Big cruise ships make for big pollution; it’s an unavoidable truth. Unfortunately, responsible disposal of that waste hasn’t always been a given. The cruise ship industry is way overdue to take responsibility for its actions.”

The US House has also approved legislation requiring cruise lines to improve their passenger safety record, with new and stringent requirements related to crime prevention and reporting. This bill (HR 3619) is also now heading for the Senate for approval.

In short, it’s time for the cruise industry to clean up it’s act, or Congress is quite willing – and likely, to do it for them.

Photo by ccgd

PhoCusWright doesn’t just talk and issue reports about innovation and travel technology. They’re actually doing a little bit of innovating themselves.

The PhoCusWright Conference Online Ticket

Thousands of people working in the tourism& travel sectors the world over would no doubt love to attend industry events such as The PhoCusWright Conference being held in Orlando from Nov 17-19, 2009.

But time, budget contraints and distance make the trip unfeasible for many.  If you fall into this category, then PhoCusWright has just the ticket for you – An Online Ticket.

Signing up for this ticket enables you to experience the best speakers, the most crucial topics and the biggest innovations… all from the comfort of your home or office.

You get on-demand content from Center Stage, The Travel Innovation Summit and exclusive interviews with renowned travel leaders. You’ll be a part of the audience, listening to the best speakers, joining in for intense debate and live question and answer sessions –  previously available only to in-person conference attendees.

The Online Ticket leverages Twitter’s vast network and allows participation and discussion with other online viewers, attendees in Orlando and the speakers on Center Stage. All streaming video is available on-demand for 60 days allowing Online Ticket viewers and conference attendees to review content and never miss a session.

It’s early days yet, but what PhoCusWright has done with the Online Ticket - a successful marriage of face-to-face networking and virtual conferencing - is likely to be used as a template for every single major travel industry conference in future.

See a Preview of the Online Ticket, and if you like it – Register here.

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The National Business Travel Association (NBTA) has issued the 2010 U.S. Business Travel Buyers’ Cost Forecast report to its members. The report says businesses are expected to travel a lot more, with air travel and car rental costs expected to remain nearly flat and hotel rates expected to decline by upto 8%.

NBTA 2010 Business Travel Buyers' Cost Forecast

A whopping 69% of travel managers responding to the NBTA survey said that they expect business travel volume to grow in 2010. 56% said their projected travel spending has increased for 2010, while 31% said it remains flat.

On an equally optimistic note, the number of travel managers expecting spending cuts in 2010 has gone down:- Meetings (-27%); non-essential travel and conference (-20%); and event attendance (-15%).

NBTA President and CEO Craig Banikowski warned however that “The uptick in business travel in 2010 will take place within the framework of a new corporate culture in terms of travel. In the ‘new normal,’ we see stronger travel mandates, greater use of pre-trip approval and audits, tighter restrictions on premium class travel, more focus on travel ROI, and enterprise-wide strategic meetings management.”

As a result, the NBTA survey also indicates that 70% of buyers expect to negotiate better hotel discounts for 2010.  More than 30% forecast better discounts with airlines and car rental companies.

One area of concern is the growing list of ancillary fees charged by airlines - which the report says may push the cost of an airline ticket by 30% or more.

From what the report says, it seems like 2010 is headed for a year of increased volumes and more travel spending, but at lower prices than what we have on offer today. It’s harder than expected for the travel industry in the short term – although much, much better than 2008 and 2009, and the business travel growth also bodes well for 2011 and beyond.

You can download the full report on the NBTA website – www.nbta.org/2010forecast

Wall Street is ready to put it’s money on travel again, with a rash of IPOs scheduled for the coming months. Here’s an overview of the major public offerings that are going to hit the markets late this year or early next year.

Travel IPO market heating up

Hyatt Hotels Corp. – Back in August, Hyatt had filed plans for a $1.15 billion IPO with the SEC. A couple of days back, they filed an amendment, which offers some more details.

According to the new filing, Hyatt is offering at least 38 million shares of Class A common stock for between $23 to $26 per share. Hyatt will be trading in the NYSE under the symbol ‘H’.

Las Vegas Casinos – Sin City’s big players are cashing in big time on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. Las Vegas Sands Corp. has already filed for it’s own $2 billion Hong Kong IPO, which is due to complete its listing next month.

