How does social media marketing fit into your overall marketing plan? How to get corporate execs to buy into social media as part of your strategy? Some of the examples provided below demonstrate how corporate execs are warming up to social media marketing and factoring it into an overall strategy.

Lonelyplanet

Lonely Planet (www.lonelyplanet.com/) – The dominant publisher of travel guide books is rapidly shifting from books written by LP writers to digital content partly aggregated from the community.  As a result, Lonely Planet has been ramping up their Thorn Tree Community Forum, factoring it into the future development of their main business, and encouraging their website visitors, guide book readers and purchasers to become contributors.

Lonely Planet CEO Matt Goldberg says the shift in focus towards the community and digital content is part of a plan to provide solutions to consumers’ needs, instead of being only a content provider.

Carnival

Carnival (www.carnival.com) – The Carnival Cruise Line, as mentioned here, is aggregating UGC on Twitter and Flickr published by cruise passengers while on-board Carnival’s ships, and keeping up the engagement via John Heald’s blog, and CarnivalConnect.com - an in-house social media platform for their community, and FunShipIsland.com – an interactive virtual tour. All three sites now routinely bring in over 1 million visitors each, and are being used by Carnival for strategic brand positioning.

But it didn’t start like that. John Heald started blogging to create buzz for the launch of a new ship. CarnivalConnect was launched to encourage guests to send invitations to their friends and family. Carnival saw the potential across these platforms, and merged it all into an overall strategy of showing new visitors what’s happening on board, and allowing new and prospective visitors to engage with loyal customers via social media.

Banff

Banff Lake Louise Tourism (www.banfflakelouise.com/) – BLLT was chugging along like most other tourism organizations in Canada, when the Banff Crasher Squirrel popped into a photo and triggered a viral tsunami wave on social media platforms – over 300 blog-posts, 5,000+ tweets, and 650+ facebook posts.

BLLT understood the potential early, and set up a YouTube video, a twitter account for the squirrel, and a Facebook page, along with a search-engine marketing campaign with keyword “squirrel.” End result – $3 million in ad value, reaching out to 80 million people in North America and Europe via online channels, print and TV. The squirrel is now on billboards marketing Banff, and has established a permanent presence on social media platforms.

Affinia

Affinia Hotels (www.affinia.com/) – For hotels wanting to wade into social media marketing, Affinia offers a valuable lesson – It’s all about listening, and responding on time. They’re all over Twitter, talking to their guests, offering assistance and answering queries.  Their My Affinia program allows guests to customize and pre-select in-room amenities – from pillows to iPods. Items are added on to this list or modified based on the feedback that the Affinia reps get from the social media chatter. 

Another good example of a hotel implementing social media marketing as part of an overall strategy is the Roger Smith hotel – details here. The fact that Chris Brogan gives them high marks for listening to their customers and being social-media savvy is a testament to their success at playing the game.

Southwest

Southwest (www.southwest.com/) – Southwest Airlines looks at social media as an extension of their customer engagement offline. Their ‘Nuts About Southwest’ blog is a lot more popular than any blog owned or run by any other airline. The Blog-o-spondent video contest run on the blog went massively viral last year. The blog is updated constantly by a team of Southwest employees.

Newly uploaded videos can be seen every week on Southwest’s  youtube channel. Thousands of networked Southwest employees form a web that stretches into every corner of Linkedin. Jeremy Jameson, Corporate Strategist,  Strategic Planning for Southwest Airlines, says that the social media success is simply an online extension of their corporate culture of engaging in authentic relations and conversations with customers.

Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Atlantic (www.virgin-atlantic.com/) – Richard Branson’s mothership offers a valuable lesson in course correction. After taking flak last year over the firing of 13 employees who posted derogatory remarks about customers on Virgin’s corporate Facebook page, Virgin seems to have retooled their approach.

The airline now has a cross-functional Social Spaces Forum group comprised of personnel from eCommerce, PR, customer relations, product and service, marketing etc. The team works closely to understand the social marketplace, shape the direction for activity in social spaces and develop a framework for the business in this area, according to Allison Wightman, Head of Marketing Systems, Virgin Atlantic Airways.    

United

United (www.united.com/) – Again, a lesson in how to turn around a bad situation on the social media networks. Only, United hasn’t done it yet. I’m sure you’ve heard the viral Dave Carroll video on Youtube, which the Canadian singer created after United broke his guitar and refused to pay for it.

