Asia dragging Wotif down, Dombey to lead Bangkok-based team
While its business in Australia and New Zealand is showing gains, Asia and the rest of the world are dragging Wotif down.In its latest “Market Update and Completion of Strategic Reviews”, CEO Scott Blume, who took up the reins earlier this year, disclosed that total transaction value for the gr [...]
Wego’s new engagement platform follows the people, not the places
Travel search engine, Wego.com, rolls out a new Audience Engagement Platform that extends its programmatic advertising technology stack to deliver more targeted inventory online.Touted as an industry first, the platform enables advertisers to select users shopping for travel by country of origin an [...]
Goodbye pop-ups as TripAdvisor slaps search on top of its content
TripAdvisor today announced the launch of its all-in-one Hotel Price Comparison search, now live worldwide, matching real-time pricing and availability with the more than 100 million reviews and opinions of TripAdvisor travellers.The morphing had been noticed for a while but today's press release he [...]
Times may be changing but hotelscombined intends to keep B2B focus
With so much attention on meta-search lately, and talk of some players moving down the purchase path, one company intends to remain focused on what it does well – the B2B affiliate space and hotels. This despite it taking out ads in Australia to promote its consumer facing brand.I caught up with H [...]
The battle for small: Is West Africa tougher for hostel OTAs than for the big boys?
Earlier this year I made a booking for a small, independent property called Eshu in Cape Coast, Ghana.We reserved through HostelBookers, which sent us confirmation and took a deposit. Two days before hitting the road we called to confirm.And after trying several mobile numbers we finally reached t [...]
EAN’s Intelligent Query a ‘leapfrog in search’, says CTO Fletcher
Expedia Affiliate Network has developed a tool that it says is a “leapfrog in search” and comes close to unlocking what’s in a travel agent’s head and putting it on the web.As EAN’s CTO and VP of Product, Eachan Fletcher sees it, online travel agents want to get more human and a human trav [...]
New technologies and different travel behaviours are game changers for travel in APAC
The rapid use of mobile devices (smartphones, tablets) and social media among consumers in Asia Pacific (APAC), as well as rising demand in cruise holidays and high speed rail travel, has seen the region leapfrog existing behaviours in the adoption of newer technologies and infrastructure.High speed [...]
‘Challenger’ Andres brings customer focus to Travelport, eyes OTAs and hotels
Six months into his new role as vice president Asia and regional managing director Asia Pacific for Travelport, and Patrick Andres is digging into what he learnt on his first job to grow the travel distribution company’s business in the region.“As a young boy working at the Westin Toronto, I re [...]
Expedia revs it up with clear goal in sight – to build first pan-Asian OTA brand
He may be the President and Chief Executive Officer, Expedia, Inc. and President, Expedia Worldwide, but at heart Dara Khosrowshahi remains a product guy. I know this because he became truly animated when he showed me the Expedia Hotels & Flights app on his iPhone.“It’s so tactile. We take [...]
NusaTrip launches, claims position as Indonesia’s first full service OTA
In yet another sign of how hot the Indonesian online travel market is getting and just days before the WIT Indonesia conference opens on Wednesday in Jakarta, NusaTrip.com has launched, calling itself the “first complete online travel agent in Indonesia”.CEO & founder Hans Ebenhahn said [...]
