Bloody unlikely, you’d say….but you just may have to rethink!
According to this reuters report, the “Baikal-Kotokel tourist and recreation zone” will stretch along 94 kilometres of Baikal coast and host five-star hotels, spa centres, a port for cruise ships, a mountain ski resort, casinos and night clubs.
With a new stylish look and feel, Expedia Corporate Travel has been recently re-christened Egencia. And they will be doing everything they can to shake the dominance of Carlson Wagon Lit (CWT) and American Express (Amex) in this sector.
In a report in the Financial times, their chief executive Mr Khosrowshahi says that, now is as good a time to launch a revamped product as any inspite of the economic gloom worldwide. He believes that the the downturn plays into the hands of travel companies such as Expedia - “In times of transition, consumers look for more information and research more,” said. “They are going to look harder for bargains,” he added. More on that report from the Financial times
Egencia offers a number of tools including some popular products which have recently entered the Expedia fold including
- SeatGuru – A color-coded interactive airplane seating charts that outline the pros and cons of different seats for over 275 airplanes and more than 40 airlines. Provided by a community of frequent business travelers, the integrated intelligence tool takes convenience and comfort factors – such as legroom and ability to recline – into account. This informative SeatGuru content is integrated within the seat selection process for travelers and their bookers to help make more informed decisions for flights.
- TripAdvisor City Guides – Gives Egencia business travelers access to destination information that links to the traveler’s itinerary and provides pertinent destination information.
Some of these products bring some unique new benefits to corporate travellers and offer Expedia a fair chance to catch up with CWT and Amex in this highly lucrative segment. Click here to go to the Egencia website.
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Will your hotel benefit from having live flight information being made available to your guests? If yes, Flight Time TV promises a solution - the company offers solutions of software or in the form of plug and play systems.According to them, the logistics required to get the data to the hotel and distributed onto the network are minimal. The data is transported over the internet to the hotel or convention centre into the guest TV network.
Flight time TV believes that immediate ROI will be generated from the rebooking of rooms or prolonged stay due to cancelled flights or flight delays.
Will it work for all? Certainly not! But for big city destinations, the business traveller is going to love your hotel for offering that extra service.
At the moment the service is US based with no information available on worldwide coverage.
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If you are really particular about how you travel and where you stay - not just which airline and/or class or which hotel brand, but to exactly pick out where you want to sit and where you want to sleep, check out these websites.
Seatguru launched in 2001 by frequent flyer Matthew Daimler - He started with a single color-coded interactive airplane seating chart. Having experienced firsthand the vast differences between airline seats, he was determined to collect this useful information and share it with other travelers. Now seatguru.com covers more than 300 airplane seatmaps from more than 45 different airlines and was purchased by Trip Advisor in 2007.
Seat 61 is not strictly comparable but a unique site dedicated to train travel around the world - if you want to know something about trains in Inner Mongolia to the palace on wheels in India, this is your ultimate resource.
Tripkick - and now tripkick.com promises to do for the hotel industry what seatguru.com has done for airlines - early days yet with the site covering some US regions, but it has every chance of taking off.
According to a Travolution report, British Airways has joined forces with Microsoft to develop a media rich research and booking tool for its website.
The project is based on Microsoft Silverlight rich media technology and aims to move away from traditional web selling by trying to inspire customers with detailed tourist information, pictures, video and other graphics.
The ‘Inspire Me’ tool tries to get behind people’s emotions when they come to the site looking for a holiday by breaking it down into what they want to do in destination, what their perfect night out is, what they like to eat and what style of place they want to stay in.
So will BA give the Online Travel Agencies a run for their money? We’ll have to wait and see……..
J.W. “Bill” Marriott, Jr., chairman and CEO of Marriott International at the World Travel and Tourism Council Summit in Dubai (20-22 April)in his key note address.
He made this particular remark in connection with Marriotts ambitious new project to help protect the planet partnering with the Brazilian State of Amazonas to preserve and protect 1.4 million acres of the Amazon Rainforest.
His other major theme was Travel mobility and trade. “Every time an international visitor visits Palm Island (Dubai), or shops on New York’s Fifth Avenue or Tokyo’s Ginza, it’s the same as exporting a Caterpillar tractor, an Airbus jet, a Sony Playstation or… oil.
Asking governments to encourage and facilitate travel, he pointed out that the US share of overseas international travel has fallen 8% since 2000 while rising 28% in the rest of the world and said that it was a huge lost opportunity for America.
