That’s the word from PackLate CEO Steve  Barsh, who says the company, founded in 2010, has transitioned from a consumer focus on last-minute vacation rentals to a business-to-business operation and white-label distributor of professionally managed vacation homes.

PackLate [see TLabs Showcase] has built a hub — Barsh calls it a “switch” in a bow to the proposed Vacation Rental Management Association switch — and connects it to about about a half dozen property management systems, and then contracts on a net rate or commission basis with the property managers in each destination.

Barsh says the hub’s integration with the PMSs delivers live inventory and rates, and door-level bookings as opposed to reservations for a condo complex or vacation home community, where specific-unit assignments are allocated on-site.

For example, American Airlines Vacations, a unit of American Airlines, makes some of this PackLate-delivered vacation-home inventory available through an American Airlines Vacations’ partnership with Tourico Holidays. In the following image, a condo, Incredible Burgundy Hill in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, is offered via credit card or AAdvantage miles, with no emailing or phone conversations necessary with the owner.

Tourico Holidays, a unit of Travel Holdings, has some distribution muscle: Tourico Holidays operates 150 websites in 23 languages and has widespread travel agency relationships.

Travel agents can book the vacation homes through Tourico Holidays’ agent site, although some agencies have direct-connects with the wholesaler and can book the homes on their own agency sites.

Travel Holdings, Tourico’s parent, also operates consumer sites, such as Easy Click Travel, where vacation homes provided through PackLate show up under a Vacation Homes tab and are offered in California, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Utah, Wyoming and several other states.

Most of the bookings through the PackLate system, which currently stocks around 15,000 properties, come from in-bound visitors to the US. Many of the reservations are for destinations in Utah, Colorado and Florida.

Barsh says the PackLate system, which leverages Amazon Web Services and other technologies such as Ruby on Rails, MySQL and Engine Yard, is highly scalable.

In that regard, the company is talking with major wholesalers and airlines, with an eye toward expanding in Europe as a top priority, Barsh says.

Tourico Holidays and PackLate began their distribution relationship in May 2011, although bookings have really ramped up in the past couple of months, Barsh says.

“We are available today and it is working,” he adds. “We have proved to the Touricos of the world that we know what we are doing.”

Barsh says the VRMA-Pegasus Solutions switch notwithstanding, PackLate wants to become an industry switch in its own right or, as he puts it, the “Sabre of vacation homes.”

PackLate has raised more than $1 million in seed funding from First Round Capital, Genacast Ventures, FirstMark Capital and ETF Venture Funds.

On the heels of Expedia Worldwide president Scott Durchslag exiting the company in January, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi used words such as “unsatisfactory” to describe “the overall Expedia brand performance,” and “poorly” to characterize how airline ticket sales and vacation packages fared in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Expedia Inc.’s revenue increased 7% to $787.1 million on a 19% increase in hotel room nights in the fourth quarter, although a decrease in revenue per room night put a damper on things.

Adjusted EBITDA fell 4% in the quarter to $162.1 million, and content and technology costs, including monies allocated to the tech platform, rose 29% to $98.6 million.

Hotels.com and the Expedia hotel product have been migrated to the new tech platform, the air product will be on board by the end of the first quarter, but vacation packages aren’t expected to be transitioned “until the back half of 2012,” Khosrowshahi told financial analysts during the company’s fourth quarter conference call yesterday.

Khosrowshahi expressed confidence that the new platform will increase conversions and enable Expedia to innovate faster, but he conceded that the company has something to prove and “there are a lot of ifs at this point.” He said:

Listen, all other things being equal, when E3 is complete, I would expect to see room night growth accelerate for Expedia, not only standalone room nights but especially packaged room nights that have been a negative factor. And I would hope to see that in the second half of the year. Again, we haven’t done it. But that’s why we’re investing the way that we are on the technology side.

The company says subsidiary Hotels.com, which transitioned to the E3 technology platform in early 2010, “experienced healthy room night growth across all regions during the fourth quarter.”

