http://www.travolution.co.ukThe latest information from Travolution60168101815http://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/07/03/2683/anite-boosted-by-thomas-cook-compensation-payment.htmlCCPFri, 03 Jul 2009 10:05:14 +01:00 Anite ’s travel technology business performed “reasonably well” in the year to end-April09 , with the results boosted by a one-off payment of £2.3m from Thomas Cook Group “in relation to the early settlement of a contract with MyTravel”. The contract was lost as a result of Thomas Cook’s takeover of MyTravel, which saw the former MyTravel businesses move away from Anite’s reservation system and services and onto the Thomas Cook platform. While the original contract seems to have been cancelled, Anite will continue to provide “a modified service” to Thomas Cook Group for another five years. Similarly, Anite also lost First Choice as a client as a result of its merger with TUI and the move of First Choice onto the Thomson reservation systems. “The loss of these two companies as clients will effect future revenues,” it acknowledged. Anite also provided the reservation systems for XL, the tour operatorhttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/06/26/2654/mantic-point-creates-content-tool-for-smes.htmlCCPFri, 26 Jun 2009 10:10:28 +01:00 Mantic Point has developed a service enabling small to medium sized travel companies to send itineraries and travel information to their customers’ mobile phones for free.   The service lowers the barriers to entry for smaller companies looking to exploit the mobile channel and enables them to brand any information they send to their customers’ mobile phones.   This is the latest phase in Mantic Point’s SME strategy and based on its StreamThru platform.   Managing director Mike Atherton said: “This allows the smaller travel businesses to have quick and easy access to a mobile phone service – something most travellers are coming to expect as part of their package.”    “The other real value of sending travel itineraries to a mobile phone is that customers can avoid having to carry around lots of paperwork and will always have access to their travel details.”   To acchttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/06/26/2653/travel-browsing-blamed-for-skiving.htmlCCPFri, 26 Jun 2009 10:10:28 +01:00 UK companies are losing up to £15 billion a year as workers waste hours surfing the net for holiday deals and e-mailing friends according to a survey. The report, from internet security specialist SmoothWall , claims a third of workers waste at least one fifth of the working day searching for deals or exchanging e-mails with friends.   The survey believes that UK employees may currently be at their least productive with the holiday season looming and schools about to break up for the summer. While in the past studies have shown that British workers have forfeited nearly £200 million of holidays by not using up their annual allowance, the current trend, according to Abta, is for only 7% of workers seem prepared to forego their summer holidays this year.   Already in 2008 research showed time-wasting at work was on the increase, with UK workers spending more than an hour and a half surfing the whttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/06/24/2647/tripit-launches-pro-service.htmlCCPWed, 24 Jun 2009 09:19:00 +01:00 TripIt has unveiled a new service enabling travellers to monitor their trips on the go. TripIt Pro gives travellers access to their itinerary and automatically alerts them to any changes, cancellations or delays. The company’s co-founder and vice president of business development Scott Hintz said the development was about driving the TripIt model and monetising it. This is a huge step in our evolution and will be a major revenue source. We are really ingrained in the travel experience and so building some services around that makes sense.” The service, which costs US$99 a year and has been trialled with about 1,000 travellers, also allows users to look for alternate flights. TripIt Pro is currently only available for US registered phones and US credit cards but Hintz said the plan was to open it up for other users. Other features include the Inner Circle enabling travellers to provide access to http://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/2009/06/02/2599/online-credit-card-payments-on-the-decline.htmlCCPTue, 02 Jun 2009 09:51:00 +01:00 Credit card usage on the internet is declining in the UK while the demand for alternative payment methods is on the rise, according to a nationwide survey from NEMS market research . The study, conducted on behalf of Prepaid Services Company, found that 28% of people are using their credit card online less or not at all this year and more than a third said they would use cash online if it were as easy as over the counter sales. David Hunter, chief executive of Prepaid Services Company, which launched its Cash-Ticket product earlier this year, said the economic situation was definitely a factor. “If people are wary about using cards online for whatever reason, be it safety from fraud or simply because they want to monitor their online spending, they should have other options.” The survey of 500 people also revealed that women are now more reluctant to use their cards with 31% either reducing their crhttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/05/29/2583/amadeus-online-bookings-soar-despite-10-decline-in-air-sector.htmlCCPFri, 29 May 2009 09:56:00 +01:00 Amadeus has revealed that its online booking technology handled over Euro 9 billion worth of bookings for its airline dot-com customers in 2008, around one-third up on 2007’s figure. The Madrid-based business’ annual results, released this week, highlighted a number of different revenue streams as Amadeus continues to expand beyond its traditional role as a GDS. As well as providing the booking engine, Amadeus also hosts a number of airline dot-com web sites. Its kit supports more than 6 million unique visitors every day. During 2008, it delivered over 2.85 billion page views with 99.9% reliability. In order to highlight the strength of its airline IT business, it has introduced a new metric – passengers boarded. This will cover airlines which use two or more products from its Altea Customer Management Solutions. In 2007, passengers boarded was 123.8 million. This year http://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/05/22/2567/web-guru-jakob-nielsen-says-travel-sites-only-above-average.htmlCCPFri, 22 May 2009 09:18:00 +01:00 The world’s foremost figure in online user experience has said usability