Thursday's Travel InsideOut

Super-sleuth Tom Botts noticed that the under-the-radar Travelzoo launch of fly.com in the U.K. is under way. You can take a look at the U.K. incarnation here, and notice that the domain name is not Fly.co.uk, which is owned by another travel comparison-shopping company. Oh the confusion.

Hudson Crossing Travel Industry Insight: Fly.com: A New Way for the UK to Search for Aeroplane Trips: TravelZoo property Fly.com has quietly launched a UK version of their meta search site. For curious US users, simply click on the flag in the upper right hand corner. UK users are redirected automatically. Read more

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Priceline.com notes that major hotel chains, to a great extent, have gone missing on competitor getaroom.com and the Name-Your-Own Price folks can name some reasons why.

Dennis Schaal Blog: Nothing Opaque About Priceline's Take on getaroom.com: So what are Priceline.com's and Hotwire's opinions about getaroom.com and its model? Read more

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The Arison family, which will retain a substantial piece, about 28 percent, of Carnival Corp.’s voting rights, will sell millions of shares of the company. You can call it a repositioning sail (actually, sale). The family has made this sort of move before.

USA Today Cruise Log: Arison family to sell some Carnival Corp. shares: Members of the Arison family, which owns a substantial chunk of Carnival Corp., plan to sell up to 8.5 million shares, the company said. Tax planning, estate planning and diversification purposes are the reasons given. Read more

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The off-again, on-again merger of the two leading corporate travel organizations in the U.S., NBTA and ACTE, may be off again as due diligence and name games appear to be getting in the way.

Travel Weekly: NBTA-ACTE merger talks apparently on again: Merger talks between the Association of Corporate Travel Executives and the National Business Travel Association are at the point of resuming, judging by a blog entry posted on Thursday by Kevin Maguire, NBTA president. Read more

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Arthur Frommer goes to the calculator and figures that JetBlue’s new All-You-Can-Jet Pass for $599 may just not add up to a bargain for some travelers.

Arthur Frommer Online: JetBlue's Seemingly-Cheap $599 One-Month Pass Is Perhaps Less Than First Meets the Eye: Though it's been greeted with rapture by some travel websites, I'm not entirely enthused about JetBlue's recently-announced All-You-Can-Jet Pass for $599. That device gives you the right to make unlimited flights on JetBlue, for one month between September 8 and October 8, for all of $599. And quite clearly, if there were a reason for you to make daily flights on JetBlue for 30 consecutive days, you'd save big by first buying the Pass. But that would involve an abnormal amount of flying. Read more

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Barry Sternlicht, who departed as chairman of Starwood Hotels in 2005, still has his hand in a few hotel -- or should I say, real estate -- ventures. His Starwood Property Trust just made its mark as the largest IPO to date of 2009. Location, location, location.

Canadian Business Online: Starwood Property Trust shares decline on 1st day of trading, IPO prices at $20 per share:
NEW YORK - Shares of hotel magnate Barry Sternlicht's Starwood Property Trust Inc. initially declined on their first day of trading Wednesday before closing unchanged, even as the broader markets edged up after the Federal Reserve left a key interest rate at a record low. 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.

Travel InsideOut is Copyright (c) 2009 by Dennis Schaal. All rights reserved.

Tuesday's Travel InsideOut

Is Orbitz CEO Barney Harford rolling a rock up a hill in the face of recessionary headwinds or is he finally making good on the company’s oft-promised, but never delivered effort to build a viable hotel business?

Travel Weekly: Orbitz on new track under Harford: Barney Harford, who had helped craft Expedia’s Asia-Pacific hotel business and served as a consultant to Kayak, walked into the perfect storm in early January when he signed on to replace Steve Barnhart as president and CEO of Orbitz Worldwide. Read more

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Separately, and using different tactics, Delta and United are doing everything they can to retain the allegiances of their most loyal, if sometimes fickle, customers.

