Honourable mentions

The honour system has been rather blemished in recent months following the police investigation into the so-called Cash-For-Peerages scandal involving UK political parties.

But while the Westminster Village drawls at the prospect of prime minister Tony Blair getting himself into a right legal pickle over the issue, five members of the travel industry can celebrate this evening after finding themselves singled out in the latest New Year Honours.

Grabbing CBEs are Michael Gooley, chairman of Trailfinders, and Stephen Ridgway, chief executive of Virgin Atlantic.

OBEs have been handed to Anthony Cairns, deputy chair of Leeds-Bradford International Airport, and Rita Sharma, the managing director of the BestAtTravel website.

Last but not least, John Grey, head shoe shiner at Virgin Atlantic, has been awarded a MBE.

Say what you like about execs of big companies getting honoured by Her Majesty (or is that the government?) for services to a particular industry, it is nice to see someone at the coal face of a company, like Grey, receiving some recognition.

Ridgway was pretty nice about it too:

"Of the two of us, I suspect John has been more influential in helping to look after our passengers."

Full list of honours here on the BBC website

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Tagging craze arrives at Travolution

Clearly the blogosphere is a wee bit bored during the Christmas holiday break, so a little game has developed in the last week or so where bloggers have been named by others and asked to reveal five things readers wouldn't know about them.

The Travolution Blog [i.e me] has been tagged by both Darren Cronian of Travel-Rants and Holiday Watchdog Techie to provide five insights, before passing the baton on to four other bloggers.

So, five things you didn't know about me:

• I used to play bass guitar in an indie band called Pea On A Fork, debuting at the Brentford Lion in West London in 1991.
• I ran the Copenhagen Marathon in June 2002.
• I own every Depeche Mode single from 1981 onwards.
• I had my tongue pierced whilst on duty working at a pub at Middlesex University in 1998. [and I still have it]
• I worked at New Scotland Yard for seven years.

I tag Guillaume Thevenot of Hotel-Blogs, Nathan Midgley of Crosstalk, Teddie Cowell of Search Engine War, Radar On Tourism, and Tim Hughes of The Boot, to carry on the good work...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Got to have it five times a year

Trying desperately not to pick on Lastminute.com this week, but it is worth mentioning an email that arrived yesterday to announce the online travel agent's tie-in with celebrity psychologist Honey Langcaster-James.

Apparently consumers should bolster their five-a-day fruit and veg intake with five holidays and short breaks each year!

Lastminute.com's travel director, John Bevan, says:

"Taking around five holidays and short breaks each year will help you stay healthy. Regular breaks from work will focus your mind and give you time to recharge your batteries, as well as ensuring you make the most of your leisure time.”

Erm, well, of course.

Langcaster-James adds her own insight:

“Nipping off for a long weekend or even an overnight stay every couple of months will give you something to look forward to when the stresses of life and work get you down.

"Arranging a few short breaks over the year, rather than just one long holiday, may well be beneficial for all the members of your family."

How touching to know our welfare is never far from the minds of the industry.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Still Diggered

Few will be surprised that content aggregator Digg.com has still failed to respond to any emails from Travolution regarding the apparent banning of our blog and website URLs.

It appears a number of other sites have had similar difficulties.

Elsewhere it seems many the frustrations focus on the lack of communication between users and the Digg team, when a complaint or issues arises.

Here are a few lines from an email we sent to their press team on the 21 December.

"Travolution is a B2B publication, including magazine, website and blog, covering issues affecting the online travel industry. Part of our coverage over the last year has been to talk-up social media websites, such as Del.icio.us, Digg and Reddit, as absolutely key for those travel websites that want to beef up their web presence.

Please can you respond to this email, even it is for mild admonishment due to a breach of T&Cs, leading to the barring of our various URLs from Digg.

In the meantime, Happy Holidays!"

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Time to get the decorators in at Lastminute

With chairman Brent Hoberman finally leaving online travel agent Lastminute.com, a few years after co-founder Martha Lane-Fox stepped down, surely the company's London headquarters could do with a lick of paint.

This touching shot covers the entire wall of one of the Victoria Street building's meeting rooms.

Captions welcome via the comments button.

People really do get online travel

Bumping into the odd relative or two over the Christmas is always a useful benchmark to evaluate how much people know about a particular industry and its carious issues.

