Wednesday, July 02, 2008

++Good news day for Ebookers - MSN ahoy++

More details here, but ebookers - with its parent company Orbitz - has secured a deal to provide full online travel agency functionality on the MSN Travel channels in the UK and US respectively.

A few things spring to mind:

  • Best piece of partnership news for ebookers in a long time.
  • The new Orbitz-wide technology platform is clearly working from a business opportunity perspective.
  • Global deals can be done.
  • Blood is clearly NOT thicker than water - why Orbitz over Expedia [the OTA it created in 1996], which previously ran the search and bookings tools on MSN.


Kevin May, editor, Travolution

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Embedding the ebookers site within the MSN is not very imaginative is it?

I wrote yesterday about the future of search engines in Travel, and my opinion hasn't changed despite this news.

Travolution Blogger said...

Darren: fair comment, but how would you as an online travel agency engage with users of the MSN Travel Channel, offering them search and booking facilities?

Anonymous said...

Good question.

Wouldn’t a simple solution be to create a funky micro-site, MSN branded, that syndicates the best travel content, i.e. guides, travel tools etc from MSN Travel around the Ebookers powered and branded search and booking facilities. Rather than a link which opens up to duplicate version of the Ebookers website with a MSN travel header.

It’s unimaginative, cheap and quick solution IMO.