Khosrowshahi added:

And Hotels.com has continued to maintain … high room night growth. And hopefully, with execution, we’d expect to see that continue on a go-forward basis. But again, we know that we have to prove that out to you. I think the Q4 room night number was really healthy, and I think it was really healthy without Expedia hitting on all cylinders. So if we can hit on all cylinders, we could see things get better. But those are a lot of ifs at this point.

There were bright spots in the earnings announcement.

Expedia is bullish on its 50-50 AirAsia joint venture, which chipped in with healthy room night and hotel revenue growth in the fourth quarter.

And, Expedia CFO Mark Okerstrom says the company is not feeling any impact from Booking.com’s share gains in the US market, where Expedia’s hotel share likewise is growing.

Financial analysts offered varying views about Expedia’s prospects following the earnings release.

Tom White, an analyst for Macquarie Capital, has a “neutral” rating on Expedia and wonders about the cost of the technology upgrades. White says:

The main question for the stock in our view is not whether the Expedia brand’s tech re-platforming will yield improved conversion rates but when and how much the initiative will ultimately cost. This limited visibility, coupled with the potential for y/y EBITDA declines in 1Q given EXPE’s increased seasonality post the TRIP spin is enough to keep us on the sidelines near-term despite EXPE’s appealing relative valuation. Add to this EXPE’s larger relative exposure to the slower-growth/supplier-friendly U.S. market, and we still view PCLN as the preferred way to play the secular shift of global travel bookings moving online.

And, Mark Mahaney, an analyst for Citi Investment Research & Analysis, also has a “neutral” rating on Expedia’s stock, but says the “soft” results for Expedia in the fourth quarter sets the company up for “an excellent 2013.”

Either way, with Booking.com growing its hotel business, Expedia has something to prove.

Or, if Groupon doesn’t seek to disintermediate Expedia, would Groupon want to bring in additional partners?

In Groupon’s first earnings call as a public company yesterday, CEO Andrew Mason said Groupon is “very happy with the progress” of Groupon Getaways, but is already “broadening” it from a sales perspective.

With travel an integral part of Groupon’s growth strategy, Mason said Groupon already sources a lot of the hotel deals in Groupon Getaways with its own travel sales force.

So if Groupon’s travel sales force is already striking direct relationships with hotels, why share the revenue with Expedia?

Groupon and Expedia launched Groupon Getaways last summer.

It’s a time-worn practice at Expedia, and also in travel and outside of travel: partner with a company, learn the business and then dump the partner.

“It seems to me that Groupon is being quite obvious about it,” says one travel industry insider, “and Expedia seems to be asleep at the switch.”

Groupon has been casting a wide net looking at various travel startups and they are interested in companies with hotel relationships, technology and a great management team.

No one is saying that is indeed Groupon’s wish, but the apparently increasing activity of Groupon’s own travel sales force raises questions.

Mason said Groupon Getaways is doing “well” with hotel sales, but over time Groupon could add new products and features.

Speaking to financial analysts, he declined to break out numbers for Groupon Getaways.

Asked about the costs of it, Mason said Groupon makes investments in commissions to win initial business, but “over time it lessens.”

In the fourth quarter of 2011, Groupon recorded a net loss of nearly $42.3 million compared with a net loss of $313.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2010.

Groupon’s revenue in the fourth quarter grew 194% to $506.5 million, the company stated.

Making what it deems to be necessary changes and investments despite the short-term impact was a theme that ran through the company’s conference call with analysts February 8 despite the fact that Wall Street looks for growth and bottom-line results.

Steve Kaufer, TripAdvisor CEO, said he couldn’t say whether or not in the future the company would take such steps as the redesign, which led to lower revenue per session.

And, TripAdvisor officials were adamant that it would increase investments in initiatives, including mobile and China, which currently are running at a loss.

There will be no slowing of TripAdvisor’s investment in China and Daodao, which has been posting operating losses since it came into the TripAdvisor fold in 2009, and is projected to record operating losses in 2012, as well.

