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Posted Nov 15, 2011
My, what a contrast in travel innovation. The first two presenters at today’s PhoCusWright Travel Innovation Summit were Hipmunk and Evature. Both focus on simplifying the travel search process. Pay attention to the implications for corporate travel.
Posted Aug 5, 2011
The U.S. General Services Administration launched a mobile app listing hotel, meal and incidental per diem rates for cities in the continental U.S. Taking into consideration how new the app is, there appear to be a few kinks left to work out, but otherwise, it is great platform for quick access to spending limits.
Posted Jul 22, 2011
Posted Jun 10, 2011
This is an oligopoly with three major players and one regional player. Travelport owns three GDS brands, Galileo marketed globally, Apollo and Worldspan marketed primarily in the US. Travelport is the number two player in the US. Sabre is number one in the US and markets its product everywhere in the world but Asia, where they have an investment in Abacus. Separate from the Abacus activity, Sabre is currently number three globally. Abacus is hosted on Sabre. Amadeus is the number one GDS worldwide, but is the number three player in the U.S.
Posted May 17, 2011
BTN reported that CWT "had no comment." Or was it that CWT was speechless?
Posted Apr 22, 2011
Holy cow, can this really be happening? At The Beat Live conference in Chicago last year, a comment was made that the corporate travel industry could be at a tipping point in regards to the future of distribution. Well folks I'm here to tell you, we've not only hit the tipping point but the wall is starting to crack.
Posted Apr 22, 2011
The Department of Transportation is delaying any decision to force airlines to utilize the GDS-mandated methodology for selling and displaying ancillary services. They are delaying their decision because they "lack additional information about costs, benefits and consequences" of requiring carriers to provide that information to the GDSs. It's easy to understand why DOT has more questions than answers. We can just look at some of the recent comments by industry brass. Airlines now support a standardized XML for their direct connect whereby the airline can, in a fully transparent way, offer its best and most relevant product. What is standing in the way of the GDS simply connecting to those airlines? The GDS clearly express it is not a technology or "XML" issue, as recently stated by a Sabre official in The Beat.
Posted Mar 9, 2011
I always thought technology drives most change and the travel industry is no different to any other business in this respect. I assumed that the reason for travel evolution being so painful was that new technology had been so scarce for so long that now it has arrived people are overdosing on it. However, unlike the pharmaceutical business nobody has tested products, understood the correct dosage or learned how to deal with adverse reactions.
Posted May 5, 2010
As I described in Part 1, broad innovations in technology have paved the way for many travel innovations. But surely there are important non-technology factors that are shaping the future of the travel industry. Let's take a look at five such factors and their implications.
Posted Apr 29, 2010
Yesterday I spoke at the Open Travel Alliance's Forum on the topic of innovation in consumer travel. This post summarizes the major factors influencing travel innovation, and the top innovations in consumer travel from the last two decades.
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