Something or nothing?

A collective scratching of heads at Travolution Towers this week when the Squeeze Holidays launch press release came through.

[see today’s news story]

Not over its bold statement that it would take "significant market share within its first year of business", but the fact that Paul Evans, CEO of lowcosttravelgroup, was quoted in the release.

Evans “lauded” the arrival of the site – a fantastically archaic word in a release about a dotcom start-up. He said: “Having worked with team in previous guises over the years I have every faith that SqueezeHolidays.com will soon be a formidable player in the online travel arena."

Formidable enough to take some of lowcostravelgroup’s market share?

There is no obvious connection between the two organisations, but that’s not to say there aren’t any less obvious ones. Readers can make their own conclusions about the line regarding an unnamed partner in the story:

SqueezeHolidays has launched with a range of beach accommodation sourced from 'one of the well-known bedbanks'.

We eagerly await Squeeze Holidays' “further announcements in due course”.

[NOTE: The announcement on Neutron Ventures’ web site doesn’t mention Evans’ testimonial. Curious and curiouser...}

Martin Cowen, chief writer, Travolution

Travo Question Time - September. A cosmic panel!

The next Travolution Question Time brings together a stellar line-up of executives from across the travel industry for an intimate and engaging evening of debate.

September 23rd in London. Full details here.

Expedia’s new vice president for EMEA, Alex Zivoder, will make his UK travel event debut alongside other well known figures in the online sector, Paul Evans (Lowcostbeds) and Chris Loughlin (Travelzoo). Joining them will be Mark Tanzer, chief executive of Abta, and Justin Cooke, the man behind award winning digital agency, Fortune Cookie.

This, the fourth in the series of Travolution Question Time events, promises to be yet another excellent opportunity to interrogate and network with some of the leading lights in the industry.

Get a ticket (£65+VAT).

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Youtravel.com - first review

The much talked-about new accommodation-only start-up Youtravel.com, which counts the likes of ex-Libra Holidays sales and marketing boss Paul Riches among its senior management team, launched today.

At first glance this morning there appeared to be no obvious technical glitches.

Positives: The site has a relatively simple design, making use on the homepage of handy boxed sections for destinations, bookings, sign-ups, suggestions and special offers.

The hotel search tool is as thorough as the user wants it to be, including options for board, facilities, check-in day, et al.

There is also a search-by-weather option – a nice, user-friendly tool that appears to becoming a rather popular piece of functionality following a similar launch by Wegolo earlier this month.

Negatives: more colour, please! [There are plenty of images of hotels and resorts, but often buried way down amongst the – very comprehensive – stack of details for each product]

Comments elsewhere ahead of Youtravel.com's launch pondered how much pay-per-click advertising would be needed in order to take on the reams of other bed banks, such as Hotels.com, Hotelopia.com, Lowcostbeds.com.

Perhaps Riches will tell us soon.

Kevin May, editor, Travolution

Viewers and readers learn about online travel

Seems like the mainstream press has woken up in the last few weeks to the impact of the internet on the travel industry.

This weekend the BBC’s FastTrack show, a consumer slot on BBC News 24 and BBC World, spoke to Teletextholidays and the Guardian’s travel offshoot I’ve Been There to gauge opinion.

The piece began with a walk down memory lane, with viewers treated to the sight of the old – though still in action for those avoiding Red Button digital technology – Teletext pages with hundreds of travel deals, all to the accompaniment of jolly end-of-the-pier organ music.

Those were the days…

FastTrack reporter Simon Hancock – who rang us a few weeks ago to get some background material for the show – then took viewers on a whirlwind tour of the online travel market over the last ten years, featuring Expedia, Lastminute.com, Thomson and the like.

And then, just two hours after Sunday morning’s repeat, BBC News 24 had a news item on very much the same subject.

Brilliant! Sunday morning at home feels like weekdays at work!

After some amusing archive footage of those early holidays around the Mediterranean, the piece went on to analyse the effect of the internet on the package tour market.

In 2002 around 40 million travel products were sold and around half were traditional package holidays. Fast forward to 2005 and the number of trips has increased by 10% to 44 million, which is good news for all the industry, but the share of packages has dropped to 42%.

Simon Vincent from online travel agent Opodo told viewers one of the reasons for consumer enthusiasm for booking travel on the web is that they are not tied to the opening hours of traditional travel agents.

Meanwhile back in the studio, travel hack Karen Benyon mounted a spirited defence of the High Street agent by claiming it has been “proven” that cheaper prices are not necessarily always found on the web.

It is can only be a good thing that the issues affecting the travel industry are finally being aired in front of everyday consumers.

And the ‘onliners’ of the industry are finally getting some recognition.

In the Times a few weeks back Cath Urquhart produced her 50 People to Know in Travel.

Paul Evans (Lowcost Holiday Group), John Hatt (Cheapflights), Andy Phillips (Active Hotels) and Martha Lane Fox (Lastminute.com) were all featured.

Not sure how easy the notoriously elusive Hatt will be for consumers to track down - and what about poor old Brent Hoberman, Lane-Fox’s co-founder? Minor points...

[See our own list of the pioneers of online travel, The Influential Ten]

Kevin May, editor, Travolution