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.”

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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.

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.

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

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.

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.”

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.

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.

John Peters, the president and CEO of Tripology, says Rand McNally acquired Tripology on Friday as the 154-year-old map and travel guide company transforms itself into an online and location-based online travel company.

The move breathes new life into Tripology, a lead-generation service for travel agents which had fallen on hard times weeks ago when an investor pulled out of the company.

It also ends weeks of speculation about who Tripology’s suitor was after Peters had announced that Tripology had signed a letter of intent with an unidentified company.

Peters says the Tripology brand and operations will remain largely the same as Tripology becomes a Rand McNally property and one piece of the puzzle as Rand McNally transitions into an online, trip-planning company.

Jeff DeKorte, the former general manager of AOL Travel who was brought in by Rand McNally to strategize about Web strategy, says Rand McNally is in the midst of transforming itself from a traditional, print-based company that focused on selling maps and globes, into an online travel company which offers mobile-based services.

Among immediate changes, Tripology’s headquarters will relocate from Manhattan to Skokie, Ill., where Rand McNally is based.

Peters will run Tripology and become Rand McNally’s vice president and general manager of digital strategy.

Tripology, which has 14,000 travel agents signed up to use its lead-generation services, employs five staff, including Peters, and discussions are under way with the parent company about staffing levels.

Peters talked to Tnooz today at the TravelCom conference in Dallas about the acquisition. One year ago, TravelCom designated Tripology as its innovator of the year.

Peters says Rand McNally’s purchase of Tripology for an undisclosed sum almost immediately solves several of Tripology’s problems — brand recognition, consumer traffic and distribution.

Peters acknowledges that it had been costly for Tripology “to get in front of consumers.”

But, according to Compete Inc., Rand McNally had 757,000 unique visitors in January 2010, down from a 2009 peak of almost 1.2 million unique visitors in June.

Tripology had 33,600 unique visitors in January, Compete says.

DeKorte says Rand McNally has a broad vision to become an online trip-planning company and the strategy is evolving.

The move to become a a force in online travel coincides with the ascendance of a new Rand McNally management team which Patriarch Partners, the owner of privately held Rand McNally, brought in several months ago, DeKorte says.

Peters emphasizes that with the lead-generation service becoming a Rand McNally property, Tripology remains “all about travel agents.”

He emphasizes that the acquisition means Tripology now will have the resources to develop more travel agent tools, including social-media features and lead management tools, which had long been delayed.

Says Peters: “We had a to-do list a year-and-a-half long.”

Dennis Woodside of Google has some simple advice for travel marketers who will have to try to cope with the coming disruption — “dog-fooding.”

In his keynote address at TravelCom in Dallas, Woodside, Google’s vice president of American operations, says travel companies will have to eat their own dog feed — i.e. constantly test and tweak the solutions they’ve created — as they meet head-on looming disruptions in search, video, mobile and cloud computing.

Search: Woodside says search will have to become richer, more social and global as consumers seek user-generated content and video about their travel experiences.

“The way you think of search has to evolve,” Woodside says.

Video: Woodside says video will evolve into a more flexible advertising mode as half of all video will be addressable to certain consumers or segments instead of the current 30-second spot with a one-size fits all approach.

For example, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority would be able to make inroads by advertising on the Web certain racy shows or attractions out in the desert in a more cost-effective way than is done today, he says.

Travel marketers would be able to reach much larger audiences with video at various price points than is the current norm today, Woodside says.

Mobile: In the long term, some 30% of online bookings will come from mobile devices, Woodside says.

In fact, he argues, “we think it [mobile] will become more important than the PC.”

Even Google feels a threat from mobile, Woodside says, and it will have to adapt all of its services for mobile or become “less relevant.”

Cloud computing: Most travel marketers will have to migrate their services to cloud computing, which will be another disruptive force, Woodside says.

So, hold onto your hats, break out your smartphone and pass the dog food.

Google’s Dennis Woodside says the company rolled out Google Buzz too abruptly and likely won’t  introduce other new products in a similar manner.

Woodside, Google’s vice president of American operations, says Google also shouldn’t have linked Buzz to people’s Gmail contacts because e-mail contacts aren’t necessarily part of people’s social networks.

Google employees used Buzz internally before its release and didn’t pick up some of these issues, he says.

