Category: Travel Industry News

American Recovery Act Won’t ReInvest in the Travel Industry

Feb 01, 2009 0:43 - By: P. Ling

Roger Dow, President and CEO, U.S. Travel Association

There’s $825 billion of spending and tax cuts incorporated into the stimulus bill (S.1 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009). But this open hose of taxpayer dollars is not being used to fill up the travel industry’s tank, mainly because of a clash between the National Tour Association (NTA) and the U.S. Travel Association (USTA).

The lobbying and the media campaign being run by the groups representing travel and tourism, while intense, still leaves a lot to be desired. The NTA and the U.S. Travel Association (USTA, formerly Travel Industry Association – TIA) are not speaking with one voice, and whatever they do say, is being completely ignored by Congress and the Obama Administration.

During the transition, the USTA set up a special transition website (www.poweroftravel.com/), where they wrote about the travel industry’s priorities and listed expected ‘handouts’. Obama’s transition website (www.change.gov/) had mentions of just about everything else from education to healthcare to transportation, but not a single word about tourism promotion or pending legislation affecting the travel industry.

Then the NTA organized a summit of 37 travel and tourism groups in Washington DC so as to be able to come up with set of joint recommendations. They did finally come up with 7 recommendations, and sent a letter to then President-elect Obama. But it was signed by the heads of only 24 industry groups,  and it didn’t include Roger Dow, President of the USTA.

In fact, in between the summit in December and the letter in January, Roger Dow actually sent emails to participants of the summit in which he undermined the credibility of the summit and asked them not to support the initiative and the recommendations.

The USTA then further complicated the situation by sending their own letter to Congress, with recommendations for getting the Travel Promotion Act (H.R. 3232 and S. 1661) included in the stimulus bill, and urging modernization of the nation’s air traffic control (ATC) system.

Given this appalling display of lack of unity as an industry, it’s no big surprise that the  American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 does not include the recovery and necessary investments for the travel industry.

BBC Launches Lonely Planet Travel Module

Jan 27, 2009 22:42 - By: P. Ling

Lonely Planet Travel Module on BBC.com Home Page

Lonely Planet Travel Module on BBC

The BBC has launched a Lonely Planet travel module on the BBC.com home page. The module provides Lonely Planet direct one-click acccess to BBC.com’s 26 million users around the globe.

In addition to enticing visitors to visit Lonely Planet’s destination pages, there’s also a picture gallery and a ‘latest from Lonely Planet’ section which displays three editorially selected stories from the Lonely Planet website.

In a press statement, Kym Niblock, MD BBC.com, BBC Worldwide, said that “Broadening our already huge content offering to give our users access to the latest travel information will enable them to connect with the world and each other.”

Well, I tried to do a little connecting, and turns out the only connection the module facilitates is between the visitor and the Lonely Planet website. Anything you do – any click anywhere on the module – Will immediately result in you ending up on a page on the Lonely Planet website.

To be fair, BBC.com could do a lot worse than have Lonely Planet handling its travel section. The problem here runs a little bit deeper, and has to do with BBC’s aggressive promotion of Lonely Planet on its digital real estate.

BBC Worldwide owns Lonely Planet – a 75% stake, to be precise. To add to the confusion, BBC.com is a commercial for-profit site, while BBC.co.uk has to work under UK license-fee regulations, which prevents it from showing favoritism to any one travel content provider.

This faultline between the BBC and BBC Worldwide has been the subject of endless controversy, with accusations of lack of transparency in the commercial operations, and even a parliamentary committee formed to look into why the BBC purchased Lonely Planet, and the associated risks involved.

When the BBC tried to launch a Lonely Planet-branded magazine, lawmakers expressed concern that it would give the BBC an unfair advantage over other magazine publishers. There was a particularly big dust-up late last year with media and lawmakers piling on the BBC for providing Lonely Planet excessive coverage to LP editor Tom Hall.

Hopefully the BBC will do things properly this time round and U.K. residents will get to see the Lonely Planet travel module, same as the rest of the world.

