On the eve of the American Hotel & Lodging Association’s March 15-16 Legislation Action Summit in Washington, D.C., a coalition of intermediaries penned an open letter to the hotel industry, urging dialogue about hoped-for federal hotel-tax legislation and inviting AH&LA leaders to meet with the group during or after the conference.

Citing “acrimony in recent weeks” over efforts to legislate a national standard about hotel taxes, the letter — sent by the American Society of Travel Agents, the Interactive Travel Services Association, the Business Travel Coalition, the U.S. Tour Operators Association and Hotel Electronic Distribution Network Association —  urged the sitdown so hotels and online travel agencies and travel management companies might work together to address any concerns about the legislation’s “potential language.”

As of Saturday morning, AH&LA hadn’t responded to a press inquiry about the letter, but ITSA spokesman Andrew Weinstein says, “Their initial response was that they will share the letter with their hotel partners and approach them about meeting with us, but that it would be impossible to do so in the midst of their legislative summit.”

With OTAs facing dozens of lawsuits by municipalities across the country seeking to get them to remit hotel taxes on the retail — and not just the net — rate, the differences between AH&LA and the coalition of intermediaries appear to be far broader than “potential language.”

The AH&LA’s position is that the OTAs seek a federal tax preference that would prohibit local jurisdictions from taxing anything beyond the merchant rate they get from hotels, and that “the legislation also discriminates against every lodging property in the country by specifically banning hotels from using the new tax category.”

“Because lodging properties will continue to collect and remit all taxes due, TPIs (Third Party Intermediaries) will be able to use their federal tax preference to market a lower final cost because they will be shielded from charging the same amount of tax,” the AH&LA states.

The issue will be one of the central themes of the AH&LA conference next week.

For its part, the coalition of intermediaries states in the letter that it does not “think municipalities should attempt to shift any additional tax burden to hotels and we will work with you to fight any such efforts aggressively.”

Tnooz reported in early February that ITSA and AH&LA had been discussing terms for a meeting about the hotel-tax issue, but apparently that get-together never happened.

So now the intermediaries have gone public with an “Open Letter to Our Partners in the Hotel Industry.”

Asked if the initiative to meet with AH&LA leaders next week, with its conference in full swing Monday and Tuesday, was a publicity stunt, ITSA spokesman Weinstein says:

“Not a stunt at all.  Their leadership will all be in D.C. next week, so it’s the perfect time logistically.  (Their conference is only on Monday and Tuesday, so we could meet at any time before, during or after it.)   We would be happy to work around their schedules, but it seems crazy to start a fight on the Hill before we even sit down to see if their concerns — which seem mostly like wording issues  – can be resolved in a way that benefits the entire industry.”

—-

Side Note: For ASTA, the open letter was signed by Paul Ruden, the travel agency group’s senior vice president, legal and industry affairs. ASTA announced Friday that long-time CEO William Maloney resigned. The chief executives of the four other organizations signed the open letter on behalf of their respective groups.

What you missed on Tnooz this week, Sunday March 7 to Saturday 13 March 2010:

Top three most commented articles this week:

• Singapore shifts emphasis to consumer with YourSingapore launch
• All aboard — Amtrak set to rail about this or that on Twitter
• Game-changer? Smartphone manufacturers looking to disrupt travel distribution

Controversial topic of the week:

• Google kaboom — disruption coming from search, video, mobile, cloud

How To Build an iPhone App:

• Day One of Four
• Day Two of Four
• Day Three of Four
• Day Four of Four
• Launch Day

From TLabs:

• TLabs Showcase – TaxiPal
• Fiverr – another wacky web idea or neat for the very end of Long Tail in travel?