In a similar situation, Electronic Arts was hit with a user-uploaded video of a glitch in their game which showed Tiger Woods walking on water. EA promptly responded to this with a professional ad video featuring  Tiger walking on water, which in turn again went viral and nullified all the negative impact of the first video.

As Julie Sturgeon notes, the right approach for United would have been to co-opt Dave Carroll and turn it into an ad, or put out a video of their own in response. 

AA

American Airlines (www.aa.com) – American isn’t usually counted amongst the savvy kids on the social media block, but they have taken a right step with the creation of BlackAtlas.com – a community site offering travel insights from an African-American perspective. No other airline has a brand community like this, and it should go a long way towards helping AA score some much needed social media creds.

According to Roger Frizell, American’s vice president of corporate communications, they’re planning a site in 2010 which would collect in one place all the social media videos and chatter about AA. American, he says, intends to be a part of the conversation, instead of just letting it happen without them. 

Wyndham

Wyndham (www.wyndham.com/) – Again, Wyndham is probably the only hotel group to offer a community site – Womenontheirway.com – which aims simply to foster a sense of community among female travelers.

This community goes a long way towards humanizing Wyndham and adds a touch of gentleness  to the corporate image.

Avis now tries harder to get a commitment

Rental car company Avis Budget Group has found a way to make money off deadbeats in North America, South America, Australia and New Zealand.

By December 15, 2009, it should be all systems go to begin charging a fee when customers reserve a vehicle but fail to show up for the car keys. The concept is similar to hotels assessing one night’s room rate to the credit card on record should the guest not appear — but it’s a first for the car rental niche. “It’s a long overdue change,” officials are saying.

Currently, the company is working to make sure its GDS partners are equipped to take credit cards in advance for that purpose. Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport spokespersons are saying they’ll have their end ready by the December deadline.

So far, the travel industry hasn’t raised an eyebrow, even though booking a rental car the traveler has no intention of claiming as part of a package to bring other element prices down is a fairly common strategy among agents and DIY online consumers. Perhaps that’s because Abrams Consulting Group is saying no-show rates for rental cars have reached 30 percent. “You’re planning your fleet around peak periods,” says Neil Abrams. “You run the risk of not renting all the cars you should have or you overbook and leave customers stranded at a cost to the company. It’s a tactical issue,” he told The Beat business newsletter.

Budget says no more to no shows

Add that to the fact Avis Budget Group saw a 14 percent decrease in third quarter revenue in 2009 compared to the same period a year ago. On the other hand, it’s third quarter EBITDA (that’s a faster way to say earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) increased 17 percent. “We remained intensely focused on controlling expenses  throughout our operations and have increased our forecast of realized cost savings for 2009 to $350-400 million,” says Ronald L. Nelson, Avis Budget Group Chairman and CEO.

The real test, however, is how well travelers accept the new rules. The risk, of course, is that other rental car companies will fail to follow and customers will give those competitors their business instead, as they like the idea of a no-commitment reservation should they find a lower price elsewhere at the last second. (Enterprise Rent-A-Car  has already said this isn’t part of its business model going forward; Hertz and Dollar Thrifty haven’t committed.) Still, the rules are as friendly as possible under the circumstances: Renters can cancel the reservation up to 24 hours in advance without paying a penny. If a delayed flight is behind the failure to appear, the customer is good as long as he or she gave Avis Budget Group their flight number in advance.

Heck, according to early communications with the GDS firms, Avis and Budget may even choose not to slap a no-show fee at every location.

No word yet on whether the no-show fee will be a flat rate or the average daily rate including applicable taxes and surcharges.

Photography: Avis Budget Group

It’s hard to overstate the importance of being able to game the media and keep your company in the news. But at the end of the day, this is a losing proposition - there’s a limit to the number of press releases, interviews and travel columns you can  squeeze out of the media before they get tired of your PR pitches.

To get past the traditional media barriers, some travel companies are straddling the divide between making the news and breaking it – by becoming a part of the media. The travel companies listed below are the ones who are stealing the media’s mojo and beating them at their own game.

Cheapflights

CheapFlights (www.cheapflights.com/) – CheapFlights has a news section where you’ll find plenty of breaking news. It’s not just about air travel - they write about all things travel – hotels, vacations, legislation, destinations, etc. Even more important – the news really is breaking news, and they consistently publish it before everyone starts weighing in.