So Travolution has spent the last few days mingling with those odd relatives - ahem - and the inevitable question comes up: "What are you doing these days?", or "How is the world of online travel?".

What is fascinating, once the formalities are out of the way, is how opinionated people can be about the way they now look for and book their holidays.

Some lament the decline of the travel agents, especially in rural Cambridgeshire, where the Mays have spent the past few days, but equally most are happy to book cheap flights over the web and are increasingly comfortable with more complex trips, such as long-haul holidays.

But in keeping with the trend for so-called Travel 2.0, Joe Public is increasingly turning to the web for research and is - perhaps most interestingly - trusting the opinions of other consumers, often at the expense of existing travel providers.

This isn't just the usual suspects such as TripAdvisor. Two, seemingly un-savvy relatives, had in fact used Yahoo! Answers and the forums on Lonely Planet.

In short: the "people" are turning to the web in their droves. And the industry needs to be ready to take advantage...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

E-cards everywhere

Prize for best electronic Christmas card received by Travolution goes to the Virgin Holidays press office.

A simple yet mildly amusing effort [what else is there to do on Christmas day] from Hallmark, where the recipient has to re-arrange Father Christmas.

In fact this year has seen a record number of e-cards. Either they are 1) easier to send, 2) cheaper to send, 3) bit more interesting than paper cards, or 4) all of the above.

And here are some of the others we have received.

• An card-game effort from Virgin Atlantic [clearly the Virgin brand is embracing the concept this year]
• This game from desktop alert specialist Skinkers
• And our second favourite, from Worldspan, who clearly haven't let the recent takeover dampen their spirits and are wishing for even bigger things such as World Peace!

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Review of the reviews on ProBlogger

Darren Rowse, the Melbourne-based editor of the excellent ProBlogger site, has asked readers to contribute their 2006 reviews and projections for 2007.

The Travolution Blog has submitted its Online Travel in 2006 post from yesterday.

Click here for the full list.

But here are some highlights:

• Predictions For 2007 from JasonKolb.com
• 2006 Web Wrap-Up from Luna Tech Inc
• The Five Biggest Movie Gambles of 2007 from Filmrot.com
• 2007 Prediction – Blogs Will Be Replaced from Josh Maher
• Blogs Aren’t The Story In 07 from Blogging for Business
• 5 Technology Discoveries That Changed My Business in 2006 from Bella Web Design
• The Google Maps API: Predictions for 2007 from Beginning Google Maps Applications
• Reviews And Predictions from On Influence and Automation
• The Biggest Blogging Mistake I Made in 2006 from Can I Make Big Money Online
• How Old Is Web 2.0? Look Back In Time from Sante J Achille
• Top Internet News Anagrams of 2006 from InnocentEnglish.com
• 2007 Travel Predictions and Trends from Budget Globetrotting
• What Google, Yahoo And Microsoft Will Buy in 2007 from Thinks
• Top 10 Crzy Tech Gifts from Crzyland
• 101 Blog Tips I Learned In 2006 from Daily Blog Tips
• Blogs Are Dead – Thanks, Digg from MacStansbury
• Will 2007 Mark The End of Digg? from Blogging For Money
• Top 8 YouTube Videos of 2006 from The Bivings Report [hilarious]
• Who Will Jump On The Blogging Bandwagon in 2007 from IT Toolbox
• 2006 Search Wrap-Up from Quartz Mountain
• 2006 Through The Eyes Of A Travel Blogger from Travel-Rants

Enjoy…

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Stating the obvious survey #1

The Days Inn hotel chain has released the results of some research which reveals this astonishing nugget of information:

"Nine out of ten workers in the UK dislike travelling to and from work in the dark."

Days Inn is actually supporting - through its Love The Sun campaign - a Conservative MP, Tim Yeo, who is trying to force the government to change the UK's time to Central European Time, rather than the current GMT, which would give Brits an extra hour of sunlight in the evening [unless it's between the months of November and February, of course, when it is dark anyway by late afternoon!]

Surely the major finding in this survey is that 10% of people LIKE travelling to and from work in the dark?

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

We are Diggered

A few months back we were alerted to the fact that Digg.com had refused to accept any new submissions of articles originating from both the Travolution Blog and the Travolution website.

We tried to post a few articles ourselves, only to be always greeted with the following message:

"This URL has been reported by users and cannot be submitted at this time."