And the rest (most recent first):

• OTAs invite hoteliers to tax meet — dialogue or grandstanding?
• Zugu lifts lid on site for Germany
• Interactive Mobile @dvertising gets its first funding round
• Hold on — Carnival mandates online-only for some travel agent requests
• YourSingapore launch triggers another round of soul searching
• GDS Bitesize – service news, agreements, products from Amadeus, Travelport and Sabre
• Marriott International takes on search engines over trademark practices
• The GDS wars, broken models and metasearch issues — JetBlue-style
• Seven minutes with Olaf Gueldner, MD Travelport Europe
• Live Blogging Bloggers’ Summit@ITB
• Hong Kong Travel Site Crunch: Data Week End March 6 2010
• Rand McNally acquires Tripology, maps quest to become online travel company
• Google exec on Buzz, Super Bowl ad, behavioral advertising, tablets
• Not so cryptic from Tripology – map giant Rand McNally is the buyer
• Travelport dumps TravelClick as the GDS world watches
• Priorities for metasearch – Skyscanner and Swoodoo say booking way down the list
• Tripology: The deal is done
• American Airlines has exit clause in HP reservations system contract
• Live Blogging PhoCusWright@ITB
• Making car hire sexy through Microsoft Surface, Europcar driving forward
• Australia Travel Site Crunch: Data Week End March 6 2010
• Poll: Understanding and using social media in travel
• Location-based social network to integrate Travel Channel dining content
• US Travel Site Crunch: Data Week End March 6 2010
• No sweat — SpaFinder unveils iPhone app
• Copy this — Hilton Garden Inn, PrinterOn enable printing from smartphones
• UK Travel Site Crunch: Data Week End March 6 2010

Previous Week in Travel Tech:

• February 28-March 7 2010
• February 21-27 2010
• February 14-20 2010
• February 7-13 2010
• January 31-February 6 2010
• January 24-30 2010
• January 17-23 2010
• January 10-16 2010
• January 3-9 2010
• December 27-January 2 2010
• December 20-26 2009
• December 13-19 2009
• December 6-12 2009
• November 29-December 5 2009
• November 22-28 2009
• November 15-21 2009
• November 8-14 2009
• November 1-7 2009
• October 25-31 2009
• October 18-24 2009
• October 11-17 2009
• October 3-10 2009

Notices:

• Tnooz #tcamp4 at OpenTravel Advisory Forum
• Tnooz Nodes – profiles, RSS feeds and Twitter links

Cheapflights has launched its second Zugu metasearch site in less than a month – using the ITB exhibition in Berlin to unveil a local version for the German market.

Chairman Hugo Burge announced the launch of Zugu.de during a panel session at the trade show this week.

Cheapflights finally took the covers off its metasearch project three weeks ago with an official launch in the UK.

The move could trigger a round of quick launches for Zugu in markets the Cheapflights brand is already operating in, perhaps following a similar pattern of country domains.

Cheapflights Media is currently active in Australia, USA, Canada, France, Spain and Italy.

Zugu.com, which is registered to Cheapflights in London, currently redirects to Zugu.co.uk. The other sites are all registered with the same London-based broker, with the exception of Zugu.com.au (already showing ownership by Cheapflights) and Zugu.ca (a private individual).

Interactive Mobile @dvertising, which offers GPS-enabled mobile destination guides in partnership with tourism authorities at trade shows, attracted a $500,000 investment from Connecticut Innovations.

iM@ had been designated PhoCusWright’s Travel Technology Innovator of the Year in 2008, and the Connecticut Innovations investment was iM@’s first venture-capital funding.

The $500,000 investment from Connecticut Innovations, seeded by the State of Connecticut to invest in early-stage Connecticut technology companies, was part of an $800,000 funding round for Norwalk, Conn.-based iM@. The funding round included investments by individuals.

IM@ CEO Kerry Cannon says the funding will be used to strengthen relationships with strategic partners, including Reed Exhibitions and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, and provide technical support and marketing.

In Connecticut Innovations’ announcement about the funding, Connecticut Governor M. Jodi Rell states the investment will help to bolster the state’s tourism industry.

In Norwalk alone, iM@ has plenty of tourism compatriots, including Priceline and Kayak.

—–

Disclosure: Tnooz CEO Gene Quinn is chairman of iM@.

So, the big day’s come and you’re ready to submit! If you haven’t done so already, you’ll need to set up your account.

Sit down with your product definition, country distribution list and have your marketing copy plus developer notes ready.

Be sure to list any user name and passwords the tester will need to run through your feature list. Remember, if it doesn’t work like you advertise, your app will get rejected.

