Hotel Teatro Heeds TripAdvisor

Some in the travel industry, namely Professional Travel Guide and Star Service Online, among others, advise consumers and travel agents, respectively, to disregard consumer-written hotel reviews like those on TripAdvisor and other review sites.

These reviews, the argument goes, are unreliable, fraudulent and dangerous.

But, these companies should know that the hotel industry itself pays very close attention to TripAdvisor, for better or worse.

Heather Turner tweeted the other day about Hotel Teatro, a boutique property in Denver, which leverages TripAdvisor to its advantage.

HotelMarketingStrategies quotes Hotel Teatro General Manager David Craig on how the property uses TripAdvisor reviews.

"We also spend the first portion of every staff meeting reading our newest TripAdvisor reviews aloud to the group," Craig is quoted as saying. "This establishes a forum for recognizing favorable performance and for developing solutions where we have areas of opportunity."

And Craig advises repeat guests, who corresponded with the hotel about their pleasurable experiences: "Thank you for taking the time to relay the details of your experience at Hotel Teatro. I am so glad that you had a wonderful visit. If you’d like to share your experience with others, I encourage you to do so at www.tripadvisor.com."

No word if Craig advises any unhappy guests to do likewise.

However, Hotel Teatro's strategy of paying close attention to what is being said about the property on TripAdvisor, and doubtless in other social media outlets, has helped the hotel achieve its TripAdvisor Popularity Index Rating of #2 out of 148 hotels covered by TripAdvisor in Denver.

Hey, TripAdvisor is very far from perfect.

But, smart companies and astute travelers would be wise to take its reviews into account instead of pretending they don't exist or have no merit.

getaroom.com Partners with Travelocity

getaroom.com, the online and offline hotel booking business founded by the founders of hotels.com, has partnered with Travelocity.

getaroom.com currently only covers hotels in major markets, including New York, Orlando, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Anaheim and Miami.

On the international front, getaroom.com also began pitching hotels in London.

But, when you search for a hotel outside of these markets in places like Knoxville, Tenn., or Mystic, Conn., you see this message: "Getaroom doesn't currently service this market. We are taking you to our partner Travelocity for great rates and availability."

Consumers then get redirected to a page that is co-branded as Getaroom and "powered by Travelocity Partner Network," which fills in getaroom's inventory blanks.

getaroom thus has opted for Travelocity's branded affiliate program. Travelocity also offers a white-label option from its WorldChoiceTravel unit.

In the co-branded program, getaroom would earn a commission on bookings that Travelocity fulfills.

I don't think this getaroom-Travelocity relationship necessarily means that getaroom and Travelocity will be developing any deeper ties. It looks like a stop-gap measure while getaroom.com works to build out its inventory.

For getaroom.com, I guess, partnering with hotels.com and its parent, Expedia, wasn't an option.

Bing's Visual Search Has Me Seeing Stars

Bing introduced visual search in beta this afternoon and its prospects have me envisioning its applicability in travel.

Speaking at the TechCrunch 50 conference today minutes prior to the visual-search launch, Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft senior vice president, online audience, told attendees that Bing has to take some major steps, as opposed to modest innovations, if it wants to compete with the likes of Google.

Mehdi placed visual search in that big-step forward category.

For now, Bing users can opt to search entertainment, famous people, reference, shopping and sports using visual search.

Users, for example, can search for HDTVs and then drill down and reduce the number of images by brand, type, screen size and resolution to pare shopping choices.

In an era when user interfaces are evolving with touchscreens, videos and imagery, substituting visual search for clunkier keywords seems like an appealing way to open up e-commerce and search to a segment of consumers who are looking for more intuitive ways to browse and take action.

Using images to search for HDTVs, cellphones, cars and movies seems like a way forward, but will it work in the complex world of travel where apples and oranges grow on the same vine?

I don't know precisely what Bing Travel will do in visual search, but I have to believe that it will get involved.

UPDATE: Bing Travel indeed has introduced a bit of visual search with a travel-related twist in the form of travel destinations with data partner Fodors Travel. There is no booking capability tied to this informational effort.

In the left-hand column, users can narrow their search by the best time to visit, continent, region and flight time, and then click on an image to access Bing links about that destination.

I didn't find it particularly useful, but this is day one.

Without tipping his hand, Hugh Crean, the general manager of Bing Travel, said Bing Travel "is working on launching a number of new and interesting travel scenarios."

So, there's more to come from Bing Travel in visual search.

Will we see consumers searching for hotels using property images and then whittling down their choices by brands, star ratings, price ranges and facilities like indoor pools or spas?

If the user interface is right, this could make for a more compelling shopping experience for some travelers.

Which would be easier and more interactive? Sorting out where to stay by clicking on a few images or plodding through pages of listings and links?

Many travel agents still prefer linear results on green screens to sexier GUIs, and some consumers will still prefer keywords to images.

But, visual search could open up paths for the more graphically minded.

Visual search has been tried elsewhere with poor to mixed results.

So, let's see if Bing can get things off the drawing board.

And, at the least, this Google-Bing donnybrook is great for consumers and innovation.

Google is so big it doesn't have to react tit-for-tat to Bing.

But, Bing's introduction of visual search will give Google another pesky nudge.

Expedia Hotel Settlements Turn Lemons into Lemonade

In two proposed settlements with consumers on the "taxes and fees" issue in hotel sales, Expedia and its Hotwire unit got very creative.

Make no mistake about it: Expedia's $123.4 million settlement and Hotwire's $5.5 million tab are financial blows to the companies, and you hear few online travel company whispers these days that the momentum in the consumer and municipal hotel-tax battles is in the OTCs' favor.

But Expedia, Hotwire and the consumer plaintiffs added a marketing element to the proposed settlements that may substantially ease the fiscal burden.

Expedia consumers eligible for the settlement can opt for cash equal to 30 percent of what they paid in service fees or take their compensation in the form of an Expedia travel credit for 65 percent of what they initially paid.

Similarly, Hotwire consumers can get 25 percent in cash or 65 percent as a credit toward travel through Hotwire.

This formula seemingly reduces the financial blow to the companies, attracts bookers to their websites and gives them the opportunity to upsell the aggrieved consumers with higher-end hotel rooms and packages.

When you also consider that Expedia and Hotwire notify eligible consumers about the settlement using e-mail addresses that the travelers might have retired years ago, the financial scope of the settlements narrow even more.

Another interesting element of the Hotwire settlement is that Hotwire is required to change the way it explains the total cost of a hotel room.

"Website Changes: Hotwire will, for two years following the Effective Date, revise its website to include a statement that the total cost shown will include all taxes, charges, surcharges, shipping/handling and Hotwire Request resubmission or other fees. The amounts will be posted on their website but will not be separately itemized," according to the settlement.

And, another provision: "In addition, the Frequently Asked Questions section of their [Hotwire's] website will contain revisions that were negotiated as part of the Settlement. Hotwire may, at its discretion and good faith, modify the negotiated text to make it consistent with any changes to its business practices, to increase its clarity, or to comply with a legal obligation or court order."

It's all about transparency.

Expedia and Hotwire -- although they continue to deny it -- got slapped with these settlements because of consumer allegations that the websites weren't forthcoming about the real nature of their fees.

Even the language changes at Hotwire, as outlined above, don't go far enough in detailing to consumers what they actually are paying for when booking a hotel room online.

