http://www.travolution.co.ukThe latest information from Travolution601174261015http://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/07/03/2063/travolution-index.htmlCCPFri, 03 Jul 2009 08:02:00 +01:00 Latest Index Unit Value: 1353.068 +4.01% on previous trading day Charts: (January-July 2009) Total volume traded: 20,504,527 Daily winners and losers: Best three gains: Travelzest (5.56%) British Airways (5.46%) Park Hotels (4.33%) Worst three falls: Anite (4.07%) Moneysupermarket (2.04%) InterContinental Hotel Group (1.45%) (Accurate to end of trading LSE 16.30 GMT, Friday 3 July 2009) Trends: http://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/07/03/2688/monster-travel-opt-for-traveltainment.htmlCCPFri, 03 Jul 2009 01:54:00 +01:00 Fast growing online business, Monster Travel, has announced today that they have signed up with TravelTainment, a multi-channel distribution system. This new technology system will put Monster ahead of the market by adding a dynamic booking engine to their consumer website, www.monstertravel.co.uk . Monster managing director, David Hawke, commented, ”Our business is firmly focused on providing the best possible experience for our online customers when they are looking for, and booking a holiday. "The technology we choose to deliver the holiday, including options, price, availability and booking, has a major impact on how our customers view our business. TravelTainment provides a level of content and connectivity to book online that is not available elsewhere for package holidays. The TravelTainment booking path will be live on our site in August. We’re confident that it will give customers far more flexibility when researching their http://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/07/03/2687/homeaway-hires-former-opodo-france-chairman.htmlCCPFri, 03 Jul 2009 01:30:00 +01:00 HomeAway, Inc, which operates the world’s largest network of vacation rental websites, has announced the appointment of Petra Friedmann to the position of President of HomeAway Europe. A longtime veteran of the travel industry, Friedmann brings invaluable online consumer experience to her new role managing the company’s European presence. She replaces Alexis de Belloy, who transitions to a similar position overseeing the HomeAway brands in the U.S.  “We’re pleased to have a proven leader to oversee our rapidly growing European business," says Brian Sharples, CEO of HomeAway.  "Her expertise in online consumer travel will benefit our operations throughout the world.” From Paris, Friedmann will manage teams based in the U.K., Germany and France and oversee the business operations of Europe’s leading vacation rental sites, including Holiday-Rentals.co.uk, OwnersDirect.co.uk, FeWo-direkt.de, Abritel.fr and Homelidays.com. She joins HomeAwayhttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/07/03/2686/lastminute.com-to-move-against-other-brand-hijackers.htmlCCPFri, 03 Jul 2009 11:26:00 +01:00 spike digital Lastminute.com will continue to pursue other companies for alleged infringement of its trademark after taking legal action against Virgin Holidays this week. The online travel agency has stepped up its threat against online brands whose messaging or actions it believes will confuse consumers. Following news from the High Court that Virgin Holidays had been served with a document demanding damages over copyright infringement, lastminute.com denied the move is a publicity stunt. Virgin Holidays’ retained agency Spike Digital created a website – dontleaveituntilthelastminute.com – to drive traffic to the operator’s homepage – a move which upset lastminute.com’s lawyers and prompted the legal action against Virgin (rather than SD). A lastminute.com sphttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/07/03/2685/business-taxis-overhauls-web-offering.htmlCCPFri, 03 Jul 2009 10:05:15 +01:00 Holiday Taxis spin off Business Taxis has revamped its booking platform and widened its destination coverage as part of a site relaunch. The business transfer specialist enables travel management companies and corporate travellers to pre-book transfers in 70 countries including the UK The service allows customers to make single bookings or open an account as well as enabling companies to set travel policies and produce management reports. A carbon- offset function is also a feature of the new site.   Strategy director Russell Parr claimed no one else offered such coverage or range or product with full control of ground transport expenditure.   The next development will be the integration of business taxis into the global distribution systems as well as the white label solutions and XML integrations for customers. http://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/2009/07/03/2683/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/2009/07/03/2682/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/2009/07/03/2681/aggregation-of-networks-is-next-step-question-time-report.htmlCCPFri, 03 Jul 2009 10:05:14 +01:00 A technology that aggregates social networks and user-generated content could be the next major development online said panellists at the Travolution Question Time. Those gathered at Tuesday’s event heard that a service connecting all the social networks consumers now subscribe to is needed because of the huge spread of social media sites. Frommers Unlimited ’s Joel Brandon-Bravo said a filtering system would also need to be built in to filter out the noise. Microsoft Advertising community manager Mel Carson described the holy-grail as a technology, which would not only aggregate these new technologies but provide