Once you finalize the submission and hit the final button, sit back, high-five everyone and then wait….

There are hundreds to thousands of apps submitted daily and so, as you can imagine, it takes a bit for your app to get reviewed.

Sit tight, if you have any issues, they will come back and let you know what you might need to fix.

If they don’t find anything out of the ordinary, it will get approved and go live in the stores you chose.

The downside is that you don’t receive an email letting you know your app is approved, so you’ll need to check often.

Once you’re live, the key is to keep your marketing copy and version notes updated. This helps potential buyers to know what’s been improved and what the app currently offers.

If you have the opportunity to market your app, you can advertise in the typical ways, partner with someone to provide traffic or buzz or virally promote your app.

The magic place to be is the “Top 20” list on Travel and the even more magical place is the Top 20 apps, period. It’s tough to land and stay on the coveted list if you’re not a game, Facebook or Google, but you should certainly keep your aspirations high and make that a goal.

Sometimes an app gets luck and gets picked up by Apple for marketing inclusion, but most often you must make your own noise to get noticed.

Think of a unique way your app can do that and keep that in mind when you define your product, marketing copy or launch promotion.

Best practices encourage your to keep your version updates to the minimum necessary to avoid irritating customers, especially if your app has a server component to it.

It also helps you not to have a pending submission version while you are supporting a legacy version for too long.

Good luck and enjoy seeing your app live on iTunes App Store!

NB: This How To series is authored by Robyn Grassanovits, Amy Dillon, Brian Knorr, Dr Maher Ali, Shannon Mihalakos and Carmen Velazquez of TripCase – an iPhone app to handle trip and itinerary management by Sabre.

Carnival Cruise Lines, which gets some 70% of its sales from traditional travel agencies,  began requiring them to carry out certain functions online only.

The development was reported in recent days by Travel Market Report and  Travel Weekly.

Many traditional travel agencies rely on the phone channel for cruise bookings so the new Carnival policy, which began March 1, represents a major shift for Carnival, especially since certain online requests are now mandatory and not optional.

The line’s travel agent partners still can do most things, including making client bookings, with Carnival over the phone, but the online-only functions include changing dining times, asking for booking confirmations, and requesting forms and options related to group and FIT reservations.

If this is an experiment for Carnival, the cruise industry will be watching it to see if the line extends its online-only requirements to wider areas.

Carnival Cruise Lines sent a letter to travel agents [see below] about the policy, which began March 1, and tied the change to the economic efficiencies of the online channel for certain functions and the desire to increase agent engagement with the line’s portal, BookCCL.com.

Here is the letter:

Dear Travel Partner,
In many ways, 2009 was as challenging a year as most of us can remember. Although we were glad to have it come to a close for many reasons, we would be remiss if we didn’t reflect on the fact that it was also a year full of opportunities and accomplishments.
The challenging economic circumstances that prevailed most of last year forced us to rethink the way we managed every aspect of our business. Along these lines, we are happy to report we have made great progress when it came to becoming more efficient in every area of our sales and contact center world. And, our research indicates that you, too, became more efficient and productive in managing your business. Your level of engagement with our e-channels has grown significantly, as has your confidence and ability to easily maneuver through BookCCL.com. Congratulations!
Our work is far from done and now that most of you can easily navigate your way through BookCCL, we are taking this opportunity to remind you of the upcoming policy changes announced last month that will continue to maximize use of our automation tools.
Effective March 1st, the following functions can only be performed online since our contact center will no longer handle these transactions.
* Extend options (Group & FIT staterooms)
* Request booking confirmations (Travel Agency & Guest Version)
* Request Group Booking reports (Group Detail Workup, Guest List,
Statement of Group Request)
* Change dining time
* Request Group Program Fee Form
If you’re not already taking advantage of these easy to use online functions, let us show you how.
Click Here (https://admin.na4.acrobat.com/_a836063406/sso_menu/) TO VIEW SOME QUICK “HOW TO” VIDEO TUTORIALS.
Should you need user support for any reason, simply send us an email at [deleted]
And, if you haven’t done so already, go online, get registered and get booking! 2010 will be the year where we continue to work smarter, together!
Thank you for your continued support.
Sincerely,

Carnival Cruise Lines

Asked about the changes, Carnival spokesman Vance Gulliksen says:

“We find that our travel partners value efficiency and want quick, easy access to their reservations.  Since last year, we have worked hard to increase agents’ level of awareness and engagement with BookCCL,com, our trade portal, and they have quickly come to embrace the many advantages it offers, like convenient access to their client’s reservations on a 24/7 basis.