“That’s the cost, to some degree, of innovation,” says Woodside, referring to missteps with Buzz.

Woodside was answering questions today after delivering a keynote address at the TravelCom conference in Dallas.

Woodside also addressed Google’s motivations for running its first Super Bowl ad, the Parisian Love video.

He says much of the buzz these days surrounding Google has little to do with its core search functionality so Google’s goal with the  ad was to reach a large TV audience at the Super Bowl and reconnect with consumers’ passion for search.

Woodside also lent his support for Google’s initiatives in behavioral advertising and believes that the advertising industry is moving in the right direction.

Google’s policy is to be transparent about behavioral advertising and give consumers tools to opt out of targeted advertising, if that is what they desire, he says.

In that regard, Google has a Google Ads Preferences manager, which is geared to inform consumers about which interests Google associates with them, and it also gives the consumers the power to add or delete interests.

[I just looked up my Google Ad Preferences and it says: "No interest categories are associated with your ads preferences so far." Woops, I guess I'm fairly uninteresting.]

Woodside says the reason few people click on display ads is that targetting is not as advanced as it is with search ads, and that behavioral advertising will improve results for display-ad publishers.

And, what’s in store for e-readers like the Kindle or possibly the iPad?

Arguing that Amazon’s Kindle is a closed system, Woodside believes open systems will eventually prevail and that particular devices will become less important.

Woodside believes eventually most e-books will be accessible over the Web through browsers.

Says Woodside: “On the Web, open systems seem to win in the long run.”

Travelport’s announcement that it is bringing all of its GDS advertising business in-house — and it is the first major GDS to do so — is a fairly momentous development because it breaks TravelClick’s near monopoly on green-screen advertising.

Until Travelport’s announcement, TravelClick handled virtually all the advertising sales and ad-serving for Travelport GDS [Galileo, Apollo and Worldspan], Amadeus and Sabre.

The adds typically are messages from hotels about promotions and specials, and they appear on travel agent’s green screens.

With Travelport’s decisions to have its own sales teams exclusively handle this advertising and to use an ad-serving platform of its own choosing, TravelClick is losing a very substantial percentage of global green-screen real estate.

TravelClick is heavily into handling advertising for hotels and GDSs so Travelport’s initiative is by no means a knockout punch for TravelClick, but assuredly it hurts.

For Travelport, which is slated to launch its Universal Desktop in the U.S. later this year, the move means it can earn higher margins in its advertising programs by eliminating a middleman.

The advertising business is a high-margin affair, and many travel e-commerce players are seeking to get the most out of it.

Travelport’s execution of the strategy will answer the question of whether TravelClick or Travelport’s own sales squads can handle the business more efficiently.

The other major GDSs — Sabre and Amadeus — assuredly are monitoring Travelport’s initiative.

UPDATE: Amtrak says an unauthorized individual previously was using the @Amtrak Twitter account, but the rail line has now secured it for itself. The @AmtrakUSA account was a placeholder while efforts were under way to get the @Amtrak account.

Amtrak, the federally funded rail line operating in 46 states, launched a Twitter account, @AmtrakUSA, the other day and is trying to get its social-media act together.

As of this writing, AmtrakUSA has issued a modest two tweets and had 13 followers since March 4, but has hired a social media director and is making sure that internal stakeholders, including corporate communications and customer relations, are on board with the effort.

The rail line is also establishing a social-media policy for employees with guidelines about how to handle status updates on Amtrak’s Facebook page, for instance.

As with many travel companies these days, Amtrak has had internal debates about whether getting involved with social media is too risky or the smart thing to do.

Apparently the social media advocates have won out for now — or at least they have been granted permission to test the waters.

Amtrak opted to establish the AmtrakUSA account because the Amtrak name was being used by an unauthorized user.

With the rail line having just launched its AmtrakUSA Twitter handle, it’s too early to assess the direction of Amtrak’s Twitter strategy.

Perhaps Amtrak doesn’t even have it totally formulated yet.

In other Amtrak tech-oriented news, the rail line introduced AmtrakConnect Wi-Fi service for all first and business-class passengers on its 20 Acela Express trains.

Amtrak partnered with GBS Group and Nomad Digital to deploy the service, which initially will be free, but the compensation model will be under review.