So it looks like Expedia, Hotwire and other online travel companies will continue to be able to protect their hotel merchant models and dodge the transparency bullet for now.

Friday's Travel InsideOut

Talk about blaming the victim .... The Stamford Hotel Marriott, according to published reports, alleged that a woman raped in her minivan in front of her children as she was leaving the hotel "failed to exercise due care for her own safety and the safety of her children and proper use of her senses and facilities." Well, there’s nothing like standing up for your guests, who always are the top priority, right?

Connecticut Post: Stamford Marriott claims woman was negligent in her own rape: STAMFORD -- A downtown hotel being sued by a woman raped at gunpoint in its parking garage is claiming she was careless, negligent and "failed to exercise due care for her own safety and the safety of her children and proper use of her senses and facilities," according to court documents. Read more

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With pilots' unions at Southwest Airlines and Frontier Airlines squabbling over the seniority issues inherent in a merged airline, Republic Airways swooped in and stole the Frontier prize from Southwest. Republic, which had been a regional airline, now spreads its wings and becomes larger than AirTran Airways. Unbowed, Southwest said it remains committed to service in Denver, Frontier’s base.

Travel Weekly: Republic takes Frontier after pilot impasse kills SWA deal: The inability of Southwest and Frontier pilots to work out seniority differences killed Southwest's $170 million bid to buy the Denver-based airline and lead it out of bankruptcy. Instead, Republic Airways Holdings won the right to buy Frontier for $108.8 million at Thursday's bankruptcy auction. Read more

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Priceline.com, Hotwire and getaroom.com offer divergent value propositions for different sorts of online -- and in one case -– over-the-phone bookers. And, as the competition for discount-hungry consumers picks up, one of the entrants is becoming more vocal about its advantages.

Examiner.com: Hotel discount ups and downs at Priceline, Hotwire and getaroom.com: With travel discounting in peak season, there are tons of ways to find hotel discounts, from deals newsletters to Web specials and last-minute offerings.

And three travel-discounting businesses -- two established players and one newbie -- offer varying booking modes that probably fit the temperaments of a lot of travelers. Read more

And, for more of a travel industry angle on the emergence of getaroom.com, put down the phone and read on.

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?

I was unsuccessful in reaching Hotwire Group President Clem Bason yesterday about getaroom.com, the start-up launched by the founders of hotels.com, because Bason was said to be -- of all things -- traveling. I would still love to hear from Hotwire on this issue. Read more

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Calling all cars, calling all cars… High prices and rental-car firms not being very fleet of foot in meeting larger-than expected demand in various European countries have led to consumers walking up to rental-car counters and finding out that all available cars have taken to the highways without them. Car rental firms get no mileage out of these sorts of supply and demand foibles. Incidentally, in Euro-speak, when they talk about car-hire firms, they mean car-rental companies:)

BBC: Tourists face car hire shortage: Holidaymakers across the UK and Europe are facing bigger bills for hire cars - or risk not getting one at all - due to a shortage of vehicles. Read more

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It appears that new FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz wants to crack down on companies pushing behavioral advertising -- the practice of serving ads to consumers across a variety of advertising networks and websites based on the Web pages they visited elsewhere. Leibowitz is floating the idea of requiring companies to give consumers the choice of opting-in before becoming subjected to these services rather than only the current opt-out practice. In the travel industry, Expedia has been a leader in behavioral advertising as it sells consumers' cookie data to third-party advertisers.

Seeking Alpha: Government Could Make Monetization Harder for Online Ad Networks, Publishers: In the last few years, behavioral targeting has gone from being an interesting experiment to the core success of many ad networks. Many networks are using data collected from one site to improve the targeting of advertising on other sites. But in the past two months, both the FTC and some members of the House have discussed limiting the ability for online advertisers to do behavioral targeting. Read more

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Dylan Hotel in Dublin produced a video to show off the property. This kind of, well, show-biz will become much more popular among hotels in the future. Popcorn anyone?

Hotel Website Marketing: Dylan Hotel launch cool website video: Congratulations to the Dylan Hotel in Dublin for taking the plunge and adding a cool hotel video to their website. More Irish hotels need to embrace online video not only to improve their own website but also to get coverage on Youtube, Vimeo etc. 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.

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?

I was unsuccessful in reaching Hotwire Group President Clem Bason yesterday about getaroom.com, the start-up launched by the founders of hotels.com, because Bason was said to be -- of all things -- traveling. I would still love to hear from Hotwire on this issue.

But, I asked Priceline spokesman Brian Ek how he sees the hotel landscape and whether consumers would be better served to use getaroom.com over Priceline.

"Regarding your questions, it’s just about impossible to draw any comparisons since we’re hearing that our major hotel chain supplier/partners aren’t supporting it [getaroom.com]," Ek said. "They see it as non-opaque and dilutive to their ADRs (average daily rates)."

"From a hotel’s perspective, if a customer can get a discount at the exact hotel they’re looking at, why would they ever pay full price?" Ek mused. "It just hurts the hotel’s ADR at a time when hotels are doing their best to keep ADRs up."

Indeed, there apparently are a paucity of major chains using getaroom.com, which displays published and discounted rates on its website and asks consumers to phone its call center for additional unpublished bargains.

I checked getaroom.com today for Boston hotels Aug. 14-16 and found merely a dozen hotels displayed -- and just three local properties, a Radisson, a Millennium and a Wyndham, that are part of larger brands.

On Ek's point about ADR dilution, the Wyndham Boston Chelsea displayed a $200 base rate per night with a line through it and showed that room was now being offered for $160 per night.

That may be great for the consumer, but for the hotel's brand -- not so much.

Indeed, the Wyndham Boston Chelsea was transparently offering a discounted rate. Over at Orbitz.com, that same room was being offered for a base rate of $176.25.

I searched getaroom.com for Chicago hotels on the same nights and found an underwhelming 15 hotels on display there.

Interestingly, getaroom.com may have changed its mode of prompting consumers to phone its call centers for discounts.

While in the past getaroom.com displayed a message to "call for special unpublished rates" within the displays of some individual properties, now I see it is showing that message at the top of pages without pointing to specific hotels for cut-rate discounts.

That change may be a way to reduce the dilutive effect of a property's discounting -- or at least a bow to hotels' sensitivities on that front.

I had another thought about the apparent lack of chains' participation in getaroom.com.

In addition to concerns about discounting and lack of opacity, do getaroom.com owners Bob Diener and David Litman, who also co-founded hotels.com, have to battle still-raw resentment about hotels.com's distribution clout back in the day?

Methinks that may be a smoldering issue.

Meanwhile, Priceline, with its scale and flexibility, may have it all over getaroom.com and some other players in terms of the depths of discounts that it can offer travelers.

Comparing getaroom.com to Priceline, however, is apples to grapefruits. Priceline is established and getaroom.com is a newbie.

Also, although Priceline's opaque deals may be of better value overall for consumers, getaroom.com has value too because consumers know the identity of the hotel they are booking before they provide their credit card numbers.

And, that latter tack will appeal to plenty of consumers.

Still, Priceline President and CEO Jeffery Boyd wasn't talking about getaroom.com specifically, but he addressed the discounting issue during the company's second quarter conference call Aug. 10.

"We make business decisions as to whether to commit resources to matching those promotions and I think here domestically, our Name-Your-Own Price savings still are dramatically more favorable to the customer than one-night free if you buy four nights," Boyd said, referring to prevailing discounting trends.

