Biggest Hotel Sale Ever to combat swine flu travel fears

by Jamie Rhein on

If you are after a bargain, Mexico is where it’s at. We’ve posted about how a group of hotels have a deal for those who do get swine flu from their trip to Mexico. But since that probably isn’t going to happen, there are deals for those who don’t get sick.

There’s a “Biggest Hotel Sale Ever” campaign in Mexico through Expedia. In general prices are 26% cheaper than this time last year. Resorts also have deals on spa treatments, dinners and alcohol, so check out a resort to see what you can snag.

In case you’re worried about catching swine flu, check out this AP article . As the article explains, getting swine flu in Mexico is a long shot, and people have begun to see that these deals are not to be missed.

Here’s my take. There’s a lot of sickness you can get in all sorts of places, but they don’t end up on the news. I’m not saying that swine flu is a sickness to pooh pooh, but in reality, a person can get sick by heading to any place that has a lot of people milling about. Staying home sounds boring.

Online bookings just got cheaper!

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Online travel deals just got better. Even though airlines are tacking on extra fees, fares have been plunging for a while now, so it still cuts in favor of travelers. Travel websites have started to get in on the savings, too. Several sites are ditching their booking fees – at least temporarily.

Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia announced yesterday that they are waiving their booking fees. For Orbitz, this is a permanent move. In the hypercompetitive world of online travel sales, these guys are doing everything they can to get your travel dollars. So, if you’ve been waiting to save even more money on travel – as if the dirt-cheap fares aren’t enough – the deal just got a little better!

[Via BloggingStocks]

UpTake takes the pain out of finding the best travel reviews

by Scott Carmichael on

The travel world is “blessed” with quite a few review sites. In recent years, millions of reviews have been added to sites like Yelp, Tripadvisor, Fodors and more.

Of course, this means that it can be hard to find the best place for an honest review, or a site with enough reviews to help you make the right choice.

Enter UpTake – this service takes reviews from all those sources, and displays them on their own easy to use site.

They cover it all – hotels, restaurants, activities and even shops, spas and beaches. In total, UpTake claims to provide access to over 20 Million reviews.

The site itself is a breeze to use, and since everyone has a different preference for how they search, you can access reviews and recommendations in several ways. The easiest is of course to just enter your keywords. Thankfully, the site lets you find stuff with plain English queries. You can also browse by state, activity and even by theme (romantic, budget friendly, girls getaway, pet friendly, family friendly and “just get away”).

Search results are presented in a very easy to use format. The information shows you a brief summary of recent reviews, any available ratings, a map of the location, the most recent price of the location and even a list of other things to do in the area.

Once you get a list of places based on your search, you can narrow the results down by changing the price, type of amenities and theme. The results update “live” based on these requirements, making it really easy to pinpoint exactly what you are looking for.

For example, check out their page for the Westin Michigan Avenue in Chicago. As you can see, you get a great amount of information, with everything from the number of rooms to the year the hotel was built, as well as links to most review sites.

Hotels can be booked directly on the site, and UpTake even takes the hassle out of finding the cheapest rate by providing prices from multiple booking sites.

The “themes” section on UpTake is equally impressive – once again, you can search by keyword (“Pet friendly things in Seattle“) or by clicking on the themes buttons on the main page.

What I really like about the themed search results is that they gather information from appropriate sites. For example; pet friendly destinations uses reviews from DogFriendly.com.

Finally, the UpTake Vacations section allows you to do one-stop-shopping for planning your vacation. You’ll find hotel recommendations, but also links to attractions and other activities. Of course, all these destinations link to the specific UpTake review page.

All in all I’m quite impressed with the site – it offers a massive amount of information, but the tools make it really easy to find things, and unlike some other review sites, you only really get the information you need, without making the results overly complicated or hard to read.

The site is technically still in “Beta”, but I did not come across anything that did not work correctly. That said, there are one or two things I would have liked to see added – with so much information, it is hard to keep track of the things you looked at. Unfortunately, UpTake does not provide a way to easily save your results. In an ideal world, you’d be able to add search results to a “virtual suitcase”, making it easier to plan your trip and do some true comparison shopping.