We understand, of course, that there are certain terms and conditions that users should adhere to [we hope that we have, of course] and our own posts to the site were limited to perhaps one a week.

However, all our efforts to obtain a response from Digg.com - via email - to get to the bottom of the problem, or at least be told why we have been barred, have been ignored.

We also - as a publication that consistently promotes the use of social networking as A Good Thing for the travel industry - attempted to get through to Digg via its media team, with no luck.

Surely the world of social media must extend to being sociable and therefore responding to emails from users?

Any solutions to this problem will be gratefully received.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Online travel in 2006

2006 will perhaps be remembered as the year that the traditional travel industry woke up to the internet in a big way.

In the UK the likes of Expedia, Lastminute.com, Opodo et al have been blazing a trail for online travel agencies for years, but this year has seen those pre dot-commers realising exactly what can be achieved on the web.

Thomson, the UK multiple with a traditional bricks and mortar presence as well as aircraft and tour operating business, said it would be continuing its aggressive growth strategy that will ensure the web is its primary portal to reach consumers.

The other members of the so-called group of Big Four, such as Thomas Cook, also made a concerted effort to push their online brands.

Away from the package holiday market, other suppliers, such as British Airways, which have had an online presence for years, unveiled their own innovative new websites during the course of 2006.

Indeed the new BA.com caused quite a stir in the industry when it relaunched in November as, to all intents and purposes, it mirrored both in terms of functionality and design many of the online travel agency sites.

A string of other airlines and hotels also took the plunge and invested resources into their online businesses.

Meanwhile, Web 2.0 has moved from being something the geeky end of the internet community talked about at conferences to where some of its core principles are heralding a new age for the travel sector.

In fact, user generated content – in the form of reviews – on sites such as TripAdvisor is almost a benchmark for where a travel website should be if it just wants to scratch the surface.

The mash-up is becoming the de-facto method when trying to show some level of advanced functionality on a site.

But look beyond these already rather simple tools and there is a world of opportunity in the guise of travel social networking with sites like WAYN.com, Yahoo!’s Trip Planner and Answers, Travelpost and RealTravel.

We cannot mention 2006 without commenting on the influence of some of the key US players on the market.

On the one hand, the American owners of Lastminute.com and Ebookers is finally beginning to unravel (Ebookers relaunches in April 2007 and Ian McCaig has taken over from Brent Hoberman at Lastminute.com).

But the likes of Sidestep, Kayak and Mobissimo are expected to shake up the already burgeoning travel/meta search market. This will be a key to keep an eye area in 2007.

Finally, there is plenty to say about private equity and the role of venture capital groups in the industry.

VC-backed Travelport snapped up rival GDS Worldspan earlier this month, and just a few days later Lastminute.com and Travelocity owner Sabre Holdings was sold for a cool $3.75 billion.

Nobody is really sure as yet as to what the long-term effects will be on an industry that arguably needs stability, but in many respects is seeing large swathes being run by short-termist investors.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Escape for the New Year

Cheapflights has unveiled its top ten destinations for New Year revellers in the UK desperate to escape the chaos of your average town centre or more leftover turkey sandwiches at home.

New York, New York
Prague
Sydney
Rio de Janeiro
Paris
Miami
Jost Van Dyke, British Virgin Islands
Amsterdam
Whistler, Canada
New Orleans

Travolution, alas, will be sticking with the delights of Sunny Sutton.

Secret hotels

Medhotels.com, part of the Lastminute.com empire, notes an interesting development in the concept of 'secret hotels'.

The site has reported a 30% increase in sales of accommodation in London through its Top Secret Hotels channel, where agents can book a room for a client but the name is withheld until the booking has been made.

The consumer is often getting a discount of 75% off the rack rate.

Medhotels says "detailed descriptions on the website" means users can get a good idea of a hotel's location and facilities.

More ammunition for those saying the web is commoditising hotels, and travel in general.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Christmas funnies #1

It says something about the industry in the final days before Christmas when a senior figure emails with a list of management comments about staff.

Rather amusing…

Enioy.

• “His men would follow him anywhere..............but only out of morbid curiosity”
• “When she opens her mouth, it seems that it is only to change feet”
• “This young lady has delusions of adequacy”
• “He sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them”
• “This employee is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot”
• “A photographic memory but with the lens cover on”

Travelocity launches a blog

Well, Travelocity actually launched the blog - called the Window Seat - a few weeks back, but the Sabre-owned company only released details today.