Boyd added: "So we feel like we are very strongly positioned, even with that kind of promotional activity here, although there’s nothing to say that in future, we wouldn’t be able to offer that kind of a thing here in the United States and there’s nothing in the booking.com model or the Agoda model [two Priceline subsidiaries in Europe and Asia, respectively] that prevents them from offering that kind of lower pricing for multi-night stays, which is really what the principal promotional activity has been here in the United States and in Europe."

To paraphrase what Boyd seems to be saying to competitors and their discounting: "Bring it on."

RELATED POSTS

getaroom, getaroom, getaroom.com

getaroom.com's Phone Rates and Manner Fall Flat

Critics to hotels.com Founders: Take a Hike

hotels.com Founders Introduce 'Reverse Opaque Rates'

Wednesday's Travel InsideOut

Some travelers may take a pass on this, but undoubtedly JetBlue’s phone lines are humming because it began selling a flight pass for $599. Purchasers get a month of no-holds-barred travel, to some extent. Let's see how this gets displayed in global distribution systems.

Los Angeles Times: A month of JetBlue flights for $599 with ‘All You Can Jet’: JetBlue Airways today began selling a $599 pass that allows unlimited travel on the budget carrier from Sept. 8 to Oct. 8. The pass, called “All You Can Jet,” which has set Twitter buzzing, could be a good deal if you plan to fly a lot that month. But not if you don’t, because it’s nonrefundable. And there are other catches too. Read more

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First, the travel industry’s best and brightest commented on this blog about the innovation failures of the online travel companies. Then, Forrester Research releases a report by Henry Harteveldt, outlining consumers’ frustrations with booking travel online. And, now iPerceptions published the results of its own inquiry, showing that potential hotel bookers are put off by the lack of usability of hotel websites. I think we are onto something:)

Hotel Interactive: Hotel Websites Failing to Meet Expectations: The hotel industry is potentially losing out of millions of dollars in reservations because too many people are not looking and then booking. No, this is not a case of people using these sites for research only. Turns out technology is the main culprit here and its shooing away potential travel buyers in droves. Read more

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If timing is everything in life, then Continental Airlines didn’t have much luck when it announced the beginning of a helicopter-service promotion for business traveler a day before last Saturday’s accident involving a private plane and a tour helicopter.

Examiner.com: Continental announces helicopter promotion 1 day before tour crash: Continental Airlines announced a Newark Airport-Manhattan helicopter promotion with US Helicopter one day before the Saturday crash of a Liberty Helicopter Sightseeing Tours helicopter over the Hudson River. Read more

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It’s an exciting day at Yale [hint: that’s secret Yahoo code for, well, Yahoo] as the company tries to reestablish Yale [you know, Yahoo] “mindshare” in light of the Yahoo-Microsoft advertising deal. To all of you travel advertisers out there -- get ready for some stick-to-the script talking points from Yahoo sales/spinmeisters when the partnership gets its wings a year or so from now.

Silicon Alley Insider/Yahoo: Yahoo CMO Talks Up Microsoft Deal In Internal Memo: Yahoo CMO Elisa Steele sent out a memo to her reports following the news two weeks ago that the company had finally outsourced its search to Microsoft. Kara Swisher landed a copy today. Read more

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Here’s a compilation of properties and chains on Twitter. It’s a relatively small list, considering the expanse of global hotels, but the ranks undoubtedly will increase.

Resideo Hotels: Hotels Using Twitter: More and more hotels are signing up on Twitter, so we decided to put together this list. It's most definitely, by the nature of the web, incomplete -- so please feel free to let us know (via email, Twitter or the comments section below) if you know of others that should be included. Enjoy -- and feel free to follow us on Twitter: @resideo Read more

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Oh, love – or is it lust – is in the air with the consummation of a partnership between Hedonism II and a swingers’ website. We hope it’s not all just a tease, but travel agents, in this deal, won’t have to split their commission with the website.

Travel Weekly: Hedonism II partners with swingers' website: A swingers’ website and SuperClubs’ Hedonism II resort in Jamaica have teamed up, and the partnership could prove a profitable connection for travel agents. 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.

Where in the World is the Orbitz Hotel Business Model?

Orbitz Worldwide is about to change its hotel business model and go-to branding in Asia-Pacific.

It's an evolution of OWW's global, multi-brand strategy, where its core hotel business model varies from region to region.

In North America, where full-service online travel companies Orbitz.com and CheapTickets.com prevail and vacation packages are vital, and in Europe on ebookers' turf, OWW sees the merchant model remaining its dominant practice.

But, in parts of Asia-Pacific, Orbitz will tweak the RatesTogo.com modified retail model by expanding the booking window from 28 to 365 days, and in many markets OWW will designate HotelClub as the lead brand.

RatesToGo is a unit of OWW's HotelClub, a hotel-only site that is strong in Asia-Pacific and Europe. Today, HotelClub uses the merchant model for gateway and other major destination cities, and RatesToGo uses the modified retail model, where consumers prepay the RatesToGo commission and booking fee in the form of a deposit and pay the balance to the hotel upon checkout.

The commission generally is 10 percent to 15 percent.

Mike Nelson, president of the Orbitz Worldwide Partner Services Group, said the strategy soon will change so that HotelClub will be the lead brand in emerging markets and in "secondary cities" in Asia-Pacific, and HotelClub will offer both the merchant and modified retail model with the longer 365-day booking window.

However, the strategy will vary market to market, Nelson said, with RatesToGo and HotelClub coexisting in the current status quo in Australia, for instance, where RatesToGo is strong.

OWW's initial focus for expanding the modified retail model from last-minute inventory to bookings 365 days' out, and pairing it with merchant model rooms on HotelClub is in Asia-Pacific, Nelson said, but he doesn't rule out a broader rollout.

Asia-Pacific is fertile ground for the modified retail model because, among other advantages, it eliminates the need for the hotel to set up a commission-payment system, Nelson said.

And, that makes it easier for HotelClub to sign new hotel partners, especially among smaller or independent hotels.

And, in focusing on a niche of emerging markets and secondary cities, OWW may be able to avoid head-to-head competition with some of the region's strongest hotel players like Ctrip in China and Rakuten in Japan.

At least, that's the hope.

Oh, by the way, HotelClub's new modified retail model will have it's own catchy branding.

At least, that's the hope, too.

Related Post

As the Online Travel Companies Turn

getaroom, getaroom, getaroom.com

getaroom.com, the hotel-booking site and call center business introduced by hotels.com founders David Litman and Bob Diener, just fired off $10 million worth of TV, radio and print ads in key markets across the country.

You can view one of the 30-second spots, unveiling the getaroom.com theme song to the tune of the William Tell Overture, on youtube.

"Name recognition is key to generating awareness and driving consumers to the getaroom.com website and call center," said Diener, in the press release announcing the ads. "These ads cut through the clutter and once you see and hear them our name certainly stays top of mind."

Litman and Diener delivered the advertising the old-fashioned way: They wrote, directed and paid for the ads themselves.

These guys know what they are doing. I have visions of them pacing the Dallas call center at this moment, correcting the miscues of call center agents and grabbing the headsets themselves, taking customers' calls.

As you may recall, getaroom.com lists published rates on its website, but consumers can register and phone the call center for unpublished discounts, said to "typically" be 10 percent to 25 percent, but tapping out at 50 percent.

Not that there are a bunch of novices in the call center and filling out hotel sales teams.