Bing

Bing (www.bing.com/) – Microsoft’s Bing Travel hosts a community travel blog with some big-name contributors, including Pauline Frommer, Peter Greenberg, Joel Grus and Rick Steves.

  Entries from this blog are getting a lot of exposure in discussions of hot topics in the news, and it’s quite safe to say that this is one of the things that Bing is doing right. 

Uptake

UpTake (www.uptake.com/) – The sum of it is that the traditional media approach was found lacking, so UpTake took a large part of its PR budget, and launched a blog network with 7 blogs and 50 bloggers, as part of a plan to inflict lethal generosity on the travel industry.

UpTake co-founder Elliott Ng explains it in this Businessweek piece – “Now we’re breaking industry stories… covering other companies’ launches… getting invited to cover conferences as bloggers. We’ve built real relationships with people in the media rather than just pitching stories.”

CarRentals, UK

CarRentals, UK (www.carrentals.co.uk/) – Has a news section, entries from which have started turning up in breaking news alerts of late. The news section features stories from a wide range of subjects, most of which have something to do with either travel or the UK or both.

Rogersmith

Roger Smith Hotel (rogersmith.com/) – Take a look at Roger Smith Life and Roger Smith News and you’ll find that everything – the news, the art and all the people – leads you right back to the hotel in New York. And the connections are a lot deeper than just plain talk.

Earlier this year, they ran an ‘experiment’ where a couple from the UK was put up in a storefront recreation of one of the hotel’s suites. Basically, the couple was living in a see-through glass room on the street in New York City, and it was an art experiment by Roger Smith Life covered by Roger Smith News which brought in huge publicity for the Roger Smith hotel. 

Hilton

Hilton (www1.hilton.com/) - Hilton’s Homewood Suites recently launched a family travel blog and community site named SuiteTrip.com. In their own words, “SuiteTrip.com is your go-to guide for everything family travel-inspired.” 

Another Hilton outreach is into Travelskoot’s Videos (www.travelskoot.com/hilton) - Hilton provides destination videos featuring concierges working at Hilton hotels in these destinations.

Starwood

Starwood (www.starwoodhotels.com/) - Starwood runs a blog for its SPG members, called The Lobby, which is more of a traditional travel blog talking about destinations and attractions from all over the world, rather than just a Starwood blog talking about Starwood hotels and resorts.

We are now at a stage where the market is social media. It is simply not enough for companies to jump in occasionally, talk to  journalists and industry insiders, and hope to create some buzz with a press release.  Travel companies are increasingly targeting consumers directly on Twitter and Facebook.

Here’s a list of the top travel brands making positive use of social media to target consumers directly.

Jetblue

United

JetBlue (www.jetblue.com/) – Offers time-limited deals announced on twitter for last minute flights every Tuesday. More information here and follow on twitter @JetBlueCheeps.

United (www.united.com/) - United has a similar offer for twitter users called Twares – special fares available only via Twitter. More information here and follow on twitter @UnitedAirlines.

Hyatt

Hyatt (www.hyatt.com/) – Hyatt was the first major hotel group to offer a global 24/7 ’Twitter Concierge.’ Almost every major travel brand offers customer service via social media, but Hyatt was the first to specifically name it and create a separate account (@HyattConcierge). They’re now asking guests to use it to book spa appointments, dinner reservations, etc and make special requests.

Starwood

Starwood (www.starwoodhotels.com/) - Starwood has taken the unique step of creating a  clearing house for all the social media chatter about Starwood – on blogs, apps, facebook updates and on twitter. This allows them to make use of user-generated content on social media as a means of providing real-time information and updates to their SPG members.

JDV

Joie de Vivre (www.jdvhotels.com/) – JDV offers special deals via Twitter Tuesdays and Facebook Fridays. The offers go out at a different time every week and are only good for one hour, so unless you’re following JDV on both twitter and facebook, you’ll miss these deals.

Fairmont

Fairmont (www.fairmont.com/) – Their main account (@FairmontHotels), in addition to the usual interaction, deals and ’suite tweets,’ also regularly puts out twitter-only deals and runs innovative contests with free prizes – usually a free stay at a Fairmont.

Marriott

Marriott (www.marriott.com/) – Marriott’s social media efforts encompass all the usual avenues – deals, twitter-only deals, contests and special offers. Their most recent ’Tweet Yourself to Hawaii’ contest  is a pretty big success, and is earning them a ton of followers and fans on both twitter and facebook, and generating a lot of press.

