EyeforTravel has lined up some heavy-hitters for the Travel Distribution Summit to be held Sept 16-17, 2009 in Chicago, at the Westin.

EyeforTravel Travel Distribution Summit

It’s a great opportunity to meet and network with over 700 top executives from online travel suppliers and distributors including Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, STA Travel, Google, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, Hilton Hotels Corp., Continental, Jetblue, American Airlines and many more.

But the thing that sets apart this event is that EyeforTravel has managed to fill in 2 days of panels and presentations with some genuinely hot topics being discussed and debated by the aforementioned heavyweights and trend-setters.

Day One starts with a panel on the balance of power between OTA’s and suppliers, with Jeff Davidoff, CMO, Orbitz; Matthew Crummack, SVP Lodging, Expedia; and Julie Atkinson, Sr. Director Global Online Sales and Distribution, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide.

This discussion is a big deal and a hot subject right now, given the OTA price wars and the steep recession-influenced discounts that suppliers are offering on their own websites.

Day Two’s highlight is the panel on ‘Innovations in Search.’  Speakers for this panel include Ted Souder, Head of Travel – Central Region, Google; Anne Payne, CEO, BeDynamic; and Yen Lee, President, Uptake.

Semantic Web

You’ll learn about preparing for the Semantic web, and the website changes needed to ensure optimized results in semantic search. 

You’ll learn how to build a keyword list that’s based on consumer behaviour and purchasing habits. Find out how Google actually sees your site, how to engage customers on your websites for the best conversion rates, how to accurately measure ROI, and get the lowdown on mobile search and geosearch.

In addition, the Travel Distribution Summit offers a host of speakers sharing their expertise and forecasts for crucial distribution trends, finding value in the new economy, deploying social media to improve distribution, the links between online trip-planning tools and offline distribution, benefits of meta-search for suppliers, ancilliary revenue strategies and the increasing importance and changing landscape in the vacation rental market.

To make it even more attractive, EyeforTravel has scheduled two more conferences on ‘Revenue Management and Pricing’ and ‘Mobile Strategies for Travel.’ One pass gives you unlimited access to all three conferences.

Plus, if you’re planning on staying at the Westin, you can get a special EyeforTravel discount. For flight discounts, go to www.jetblue.com/promo and enter promotional code ‘EyeforTravel’.  This discount is valid for outbound flights Sept 13-15, 2009 and return flights Sept 17-19, 2009.

by Barbara Weibel at Hole In The Donut Travels

Trazzler, the travel destination website that recommends trips unique to a user’s location and travel personality, recently announced their biggest contest to date, the #NYCGO Writing Contest. In cooperation with nycgo, the official source of daily information about all there is to do and see in New York City, Trazzler invites travel writers to describe “a place that not only satisfies your thirst for a change of scenery, but goes beyond this, breaking the spell of everyday existence and providing the refuge, relief, or pleasant contrast that we all crave, especially in the summer”

The grand prize is a $10,000 contract to be a writer-in-residence for two weeks in New York City. The winner will be paid to write 30 Trazzler trips covering the five boroughs of NYC. Hotel accommodations (14 nights) and round-trip airfare will provided by co-sponsors AKA luxury hotel residences and JetBlue. Additionally, each of nine runners-up will be awarded $250 contracts to write ten Trazzler trips and four editors’ choice winners will receive $500 contracts to write 15 Trazzler trips.

The “Oasis” theme of the contest leaves the subject matter open to interpretation. An oasis could be an urban park, a gourmet meal, a swimming hole on a hot summer day, a romantic hideaway, a museum… really any place of extreme beauty, culture, flavor, respite, or relaxation.