Take a look here.

It's written mainly by Amy Ziff, Travelocity's editor-in-chief.

The blog will apparently offer a "unique fusion" of expert information for travellers.

Take a look and report back...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Person of the Year is...

...You - according to Time Magazine.

This is actually quite a nice touch for a magazine that normally recognises the achievements of politicians, philanthropists, intellectuals, and businesspeople in its infamous end-of-year front page.

The cover star this year has been chosen to acknowledge the role of everyday computer users in defining the new age of the internet and media through user-generated content and involvement with sites like MySpace, YouTube, Bebo and Wikipedia.

Read the full article.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Why spend millions on TV advertising?

In some respects you’ve got to hand it to Travelsupermarket as it continues its relentless strategy of brand building via the offline media.

As reported here, Travelsupermarket will be splashing out £11 million in 2007 on a huge marketing campaign, with £8 million going just on TV.

The interesting point to all this is the absolute faith the Cheshire-based company has in the strategy.

In fact the unflappable Chris Nixon, Travelsupermarket’s general manager, more often than not casually brushes aside any remarks about an apparent over-reliance on TV advertising.

Many online-only brands have adopted this approach in the past, and it has often paid off, at least initially – ESure, Egg, Ebay.

But this is the first time that an online travel company has followed through a initial burst of TV advertising with a far bigger (the 2006 TV campaign totaled around £2.5 million) level of spend.

There are clearly many reasons for the ongoing marketing programme: despite the growing popularity of the vertical travel search engine sector, many industry figures suspect Travelsupermarket will feel a hit of some kind when the traction behind new players Sidestep and Kayak really kicks in during early-2007.

In fact it would be fair to say that of the two, Sidestep has generated a fair amount of buzz in industry circles, primarily for its functionality and content.

And if leading industry figures are a decent enough benchmark of what will also perhaps enthuse consumers, then Travelsupermarket’s strategy is spot on.

Raise the traffic volume bar by getting in the minds of consumers, during the Christmas and New Year holiday break, and hope some of the traffic sticks in the long run by also improving its content and functionality.

Travolution is probably not alone in predicting 2007 could be the year that meta search/travel search truly comes to the fore.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Online game of the week

Here's a fun - and marginally difficult - game produced by Millennium Hotels and Resorts.

Click here to play the game.

You can almost tell it's Christmas with the amount of material coming in that is clearly not "news"!!

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Travolution December edition

....is available from today.

The digital edition is availble now.

If you've out on getting a printed version, make sure you get it next time by signing up for a free copy.

Here are the main features for December:

• Future of the GDS
• Newspapers and online travel
• Democratising travel
• Internet Business Group profile

Regular columns from:

• Ed Whiting
• Tim Frankcom
• Patrik Oqvist

Enjoy...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Flashpackers and blogging slowdown

A quick round-up today as we’re busily uploading the December edition onto the website, ahead of tomorrow’s official publication day.

According to the BBC, the blogging phenomenon will start to level out in 2007 around the 100 million mark. This is clearly a rapid slowing down on the current rate of almost doubling every six months.

Meanwhile, Euromonitor International – who spoke after Travolution at the TTA conference in London yesterday – has outlined the key growth areas for travel in the next 3-4 years.

• Adventure travel (trekking, rafting, etc)
• Extreme sports (sky diving, bungee jumping)
• Health/wellness (spa holidays)
• Voluntourism (planting trees, installing water pumps, etc)

But our favourite – and a phrase we’ve not come across before – is flashpacking!

Successful, rich, 30-somethings (primarily), who take a year or so off to travel the world.

But rather than slum it on the Khao San Road in Bangkok with the rest of the great unwashed, for example, they stay at four and five-star establishments all the way.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Travolution@TTA London

So here we are today at the Travel Trust Association annual conference in London’s Hilton Metropole Hotel on Edgware Road.

TTA director Todd Carpenter has opened the day’s proceedings with a rather gloomy assessment of the year – “worse sales in memory” – because of a lack of business following the World Cup in Germany and the alleged plot to bomb US-bound aircraft in August.

This is a situation that was obviously completely unforeseen and TTA members have been at the forefront, with others, of a woeful year.

