http://www.travolution.co.ukThe latest information from Travolution60182122615http://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/07/03/2684/skyscanner-in-major-expansion-into-hotel-market.htmlCCPFri, 03 Jul 2009 10:05:14 +01:00 Skyscanner is taking another step towards becoming a more comprehensive travel search engine by launching a hotel channel for the first time, Travolution can reveal. The new accommodation search facility – released to the site this week – follows just a few months after the Edinburgh-based meta search engine unveiled car hire tools to go alongside its successful and original flight product. The hotel channel will be powered existing accommodation meta search engine HotelsCombined , giving Skyscanner access to 200,000 hotels in 195 countries around the world. The car hire search tool is currently run by Dublin-based CarTrawler. HotelsCombined uses product lines from the likes of booking.com, Expedia, hotels.com, gtahotels.com and LateRooms. Skyscanner will roll out the hotel search facilities across sites in 20 markets during July, usinghttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/07/03/2682/major-survey-identifies-consumer-woes-with-travel-websites.htmlCCPFri, 03 Jul 2009 10:05:14 +01:00 A global study of more than 1,300 online travellers has identified a number of frustrations with travel websites, with one-third identifying the lack of response to email queries as a major irritation. The study was carried out by Frommer’s Unlimited and eDigitalResearch in March and April this year. More than half the respondents came from the UK. When asked about their bad experiences online, 52% said that major that travel sites were ‘confusing’, although the responses didn’t drill down into more detail about where the confusion lies. A similar percentage felt let down by a lack of images on travel sites. One-third of users revealed that they had received no response to emailed questions, suggesting that customer service remains an issue for travel web sites. Ignoring a pre-booking email could result in the sale being lost; ignorinhttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/06/30/2669/laterooms-eyes-overseas-markets-as-web-marketing-switch-boosts-profits.htmlCCPTue, 30 Jun 2009 09:26:00 +01:00 TUI Travel’s late availability bedbank LateRooms has reported a triple digit lift in profits after outsourcing its search engine marketing. The business also has its eye on expansion into markets in Australia and Russia. Efficient Frontier took over laterooms.com paid search last autumn. Glyn Powditch, head of business analysis at laterooms.com said: “In January 2009 we saw a 60% rise in bookings and a 128% increase in profit compared to January 2008; and all this was achieved with only a 33% increase in our paid search spend.” Previously, laterooms.com’s paid search was carried out in-house. The decision to outsource its paid search “freed up internal resources to concentrate on other valuable marketing activities such as Search Engine Optimisation.” Efficient Frontier was also able to offer a scalable platform for SEM, which laterhttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/06/26/2656/dialaflight-in-legal-wrangle-with-tripadvisor-and-microsoft.htmlCCPFri, 26 Jun 2009 10:10:00 +01:00 Top travel site DialAFlight is in discussions with TripAdvisor regarding a legal settlement for an alleged libellous comment that appeared on the review giant’s subsidiary HolidayWatchdog. The move comes within days of initiating a bevy of defamation lawsuits in the UK and Germany against review sites – including one included in Microsoft’s new Bing brand – and a high profile consumer travel blog. Peter Stephens, managing director of DialAFlight parent company, Lotus Group Ltd, said the company filed defamation actions against Microsoft-owned shopping site Ciao in Germany, as well as consumer forum Grumbletext and Darren Cronian of the Travel Rahttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/06/26/2651/alan-josephs-joins-travelintelligence-as-ceo.htmlCCPFri, 26 Jun 2009 10:10:00 +01:00 Former Ebookers boss Alan Josephs is to become chief executive of online high-end accommodation specialist TravelIntelligence . Josephs stepped down from his previous position as managing director of Orbitz-owned Ebookers earlier this week, replaced by ex-Expedia distribution boss Tamer Tamar. Current TravelIntelligence boss Marin Muyser is staying within the company and will become its new executive chairman, Josephs told Travolution this week. TravelIntelligence has a consumer-facing site and a sizeable white label business for a range of other web-based firms. The business was created in 2000 by a number of high profile figures including Sunday Times journalist A A Gill. Its first