New York Times: Worst Part of a Trip May Be Booking It on the Web: If you dreaded sitting down at your computer the last time you made travel arrangements or felt frustrated by all the time and effort it took to sort through pages of results for flights and hotels, join the crowd.
A new report, to be released Tuesday by Forrester Research, found that far from embracing the do-it-yourself era, many consumers were fed up with the complicated process of planning and booking travel. Read more
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There indeed appears to be life for Orbitz after air-booking fees. The online travel company posted a profit in the second quarter by increasing air volume, cutting marketing and other expenses, and focusing on search-engine optimization to wrangle free conversions that accrue right to the bottom line.
Travel Weekly: Orbitz reverses Q2 results with a $10 million profit: Orbitz Worldwide reported net income of $10 million in the second quarter, compared with a $5 million loss a year earlier.
The company’s revenue plunged 18.6%, to $188 million, but Orbitz achieved second-quarter profitability because it slashed operating expenses by 23.1%. Read more
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If there’s one thing that many airlines can’t stand, it is a good scrape. Well, just as American Airlines did in the U.S., Ryanair in Europe is on a campaign to stop search engines from combing its website for fares. AA was successful and stopped the scraping. Ryanair is hoping for similar results.
Travolution: Another scraping case for Ryanair lawyers: Travelviva, an online German travel business, is the latest “screen-scraping ticket tout” to face legal action from Ryanair in the Irish courts. Read more
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Expedia Inc. began leveraging its SeatGuru unit to display seat reviews in the flight-booking path on Expedia.com. Taking a page or two from the hotel-review trend, the move provides some momentum toward expanding user-generated content into the airline sector. The writer below seems to have missed the fact that Expedia owns TripAdvisor/SeatGuru, but what’s the big deal about sharing a flight review or two among friends.
TravelDailyNews: New exclusive partnership of Expedia.com with SeatGuru: Expedia.com customers can now select the best airline seats, based on user generated reviews from real flyers, thanks to a new exclusive partnership with TripAdvisor's SeatGuru, the Web's most comprehensive source for airline information. The partnership, announced, integrates SeatGuru flyer reviews of airplane seats into the seat maps for most flights sold on Expedia.com. This development marks the first time user-generated airline content is available on an online travel booking site. The availability of SeatGuru's reviews allows Expedia.com customers to travel more comfortably by helping them select better airplane seats, such as those with additional legroom, and avoid bad seats, such as those with limited recline. Read more
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Holland America, Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line plan to reposition ships outside Alaska next year as they feel the pricing pinch from Alaska sailings.
Reuters/Yahoo Finance: Slumping economy hits Alaska cruise business: ANCHORAGE, Alaska, Aug 4 (Reuters) - Poor economic conditions are squeezing the cruise business in Alaska, a mainstay for the state's seasonal tourism business, hurting leading ship operators Carnival Corp & Plc (CCL.L) and Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd (RCL.N) (RCL.OL). Read more
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Travel InsideOut is a Dennis Schaal Blog daily feature. Get a thorough-going look at the day's travel industry top and tangentially interesting stories. Feel free to comment on them below.
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