Dates:
* Contest submission start date: Wednesday, July 22, 2009, 12 noon EDT
* Contest submission end date: Monday, August 17, 2009, 11:59 am EDT
* Judging period begins: Monday, August 17, 2009, 12 noon EDT
* Judging period ends: Monday, August 31, 2009, 11:59 am EDT

How to Enter:
* 1. Sign up for Trazzler (be sure to provide a valid email address, even if you use Facebook Connect)
* 2. Submit your entry by clicking on “Write a Trip” and filling out the required fields
* 3. Click the “Trazzler #NYCGO Contest Entry” checkbox at the bottom of the “Write a Trip” page
* 4. After your trip is posted, you will be invited to share your trip on Twitter and Facebook
* If you have questions or problems, contact the Trazzler team in the help forum

Any entry displaying the text “Trazzler #NYCGO Contest Semifinalist” immediately following the trip description on or before Monday, August 31, 2009 is a semifinalist and cawill automatically be entered in round two. The 10 trips that are wishlisted the most by the greater Trazzler community between Monday, August 31, 2009 (12 noon EDT) and Monday, September 14, 2009 (11:59 am EDT) will pass to round three. Winners will be announced during the week of Monday, September 21, 2009.

The U.S. Green Building Council, The American Society of Interior Designers (ASID), and The Hospitality Industry Network (NEWH) are sponsoring the Sustainable Suite Design Competition to help drive green design practices within the hotel industry.

Sustainable Suite Design Competition

The winning design will be built as a model guest room to be presented as an educational display for the design industry, hotel owners and brands, and corporate travel executives.

Additionally the winning team and design will be profiled in Hospitality Design, ASID ICON, and the NEWH Magazine. The Sustainable Suite will be unveiled at HDExpo in Las Vegas in May 2010.

There’s also a ‘Students & Young Professionals’ award, and the winners of this award too will be mentioned along with the ‘Professional’ award in all the aforementioned magazines, but their design will not be built out.

The judges for the competition include Helen Jorgensen, Sr. Director of Purchasing, Host Hotels & Resorts; David Mahood is the V.P. Sustainability, NEWH; Carlie Bullock-Jones, ASID, LEED AP, Sustainable Design Consultant with Ecoworks Studio in Atlanta; Eileen Slora, Executive Director, Interior Design for Fairmont Hotels and Resorts; Linda Sorrento, Senior Director of Education, USGBC; and Annette K. Stelmack, founder of Inspirit-llc and a ‘green design guru.’

Last date for entries is Aug 31, 2009, and the judging will be completed by Oct 1, 2009. You can download the application form here, and these are the FAQs for the competition.

The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas is placing a massive bet on the successful opening of the 490-room Paradise Tower expansion. And surprisingly enough, it looks like their gamble might just pay off.

Hard Rock Hotel, Las Vegas

Paradise Tower is all set for an official opening this week, but most of the rooms are already open for business.

The 490 room Paradise Tower, which has been designed to attract corporate travelers, is part of a massive $760 million expansion project, and will be followed by the December opening of the Harmon Tower, which adds casino space and 375 more suites to the resort.

As part of the expansion project, the Hard Rock has already re-opened their expanded concert venue called ‘The Joint’ in April, along with an addition of 60,000 sq ft of convention and meeting space.

And here’s the kicker – The Hard Rock Hotel’s 1300 rooms have clocked in an impressive 95% occupancy throughout this month, are sold out for the next weekend, and near capacity for the next few weekends.

The sold-out weekends can be attributed to the Hard Rock’s Sunday pool parties at it’s popular beach club ‘Rehab.’ But the surprising thing is that the Hard Rock has managed to keep the meter ticking Sunday thru Thursday.

The Hotel attributes this success to the new concert venue and the additional meeting space, which they say has helped them attract more conventions and meetings business during weekdays. This success could quite possibly be helped along some more with the opening of the business friendly Paradise Tower.

And in the next stage in December - the Hard Rock is targeting casino-goers with 35,000 sq ft of additional casino space to add to the existing 30,000 sq ft. Plus the Harmon Tower which has some neat touches for the casino crowd - like a separate check-in desk.

Just the fact that they managed to get all this done in the middle of a downturn, plus the launch timing – just ahead of MGM’s massive 6000 room CityCenter project, mean that the Hard Rock’s expansion is already a partial success. And they’re going to need it, to satisfy the lenders who coughed up $760 million.

The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino was acquired by Morgans Hotel Group for $770 million in 2007. The current expansion is funded by a $620 million loan taken on by a joint venture between Morgans Hotel Group and DLJ Merchant Banking Partners.

Photo by Michael180 via wikipedia (creative commons).