MGM Mirage, which operates the $1.25 billion MGM Grand Macau, is also planning a Hong Kong IPO, according to MGM Mirage Chairman and CEO Jim Murren. Earlier this month, Wynn Resorts Ltd. raised $1.87 billion in what was Hong Kong’s second biggest IPO for the year.

REITs – The flood of hotels going into foreclosure you saw in the past few months was a result of hotel companies bailing out of big mortgages based on pre-recession valuations. Hotel REITs are now looking to boost their liquidity and be ready to invest on the same undervalued properties, but with smaller mortgages.

Sunstone Hotel Investors Inc., which handed back the W San Diego to lenders in June because the property was devalued, is now planning to sell at least 14 million shares.

The Chesapeake Lodging Trust filed IPO plans in September to raise up to $460 million. Last week, the Pebblebrook Hotel Trust filed for a $402.5 million IPO, with plans to buy upscale hotels and resorts in the 20 largest US cities.

Blackstone Group – Earlier this month, Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman sent a letter to investors in which he said that the group was gearing up for IPOs for eight of its companies, including Europe based Merlin Entertainment, which owns the Legoland Parks. Blackstone recently announced the purchase 10 more theme parks from AB-InBev for $2.7 billion.

Another of Blackstone’s assets – Travelport, is all set to revive it’s plan for a listing in London. Travelport was purchased by Blackstone in 2006 for $4.3 billion, and was looking good for an $8 billion floatation in 2007 just before the markets crashed. The plan was shelved at that time.

Travelport’s GDS competitor Amadeus IT Group SA, owned by London based private equity group BC Partners and Cinven Group, is itself on the verge of a similar $8 billion IPO listing on the Madrid stock exchange, provided the markets remain buoyant next year.  

Both Travelport & Amadeus are pressing ahead with their respective IPOs after merger talks between the two reportedly ended in nought. And Sabre Holdings, which was acquired for $5.4 billion in 2006 by private equity firms TPG and Silver Lake Partners, has similar tentative plans for an IPO sometime next year.

Photo by rednuht

When Nic posted her My Bottle’s Up rant on October 16, allegedly detailing how TSA agents separated her from her child at Atlanta’s security checkpoint, the tale garnered plenty of sympathy and outrage, mainly from mothers who know what it’s like to travel alone.

Blogger Nic

The blogger’s story contained plenty of drama, from a crying toddler saying ‘No, no, no,” as he disappeared from sight to a woman blacking out from emotion in the bathroom. She claims to have called her husband and mother, begging them to help her because “they took Jackson.”

It’s a social media nightmare for anyone involved in the travel industry today, as bouncing prices, additional fees and last-minute changes have prepped the public to believe any horror story that comes down the pike. But what social media taketh, it also giveth back.

By Friday evening, the TSA got the last word at its blog, using less than a fourth of the space Ms. Nic took up for her side of the dust-up. It merely put up a video of the events showing that many of her claims were exaggerations, including the fact that no one carried off a young child. The Twitter-sphere was next in line, regugitating the blogger’s cyber comments after boarding the flight:

” dunno if i’m going blog about it… may pitch it to publications and go waaaay out with it. i dunno yet. “

” eh, i can put it on my blog, but get paid if someone picks up my story… MWUAHAHAHA…. pay me for my insanity!!!! ”

” i’m not posting sh*t. i’m writing a piece to be published much more widespread than my blog that get 6 hits ”

” full story can’t be posted on my blog…. publishers want it. “

“needless to say, today has been hell… but TSA will be ripped a new asshole thanks to freelance writing.”

Tylenol would have killed for this kind of defensive weapon during the tampering scare several decades ago.

Jason Chaffetz

But lest the TSA gets a swelled head, the surveillance video it released of Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) traipsing through security at Salt Lake City International Airport proves the politician’s assertion that he did not choose a whole-body-image scanner after voting against that measure in the U.S. House of Representatives. Nor did he throw his business card at TSA officials on the scene as some had suggested.

“It corroborates exactly what I’ve been saying,” Chaffetz told the Salt Lake Tribune. “It dispels the erroneous myth perpetuated by the union.” Not to mention the erroneous myths perpetuated by life in general.

Photography: My Bottle’s Up, Jason Chaffetz