The Dallas Business Journal reported that getaroom.com hired many of its 30 full-time and 20 part-time employees from the ranks of hotels.com, Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz.

You can imagine the call going out to former employees of the Diener-Litman-run hotels.com, which IAC finished acquiring in June 2003 and Expedia now owns, saying, "we're back."

The two had taken a five-year sabbatical from the travel industry because of a noncompete agreement with hotels.com.

The Dallas Business Journal said getaroom.com projects $45 million in revenue for the first year.

Some other things that getaroom.com has going for it include: an 800 number with the word "hotels" (800-hotels-8) in it, and an understanding of social media.

There's a bit of irony in a company that is pushing consumers to book over the telephone, instead of online for the best discounts, appears very adept at playing on the social media airwaves.

Here's getaroom.com's Facebook page.

Here's Diener gabbing on Twitvid.io.

When you register for getaroom.com, there are links at the bottom of the page to getaroom.com on Facebook and Twitter.

And, in another interesting twist, Travel Dividends believes that the commissions getaroom.com pays through its travel affiliate program are "rather rich," inferring that getaroom.com could make some headway against more modest programs offered by Expedia, Hotwire, Travelocity, Priceline and Orbitz.

Diener tells me that in addition to the company's first advertising campaign, "much more is coming."

getaroom.com just starting offering inventory from Barcelona hotels and plans on introducing other cities in Europe later in August, Diener says.

Launching a $10 million advertising campaign for a start-up is a pretty good start, especially when you realize that the duo made a few pennies from selling hotels.com and have deep pockets.

William Tell Overture or not, I think you will be hearing the name getaroom.com a lot in the future.

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Related Posts

Getaroom.com's Phone Rates and Manner Fall Flat

Critics to Founders of hotels.com and getaroom: TakeAHike

Update: Hotels.com Founders Introduce 'Reverse Opaque Rates' and Point to hotels.com Shortcomings

Friday's Travel InsideOut

Southwest and JetBlue now are flying into some major airports instead of off-the-beaten-track landing strips. Will they be able to maintain their value proposition as they get right in the middle of all of the hub-bub?

Wall Street Journal: Southwest Lands at Logan, Bringing Low Fares Mainstream: Next week Southwest Airlines Co. will do something that Herbert Kelleher, its legendary former chief executive, said would never happen: The airline will offer flights at Boston’s Logan International Airport. Read more

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Following are two articles, one from the Los Angeles Times and the second from the Havana Times, detailing efforts by U.S. citizens to defy the Cuba travel ban. Hey, it's Travel InsideOut, you know.

Los Angeles Times: Violator of Cuba travel ban seeks to force court action: Erika Crenshaw returned to Los Angeles this week from a 10-day trip to Cuba with a message for authorities charged with enforcing a ban on travel to the communist-ruled island: Come and get me. Read more

Havana Times: US Travel Ban on Cuba Losing Teeth: While visiting Cuba is still illegal and subject to fines for US citizens, Washington’s travel ban appears to be losing some of its teeth. Read more

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A new tool for revenue managers helps hoteliers determine how to set their opaque rates on Priceline. How high is too high? How low is too low? Let’s limbo some more:)

The Center for Hospitality Research: Setting Room Rates on Priceline: How to Optimize Expected Hotel Revenue: Executive Summary: This report and tool combination develops a novel approach to set prices on Priceline.com to maximize revenues received from releasing rooms to Priceline. When setting rates on Priceline, hotel properties face a straightforward auction-like pricing decision. Read more

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A new hotel application on Twitter shows more experimentation with travel search and planning on the social media site.

InventorSpot:Twihotels, The Twitter Hotel-Finder Launches: Hotel booking sites like Hotels.com can locate a number of hotels anywhere in the world and if you are diligent enough to cross-reference with TripAdvisor you can most likely obtain a review on that hotel's performance. But until now, there was no one site that could surface hotel recommendations for you firsthand, without a lot of searching and cross-referencing. Twihotels is filling that void nicely with a new app they just rolled out in August. Read more

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It’s too soon to tell whether there will be fewer cruise-ship repositionings or vacation cancellations, but hurricane watchers have downgraded their hurricane forecast after a pacific start to the hurricane season.

Travel Weekly: Hurricane forecast altered after a quiet two months The lack of hurricane activity prompted the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to alter its 2009 forecast on Thursday. Read more

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I’m betting that Orbitz will take Ratestogo.com’s modified retail model out of Asia and Europe and into North America in a meaningful way.

Dennis Schaal Blog: Does Orbitz Ratestogo.com Mean Merchant Model To Go.com?: Orbitz Worldwide CEO Barney Harford is bullish on subsidiary ratestogo.com, the Sydney, Australia, hotel business primarily selling last-minute rooms in Europe and Asia. 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.

Google: We Won't Be a Copycat in Travel

After writing Kayak's Hafner Awaits Google Hotels and the Brave New World of Google Travel 3.0 , I spoke with Google's managing director of travel and learned a lot more about what Google won't do in travel.

Here are some headlines from my conversation with Rob Torres, who emphasized that all options -- including the build versus buy equation -- are on the table. Torres said:

• Google monitors all competitors, regardless of their market share, but "we are not going to copycat. We will only do something if we can do it 10 times better than what's happening today."

• "Microsoft made a great acquisition in Farecast," but Google likely would take another route. "We don't have anything like that," Torres said, referring to Bing Travel, "and we don't intend to do something like that."

• Asked whether Google would acquire a company like Kayak or FareCompare, Torres said: "Would we acquire a Kayak just to be a Kayak? Probably not."

• "If anyone can come up with a game-changing opportunity" in travel, it would be Google, he said.

• Torres doesn't see Google introducing metasearch as an aforementioned game-changing opportunity. "The reality is that Kayak and others already are doing that very well."

• Kayak CEO Steve Hafner was being "highly speculative" and started from erroneous assumptions when he said Google doesn't care about flights and would bolster its stance in the travel business in the hotel sector. "We don't look at it as one versus another [air versus hotel]," but view the travel vertical "wholistically," Torres said. "I think our flight partners are very important. That's where they [most trip-planning queries] start."

• Asked why then Google did not further develop it's one-box flight search , launched in late 2005, Torres said "it has taken time to figure out the next step."

• Torres said Google's recent introductions of City Tours and Favorite Places, two travel applications leveraging Google Maps, were "nothing really big" in terms of the big picture and "not necessarily driving a travel product."

• A widely held view, Torres stated that the possibility of Google introducing a "transactional model" like an online travel agency are remote.

• Rather than attacking things piecemeal, Torres said Google looks to improve search across specific verticals and industries, including travel. He said Google has tremendous relatively untapped assets, including Google Maps, Google Base and YouTube.

So, now we know some of the things that Google likely will not do in travel.

Torres said that "time will tell" what steps Google would take.

Of the travel business, Torres said: "Certainly our interest hasn't waned over time."

Related Post

Google travel is coming… could it be a hotel PPC system?

Does Orbitz Ratestogo.com Mean Merchant Model To Go.com?

Orbitz Worldwide CEO Barney Harford is bullish on subsidiary ratestogo.com, the Sydney, Australia, hotel business primarily selling last-minute rooms in Europe and Asia.

Harford said during the OWW Q2 conference call yesterday that he "loves" the ratestogo.com business model, which offers a twist on the traditional agency model.

