Welcome to Travolution 4.0

As is now customary, here’s a little plug for the latest edition of Travolution magazine, our fourth since we launched in November last year.

Our cover feature addresses the changing world of tour operators and travel agencies, since the internet landed in their laps and made them radically rethink how they run their businesses, from an e-commerce perspective, or what they actually do on a day-to-day basis.

As the digital world blurred the boundaries of what they do? Will the internet and its handy way of facilitating products like dynamic packaging enable them to do the same job? Indeed, are they now just “drinking from the same glass” of opportunity when it comes to defining their roles?

Meanwhile, Foviance has pushed eight leading travel websites into its hi-tech usability laboratory to put them under the microscope in terms of their ease-of-use for the consumer for our Roadtest.

The June edition of Travolution also sees a few changes:

* Our columnists – Ed Whiting (Comtec), Tim Frankcom (Yahoo!) and Patrik Oqvist (Expedia and Hotels.com) have sharpened their pencils and, in turn, their opinions.

* Hitwise has produced what is believed to be the first significant look at the vertical search market in the UK – the first in a series of pieces of research commissioned especially for Travolution.

Finally, as we look to concentrate our print edition on analysis and features, to coincide with an overhaul of our website in the coming months to become the one-stop shop for industry breaking news, there is a far bigger focus on publishing a synopsis on cutting edge research produced within the industry.

Enjoy!

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

[NB: Intellimag article P12 should say Holidays4u, rather than Hotels4u - apologies for any confusion caused]