Online Travel Websites & Hotel Tax Lawsuits

Jan 21, 2009 1:53 - By: P. Ling

A decision against Pitt County, NC by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Raleigh in a lawsuit won by a bunch of online travel websites, is making waves in the travel industry and in the justice system, because of the enormous significance to other similar cases pending in dozens of courts, not to mention the millions of dollars involved, and the larger question of whether states have a right to tax internet companies which do not have a physical address in-state.                                                                                                   
Online travel websites which offer hotel booking make a profit by pocketing the difference between rates offered to customers and the discounted bulk rates offered by the hotels to these sites. The problem here is that the hotels, as of date, are paying occupancy taxes to local counties based on the lower discounted rate. The counties, on the other hand, want taxes for each room based on the higher rate the customer actually pays. The argument here is over who, if anyone, is going to pay the tax on the difference between the two rates.
 

And this untaxed difference pocketed by online travel sites has suddenly become as important as the abortion wars, with dozens of counties having filed lawsuits (some of them class-action) against online travel websites including Expedia, Travelocity, Priceline and Orbitz, among others. None of the lawsuits, until the Raleigh appeal case, had been able to win a definitive federal decision inspite of years of litigation and hearings.

And this is not just about paying more taxes in future. Lyndhurst County, NJ collects about $337,117 a year in hotel taxes, and they’re suing travel websites (including Expedia, Travelocity and Priceline) for 5 million dollars. This is just for one County.  They’re actively trying to rope in all 147 towns in New Jersey and make it a class-action. If that happens, and then the travel websites lose the suit, can you imagine the amount that they’d end up paying in back-taxes, damages and costs? And even this would be just for one state.

Hotel Occupancy tax Lawsuit

Hotel Occupancy tax Lawsuit

Throw in the dozens of other lawsuits in San Antonio, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Chicago, along with class-actions by smaller counties put together, and what you have is a disaster waiting to happen – If the travel sites start losing.

Which is why immediately after the federal Raleigh appeal went in favor of the travel websites,  both sides  are now rushing to lobby the new 111th Congress.

The travel websites want to add an amendment to the $850 billion economic-recovery stimulus bill which would ban local authorities from taxing the travel websites. The Counties and Cities, for their part, are putting pressure on their Congressmen to not support any such move, so they can continue their fight through the courts.

Photo by Phillip via flickr (creative commons).

200+ Travel Twitterers I’m Following on #FollowFriday

Jan 16, 2009 22:40 - By: Elliottng

image

UPDATED 1/20/09: see more travel Twitter people from the comments and responses, @wandermom and @wendyperrin. Thanks!

Are you in the Travel Industry and not yet on Twitter?

If so, read Travolution Kevin May’s post on why travel firms MUST take note and his experience with the Twitter Travel community at PhoCusWright this year.  Then join Twitter and follow @travolution.

Still not convinced?  Read “Changing travel, one tweet at a time” on MSNBC by Christopher Elliott (@elliottdotorg) and BELIEVE!

Are you on Twitter and looking for more Travel Tweeters (or is it Twitterers?) to Follow and Connect with?

Then this post is for you.  Today on Twitter, a meme called #FollowFriday was spreading like wildfire.  People would tweet about other Tweeters they enjoy following, and then add the hashtag “#FollowFriday” to their tweet.  Follow the #followfriday action via Twitter Search.

I tweeted about a few top-of-mind Travel Twitterers that I wanted to share.

#FollowFriday tweet

But there are so many more interesting Travel Tweeters that I’m following.  In fact, I counted 200+ Travel Tweeters that I’m tracking using a special group in my Tweetdeck browser.

Other Lists of “Top” Travel tweeters

There are a number of lists out there that have the “top” Travel tweeters, including:

The 200+ Travel Tweeters that I follow

Well, without making any strong recommendations on who YOU should follow, I thought I’d simply share who I follow.  I’m happy I’m following all 200+ of these Tweeters.  Mine these Tweeters for the ones with the same interests as you.  Happy Following!

There you have it.  My precious Travel Twitterer list!

UPDATED 1/20/09: Added some great adds from the comments below, @wendyperrin, @christinelu, and @wandermom.

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