Carpenter’s plan this morning is not dwell on things out of the control of the members, but to focus his ire those outside of the organisation.

ABTA, predictably, has come in for a reasonable kicking about its role over the bonding issue.

But even worse than the dreaded ABTA, according to Carpenter, is the government and it’s recently announced increase in air passenger duty.

He raises an interesting point: if the new level comes into play on the first 1 February, airlines could be saddled with finding the increased APD for those passengers that booked their trip prior to that date.

He estimates this could be in the region of £90 million. And the airlines are hardly awash with extra money.

Interesting times…

Travolution is making a speech here at the TTA on blogging and its importance for travel businesses. We hope to bamboozle some of the delegates a little by putting this post into a slide for the presentation, to illustrate how dynamic and quick live blogging can be.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Sabre bought - who's next?

No surprises then, seeing as the deal has been widely trailed on the wires most of the day.

The deal is for a cool $5 billion and sees the enture Sabre Holdings portfolio, including Travelocity, Lastminute.com and the Sabre GDS, transferred to private equity in the guise of Silver Lake Partners and the Texas Pacific Group.

The deal is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2007.

Sam Gilliland, chairman and chief executive of Sabre Holdings, says:

“We are excited about the ability to deliver substantial value today to our shareholders, and we look forward to a strong future, partnering with two preeminent investment firms that are closely aligned with our strategy and long-term objectives.

"This transaction is a clear endorsement of our business model, our industry leadership and the hard work and dedication of our talented people around the world.”

Amadeus must be feeling a little bit frozen out of the news this past fornight, following the Travelport takeover of Worldspan last week

Interesting times ahead.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Ebookers sorts out its SEO

PING! Email arrives from Saurabh Kumar, e-commerce manager at Ebookers, to tell us that the online travel agent has fixed the rather unfortunate problems it had with natural search a few months back.

The OTA admitted to us in August that it had "big problems" with its search engine optimisation because of its use of a single IP address across its network of sites.

Google was so incensed by this chicanery that it actually de-listed the Travelport-owned Ebookers for a period earlier this year.

But the issue has now been fixed, according to Kumar. A project put in place during the summer finished a weeks ago and "Google rankings responded almost immediately".

Happy ending? Well, Ebookers will certainly be pleased that the dreaded Grumbletext listing that featured in the first few results just a few months back has now been relegated to the second page.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

December is officially The GDS Month - Sabre next

No sooner have Travelport-Worldspan been sharing a Christmas party, then rumours of a takeover of Sabre Holdings have begun to emerge.

And this time the source is that bastion of accuracy and financial knowledge, The Wall Street Journal.

A report on the WSJ.com website says the company, owners of the Sabre GDS, Travelocity and Lastminute.com, could be sold as early as this week to a private equity group for $3.75 billion.

[Subscription required to read full story]

More consolidation perhaps? The article continues:

"The announcement fueled speculation that Sabre might consider pursuing an agreement with Amadeus, a travel-distribution company based in Madrid."

Our man in America, Dennis Schaal of Travel Weekly USA, who has written about a potential sale in recent months, emails:

"You have Sabre feeling paranoid about the Galileo [Travelport]-Worldspan combo, PLUS there is so much private-equity money out there - and the equity boys love the cash flow of a GDS coupled with the sexiness of Travelocity/Lastminute."

Blink and you may well miss something these days...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Sights you seldom see

Imagine our surprise when Travolution was trying to access the Thomson website this evening, only to be greeted by this:

Weekend Caption Competition #6

There could really only be one image this week - a certain Rajesh Gangwal, chief executive of Worldspan, who has finally sold his GDS company to arch rival Travelport, and is expected to quit once the transition process has been completed.

Entries via the comments button below.

Travelport-Worldspan unite - at last

We're glad to say that after pounding this story for a few days it appears some of us were spot on from the beginning. Phew

The only part we got wrong was the day of the announcement.

The pair have just announced that they will indeed "merge", although in reality that means Travelport will pay $1.4 billion for the deal and a further $125 million has been handed to Worldspan as part of a recapitalisation programme.

Travelport chief executive Jeff Clarke says in a press release:

"Increasing cost pressures on travel suppliers and agencies combined with the strengthening of alternative distribution channels, such as supplier direct channels, continue to influence how travel is purchased."