“It makes sense for us to now migrate a number of basic reservations functions to online only so our call center team can remain available to support travel agents in closing sales and assisting with the more complex service issues, with the end goal being to provide even better service to our partners.”

Gulliksens says CCL invested in enhancements to BookCCL.com and the portal has been experiencing record activity.

“This increase in online usage gave us the confidence to move forward in this direction,” Gulliksen adds.

The launch of Singapore Tourist Board’s new brand and digital strategy has gotten the sector talking.

Some call it innovative, others wonder whether it is too whizzy. The proof is in the durian pudding, as we may say in “YourSingapore”.

So what’s the buzz?

The Singapore Tourism Board (STB) officially unveiled their new brand and digital strategy – YourSingapore – at ITB Berlin this week, and already the blogosphere is abuzz with chatter.

Travel technology pundits have shared their comments on the move by a tourism board to steer towards a customer-direct and largely digital approach.

One of the most common themes coming through is how busy the site appears.

There are a lot of images on the home page and as attractive as it looks, it can be quite overwhelming, especially someone who’s never been to Singapore.

Sitting in a hotel room in Berlin with fairly fast Internet access, it took more than 30 seconds to download all images. What happens in markets with slower broadband networks?

Certainly, STB stands out among tourism boards that are doing something innovative and different. When you attend an event like ITB Berlin, you appreciate first-hand the competition out there among destinations.

The halls are packed with tourism boards who have invested millions in their booths, all trying to fight for attention from a market that’s still not yet fully recovered from the economic shocks of 2009.

Germany may be one of the more resilient markets – Germans are hardy travellers and the economy is still holding steady – but Europe is on shaky ground with problems besetting Greece and the UK, one of the top outbound markets from Asia is floundering.

In many ways, unleashing YourSingapore is an acknowledgement of the transfer of power from supplier to customer.

Let the customer decide what they want; tell them what is on offer and make it easy for them to research, plan and book – that’s the essence of the new STB campaign.

Some brand owners may baulk at the notion of giving up such control – and if you sit back and think for a moment, it’s ironic that this is coming from Singapore, a city state known more for its controls than lack of – but this is the age of social media, the wisdom of the crowd and crowd outsourcing.

It is natural, of course, for digital media proponents to applaud the new website, but what about traditional tour operators who are already facing battles with airlines and hotels who are increasingly going direct?

A leading European tour operator, who asks not to be named, admits it is time – once again – for a rethink.

Shrugging his shoulders, he says: “Everyone’s going that way. Airlines are going direct and soon hotels will too. We have to find a way to adapt.”

For STB, the road to “YourSingapore” has just begun. Now they have to make sure the road leads somewhere, and not some dead end.

The latest news from the GDS world, including new airline agreements, product news and initiatives.

12 March 2010:

• Shearings Holidays and Amadeus sign GDS content distribution package. The three-year agreement will give Shearings worldwide access to fares, schedules and inventories across the Amadeus system.

10 March 2010:

• Amadeus launches LinkHotel, a distribution service for small to medium size hotels and groups. LinkHotel also provides reservation tools, marketing services, and commission handling.
• Amadeus division Traveltainment acquires online marketing company Pixell. The Bonn, Germany-based company handles advertising for clients through SEO, SEM, display marketing, direct marketing and affiliate marketing as well as Twitter, social networks or mobile devices.
• Travelport unveils Opinions review system in the UK and Ireland. The service, which had a successful launch in France in mid-2009, allows agents to review hotel properties and ask questions of other experts on the system.

9 March 2010:

• Net Trans and Travelport ink deal to provide hotel commission recovery to Travelport agents around the world. The Net Trans system allows agents to see how much commission has been paid or owed by a supplier as well as managing processes between the two.