on travel websites is “above average” at best compared to other sectors. Speaking exclusively to Travolution this week, Jakob Nielsen – one of the academic pioneers of website user experience since the web’s creation – said travel sites on the whole had so far failed to address the issues of “complication” of product. “There is a lot of complexity involved in travel which is difficult to manage from a user perspective,” he said. Although financial services sites were generally performing better than travel From a user experience perspective, Nielsen said other sectors such as government and B2B lag even further behind. Nielsen admitted making the complex data associated with travel available on the web had been a “significant breakthrough” but suggested much more could be done to meet http://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/05/22/2559/embedded-player-tool-next-for-tvtrip.htmlCCPFri, 22 May 2009 07:58:00 +01:00 Hotel video specialist TVTrip is offering to integrate videos into hotels and chains own websites. TVTrip, which now has more than 3,000 filmed hotels, aims to offer travellers an unbiased view of hotels and their facilities helping them choose the best place to stay. The company is now offering hotels the possibility to host and serve their videos through a new embeddable video player. The player is available in 25 languages, enabling hotels to appeal to customers worldwide. TVTrip has also signed a deal to film 900 properties across the globe for French leisure giant Accor. The videos will be posted on both Accor ’s website as well as TVTrip’s 25 sites. http://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/05/21/2553/travel-buddy-mobile-white-paper.htmlCCPThu, 21 May 2009 08:17:00 +01:00 Travel Buddy parent company Mobiletrails has launched a white paper on the opportunities of using mobile phone technology in travel. The paper, published exclusively in association with Travolution and aimed at senior industry executives, gives an understanding of the mobile phone sector, how issues could impact on the travel industry and practical examples of how mobile technology can be used. Request the White Paper for free by emailing Travolution editor Kevin May . More information: * Travel Buddy * Mobile Trails http://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/05/21/2550/travel-buddy-launches-white-paper-on-mobile-technology.htmlCCPThu, 21 May 2009 08:01:00 +01:00Travel Buddy launches white paper on mobile technologyhttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/05/15/2539/huge-majority-of-web-users-abandoning-sites-during-transactions.htmlCCPFri, 15 May 2009 07:25:00 +01:00 A survey has found over three quarters of regular travel website users have abandoned a transaction at the shopping basket phase of their booking. A third of the 84% who admitted leaving a site at such a late stage in the booking process cited reasons such as slow speed of the site and uncertainty of whether they had found the right price. The study by web performance firm Maxymiser and Redshift Research also found that 64% would refuse to go back to a travel site if they had received a poor user experience during the booking process. Maxymiser managing director Mark Simpson said: “Any travel business that is running an e-commerce website needs to wake up to the appalling leakage that is taking place as visitors move through their web pages. “As this research has clearly highlighted, the majority of travel businesses are losing customehttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/05/08/2514/tvtrip-creates-professional-hotel-video-production-service.htmlCCPFri, 08 May 2009 10:15:00 +01:00 VC-backed tvtrip.com has launched a new service for hotel websites which brings down the cost of producing and hosting professional video content. Its vice president Stephen Stollerman told Travolution that the move was a natural extension of its core business, which films videos of hotels and hosts them on tvtrip.com, driving bookings through to its OTA partners. However, the current climate is driving many consumers to downgrade their accommodation. Stollerman said: "Video is vital if you want to help a customer to downgrade from a five or four-star to a three or two." He also said that the investment in its proprietary technology over the past two years was starting to pay off. "In this economy, we can offer a hotels a quality product at a low cost. The service covers hosting and embedding, with access to a video player built by TVtrip.coms development teams in Paris and Bucharest," he said. http://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/05/07/2508/virtual-earth-and-photosynth-in-major-integration-by-microsoft.htmlCCPThu, 07 May 2009 07:40:00 +01:00 Microsoft has combined its Virtual Earth and Photosynth platforms for the first time in a move to radically improve the functionality of both systems for users. The announcement today will give website owners the ability to place Photosynth applications into their own embedded maps, using either their own imagery or drawing from existing photos in the Photosynth library. Microsoft is hoping the new functionality will appeal to hotels and other travel destination services such as tourist boards and DMOs. Photosynth is a cutting edge imaging system developed by Microsoft over the past two years which allows users to navigate around a location in three dimensions using a myriad of different photos. The system has resided within the Microsoft Live Labs beta test platform until now but willhttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/05/01/2493/keytoss-creates-security-driven-mobile-booking-system.htmlCCPFri, 01 May 2009 09:09:00 +01:00 New Jersey based start-up KeyToss has launched a mobile hotel booking service which it claims is the ‘optimal solution’ to payment security concerns. Chief executive Samuel Kim told Travolution: We went to great expense to create an extremely secure system We spent a lot of time figuring out and developing what we think is the optimal solution and went to great expense to create an extremely secure system”. Customers have to set up a KeyToss account in advance online, which stores their credit card number and billing address. At the point of booking on the mobile, they need to key in the card’s expiration date and card security value, as well as their Keytoss account password. Kim explained: “It's not much of a burden for the customer to enter these details on the phone, and it's a huge gain in security.” It has also addressed hardware security issues. “We use multiple layers of encryption and we