Note:- As far as Fairmont, Starwood and Marriott are concerned, their brands, executives and even hotels have an active  presence on twitter and facebook.

For example, Starwood’s Aloft brand has one main account, and then each of their hotels has a separate account – and the entire effort looks like its been well planned to manage future growth.

Fairmont’s individual hotels also have their own twitter accounts, and are quite aggressive in marketing themselves. The Fairmont Chicago went so far as to hire a marketing company to manage and promote a twitter contest.

Marriot’s Ritz-Carlton brand similarly has an official a/c, the individual hotels have their own accounts and their key executives also maintain active profiles. Their co-ordination was plainly evident when their Jakarta hotels were attacked with bombs earlier this year in July, and all their accounts were tweeting information at various levels. 

Marriott (@MarriottIntl) provided the official responses, Ritz-Carlton CEO Simon Cooper (@SimonFCooper) provided the sympathy and a human face, while Alison Sitch, corp. director for PR (@RitzCarltonPR), provided active assistance.

The three travel brands listed below also need to be commended for their innovative use of social media to connect with consumers and improve brand visibility and image.

V Australia

V Australia (www.vaustralia.com.au/) – V Australia has taken twitter by storm with their 4320LA and 4320SYD twitter contests. It helped promote their twitter presence, their brand and the destinations – Los Angeles and Sydney.

Travelocity

Travelocity (www.travelocity.com/) – Travelocity’s Roaming Gnome doesn’t just travel on site and in real life. He also has a sizeable presence on Myspace, Facebook and Twitter. Putting the Roaming Gnome as their public face on social media platforms helps Travelocity connect with consumers.

Carnival

Carnival (www.carnival.com/) – The Carnival Cruise Line has a unique strategy - They get tons of free publicity on Twitter by  aggregating tweets and blog posts from people on-board their ships. Here’s a recent sample. To further this angle, Senior Cruise Director John Heald blogs about his life as a cruise director, offering behind-the-scenes insight. Carnival has also set up an in-house social network – CarnivalConnections - for building and maintaining an active community.

Richard Fain, chairman and CEO, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. officially takes ownership of Oasis of the Seas .

The hype has been enormous — seminars touting the retractable roofs, interior balconies, ziplining, aqua theater, an elevator bar and a promenade that features real grass the employees have to mow. Heck, they’ve even signed Rihanna to provide entertainment in December. But despite the webinars, CLIA classes, brochures and emails telling the travel industry between the lines that Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas will invigorate profits, it’s now looking like … well, hype.

Even the world’s largest ship can’t overcome the plummet in discretionary income to persuade folks to book sooner than a few weeks out in this fourth quarter. Travel agents are telling Cruise Week that at the end of October, there’s still plenty of vacancy on Oasis for Christmas and New Years sailings, even though the $1.5 billion vessel is the most talked about new cruise ship to come along in years, the publication points out. This includes everything from the inside Category Q spaces to balcony categories, although the suites at the top of the pricing chain are sold out.

It’s the same story for the first quarter of 2010, too: suites sell, while agents paddle to get vacationers to commit to the rest of the ship. That 40 percent additional space to entertain as many as 6,360 passengers per sailing may turn into 40 percent more booking headaches as the recession continues.

And since Oasis also carries another accolade — world’s most expensive cruise ship — slow bookings can’t be too welcome within the accounting department at Royal Caribbean, particularly with sister ship Allure of the Seas hot on its heels in the shipyards.  Oasis is scheduled from December 2009 to April 2010 to offer 7-night trips from Ft. Lauderdale to St. Thomas, St. Maarten and the Bahamas. Beginning in May, the itinerary changes to Haiti, Jamaica and Mexico out of Port Everglades, one of the few large enough at the moment to allow Oasis to dock.

“It’s in the DNA of our company, about every 10 years, to take more or less a fresh sheet of paper and create the greatest cruise ship in the world,” CEO Adam Goldstein has said. He’d better hope he also reinvents American travel habits in the next 12 days as well.

Photography: Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.

Aviation 2040

Society has become acutely aware of the effects of advancing climate change and air travel has suffered as a result. Those who need to travel by air do so discreetly for fear of vilification. Environmental lobbyists and civil society groups denounce air travel despite technology gains. Video-conferencing has drastically reduced business and personal travel. Oil prices reach a historical post-Peak high… many regional airports close and international airports are nationalised.

