Feature 1: Now you can search for, compare and book hotels directly via Google, with the search engine’s newly launched Hotel Finder experiment. It’s a nifty map-based tool, with some interesting location, social and deals related filters.

Google Hotel Finder experiment

1. You can filter results based on user ratings (posted by Google Maps users).

2. You can filter results based on price, with the added option of listing hotels whose current price is in between its typical price and a 50 percent discount price. This feature digs up hotels that are currently offering huge discounts (as in daily deals).

3. You can use the “edit shape” and “add shape” options to customize the search area and limit your results to a specific region on the map.

Another feature allows you to add a hotel you like to your “shortlist” and continue searching, so that you have all your best choices to look at afterward.

The booking part is probably what is going to get the most attention, though. Google is offering direct links to online travel agents (OTAs) and supplier sites with a “Book” button, and that doesn’t leave much room for anyone else to get in between the customer and the OTA or supplier.

What is Google Hotel Finder? Google.com

Feature 2: The U.S. Travel Association got a rude shock this week when it saw the Corporation for Travel Promotion (CTP) put up for “elimination” via online voting on the U.S. House of Representatives Majority Leader’s Youcut website. Listed proposals on this site are voted on every week, and the one with the most votes is then included in House legislation for elimination.

The USTA quickly put out an action alert, asking people to call the Majority Leader and tell him not to eliminate the CTP. The whole kerfuffle got sorted out fairly quickly since the CTP didn’t get the top votes this week, and USTA says it now has assurances that it won’t be listed again.

U.S. Travel acts to protect the Corporation for Travel Promotion – Travel Agent Central
Thank You! Update on threat to Corporation for Travel Promotion – Power of Travel Coalition

Here’s the rest of the week’s interesting news:

Infographic: Real cost of sleeping - CreditDonkey
Infographic: Social travel revolution - Tripl

“Social Essentials” white paper to quantify social media impressions - comScore
Cornell student project differentiates between real and fake hotel reviews – Cornell.edu
Restaurants research customers online to find their tastes and preferences – SMH, AU

Expedia and Groupon sell 15,000 travel deals in three days – AllThingsD
Expedia 2Q revenue jumps 23 percent to $1.02 billion - WSJ

Hilton launches iAd with “Stay Hilton, Go Everywhere” campaign – Hilton.com
Zillow founder launches new mobile discovery app Trover - TechFlash
United Airlines app turns iOS devices into mobile boarding passes – ZDNet

Travelport loses bid to move or dismiss AMR ticket data suit – Bloomberg
American and Travelport close in on temporary agreement – Travel Weekly

Global Entry now available at pre-clearance airports – CBP.gov
The GE Show: Future Flight - GE.com

Do pet passengers get pat-downs, too? MSNBC
Everything’s better with cute animals - Hipmunk on TV

Study: Business traveler market segmentation – GBTA
Road Warrior 2.0: Tips for the modern-day business traveler - Hyatt Place

Ralph Nader and the airline refund – NYT
Travelers may be owed a tax refund - AP

Photo – Google Hotel Finder snapshot

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It’s a difficult time for tourism marketing organizations, what with budget cuts, job losses and most visitors still unwilling to spend as much as before the recession. But do these desperate times call for desperado measures? Apparently so…

New Mexico: Whenever New Mexico governors are in trouble, they tend to call on Billy the Kid for help. Former Governor Bill Richardson did the same when he tried to pardon Billy the Kid. That created a big-enough ruckus to give the governor a much-needed diversion from his state’s problems.

Now, current New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez has decided to go the other way and put a $10,000 bounty on the hapless Kid. As part of a new New Mexico tourism campaign, she wants people to join a virtual posse online and then travel the state for real in search of the infamous outlaw. There’s even a dedicated website (www.catchthekid.com) to create a posse profile.

Designated locations will have clues that lead to the Kid and his hideouts. Participants have to be in the right place at the right time to catch him. There’s a smartphone “Catch the Kid” app, or participants can just take pictures and upload them to their profile pages.

Those using a smartphone stand to gain Billy’s “loot” along the way, which can be used to buy vacations, deals and meals on the website’s general store. The first posse to “capture” the kid gets a $10,000 reward.

Guerrero, Mexico: The Mexican state of Guerrero placed a help-wanted ad looking for beautiful women to sign up as “tourist police” to patrol its popular visitor destinations, like Acapulco. Ramon Almonte Borja, head of the state’s public security secretariat, tells CNN that the idea is to set up a police force “comprised of only women, preferably beautiful ones.”

The “police force” will be unarmed, and its job description is apparently to look good in specially designed police uniforms and to guide tourists. Makes you wonder why crime in Mexico is such a big problem… There are currently 52 openings, but that could change depending on how many women apply.