8 March 2010:

• Best Western International signs enhanced contract with GTA by Travelport to boost distribution of the chain’s property descriptions
• LOT Polish Airlines and Amadeus agree extension to technology partnership to extend to the Star Alliance Common IT platform inventory system. The new agreement will complete in in the second half of 2010 and also see an upgrade to its customer management system and use of the wider Star Alliance platform.
• Sabre reveals programme with data management firm iWay Software. The Airline Solutions division of Sabre has worked with iWay to audit and analyse the Airport Data Intelligence programme, a system which tracks capacity and other details of every flight in the world.

6 March 2010:

• Bangkok Airways and Amadeus unite for travel agency promotion. Agents booking tickets on the airline through the Amadeus GDS are also entered in a prize draw. Both organisations claim an immediate increase in bookings following the launch – the promotion runs until 31 May 2010.

5 March 2010:

• Agencia Abreu seals multi-year deal with Travelport to use the Galileo GDS system. The Portuguese travel agency, one of the largest in the country and in existence since 1840, has 120 offices around the country and also a sizeable presence in the US and Brazil.

4 March 2010:

• Amadeus signs agreement to evaluate use of the Altea Customer Management System with Asiana Airlines. The Memo of Understanding will explore for future use of the Altea system for reservation, inventory and departure control processes across the Asiana network.

Marriott International doesn’t take kindly to Google, Yahoo and Bing selling the hoteliers trademarks as keywords to competitors and expects the search engines to change their practices.

Shafiq Khan, Marriott’s senior vice president e-commerce, says Marriott is “very concerned” about search engines selling Marriott keywords to others.

Speaking on a panel, “Hotel Executive Discussion,” at the TravelCom conference in Dallas, Khan said the practice “is a very significant issue. It is going to catch up with Google, with Yahoo with Bing.”

A Google search today for Renaissance Hotels & Resorts, a Marriott brand, turned up Expedia and Travelocity sponsored links, among others, with the word “hotels” in the text.

A Bing search today for Renaissance Hotels & Resorts produced sponsored ads from Expedia and Travelocity which were displayed higher than the Renaissance Hotels sponsored ad, like this:

And, a Yahoo search today for Renaissance Hotels & Resorts turned up an ad from Reserve Discount Hotels as the first sponsored result, like this:

Khan says Marriott is engaged in discussions with Google about its trademark-keyword practices and “we’ll be managing that with Google.”

He adds that expects Google will be a “smart company, a wise company” and will alter its practices.

The trademark issue has been a thorny one for years.

Carnival Cruise Lines recently banned its travel agency partners from using its trademarks as keywords in search engines.

Other companies have sued the search engines and otherwise pressured them to curb their practices.

In other matters, Khan says 2010 is “shaping up as a very good year,” although he adds, “I don’t think we will see 2007 again for quite some time.”

Testing and QA:

User cases are key to preparation during the final phase before app submission.

Be sure to test everything on the emulator and actual device you support. There have been instances of differences between environments including response time, screen display and functionality.

The emulator lacks real time limitations like internet connection testing for 3G versus EDGE.

When we began, the general public didn’t have access to automated functional testing.

As a result, one of our developers created his own, UISpec, which is currently available as an open source component [It writes scripts around your testing keys].

Another important detail when testing these apps on the phone device, is that it has to be done from a publicly accessible server, as most corporations won’t let an iphone connect through the firewall.

Figure out early in the process for an alternate solution before developing and testing.

Remember that iPhone guidelines address specifics to iPhone and not iTouch, so take into consideration not to force capabilities to work on new OSs.

As a developer you need to think about features, so check on which device to see if you can handle, such as camera version, phone version, GPS usage, photos for the device etc.

You will learn some lessons along the way during the guideline and review process that will refine your product development, testing and product definition, and overall user experience.

Remember too that Apple’s ad hoc distribution allows for up to 100 people to “beta test” your app before you launch it publicly.

We’d recommend you take advantage of that to gain feedback and test the process.

You also receive up to 50 promo coupons for promo when it does go live on iTunes as part of the developer kit.