They even helpfully provided a timeline:-

2013 – The World reaches official Peak Oil
2016 – “Stay British” media campaign to promote domestic tourism
2018 – Boeing launches aircraft with radically reduced carbon emissions
2019 – UK government introduces personal carbon accounting
2023 – BAA sets up rail franchise
2025 – British Airways re-nationalized
2026 – Boeing and Airbus merge
2028 – Pope uses Easter address to tell the faithful to stop flying
2037 – Boris Island damaged in North Sea surge
2039 – Heathrow, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow only international airports in operation within the UK

Peak Oil in 2013 - a bit hasty, perhaps? And why drag the Pope into a discussion about the airline industry? Even more sacriligious – a merger of Boeing and Airbus?

Marcus Morrell, of ARUP Foresight Innovation and Incubation – which participated in the development of the report along with ICE, made it clear that that these were not predictions. He said that instead they “represent a range of possible outcomes that may play out over the coming decades. Although fictitious, they are drawn from the expert opinions of key industry stakeholders…”

You can download the full report here – www.ice.org.uk/aviation2040

Planetism

Planetism (www.planetism.com/) – Gaithersburg, MD based Planetism is an eco-friendly tourism service which promises a ‘revolution in online travel shopping.’  The company, and their website – is premiering at the PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit.

Travelport

Travelport (www.travelport.com/) – New York, NY based Travelport’s lines of business include their Global Distribution Systems and GTA, which combined, represent a global travel distribution footprint. Travelport’s IT Services & Software business provides next generation IT solutions for airlines worldwide.

Traveltainment

TravelTainment (www.traveltainment-group.com/) – Aachen, Germany based TravelTainment provides a multi-market, multi-channel distribution system for sale of leisure travel products. TravelTainment AG was founded as Usbeck Engineering GmbH in 1991, renamed TravelTainment AG in 2000 and became a subsidiary of Amadeus Technology Group SA in 2006.

Traxo

Traxo (www.traxo.com/) – Dallas, TX based Traxo enables users to share their past and future travel plans with their network. Starting with travel plans booked anywhere on the web, Traxo automatically detects travel reservations and imports this information into a user’s travel dashboard in Traxo, creating itineraries and keeping track of all past and future travel.

Tripcase

TripCase (www.tripcase.com/) – Tripcase is a travel application put out by Southlake, TX based Sabre which currently works for the iPhone and Blackberry, with plans to add a version for Windows Mobile. The Tripcase app allows you to organize information about your upcoming trips, and will automatically import trip details from connected travel partners.

Tripware

Tripware (www.tripware.com/) – Mesa, AZ based Tripware is a travel service for people who plan, book, and manage their own trips. Tripware can be integrated with your Microsoft Outlook calendar using the Tripware OutBook plugin so that the entire process for booking travel can be done right from Microsoft Outlook.

Voyage.tv

Voyage.tv (www.voyage.tv/) – New York, NY based Voyage.tv – currently in beta, provides  destination video programming, with hotel & resort Profiles, activity & tour videos, and signature series that deliver content that is unbiased, current, accurate and personal. Their technology is provided by Trisept Solutions.

Voyij

Voyij (www.voyij.com/) – Cupertino, CA based Voyij allows users to explore and discover travel sales and deals regardless of origin, destination or dates. Enter where you are and Voyij presents a comprehensive list of travel deals on the web at a given time. Further filtering can be done based on travel dates, hotel star ratings, destination, activities, price, and more.

YourTour

YourTour (www.yourtour.com/) – YourTour is a personal tour planner put out by Mons, Belgium based DeciZium SA, which offers customized trip propositions based on users’ preferences. YourTour allows users to plan and book customized self-drive tours, with the help of content provided by Lonely Planet and online reservations from Booking.com.

ZipSetGo

ZipSetGo (www.zipsetgo.com/) – Dayton, Ohio based ZipSetGo.com is an online community-based travel website which aggregates extensive amounts of credible content, organized in a usable format. Members have access to downloadable documents and hundreds of data points of aggregated information per destination.

The rest of the PhoCusWright Travel Innovators can be found in Part I and Part II.

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Travel Industry Gears up for The PhoCusWright Conference
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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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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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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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