PhoCusWright releases moronic report

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Travel research firm PhoCusWright is trying to get people to buy its latest report by making some (supposedly) bold predictions about travel industry technology trends. Realistically, most of this stuff falls into the “No Shit” category, but alas, Gadling will not make that one of the official labels from which I can choose.

These are some real gems. In fact, I’d be willing to bet my MBA that a backpacker with three joints and a smile could have come up with most of this.

After the jump, you’ll find 10 pearls of wisdom from this research firm. Please, click the link to continue reading. I dare you. You’ll get in a few hundred words what cost me more than 40 grand. The italicized content is from PhoCusWright. The rest is from me.1. Despite Market Woes, Pockets of Investment Still Exist
Okay, Sami Mahroum, Research Director of Britain’s National Endowment for Science, Technology & the Arts (and believe it or not, I’ve shortened his title) says what I’ve been telling people at De La Concha for months: “During economic downturns, innovation is the single most important condition for transforming the crisis into an opportunity.”

In financial parlance, this is just saying that contracyclical investing occurs all the time. If you put your money into what sucks today but which may not suck tomorrow, you have a shot at some big gains. Investing in the flavor of the month doesn’t afford the same opportunities.

2. The Entire Trip Experience Will be “Informationalized”
I lived through the “dotcom” era (with a CMGi company, even … remember them?), and I heard – and said – some pretty moronic buzzwords. But, how can you use stupid catch-phrases in this sort of economy? All that’s missing is a sock puppet!

What PhoCusWright is trying to say is that online companies that provide booking capabilities are going to need to supply information past the financial transaction. Duh. Have you left a review on Hotwire or TripAdvisor lately? This is what the report is talking about.

3. Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing and Open Source Spawn a New Flock of Innovators
Ummmm, how? I’m sure open source could make me less bald if I don’t have to prove it.

4. Suppliers (Finally!) Provide Personalized Shopping/Booking Tools
The example provided by PhoCusWright is basically what people called the “My Yahoo! phenomenon long before I entered my thirties.

5. Technologies Will Continue to Converge
Yes, and my refrigerator will continue to keep stuff cold. This is natural trajectory. C’mon, PhoCusWright. All the cool research and consulting firms are tired of talking about convergence. Back when I was in the consulting world (left in 2007), we were disgusted with the word.

6. A Flood of New Mobile Travel and Location-Based Applications Come to Market
I’ve been hearing about this since mobile internet company NetMorf (RIP) tried to convince me it mattered. Mobile has come a long way since 2001, but this is more stuff that just makes sense today. Why would you pay for this?

7. Advertising Technology Transforms Travel Distribution
This one’s just stupid, so I give you travel advertising technology in action.

8. Still Searching … for Better Search
Oh, come on …not this typical gripe again. At the end of the day, it’s the searcher, not the search tool. Unless you commit some reasonable time to searching for what you want, you won’t get it.

9. Democratization of Supply Levels the Playing Field
All I can say is that “democratization” is explained by “oligopoly,” “mashups,” “SaaS,” and “the transparency of the internet.” I call it all … bullshit.

10. Business Intelligence and Analytics Move to the Forefront
The moved to the forefront a long time ago. Everyone uses this stuff now. Catch up.

So, here’s the good news. PhoCusWright will let you download “a full and detailed description of the first two trends” free! Wow! They want you to pay for the other eight … to the tune of $350. But, for the price of a mouse-click, you’ve already gotten more.

Expedia’s Profits Don’t Live up to Expectations

by Josh Lew on

Expedia, a giant among giants in the online travel booking game, is struggling. Sort of. The Washington-based company was riding high at this time last year. Their profits for the third quarter of ’07 were just shy of $100 million ($99.6 million to be exact). This year’s third quarter brought $94.8 million. Still respectable considering the hits the travel industry has taken during the summer and fall. And more than enough “walking around” cash for the company’s execs and shareholders. But the announcement that profits did not meet expectations was enough to drive Expedia’s stock down more than 15%. Though the number of overall bookings on the site increased by nearly 7%, the revenue from airline tickets, Expedia’s bread-and-butter, was down nearly 7%.

So it appears that even the muscular travel agencies of the internet are not immune from these poor economic times. If the “big boys” are suffering, imaging what it is like for the brick-and-mortar travel agents who have to compete with fewer people traveling and those who are turning to the internet for better deals.

[Via Seattle Times]