value to marketers and consumers by capturing the desires and conversations of everyone interacting with each other. Others said developments such as Facebook Connect pointed to the way things would go. http://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/07/03/2680/money-should-not-be-the-driver-for-social-media-question-time-report.htmlCCPFri, 03 Jul 2009 10:05:14 +01:00 Track everything you do on social networks and don’t expect major financial return was the message from online experts earlier this week. A high-profile panel including Frommers Unlimited , Orange , Microsoft and Mr & Mrs Smith told the room to measure success on social media by more than just the return on investment. Mr&Mrs Smith co-founder Tamara Heber-Percy said it viewed its ROI as threefold – bookings, brand awareness and membership renewals. “It’s how much our new media is drawing in people who have never visited the site before and we have just started tracking membership renewals and we’re looking at re-engaging them on facebook or twitter.” Frommers Unlimited’s Joel Brandon-Bravo warned against just focusing onhttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/07/03/2679/social-networks-not-suited-to-booking-travel-question-time-report.htmlCCPFri, 03 Jul 2009 10:05:14 +01:00 Consumers are not ready for social networking integrated with travel booking it emerged at Travolution Question Time earlier this week. While social media is being broadly used in the travel research stage an expert panel said the time was not right for the booking element. Tamara Heber-Percy, co-founder of boutique hotel specialist Mr & Mrs Smith , which has a partnership with Dopplr, said it was not at the stage of people booking. “We are looking at it with our affiliates to see what we can do but it does not seem to be the right time.” WAYN co-founder Jerome Touze said its attempts at integrating a booking facilities had not been as successful as hoped. “We have a community who are interested in where they are going next so we thought by plugging in a booking engine it would work but it was naïve because they don’t come to WAYN to http://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/07/02/2678/travelmood-shops-will-not-be-traditional-travel-agencies.htmlCCPThu, 02 Jul 2009 10:00:00 +01:00TUI Travel-owned Travelmood shops will be more akin to modern retailers than traditional travel agencies following a revamp, according to TUI Travel UK specialist long-haul division managing director Clare Tobinhttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/07/01/2677/travel-republic-pleads-not-guilty-to-atol-breach.htmlCCPWed, 01 Jul 2009 04:30:00 +01:00 Travel Republic and its director Kane Pirie have pleaded not guilty to a breach of the ATOL Regulations in a case brought by the Civil Aviation Authority . A summary hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court today, July 1, resulted in the case being referred for trial before a District Judge at Stratford Magistrates Court on October 12. The trial is likely to last three weeks. Travel Republic was summonsed on 20 counts, and Pirie on another 20, relating to breaches of the Civil Aviation ATOL Regulations 1995. Counsel for the CAA described the issue as "whether the defendants put together package holidays" and "whether there was a single contract between the consumer and compahttp://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/07/01/2676/airline-it-trends-survey-shows-sharp-decline-in-new-investment.htmlCCPWed, 01 Jul 2009 02:30:00 +01:00 Airline investment in IT is set to reach a new low this year as aircraft operators cope with unprecedented financial losses, according to the 2009 Airline IT Trends Survey co-sponsored by SITA and Airline Business, which was launched today at the annual SITA Air Transport IT Summit in Cannes. IT and Telecommunications operating spend as a percentage of airline revenue is forecast to be just 1.7%, the lowest level recorded since 2002, as airlines seek to reduce costs against a backdrop of $10.4 billion in losses last year and an IATA forecast of $9 billion in losses this year. Many airlines are in survival mode; 72% of survey respondents intend to renegotiate IT supplier contracts and 70% will invest in solutions that lower overall enterprise costs. Most airlines have already put in place measures such as rationalisation of IT suppliers, IT infrastructure consolidation, reduced head count and outsourcing. Launching the survey, Paul Coby, SITA Chairman and http://www.travolution.co.uk/Articles/2009/06/30/2674/kuoni-group-selects-tealeaf-to-further-improve-online-customer-focus.htmlCCPTue, 30 Jun 2009 02:18:00 +01:00 Kuoni has selected Tealeaf, the leader in online Customer Experience Management (CEM) software, to support its future global website roll-outs, which are part of an increased online-focused business strategy. The Switzerland-based tour operator will use Tealeaf CX solutions, to further understand customer needs and preferences in order to improve usability, site content, information architecture and transaction simplicity. With over 100 years experience, Kuoni has built its reputation on providing personally tailored holidays and travel packages supported by unparalleled customer service. Recognising that focusing on the customer is a key differentiator in a highly competitive market, Kuoni will use Tealeaf to further ensure it is delivering a consistent first-class experience across all customer touch points. The next generation of Kuoni websites aims to unify and continuously improve the quality of the online experience while customising content for individu