"This merger will create a more effective and efficient travel distribution provider and will ensure that we are better positioned to meet the evolving needs of our customers, the travel suppliers, travel agencies and end consumers."

Clarke stays on as the new chief executive. Current Worldspan boss Rakesh Gangwal will quit once the integration process is complete.

As for the rivals? Check the Sabre share price.

UPDATE: An interesting piece of analysis from Norm Rose on the Travel Technology Blog, especially with regards to Gangwal.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Slow decline of travel press advertising

Interesting meeting today with Celia Pronto, the new marketing director of student specialist STA Travel.

Not only is the company embracing the web with enormous gusto - both from a consumer-facing point of view and with its digital marketing - but it has withdrawn the majority of its print advertising from UK national press.

Open any travel supplement over the last ten years or so and an STA Travel classified ad would have screamed out offers for the latest Round-the-World trips and cheap flights to Bangkok.

Not any more. Pronto has pulled most of the ad campaigns from the inkies in favour of pay-per-click advertising on the usual suspects.

It might be expensive on certain keywords, she admits, but the ROI for press campaigns was negligible, or at least nigh on impossible to measure.

Pronto also says the reaction to the decision from the market has been decidedly mixed.

More on this subject in the December of Travolution

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Yahoo shake-up leads to more questions than Answers

So it looks like Yahoo! is taking steps to get its house in order after a period of less than positive financial results in recent months and the continued erosion of its search business by Google.

Yahoo! will be split into three divisions (Audiences, Advertisers and Technology), according to The Guardian.

[Hefty Yahoo! press release here]

The restructuring – called Project Souffle for some reason – has been designed, reports say, to “speed up decision-making” and “reduce bottlenecks”.

The new Audiences division will cover media, communications and general services, alongside taking responsibility for exciting projects as the new social media tools that internet giant is introducing, such as Yahoo! Answers.

This does sound overall like A Good Thing.

However what is rather obvious to most Yahoo! employees is that the current reporting structure is based on vertical markets, such as shopping, music, travel, cars, etc.

So what happens to a division, such as travel, which is both an advertising portal but would also consider itself a media and communications outlet, and heavily into tools such as Yahoo! Answers?

Might be wrong here, but one reporting line now split into two doesn’t exactly sound like the best way of improving supposed inefficiencies within the business.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Very unofficial Worldspan-Travelport deadline passes

Following the gossip trail over the last few days on the alleged Travelport-Worldspan merger has been fascinating.

And there really is nothing like consolidation in the industry to get tongues wagging.

Our first mention came on Sunday, but as soon as Monday arrived to say the rumour mill was red hot would be an understatement.

What also put us in a wee bit of a dilemma was knowing that our cover story for the December edition would be rather out of date by the time it comes out (Friday 15th, sign up for a copy here), if the four GDSs suddenly became three.

Cue frantic calls around the industry. Our reporter colleagues in the US have also heard very strong rumours about a takeover by Travelport, owner of the Gailileo GDS.

A pretty good senior source at one of the parties in question told us on Monday that an announcement was due in the next 24 hours.

Indeed, the date most people seemed to be looking towards was yesterday (Tuesday 5th), but as we finally closed the issue last night, the PRs were still giving us ever so slightly nervous and over-jovial responses along the lines of “it’s only industry gossip - ha ha ha!”.

A recent message left in the comments section of Sunday’s post suggested a scheduled employee announcement for Monday PM at one of the two companies was cancelled [post was anonymous].

As Tim Hughes on The BOOT in Australia pointed out, hits to his blog have gone through the roof, mainly from Google referrals on the keywords “Travelport Worldspan rumour”, etc, etc.

I can reveal that we have experienced a similar and hefty surge in traffic [not a record day, yesterday, but pretty close]. There are clearly plenty of people of out there looking for more information.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Deadline day apology

Don't be downhearted at the lack of posts today - Travolution's December edition goes to press today and we are otherwise engaged.

Normal service will resume soon...

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Wales and Scotland love online travel

PING! PING! Emails arrive from the Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs, not to send a shiver down the spine of accountants throughout the building, but to reveal the online habits of the Welsh and the Scots.

It appears that booking holidays over the web is one of the top three pastimes for both.

Almost 40% of people from across the Scottish border said they used the internet for buying travel, compared to 34% of those from Wales.