NB: This How To series is authored by Robyn Grassanovits, Amy Dillon, Brian Knorr, Dr Maher Ali, Shannon Mihalakos and Carmen Velazquez of TripCase – an iPhone app to handle trip and itinerary management by Sabre.

In the last round of GDS negotiations in 2007, airlines such as American Airlines and Delta Airlines stridently warned that they would pull out of major GDSs if the carriers didn’t get their way.

In 2010, American is pledging to go outside of the GDSs again, this time through Farelogix, and JetBlue, in more thoughtful tones absent the rhetoric, is pushing the message that the airline-GDS business model is broken and must change, leading up to negotiations next year.

Noreen Courtney-Wilds, JetBlue’s vice president, sales, says the industry took “baby steps” in the last round of negotiations.

After those talks, the airlines reduced the booking fees they had to pay GDSs, and the GDSs made themselves whole to a large extent by greatly reducing the incentives they pay to travel agencies.

“We all kind of know the financial model needs to change,” Courtney-Wilds said in a panel discussion, “Future of Distribution Forum,” at the TravelCom conference in Dallas yesterday afternoon.

She adds: “If it doesn’t change, folks will look for other ways to solve it.”

Courtney-Wilds notes that JetBlue recently transitioned to the SabreSonic reservations’ system and ratcheted up to full participation in the four major GDSs.

The upside is that JetBlue picked up incremental business from the GDS channel, but the downside of “opening up the floodgates” is that there was an increase in travel agencies “snatching up seats that you didn’t need help filling in the first place” at a higher distribution cost, Courtney-Wilds says.

She says JetBlue doesn’t need help selling $49 tickets and, referring to increased GDS distribution costs for sometimes low-yielding tickets, Courtney-Wilds adds, “we definitely have to address [that] going forward.”

Asked what was on her wish list as far as a new financial model, Courtney-Wilds says she doesn’t have all the answers, but that the solution should lead to a variable structure where the airline can pay for distribution in areas where the carrier wants to play — and presumably not pay in less-cost-effective areas.

One reason JetBlue opted to go full-throttle in the GDSs is that it gives the airline the opportunity to tap into the high-yielding corporate-travel business in certain markets.

Referring to a lot of noise these days about airline direct-connects bypassing GDSs, Courtney-Wilds says technical issues aren’t the basis of the conversation and all of this talk will be silenced once the airline-GDS financial model is fixed.

Fellow panel member Dan Westbrook, vice president, supplier development in the Americas for Travelport GDS, told the audience that the business model may need to be “fine-tuned,” adding that most airlines are willing to pay for high-yielding business.

He adds that Travelport GDS is talking to suppliers, looking for opportunities and trying to find the right balance.

Westbrook says the ultimate solution may vary, sector to sector.

Courtney-Wilds also had some stern, if polite, words for metasearch engines, too.

In the past, she says, JetBlue’s fares would appear in metasearch engines and consumers would link into the booking path on JetBlue.com, the airline’s cheapest distribution channel.

However, today JetBlue’s inventory is displayed in metasearch along with several other booking choices in the same results box and there are greater distribution costs for the carrier if consumers book through online travel agencies instead of going to JetBlue.com.

“The economics of the channel have changed and we are looking at that,” Courtney-Wilds says.

Olaf Gueldner, manager director and president of Travelport in Europe, answers three key questions about the business and the wider GDS sector.

Apple changed the music industry with iTunes. Might smartphone manufacturers like Samsung, Nokia, Motorola and RIM or mobile operating-system providers like Apple, Google or Microsoft disrupt the travel industry by weaving themselves into the fabric of travel distribution?

Mobile trip-management company WorldMate is “deeply involved” with multiple parties “in the mobile landscape” which are seeking to embed travel services from mobile check-in to last-minute travel purchases into their core operating systems, says Chief Commercial Officer Nadav Gur.

Gur says the players include smartphone manufacturers which are looking to travel — and talking with online travel agencies and other distribution parties — as a substantial revenue stream to offset margin pressure on smartphone manufacturing and services.

Gur, who was the founding CEO of Worldmate, says he expects one smartphone manufacturer to launch a deeply integrated travel product this year.