boss, managing director and co-founder James Dunford Wood, later left the business in 2007 to launch Worldreviewer. Meanwhile, Ebookers is exhttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/06/23/2641/findsyou-targets-uk-hotel-sector.htmlCCPTue, 23 Jun 2009 08:53:00 +01:00 Findsyou , an online service enabling consumers to post product requests and then be handed a matching service from suppliers, is expanding into the UK accommodation sector. The service, which currently specialises in property and cars, is making its first foray into the travel market by allowing consumers to post their accommodation needs. Chief executive Guy Walker said the service was not looking to compete with what is already out there but sit alongside it by letting providers respond to consumers’ posts. Suppliers will receive notification of customers whose needs they match and they can get in touch directly with the consumer. The service works on a subscription model of up to about £10 per month although Walker said the plan was to offer it free initially to encourage suppliers to trial it. “We’re not asking people to pay for our development so it will be free until we’re running at a levehttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/06/23/2640/nileguide-ready-for-uk-focus.htmlCCPTue, 23 Jun 2009 08:46:00 +01:00 Trip planning and itinerary site NileGuide is close to signing its first partners in the UK. Chief executive Josh Steinitz told Travolution that the company was in ‘deep discussions’ with companies including online travel agents, media portals and travel publishers and hoped to finalise a deal within a month. The plan is to unveil a co-branded version of NileGuide within the partner’s site giving consumers access to an interactive trip planning experience. Steinitz stressed that the UK and Europe were core markets for NileGuide, which recently added UK and Ireland content to its service. The company plans to further widen its coverage of the region as well as Europe including France and Spain. Currently, the UK amounts to 25% of NileGuide’s traffic, out of a total 100,000 a month. Steinitz estimated traffic would grow to 500,000 by the final quarter of the year. “Growth is coming from word of mohttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/06/18/2631/simonseeks-offers-travel-reviewers-a-cut-of-click-through-revenue.htmlCCPThu, 18 Jun 2009 10:00:00 +01:00A new travel start-up from Moneysupermarket founder Simon Nixon will offer users a chance to make money from their travel reviewshttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/06/09/2619/travelsupermarket-launches-new-cruise-offering.htmlCCPTue, 09 Jun 2009 04:39:00 +01:00 Travelsupermarket has teamed up with Cruise118 to unveil a new cruise offering. In an exclusive deal with the price comparison specialist, Cruise118 will offer a cruise holidays white label on travelsupermarket. The cruise section is part of a site revamp enabling travelsupermarket to change and manage content according to market dynamics. Cruise is also the first of a number of products to be launched in the next six months since travelsupermarket carried out detailed research and testing on customer behaviour and needs. Graham Donoghue, travelsupermarket’s managing director said: “The old site had worked well for us since launch, but we really wanted to update it with a fresh and modern look that would motivate and inspire customers to research and book their travel. “The new platform opens up opportunity for a wide range of nehttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/06/09/2618/viator-launches-in-france-spain-and-germany.htmlCCPTue, 09 Jun 2009 04:31:00 +01:00 Tours and experiences specialist Viator has developed new local language sites for three European markets. The sites - France , Germany and Spain - will feature the same breadth of content although they can be tailored to each market slightly differently with attractions featuring guided tours in the language of the site displayed more prominently. Viator Europe managing director Patrik Oqvist said the company had been able to launch the three sites together because of its powerful backend system. “Translating the words is not that difficult, it’s more about managing the content. It’s also a question of spreading the risk and running three in parallel means we get better learning from the content.” Viator has also ramped up the team in its London ofhttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/06/09/2617/dealchecker-unveils-wider-search-functionality.htmlCCPTue, 09 Jun 2009 04:23:00 +01:00 Price comparison service Dealchecker is enabling consumers who are flexible to find a snapshot of its best deals through new search functionality. The technology trawls through a database of deals to highlight the best value holidays by destination over a three-month period and from four different departure points across the UK. The system returns three of the best deals for each hotel star-rating from three to five-star. Consumers then have the option to phone the relevant travel provider or go to their website to book. The technology has also been incorporated into the flight section of the site allowing consumers to see the best value flights per duration – weekend break, short break or seven nights. Dealchecker managing director Alex Saint said the enhanced system was part of its strategy to position the service as the deals champion for consumers.   “We have set up interfaceshttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/06/02/2603/kayak-wins-white-label-deal-with-pricerunner.htmlCCPTue, 02 Jun 2009 04:31:00 +01:00 Kayak has taken over the travel search functionality for European price comparison site Pricerunner . The meta search engine has replaced Swedish firm TravelLab for the UK, France, Germany and Denmark country sites around Europe. TravelLab will continue to run Pricerunner’s Sweden site. The announcement is a significant deal for Kayak in the mainstream European consumer markets after it recently lost its managing director Faisal Galaria following a disagreement over its overseas strategy for expansion. Kayak will provide flight, hotel and car hire search on an embedded white label within the Pricerunner travel channel. PriceRunner general manager Peter Carlsson said: “We wanted to strengthen our travel channel to give our customers a comprehensive and objective view of their travel options through our white label holiday search tool. “We revhttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/06/02/2598/microsoft-bing-to-launch-travel-platform-in-the-uk.htmlCCPTue, 02 Jun 2009 09:27:41 +01:00 Microsoft will launch a dedicated version of its new Bing Travel system in the UK, officials have confirmed. The widely talked about new Bing search engine – which launched in Beta earlier this week – has integrated the Farecast travel search provider which Microsoft purchased in 2008. US web users are currently able to tap into the Farecast-driven flight and hotel search functionality, now operating under the new brand of Bing Travel. The original Farecast technology of drawing data from airlines, hotels and online travel agencies and using tools to predict when is the best time to make a booking is included in the new system. Bing Travel will also include a Hotel Rate Indicator to trawl through historical data to indicate via a colour-coded system as to whether a current price for a room is a fair price for the user. A Microsoft spokeswoman toldhttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/05/29/2581/isango-scoops-top-online-growth-prize.htmlCCPFri, 29 May 2009 09:56:08 +01:00 Travel activity and experiences specialist Isango has secured second place in a list of the fastest online companies in Europe. The Media Momentum Award is decided by investment banking firm GP Bullhound and a panel of judges including lastminute.com co-founder Martha Lane-Fox, Anil Hansjee (Google Europe) and Seb Bishop, global chief executive at RED. The panel recognised Isango’s growth rate of 1,836% over the last two years – a strategy which has seen it secure funding as well as the creation of a product line of over 10,000 bookable trips for consumers in three languages. GP Bullhound partner Manish Madhvani said: "The Media Momentum Top 50 league table has become a key barometer for the health of the digital sector and this year’s impressive results reaffirm the importance of the industry to both the UK and EU economy. "Competition thishttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/05/29/2582/cheapflights-restructures-boardroom-and-sets-new-growth-target.htmlCCPFri, 29 May 2009 09:56:00 +01:00 Cheapflights is aiming to be one of the top travel media companies in the world after a “restructuring and refocusing” of the business which includes the appointment of Hugo Burge as executive chairman. The price comparison service is also expecting to accelerate its expansion programme into new territories and is hoping grow the company ten-fold over the course of the next three to five years. A shake-up of the Cheapflights boardroom has seen Burge installed as the company’s first executive chairman and Mo Bulbrook promoted to executive director. Chris Cuddy will remain as chief executive and David Soskin becomes a non-executive director. Existing non-executive chairman John Claire has left the organisation. Burge told Travolution the company is currently in the top five travel media firms in the world, amongst the likes of Tripadvisor, Kayak and Travelzoo. “Our ambition is to be in t