Harford, who pledges to go gang-busters in building the Orbitz hotel business, said ratestogo.com's "modified retail model" is much simpler than the merchant model, which requires tons of nurturing and work.

And, besides, ratestogo.com immediately receives its pre-paid commissions, ranging from 10 percent to 15 percent, in the form of deposits as soon as consumers book the rooms.

Some 15,000 properties have signed up for the ratestogo.com approach, Harford said.

Here's how the ratestogo.com model works.

To book the Palms Hotel and Spa Miami, the consumer pays ratestogo.com up-front a $47.40 "deposit," including a $3 nonrefundable booking fee.

So, ratestogo.com collects its compensation immediately and doesn't have to wait weeks or months for finicky hotel chains and independent properties to send commissions.

And, from a consumer perspective -- and here's a HEADLINE -- the booking fee is transparent -- $3.

After the room is booked, ratestogo.com e-mails the customer a voucher, which states that consumer must pay the $251.60 balance, plus applicable city, state and other taxes, to the hotel upon checkout.

In this way, the hotel gets its money immediately upon the completion of the stay.

In turn, with online travel companies being tracked by tax-deprived cities, counties and states across the country, ratestogo.com bows out of the whole tax mess, and pays diminished credit card fees because it is merely processing the deposit and not the full retail rate for the room.

Tom Botts, a partner in Hudson Crossing, notes that collecting commissions from hotels can be "a horror show" so speedier payments are advantageous to the intermediaries.

However, a downside for the OTCs is that they wouldn't get to hang onto the hotels' money for as long as they do now under the current merchant model.

Harford said the ratestogo.com business faced challenges in the second quarter, largely because it does a lot of business in Europe, where the downturn is acute.

He offered some tantalizing hints about the future utility of the ratestogo.com model as he praised its advantages over the merchant model.

For example, Harford said it is easier to acquire hotel partners using the ratestogo.com model relative to the merchant model, which requires a protracted effort.

So, could the modified agency model be rolled out on a broader basis internationally and in the U.S?

I don't believe that Orbitz is about to chuck the merchant model -- although it has less at stake than Priceline and Expedia. For example, Harford said Orbitz estimates it only has about a $1 million annual tax exposure for its merchant model hotel business in New York City.

And, whether the ratestogo.com model would win broad consumer acceptance, given its complexity, is another issue, Botts pointed out.

Ratestogo.com currently offers "last-minute" inventory for bookings up to 28 days' out.

In response to an analyst's question about whether OWW was considering expanding ratestogo.com's 4-week window, Harford coyly replied: "Stay tuned."

If the OTCs are forced to abandon more U.S. cities because of adverse rulings on the merchant model tax question, perhaps the ratestogo.com model could get some increasing attention.

We're "staying tuned."

Monday's Travel InsideOut

American Airlines is becoming so hip. If you are tired of Facebook applications like online Scrabble or Mafia wars, users of the social-networking site can now conduct flight searches using American’s beta fare finder.

Chicago Tribune: Search for airfares on Facebook? Yes, you can: American Airlines has added a fare-finding feature to its Travel Bag application within Facebook. The Travel Bag application lets Facebook fans share travel experiences, photos, reviews and comments with friends and other Travel Bag users. The new feature – American is holding a contest to name it – lets customers search for the lowest fares on American without leaving Facebook, and allows them to share their searches with friends in their network. Read more

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Google already may be the most comprehensive “hotel website,” and now Kayak CEO Steve Hafner believes Bing-struck Google may introduce hotel pricing as its entry-point to an enhanced travel offering.

Dennis Schaal Blog: Kayak's Hafner Awaits Google Hotels: Kayak CEO Steve Hafner thinks "it's only a question of time" before Google begins displaying hotel pricing, a move that could change the online-travel ecosystem. Read more

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There’s nothing like a few new ancillary services and fees to increase cash levels and cheer airline execs’ summer blues.

Travel Weekly: For airlines, ancillary fees help ease summertime blues: It’s summertime, and airlines are trying, as they always do, to build up their cash reserves to survive the winter. This year, though, they’re also trying to survive a recession.

As the airlines cut capacity, their revenue streams have dwindled, so they are relying more on ancillary fees to make up the balance. Airline executives also said the economic stress and recovery uncertainty were pushing them to consider consolidation or some other type of union to survive over the long term. Read more

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Through an acquisition in Europe, Concur is said to have improved its services on the Continent.

Business Travel News: Concur Buys European Expense Competitor Etap-On-Line: Expense management technology supplier Concur today announced it has acquired European competitor Etap-On-Line, doubling its European operations. Read more

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If you are looking for the movers and shakers in hotel blogdom, this list would be a great place to start.

UpTake Travel Industry Blog: Top 15 Hotel Blogs & Bloggers: Like every other sector, the hotel industry too has its own set of A-list bloggers who lead the conversation. These 15 hotel blogs and their bloggers listed here offer their readers the best hospitality experience, so to speak. Read more

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.

Kayak's Hafner Awaits Google Hotels

Kayak CEO Steve Hafner thinks "it's only a question of time" before Google begins displaying hotel pricing, a move that could change the online-travel ecosystem.

Waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak, Hafner says he is much more concerned about how Kayak, the leading travel-metasearch player in the U.S., would navigate Google's souped-up role in facilitating hotel transactions than about the maneuverings of rivals like TripAdvisor, Fly.com, Bing Travel or Mobissimo.

"Google is by far the biggest source of travel information for consumers," Hafner says.

That point was confirmed for me last night when I drilled down a bit into what Google has been doing on the hotel front.

When I performed a Google search for Chicago hotels and then selected Hotel Allegro reviews, I accessed a link that produced:

• The property location in Google Maps;

• Overviews of the hotel and property details;

• Some 619 user reviews and ratings of Hotel Allegro from the likes of TripAdvisor, Priceline, HotelGuide and others;

• 50 photos and videos from the hotel itself and other content providers;

• 683 Web pages about the property, and

• Advertisements from Expedia, DealBase, Travelzoo and Hotelsmax.net.

The "look and feel" of this compilation is not very attractive, but that can be improved. And, with so many consumers launching their trip-planning through Google searches, you could argue that Google already is the most comprehensive "hotel website."

With speculation rampant about Google's next move in travel, Hafner believes he knows where Google is headed.

"Google doesn't care about flights," Hafner contends. "Hotels is where they'll enter."

He continues: "Hotels are a comparatively easy entry point and yield the highest margin for Google."

I blogged a couple of weeks ago about the Brave New World of Google Travel 3.0, arguing that Google may continue to build out its apps, from flight links to Google Maps, to put a heavier stamp on its travel offering, now that Bing Travel has raised its profile with its prominent integration into Microsoft's Bing search engine.

Hafner's theory on Google's evolution in travel is consistent with that line of thinking.

As it already does for products ranging from books to digital cameras, Google might display hotel price points in default displays and then advertisers could use Google Checkout to drive hotel transactions, Hafner says.

"So imagine a list of OTAs [online travel agencies] and suppliers, with Google Checkout to help facilitate conversion," Hafner says. "Pretty powerful."

And, Google already has another app, Google Base, featuring a data API, which perhaps could accommmodate hourly hotel pricing updates, Hafner says.

Some have argued that Google, with its market cap of $143 billion, doesn't worry about relatively little things such as Bing Travel.

But, I think with travel being such a large part of Google's advertising business, Bing's deft integration of Bing Travel in Google's own backyard has been an embarrassment to Google.