No figures for England, unfortunately.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Splash the cash

Today – Monday 4 December – is apparently the biggest UK online shopping day of the year.

Research company IMRG estimates £180 million will be spent online today, more than double the usual daily average.

Illustrating the growing use of the internet outside of office hours and rise of broadband in the home, 38% of the sales will take place either before 9am or after 6pm.

However the peak shopping period will be between 1pm and 2pm today, as workers browse and eat.

In December overall there will be £3.55 billion spent online.

Happy Spend Day!

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Travelport and Worldspan rumours

Hat tip to Tim Hughes of the excellent The Boot blog in Australia for picking up on a rumour that Travelport, owner of the Galileo GDS, is eyeing up rival Worldspan.

The lead comes from a article on ATW, an airline industry newswire, and follows comments made by Travelport boss Jeff Clarke at the recent PhoCusWright conference in Hollywood, USA.

The reports says:

"Worldspan chairman Rakesh Gangwal, who has all but posted a 'For Sale' sign on the company's front lawn."

Of course this could just be wild interpretation of publicly made comments. But, as Tim Hughes points out in his post:

"I have no idea either way but the searches of 'Worldspan' and 'Travelport' in the same search entry are one of the leading drivers of traffic to my blog. Clearly someone/people are typing that a lot into Google."

NB: Worldspan is the only GDS out of the leading four that is not part of a wider group with other travel interests, mainly online travel agencies - a position it fiercely defends.

Amadeus has a controlling stake in Opodo; Sabre owns Travelocity and Lastminute.com; and Galileo parent company Travelport owns Orbitz and Ebookers.

UPDATE: Link to story in the US courtesy of JaneSmith in the comments.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Praise from a blogger

Our thanks to Travel-Rants, run by Leeds-based Darren Cronian and one of the most popular consumer travel blogs on the web, who has put the Travolution Blog in second place in a list of the best blogs of 2006.

While we are at a loss to work out why a blog about the London Underground (we are conducting a thorough internal investigation and heads will roll...!) has beaten us to the top spot, being recognised for our achievements after just ten months of hard work is a nice way to enter the weekend.

Rants says:

"A close contest - the Travolution Blog, written by Kevin May – is full of travel content, including news, reports from travel conferences and is a must read for any travel professional. I have learnt more off Travolution than any travel publication or blog that I have read this year – if it had been for Annie’s Underground blog, Travolution would of certainly hit that No1 spot!"

Cheers, Rants.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Good news day for Yahoo

Here is a little snippet of news that almost slipped under our radar during the ABTA Convention.

Google quietly axed its Answers service on Tuesday, claiming the goals for a “company fuelled by innovation” often change for some products.

Fair enough.

Nevertheless, the real reason could be that the goal, since they launched the product four years ago, has actually become too big as arch rival Yahoo!’s own Answers product has been widely praised and is incredibly popular. Some even dare suggest Answers could be Yahoo!’s saving grace

“Google Answers was a great experiment which provided us with a lot of material for developing future products to serve our users,” says a message on the Google Blog. “We'll continue to look for new ways to improve the search experience and to connect people to the information they want.”

The service has now been retired, the site says. See the above image and our own cheeky question

John Battelle’s SearchBlog notes how the Yahoo! press office in the US was clearly having a lot of fun with the announcement and could hardly contain its delight, peddling out the latest stats about the success of Yahoo! Answers.

They’ve probably been waiting for a day like Tuesday for a long time…

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Industry firsts and seconds

A neck-and-neck race to the finish, where winner takes all!

What's all this about? The Grand National. The 100 metre dash at the Olympics. The Oxford and Cambridge boat race?

Not at all – just the usual scrap between two of the GDSs to get their announcement about a new product out first.

The latest battle began yesterday morning at 10.05, when the Texas-based Sabre Travel Network revealed it has developed a tool for agents to track hotel commissions.

Reasonably interesting development – very worthy tool, etc.

But, hey presto, just 12 minutes later bitter rival Amadeus fires off an email with news of a tool for agents to track hotel commissions – developed by the same company as the one behind Sabre’s effort, Worldwide Payment Systems.

To add to the confusion, Amadeus says: “After an extensive search, Amadeus worked with Worldwide Payment Systems to develop the industry’s first, effective commission tracking solution.”

An industry first? The Sabre tool is not "effective"? We should be told…

Kevin May, editor, Travolution