In addition, Amtrak is introducing Wi-Fi for all passengers in gate areas at eight stations in the Northeast.

The rail line already offers Wi-Fi in its ClubAcela lounges at several major stations.

Tripology, which ran out of funding early in 2010 and signed a letter of intent with an unidentified buyer, now says “the deal is done.”

Playing it as coy as possible as a lead-up to an announcement, Tripology President and CEO John Peters yesterday wrote a blog post, entitled “A Clue or Two from Tripology,” about the household name company that has swooped in to rescue Tripology.

The clues point to a trip-planning company, possibly one heavy into mapping, as becoming the new owner or investor in the travel agent lead-generation business.

The blog states:

“Do you need a hint? This company will guide you, from here to there. They know the world better than most; the places, the borders, the geographies.  Like Atlas, the world is on their shoulders.  You’d be hard pressed to find a person in the USA that hasn’t looked to them for travel guidance.

“Need another clue? If you had to get from here to there, you’d look at one of these. For this company knows where all roads lead, where every river winds, where every national park begins and ends. They inspire, they educate and now, trip planning is their focus.

“Tripology has found a new home and I couldn’t be happier.  More details to come in the next few days. Free leads continue for a bit longer!” Enjoy!”

So, apparently Tripology is ready to enter its next phase and all concerned will be interested in seeing if the company’s revenue model can be sustainable.

With American Airlines and HP having just signed a contract for HP to build a new reservations system, called Jetstream, for the airline, it now turns out that American has an exit clause in the event it gets cold feet about the massive project, according to a source.

The airline apparently can walk away from the deal 90 to 120 days — the source wasn’t sure which — after the contract signing.

The thinking is that the out clause gives American further time to evaluate whether HP, a technology company with little airline experience, is up to the task of building the airline a new passenger services system.

HP acquired EDS in August 2008 for $13.9 billion.

EDS has tons of airline-reservations system experience, but apparently downsizing and restructuring at HP over the last year means that several key people involved in developing Jetstream — the reservations system doesn’t actually exist yet — have either been reassigned, fired or have otherwise left the company, the source says.

American and HP took their time in transitioning from a letter of intent, signed in August 2009, to the recently signed contract, and the exit clause in the new agreement is another signal that the path to a new reservations system, which would replace Sabre as American’s longtime host-system provider, is not set in stone.

Gowalla, a location-based social-networking service on smartphones, concluded an agreement with the Travel Channel to integrate some of its content.

In the initial integration, the Gowalla platform, which just became available on Android devices, and was already compatible with iPhones and Blackberrys, will incorporate content about dining venues visited in the Travel Channel’s new TV series, Food Wars.

Food Wars takes well-known chefs and has them face-off against one another, with their culinary talents judged in a showdown through a blind taste test.

With Gowalla apps, users “check-in” to various restaurants and travel destinations and share their experiences with friends on Gowalla and other social networks. They can also collect “game-like rewards” at locations they visit.

When Gowalla users check in to venues visited in Food Wars, they will be able to read show-related information about the restaurant and collect passport-stamp rewards, Gowalla says.

“Catering to the loyal fan bases of these local eating establishments creates an ideal environment for consumer interaction and brand engagement,” says Chris Ackermann, director of business development for the Travel Channel.

In other developments, last month Gowalla released an API for developers.

The Gowalla homepage features a scroll of users checking in to venues around the world.

Gowalla says users have checked in at 600,000 locations in more than 165 countries.

SpaFinder launched a free iPhone app that enables travelers to use the smartphone’s GPS features to find a nearby spa, access maps, directions and user reviews, check availability and make appointments.

In a sort of in-your-facial message to the competition, SpaFinder claims its app is “the first-ever iPhone app that allows users to find nearby spas and deals, check the real-time availability of appointments, and book a reservation instantly.”

Users of the mobile device can use the app to query SpaFinder’s database of more than 5,000 day and destination spas. Consumers can search by price, deals and treatment types, the company says.

Booking capabilities are in play for more than 1,000 of the spas in the U.S., and expanding that functionality to spas in other regions is on the company’s agenda, SpaFinder says.

SpaFinder has tied the iPhone app into SpaFinder’s loyalty program.

When app users book their reservations, they earn SpaFinder Rewards Points, which can be redeemed for gift cards good at more than 5,000 spas around the globe.