So, how would implementing hotel pricing -- and this could merely be Google's opening shot in travel-inventory pricing -- impact Google commercially?

"My guess is that it would be cannibalistic since many advertisers run their SEM [search engine marketing] campaigns on a same-session loss," Hafner says. "And, Google's opportunity to increase search share is relatively small (since it already owns 70 percent of queries in the U.S.) But, they'll probably need to move to this approach anyway to counter Bing etc."

In travel, as in other sectors, when Google bobs, the entire industry weaves.

There are lots of issues to sort out.

How would this impact the hotel-direct channel?

Who would be the winners and losers?

"It's an open question what role players like Kayak would have in a new ecosystem like this," Hafner says.

Google, by implementing hotel pricing (and who knows which travel segment after that), could certainly be disruptive.

Why would consumers navigate to TripAdvisor to read hotel reviews or to Kayak to compare prices, if they could do it all and get a more comprehensive look through Google?

Why go directly to a hotel website or to an online travel agency if you can get user reviews, maps and pricing on Google?

I received an inquiry from a business publication in Japan several months ago, asking me for answers when unfounded rumors were swirling that Google was going to launch "another Expedia."

Don't look for that sort of scenario. Google isn't going to become a travel agency.

Instead, there is plenty of room(s) for Google to expand its reach as a hotel kingmaker.

Wednesday's Travel InsideOut

Does Twitter's new home page disintermediate deal publishers a tad? The entire travel industry -– airlines, hotels, car rental firms, cruise lines, wholesalers, and destinations eventually will take note of the change that Twitter made to its home page yesterday, putting “search” front and center. All of these sectors eventually will be searching for ways to respond.

Dennis Schaal Blog: Twitter Travel Search: the Start of Something Big: Twitter relaunched its home page to emphasize "search," and the impact will reverberate for travel, financial services, lawn mowers -- you name it. Read more

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It’s a busy news day with the Twitter news above and this Bing-Yahoo development, too. A search partnership, which instantly makes Microsoft Bing a player, may be welcomed by travel advertisers as a hedge against the Google behemoth.

TechCrunch: Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal Imminent: Analysts Weigh In: As we first reported yesterday, Microsoft and Yahoo are on the verge of announcing a complicated search and search marketing alliance that will combine the no. 2 and no. 3 players in search into something that may have a chance of competing with Google (although combined they will still have less than half of Google’s 65% or so search market share). The deal will be announced shortly after signing, and could come as early as today (Wednesday). Read more

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Jay Witzel is out as president and CEO of Carlson Hotels Worldwide.

Finance and Commerce: Joly takes over Carlson hotels: Minnetonka-based Carlson, parent company of Carlson Hotels Worldwide, announced a reshuffling Tuesday that will give Hubert Joly, president and CEO of the lodging, restaurant, travel and marketing giant, leadership of Carlson’s hotel business. Read more

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Barry Diller, the man who controls Expedia Inc. and IAC, is up to something again in the media business, pledging to "bridge the gap between traditional television and the Internet." Expedia meets Home Shopping Network meets YouTube?

Business Week: Diller, Silverman: Expect the Unexpected: You can go blind trying to keep track of Barry Diller's many twists and turns. The 67-year-old former TV programming wunderkind started as the ABC (DIS) program executive who brought America the Movie of the Week; became a Hollywood mogul when he green-lit Steven Spielberg and his Indiana Jones franchise for Paramount Pictures (VIAB); bolted to the studios, where he correctly divined that the Big Three TV world order was falling apart and launched Fox Broadcasting (NWS), which began fracturing TV's viewing audience. Along the way, Diller had a hand in perfecting the notion of online shopping when he ran QVC and then put online travel and concert booking into a higher gear after buying Expedia (EXPE) and Ticketmaster (TKTM). Read more

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A lodging industry analyst compares current RevPar woes to the aftermath of 9/11 and the pundit is pretty glum about the pace of a recovery.

Yahoo Finance/The Wall Street Transcript: Lodging Industry RevPAR Declines Worst Ever: All Segments Down Significantly and No Upturn Until 2011: n the following brief excerpt from just one of the 10 detailed interviews in the 44 page report, Lodging industry expert Smedes Rose discusses the outlook for the Lodging Industry and for the REITs specializing in that sector and picks high return stocks with sustainable dividends for investors in this industry. Read more

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Is Orbitz a phoenix rising or a company rolling a rock uphill in its attempt to build a strong hotel business?

Dennis Schaal Blog: Is Orbitz Poised for a Priceline-like Comeback?: I reported yesterday how Barney Harford, the Orbitz CEO six months or so into his tenure, is stirring things up at 500 W. Madison St., Chicago, in trying to come to grips with building the Orbitz hotel business. Read more

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.

Getaroom.com's Phone Rates and Manner Fall Flat

I briefly and unscientifically tested the getaroom.com call center experience and wasn't impressed with its unpublished rates over the phone and its customer-service style.

Hotwire offered much steeper discounts for properties with the same star ratings and city areas in two instances, while getaroom.com's phone rate bested Hotwire's opaque rate by a few bucks in a third test.

That being said, I can see how getaroom.com's value proposition would be attractive to some consumers.

As you may recall, getaroom.com is the brainchild of hotels.com founders Bob Diener and David Litman and, as I reported, their business model has raised eyebrows.

getaroom.com offers published rates on its website and then, for certain properties, advises consumers to "call for lower unpublished rates." Alas, it is a means for properties to off-load distressed inventory without publicizing their discounts and diluting their brands.

However, the website pitch to phone for lower rates certainly is a tip-off that the brands have a penchant for discounting.

So, I tested the getaroom.com value proposition on three hotels: the 3-star Hotel Rex in the Union Square West section of San Francisco; Swisshotel in the Magnificent Mile area of Chicago; and the Regal Sun in the Lake Buena Vista-downtown area of Orlando.

I compared:

-- getaroom.com's published website rates;

-- getaroom.com's unpublished phone rates;

-- hotels.com's published rates;

-- and Hotwire's unpublished rates.

For the Hotel Rex in San Francisco, getaroom.com's website published rate for an Aug. 4-6 stay was $160.50 per night, the same as the hotels.com published rate. getaroom.com's unpublished rate over the phone was $146.40, but Hotwire offered an unpublished rate of $113.00 from one of its unidentified hotel partners in the same section of the city.

Incidentally, while getaroom.com listed the Hotel Rex as a 3-star property, hotels.com, Expedia.com and Priceline.com showed it as a 3.5-star property, so I went with the 3.5-star rating for Hotel Rex to come up with the $113.00 Hotwire rate. Hotwire's 3-star rate was even lower, $79 per night.

But, perhaps this getaroom.com-Hotwire face-off is a tad unfair because it is a bit of an apples to grapefruits comparison.

Here's the difference: I phoned the getaroom.com call center and the agent, Todd, went into a spiel about how getaroom has it all over Hotwire because with Hotwire you don’t know the identity of the hotel before you book.

So, with Hotwire the consumer must place some trust in the company that its hotel ratings are accurate and that you won’t end up in a fleabag property.

Regarding the face-off, I was measuring the getaroom.com unpublished rate for one property versus Hotwire's entire roster of properties with the same star rating in the same section of the city. Obviously, Hotwire would have an advantage of scale.

Hotwire gives you the price up-front, and the system is a bit different with competitor Priceline.com, where you enter a bid and wait to see if your offer is accepted. And, with both Hotwire and Priceline you select the star rating and city area, but learn the hotel's identity only after booking.