WorldMate, which offers trip-management services and competes against TripIt, TripCase, Kayak Trips and others, claims to have the largest user base in the crowd, although the company is relatively short on brand recognition in North America.

The smartphone players seeking to get involved in travel are not talking about building apps and linking to third parties for trip-planning, but seek to embed travel services and booking off-the shelf into their devices.

With the cash that some of these giant device manufacturers have available, it isn’t inconceivable that they could be looking at acquiring an OTA, with their smaller market caps  – even an Expedia or Priceline — as they seek to shake up the market and move their plans forward.

WorldMate’s role with the smartphone manufacturers or mobile operating-system providers is to provide them with technology expertise and the business acumen necessary to break into the travel industry.

Privately held WorldMate has investments from Motorola Ventures and the Blackberry Partners Fund, but Gur says don’t necessarily use those relationships to read the tea leaves about which mobile partners WorldMate is involved with.

So why would a major smartphone manufacturer, like Apple or Motorola or Nokia, need WorldMate as an entrée into the travel industry?

Gur says having a first-mover advantage might be critical, and perhaps WorldMate might trim six to nine months off the delivery process for its partners.

The last-minute travel arena might be a key focus of some of these mobile players because of the nature of their devices. They can push hotel or car-rental offers to travelers at airports, for instance, especially if there are flight delays or cancellations.

With many people saying that mobile devices may eventually replace the PC as the primary means for browsing the Web and booking travel, perhaps smartphone manufacturers and mobile-operating system providers will play a huge role in changing travel distribution as we know it.

Gur, citing confidentiality agreements, declined to identify WorldMate’s partners in the new mobile-travel push.

Most popular travel websites in Hong Kong region for the week ending March 6 2010:

Agency

Rank	Website	Domain	Percentage of Visits	Previous Position
1	Ctrip.com	www.ctrip.com	12.28%	1
2	China Travel Service (Hong Kong) Limited	www.chinatravelone.com	9.29%	2
3	ZUJI Hong Kong	www.zuji.com	6.59%	3
4	Cathay Pacific Holidays	www.cxholidays.com	6.28%	4
5	Hong Thai Travel Services	www.hongthai.com	6.27%	5
6	Wing On Travel	www.wingontravel.com	6.01%	6
7	EGL Tours	www.egltours.com	5.58%	7
8	Priceline Hong Kong	www.priceline.com.hk	4.30%	8
9	Expedia	www.expedia.com	2.94%	9
10	SunFlower Travel	www.sunflower.com.hk	2.08%	-

Destinations and Accommodation

Rank	Website	Domain	Percentage of Visits	Previous Position
1	Yahoo! Travel Hong Kong	hk.travel.yahoo.com	11.07%	1
2	Hong Kong Disneyland	www.hongkongdisneyland.com	5.21%	2
3	TripAdvisor	www.tripadvisor.com	4.70%	3
4	InterContinental Hotels Group	www.ichotelsgroup.com	3.40%	5
5	Thailandfans.com	www.thailandfans.com	3.19%	6
6	Agoda Hong Kong	www.agoda.com.hk	2.21%	9
7	Discover Hong Kong (Hong Kong Tourism Board)	www.hkta.org	2.17%	4
8	HotelHK.com	www.hotelhk.com	1.83%	10
9	Qunar Hotel	hotel.qunar.com	1.74%	7
10	Marriott International	www.marriott.com	1.69%	-

Airlines

Rank	Website	Domain	Percentage of Visits	Previous Position
1	Cathay Pacific	www.cathaypacific.com	29.56%	1
2	Qantas Airways	www.qantas.com.au	7.09%	2
3	AirAsia	www.airasia.com	5.87%	3
4	Dragon Air	www.dragonair.com	4.68%	4
5	Cebu Pacific Air	www.cebupacificair.com	4.07%	5
6	Singapore Airlines	www.singaporeair.com	3.48%	6
7	British Airways	www.britishairways.com	2.38%	7
8	Jetstar Airways	www.jetstar.com	2.36%	9
9	Air Canada	www.aircanada.ca	2.25%	10
10	Emirates	www.emirates.com	2.21%	-

NB: Data courtesy of Experian Hitwise