Wall Street Journal: Delta Woos Elite Travelers: Delta Air Lines Inc. is expected to change its frequent-flier program to let travelers roll over extra elite-qualifying miles and credits from one year to the next. By allowing customers to roll over miles and credits that aren’t needed to reach a status level, the airline hopes to discourage travelers from splitting their loyalty among multiple airlines. Read more

Hudson Crossing Travel Industry Insight: United Actually Reduces a Fee. Yes, You Read that Correctly: Today, United Airlines announced they were dropping last-minute fees for Mileage Plus frequent-flyer award ticket redemption. Yes, this is not a misprint but a case of an airline actually dropping an irksome fee. Currently, non-elite Mileage Plus members are charged $100 to redeem within six days of travel and $75 within seven to twenty days. Read more

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Starwood understands that even Luxury Collection guests, known to romp from “magnificent desert retreats to breathtaking seaside villas,” can benefit from some social media love. That’s why Starwood is unveiling a “private community” platform for this jet-set guest segment.

Travolution: Starwood brand unveils online community service: The Luxury Collection, part of Starwood, has teamed up with private community ASMALLWORLD to unveil a travel community platform. Read more

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The hotel tax issue continues to hound online travel companies, as evidenced by developments in San Francisco, and now New York City’s looming hotel remarketer law has drawn the ire of traditional travel agents and wholesalers, as well.

Dennis Schaal Blog: Travelocity Pays $2.7 Million Hotel Tax to San Francisco: Travelocity paid $2.7 million to the City of San Francisco on July 23 as part of its obligation to "pay first" before being able to appeal the city's hotel tax assessment. Read more

Travel Weekly: New York City enacts tax on all resellers of hotel rooms: Opponents of a recently enacted hotel reseller tax in New York predicted last week that the measure would discourage travel sellers from booking rooms in the city and thus exacerbate the deep slump the Big Apple is seeing in its hospitality sector. Read more

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There’s momentum in Congress to ensure that certain meetings’ destinations don’t become victims of AIG-backlash syndrome.

MercuryNews.com: Reid tells agencies to end travel 'blacklist': LAS VEGAS—Nevada Sen. Harry Reid wrote to cabinet secretaries and the heads of all federal agencies on Monday to ask them to not rule out cost-effective destinations for meetings just because they are popular spots for tourists. Read more

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Through disparate offerings ranging from pool parties to its meetings business, the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Vegas has notched remarkable occupancy numbers as it makes a splash with its Paradise Tower expansion at the height of this recession.

UpTake Travel Industry Blog: Hard Rock Hotel Gambles all it’s Chips on Paradise Tower: The Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas is placing a massive bet on the successful opening of the 490-room Paradise Tower expansion. And surprisingly enough, it looks like their gamble might just pay off. 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.

Travel InsideOut is Copyright (c) 2009 by Dennis Schaal. All rights reserved.

Hotel Competition: Sand in Your Face

Hotel competition obviously knows no bounds when you consider the Starwood-Hilton litigation and Starwood's allegations that former employees made off with proprietary information, which Hilton used to develop its now-in-limbo Denizen brand.

But, now comes word from Travel Weekly's Caribbean editor, Gay Nagle Myers, about another court case that, if the allegations are true, shows that the level of hotel competition has descended into the pits.

In this caper, winding its way through the Jamaican courts, a resort developer in Coral Spring, Jamaica, alleges that a mining operator stole "500 truckloads of prime white sand," valued at $70 million, and that this payload of granular booty ended up on the beaches of three local resorts.

The sand whodunit conjures visions of tourists lounging on the beaches of the three resorts, Red Stripe beers in hand, only to have their vacations interrupted as teams of investigators break out their forensic kits to scoop up samples of the "prime white sand" to ascertain its origins.

It all makes me feel that the "sand-heist trial" in Jamaica could make the Starwood-Hilton battle look like a day at the beach.