I’ve often taken advantage of great unpublished rates on Priceline and Hotwire and feel comfortable with booking on both websites.

But, I believe there is a large subset of consumers who would feel much more comfortable getting a sometimes-smaller discount with getaroom.com over the phone than gambling that Priceline or Hotwire will put them in a suitable room.

Although Priceline and Hotwire usually offer hotels from household-name brands, at least with getaroom.com there is no mystery about which hotel consumers will end up in.

And, I also think that some consumers may be unaware that the unpublished rate they can get over the phone from getaroom.com may be substantially higher than if they booked at Priceline or Hotwire.

I continued my rate-testing for the 4-star Swisshotel in the Magnificent Mile section of Chicago. getaroom.com's published website rate for an Aug. 4-6 stay was $206.10 per night, and the hotels.com published rate was $229. getaroom.com's unpublished rate over the phone was $150.81, but Hotwire offered an unpublished rate for a 4-star property in the Magnificent Mile area of Chicago for $92.00, or about 38.7 percent cheaper than getaroom.com's unpublished rate.

In contrast, getaroom.com's unpublished phone rate of $57.72 per night at the 3.5 star Regal Sun in the Lake Buena Vista-downtown section of Orlando was cheaper than Hotwire's $62 rate for a 3.5-star property in that area on the same dates, Aug. 4-6. hotels.com and getaroom.com's website both displayed the same published rate, $66.60 per night.

So, score two big wins for Hotwire, and one narrow victory for getaroom.com.

I'd also like to make a couple of points about my experience in phoning the getaroom.com call center, which I did twice today. I didn't identify myself as a journalist, and passed myself off as an ordinary consumer looking to book a room.

Hey, I'm sleuthing for you, but I digress.

The first agent I spoke with, Todd, was congenial, but a bit pushy.

And, I understand why.

After all, call center distribution costs are higher for getaroom.com than the online channel, especially if the consumer attempts to engage the call center agent in conversation or wants to do some comparison shopping.

I had informed Todd that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to stay in San Franscisco or take a quick getaway to Orlando instead. So, after quoting me the unpublished rate for Hotel Rex in San Francisco, I said I wanted to find out the unpublished rate for a hotel in Orlando.

"OK, which hotel quickly?" he replied.

So, I felt a bit pressured and certain that the agent, anxious to make a booking and move on to the next customer, wasn’t about to go out of his way to satisfy my deal-hunting desires.

getaroom.com's call center is not a place for comparison-shopping, but a venue for wham-bam-thank-you-mam bookings.

Todd warned me, as did a second agent, Tammy, who likewise had a pleasant manner when I called again later to inquire about Swisshotel in Chicago, that I'd better book now because the rates might not be available if I phoned back in a couple of hours.

Thus, a little more pressure, and not a leisurely shopping experience.

So, I think getaroom.com, with its website and call center propositions, might be an effective way for some properties, particularly smaller ones, to put some heads in beds during slack periods.

But, I think many consumers looking for real "deals" will probably stay online rather than phone and find greener pastures and more substantial discounts elsewhere.

Friday's Travel InsideOut

It's probably not that effective for its marketing reputation that Orbitz lost two top marketing executives in the past two weeks.

AdAge: Orbitz Loses Its Two Top Marketing Execs: CHICAGO (AdAge.com) -- The top two marketing executives at Orbitz have left the company only weeks after it named a new creative agency of record, an Orbitz spokeswoman confirmed. Read more

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The guff that TripAdvisor has received about fake reviews hasn’t dissuaded a tourism promotional body in the U.K. from talking to TripAdvisor about a new review initiative.

Travolution: TripAdvisor and VisitEngland in talks over user review strategy: VisitEngland has held discussions with TripAdvisor as part of its strategy to review the current accommodation grading scheme. Read more

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In an earlier proceeding, a judge found that $184.5 million was "warranted" in an Expedia breach of contract case. If a proposed settlement is half of that amount, then we’re still talking substantial dollars in Washington State.

Dennis Schaal Blog: Expedia Reaches Proposed Settlement in Washington State Consumer Class-Action: Expedia Inc. reached a proposed settlement with a certified class of consumers in Washington State related to hotel taxes and service fees.

The amount of the proposed settlement was not disclosed, but in late May, Superior Court Judge Monica Benton found that $184.5 million in damages, allegedly covering "services fees" collected from Feb. 18, 2003, to Dec. 11, 2006, "based on Expedia's breach of contract is warranted." Read more

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Are leisure destinations like Las Vegas and Orlando on some sort of governmental-meetings blacklist? What happens in Washington stays in …. Well, this sort of policy would be ridiculous.

UpTake Travel Industry Blog: Congress calls for Investigation of Federal Travel Blacklist: US House Representatives from Florida and Nevada have asked for an investigation to find out whether a travel blacklist bans government agencies from holding meetings in certain leisure-oriented and holiday resort cities. Read more

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With traffic down amidst a capacity cut, JetBlue notched a second quarter profit and expects to remain flying in the black for the rest of the year.

ATW Daily News: JetBlue finds profitable formula, expects full-year surplus: JetBlue Airways yesterday reported a $20 million second-quarter profit, reversed from a $9 million loss in the year-ago period, and said it expects to remain in the black in both the third and fourth quarters. Read more

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The FAA proposed mandatory repairs to some Boeing 777 aircraft, many of which are operated by American Airlines.

Wall Street Journal: FAA Seeks Mandatory Engine Fixes on Certain Boeing 777 Jets: U.S. aviation regulators, prompted by the 2008 crash landing of a British Airways Plc jetliner near London, proposed mandatory safety fixes Thursday intended to prevent ice accumulation inside the fuel systems of certain Boeing 777 aircraft. Such problems can lead to dangerous reductions in engine thrust. 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.

Thursday's Travel InsideOut

It’s definitely a tough thing to hack when your company’s Twitter account gets hacked and the Twitter help desk screens its phone calls.

Dennis Schaal Blog: Update: Travelzoo's Twitter Account Hacked and Just Try To Get Someone from Twitter on the Phone: I reported yesterday that Travelzoo's Twitter account was suspended.

Travelzoo spokeswoman Mindy Joyce told me today that the account, which has some 8,000 followers, was hacked by an unknown party on Sunday. Travelzoo couldn't even get into its own account, and the deal-publisher on Monday asked Twitter to suspend the account, which it did. Read more

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Shout-outs to the Budget Travel Blog and TripAdvisor for taking decidedly different angles in their bids to stimulate travel.

Budget Travel Blog: Should you take a staycation?: NO. Your mind won't be refreshed unless you change your routine. So get away from it all! Read more

PR NewsWire/Yahoo Finance: Photos: As Temperatures Heat Up, TripAdvisor Bares All Revealing Top 5 Naked Events and Top 5 Nude Beaches: NEWTON, Mass., July 23 /PRNewswire/ -- In honor of the recent Nude Recreation Week, TripAdvisor is bringing opportunities to go "au naturel" out into the light, from a massive skinny-dip to relaxing sans suit on sunny shores. TripAdvisor®, the world's most popular and largest travel community, today announced the top 5 naked events and top 5 nude beaches according to TripAdvisor editors and travelers. Read more

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United Airlines purposefully sought to ease into its introduction of its new credit card policy, presumably to test its workings and to avoid creating a stir. But with much of the nonair segment of the travel industry miffed at its prospects and politics coming into play, United’s new policy may soon be in the spotlight.

