Armed with fresh funding, Momondo sets sights on deeper expansion in Asia
Fresh from a funding round of £80 million (US$126 million) valuing the company at more than £132 million, Momondo Group is set to expand its global footprint and expand to new and emerging markets, CEO Hugo Burge said at the WIT Conference in October.The cash investment, which came from Boston-bas [...]
New bucks, young faces, barefoot rebels – all changing hospitality
The morning Steve Rowley (pictured left), chairman of IHS, took to the stage at the WIT Conference, he had just broken the news to his employees that the group was in negotiations to buy fastbooking.com.While he couldn’t disclose details during his time onstage, he did say it was part of IHS’ pl [...]
In the long tail, the most powerful tool of distribution is inspiration
When you are operating in the long tail and run a product like “Temple Safari”, the most powerful tool of distribution is inspiration. That, and connections.Said Nick Ray of Hanuman Tourism, Cambodia, “If you can inspire travel companies and travel journalists to believe in your ideas, then t [...]
Abacus, MSN set up Travel Channel in Taiwan
Abacus and MSN have teamed up to offer a new hub of travel information and products to customers via a ‘MSN-Abacus Travel Channel’ in Taiwan.The site introduces a number of leading travel agencies such as Lion Travel and Set Tour to provide a product-searching and price-comparing function thro [...]
The death of the travel agent, Episode 9
Previously on “Lost”, we saw the Travel Agent who had been caught in a time warp constantly making the same mistake over and over again. (With apologies for the use of certain Americanisms in this piece). In one of the Day 1 sessions at WIT’s Little Big 10 Conference, Martin Symes (pictured b [...]
Brett Henry on ‘OTAs: The Coming Wave’ – why globals could win the race and what locals have to do
A week before the WIT Conference (Oct 27-29) opens in Singapore, Brett Henry, Abacus’ vice president-commercial who’s spent the last 12 years in Asia watching the online travel space, shares his observations with Yeoh Siew Hoon. ‘OTAs: The Coming Wave’ is one of the 10 trends that will be di [...]
Abacus gives agents “ground-breaking” tools to “defend their turf”
Although traditional agents still control three quarters of the Asia Pacific total travel market of US$322.6 billion in 2013, it’s a share that will inevitably shrink as consumers in Asia Pacific jump channels.According to PhoCusWright’s Asia Pacific Online Travel Overview Seventh Edition, one q [...]
Flight search nowhere near close being solved: Google’s Schmidt
Excerpt from a speech Eric Schmidt of Google made on flight search:“You often hear people talk about search as a solved problem. But we are nowhere near close. Try a query like “show me flights under €300 for places where it’s hot in December and I can snorkel”.“That’s kind of complica [...]
Aussie hoteliers’ reactions “misguided”, green light given to Expedia’s takeover of Wotif
So the green light has been given – Australia’s competition watchdog cleared the way for Expedia to complete its $703 million takeover of Wotif.com, setting aside concerns by hoteliers that the merged entity will charge hotels higher commissions.According to the Sydney Morning Herald, Australian [...]
RateTiger adds GDS shopping
eRevMax, the holding company for RateTiger, has made available GDS Shopping in RateTiger's Shopper module. This development allows RTSuite and RTCorp clients to obtain Business Intelligence (BI) reports with competitor rates from the Global Distribution Systems (GDS).Through this integration with Re [...]