Cyprus: Should the Cyprus Tourism Organization (CTO) advertise in toilets? Thing is, a Cypriot found a CTO tourism ad pasted in a toilet in a soccer (football) stadium in Glasgow. Now CTO is taking heat for wasting ad budgets on toilets.

CTO explained that it was a freebie included in a larger campaign that featured television spots. One CTO employee suggested that freebie or not, the captive audience for the urinal ads had no other place to look, so it probably worked out very well.

New York, NY: In anticipation of the July 29 release of a motion picture filmed in New York City by Sony Pictures, NYC & Company has handed over its tourism promotion duties to little blue smurfs.

The smurfs have been declared official family ambassadors with the task of getting more families to visit the Big Apple, and they’re doing a pretty good job of it with Smurfs Week NYC.

“There are very few characters like the Smurfs—they have an appeal across generations all over the world,” explained Marc Weinstock, president, worldwide marketing for Sony Pictures. “That’s why we wanted to team up with NYC & Company to present Smurfs Week NYC. We’ve planned an exciting week of activities for visitors and New Yorkers alike—this is a great way to celebrate the release of the movie.”

Photos: NM Tourism, nycgo.com

(This post was updated on July 29, 2011, to remove the reference to Greece in the Cyprus section.)

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The Time Traveler Tours Story App “Beware Madame La Guillotine: A Revolutionary Tour of Paris” is a new way for to explore the City of Light and learn about its history.

Released just two weeks after the Bastille Day holiday that celebrates the storming of the Bastille during the French Revolution, the new app is geared toward teens and tweens, but can be enjoyed by adults as well.

The tale, narrated by the young murderess Charlotte Corday in the moments before she is to have her head lopped off, takes listeners on a dramatic journey and treasure hunt into the sights and sounds of Paris at the time of the Revolution. Corday explains how and why she stabbed radical propagandist Jean-Paul Marat while leading listeners around central Paris, from the Palais Royal to La Conciergerie on the Ile de la Cite.

The app is the first in what founder Sarah Towle plans to be several guides for Time Traveler Tours. Each StoryApp Tour will focus on one of the world’s great cities and provide a daylong interactive itinerary, narrated by a historical figure whose actions helped shape their times. Along with the tale, users will get access to maps, directions, helpful hints, and a restaurant discount, plus activities, puzzles, scavenger hunts and brain-teasers for kids.

The app is available at the iTunes store in English for $7.99, and in October will be available in French for both iOS and Android. Forthcoming apps feature three more Paris tours.

Photo: Time Travel Tours

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Congressional dysfunction could soon burden passengers and airlines with $18 billion in new airport fees.

Congress debt negotiation plan

As part of the ongoing negotiations on raising the U.S. debt limit before an August 2 deadline, Congress has been mulling over a plan to double the airport security fee for passengers, and add a $25 departure fee per flight.

The airport security fee of $2.50 per enplanement (maximum of $10 per round trip) for passengers was put in place at U.S. airports after 9/11, to partially pay for Homeland Security operations. Congress now wants to double this fee, which will raise an additional $15 billion over a 10-year period.

Congress also wants to extract another $25 as a departure fee from every commercial and private plane taking off from any airport. This fee, charged directly to the airlines, will raise another $3 billion in new revenue.

Milking the aviation sector and Pension Benefits Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) for $27 billion was apparently a component of the deficit-reduction plan discussed by Vice President Joe Biden and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA). The image above is part of a set of slides outlining the full plan.

The aviation industry’s lobbying machine has swung into high gear to stop Congress from imposing the fees, even though the proposal is just one among several on the table and up for discussion. Congress hasn’t as yet reached an agreement on any revenue hikes.

“This is absolutely unacceptable; we should advance a tax policy that encourages air service to grow, not contract,” said Air Transport Association (ATA) President and CEO Nicholas E. Calio. “Airlines are critical to the nation’s economic health.”

The National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) set up a free legislative action hotline, (877) 727-5074, for citizens to call their representatives to oppose user fees in any debt-ceiling legislation.

Several  aviation organizations also jointly sent a letter (pdf) to all members of the U.S. House and Senate, urging them to abandon the $25 departure fee.

Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) President and CEO Craig L. Fuller: ”Bad ideas, like bad pennies, have a habit of turning up again and again in Washington. User fees are a bad idea that hurts an entire industry, the economy, and the nation. They simply make no sense.”

General Aviation Manufacturers Association (GAMA) President and CEO Pete Bunce: “User fees have crippled general aviation in Europe and the last thing we want to see in the U.S. is user fees growing the federal bureaucracy.”

These same organizations are also worried about a tax hike for corporate jet users, which would raise another $3 billion by extending the depreciation schedule for private jets to seven years, instead of the current five years.

Put together with a doubling of the airline security fee and the new departure fee per flight, it amounts to a $21 billion tax hike on the aviation industry and its consumers. If enacted, it will trigger fare hikes, a drop in air travel and lower plane sales.

Slide: Public Domain

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