Travel Weekly: United could be headed for congressional hearings: United’s plan to cut off a number of agencies from its credit card merchant accounts could become the focus of congressional hearings as early as September. Read more

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Meanwhile, United Airlines could be a company to watch -- from Standard & Poor's perspective.

Seeking Alpha: S&P Not So Friendly to United Airlines: Standard & Poor’s has placed United Airlines NYSE: UAUA) on CreditWatch with negative implications, due to concerns about its cash flow and liquidity. This despite the fact that the airline company reported a smaller-than-expected loss on Tuesday. Read more

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The decline in leisure and business travel, coupled with adverse publicity about an AIG junket, contributed to the forfeiture of a St. Regis-managed property in Dana Point, Calif.

Wall Street Journal: Resort Where AIG Held Sales Junket Is Foreclosed: The owners of the 400-room St. Regis Monarch Beach resort, the site of a maligned retreat last fall for top sales performers of bailed-out insurer American International Group Inc., turned over the beleaguered property to its mezzanine lender, Citigroup Inc. Read more

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Expedia took a step to expand its footprint, striking a deal with an airline consolidator in India.

TravelBizMonitor.com: EAN signs deal with Travel Boutique Online: Expedia Affiliate Network (EAN) has announced a partnership with Travel Boutique Online (TBO), India’s airline consolidator. The Expedia global hotel portfolio consists of more than 100000 properties, which includes an extensive choice of one to five-star properties, individual guest houses and Bed and Breakfast units. The organisation’s size and scale enables EAN to offer the broadest spectrum of accommodation options at best prices, both in popular and emerging destinations. 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.

Trip.com Revived and Will Lodging.com Be Next?

Orbitz has resuscitated Trip.com for facilitated search in a bid to build its fledgling advertising/media business.

I'm betting that Lodging.com, which was part of Cendant Travel Distribution Services and now is part of the Orbitz Worldwide portfolio, will be next.

Trip.com was relaunched in the context of Orbitz trying to leverage under-utilized or unused assets.

Today, if you surf to Lodging.com, you are redirected to Orbitz.com.

In a Cendant 10-K report, published in 2004, Cendant said of Lodging.com: "Lodging.com provides consumers access to specially negotiated rates at more than 10,600 economy, mid-level and luxury hotels in markets around the world. Lodging.com customers also have access to Galileo's entire published hotel rate inventory, and can book vacation packages through Neat Group's packaging engine on the Lodging.com site. With a network of nearly 4,300 distribution affiliates, Lodging.com also offers hoteliers access and control over their pricing and yield management."

As with Trip.com, I believe that Orbitz soon will tip its hand about a relaunched Lodging.com, which arguably is a very valuable domain name.

Perhaps it will be a hotel booking site or maybe a hotel metasearch or facilitated search offering?

I don't know the details, but as Orbitz does everything it can to build its hotel business, allowing Lodging.com to languish wouldn't be prudent.

A multi-brand strategy pays dividends for SEO, becomes another driveway for consumers entering the Orbitz mansion, and also enables a company to bid on more Google keywords than it would be allowed to do if it were limited to one brand.

In principle, a reinvigorated Lodging.com makes a lot of sense.

Brave New World of Google Travel 3.0

With Google’s recent introduction of City Tours and Favorite Places, speculation is rife that Google will 1) enter the travel market, 2) launch an online agency and become another Expedia, or 3) develop or acquire a metasearch engine to compete with Microsoft’s Bing Travel.

Of course, travel and advertising insiders know that Google already is a huge travel industry player, having become a king-maker ever since it debuted Google AdWords in 2000 and acquired Applied Semantics and its AdSense product in 2003.

Jonathan Rosenberg, Google’s senior vice president of product management, spoke publicly last week about how Google intends to make its travel advertising, and advertising in other verticals, more effective.

“I think it is the case on the vertical side that there is a lot of opportunity to get incremental monetization gains where you can further qualify the leads better for the advertisers,” Rosenberg told analysts. “So for example, the finance area and the travel area are areas where there’s a lot of opportunity to do that, so that you end up putting more information in the ad and then incrementally getting more information from the customer so that you can further qualify whether or not the customer in the finance area is interested in a particular type of mortgage, and then you send them to an advertiser with whom they are more likely to consummate a specific transaction that that advertiser is willing to pay for. So there’s a lot of opportunity there.”

But, clearly the early, but too-soon-to-call success of Bing and Bing Travel, may have caught the Googlers in Mountain View a tad off guard.

However, any Google further foray into travel is not just about Bing Travel, the metasearch and fare-prediction engine formerly known as Farecast.

After all, Google quietly unveiled Flight Links, a BookingBuddy-like flight-search engine, in October 2005 and at the time Google officials were adamant that Google would not enter the travel metasearch arena.

The prevailing thinking among Kremlin -- I mean -- Google-watchers at the time was that Google would not expand its presence in the travel industry because it would then be competing with its largest advertisers and that would crimp its AdWords program. Expedia, Marriott and American Airlines would be very angry.

But, as one industry wag reminded me yesterday, that was then and this is now.

The world has changed -- as it has a tendency to do.

Consider that in addition to Microsoft’s integration of Farecast into Bing Travel:

• Orbitz has relaunched Trip.com for air, hotels, cars, packages and cruises, featuring booking engines from Expedia, Hotwire, hotels.com, Priceline, Travelocity, Kayak, fly.com, Holiday Inn, Orbitz, CheapTickets and many more.

• Expedia’s TripAdvisor introduced flight metasearch.

• Travelzoo, which long has published deals and operated SuperSearch, entered the metasearch fray with fly.com. (A comparison of SuperSearch and fly.com is a good illustration of the differences between multi-booking-engine search and classic metasearch.)

• And, travel firms like TripIt, Kayak’s TravelPost, TripAdvisor and FareCompare, with its more than 170 Twitter accounts, are getting their social-media game-faces on.

The days when Google had to be overly concerned that entering the travel sphere in a deeper way would alienate its advertisers are long gone. Just look at Trip.com, BookingBuddy, igoUgo, BingTravel, TripAdvisor -- the list is endless -- to see incestuous travel industry advertisers participating in their competitors’ products and playing click arbitrage.

So, with a huge proportion of vacation planning and booking beginning with Google search, what will Google do next in travel?

I don’t think it will launch an online agency and become another Expedia. After all, the online agency business model is under pressure and that’s why we now call them online travel companies.

They are edging away from over-reliance on the needle-in-a-haystack endeavor of trying to convert hordes of travel lookers into bookers and are ratcheting up their media/advertising businesses. See Trip.com as the most recent effort.

Google could buy a Kayak or another metasearch company to bring Google's travel offering up to speed to compete against Microsoft’s Bing and Bing Travel.

But, with all of that brain power in Google Labs, it might not need to buy anything. After all, Google has operated Flight Links for years, and certainly has the know-how to do something special on its own in travel or travel metasearch.

A third path for Google would be to accelerate the development of its travel apps like Flight Links, City Tours and Favorite Places, monetize the hell out of them and roll them up into something new, as-yet-undefined and very Web 3.0-ish.

Whatever path Google takes to further develop its travel offering, one thing is certain: With apologies to Kayak and Bing Travel, there will be no debate that Google's offering indeed will have its own "look and feel."