“There is little doubt that the opportunity there is large,” Kaufer said, referring to China.

TripAdvisor provided lots of insights during its earnings call into its thinking about investments.

In fact, Kaufer said TripAdvisor has decided to invest in and emphasize mobile despite the fact that mobile traffic, to some extent, comes at the expense of desktop traffic.

As TripAdvisor benefits from its mobile offerings — 13 million downloads compared with 12 million for Kayak’s apps — the user review site has made the conscious decision not to monetize mobile fully at this time, Kaufer said.

TripAdvisor also continues to invest in the social arena, particularly in Trip Friends on Facebook, and revealed that “TripAdvisor users who are also Facebook users are approximately 27% more engaged in TripAdvisor site usage and are twice as likely to contribute content that the average TripAdvsor user.”

Some 85 million Facebook users have tried TripFriends, through the end of 2011, and they’ve received more than 1.5 billion travel “pins,” TripAdvisor stated.

The company also disclosed another fascinating statistic about users’ engagement with TripAdvisor — they add 40 pieces of content (a user review, rating, photo or room tip etc.) per minute.

TripAdvisor’s net income in the fourth quarter increased 18.8% to $22 million on revenue of $637.1 million, a 31% rise.

One element of the business, Business Listings, which didn’t exist a couple of years ago, and “other” revenue accounted for 11% of the company’s revenue in the fourth quarter. A year earlier the subscription business accounted for just 7% of revenue.

There were some interesting points made during the conference call about TripAdvisor database of 60 million reviews, which CFO Julie Bradley described as a “huge” barrier to entry for competitors.

When people talk about TripAdvisor transitioning to verified reviews, the 60 million reviews as a huge barrier to entry is one of the reasons the company is steadfastly staying with its review policy.

And, on the TripAdvisor user review front, the subject of the Advertising Standards Authority’s adverse ruling in the UK did not garner a single mention by Kaufer, Bradley or analysts during the conference call.

If analysts were concerned about its impact, they didn’t make that known.

Kaufer said the company’s rate of review collection around the world “has really gone up substantially” over the last 12 years.

He projected that TripAdvisor would be on pace to add another 20 million reviews in 2012 even if the “run rate” of review collection doesn’t increase.

Kaufer said he also looks to the company’s burgeoning vacation rental business as a major growth opportunity.

And, Kaufer was somewhat dismissive of Google Places, which impinged TripAdvisor traffic coming from Google in 2010.

Kaufer said he’s not worried about Google Places as a competitor because “they don’t have the content,” although he conceded that Google still has the potential of hurting TripAdvisor’s traffic.

In TripAdvisor’s view, those 60 million hotel reviews and climbing are a barrier to entry for Google, as well.

Eligible passengers would be directed to TSA PreCheck security lanes at nearly three dozen US airports and would be able to forego removing shoes, jackets and belts, and would be able to keep their laptops in bags as they go through an expedited screening process.

The TSA revealed today that it was expanding the PreCheck program to nearly three dozen US airports in 2012 in cooperation with American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, US Airways, United Airlines and Alaska Airlines.

The program already is operational with American Airlines in Dallas, Miami, Las Vegas, Minneapolis and Los Angeles Airports, and with Delta at airports in Atlanta, Detroit, Las Vegas and Minneapolis.

Eligible travelers include certain members of the airlines’ frequent flyer programs and members of the US Customs and Border Protection Trusted Traveler programs.

The airlines are “opting in new passengers,” the TSA says.

But individuals wishing to participate in the CBP Trusted Traveler and TSA PreCheck programs can apply here.

The TSA says 336,000 passengers have been screened to date through PreCheck lanes at participating airports.

There are no guarantees of expedited screening through the PreCheck program, however, as the TSA says it will still conduct random security checks.

“We are pleased to expand this important effort, in collaboration with our airline and airport partners, as we move away from a one-size-fits-all approach to a more intelligent-driven, risk-based transportation security system,” says John Pistole, TSA administrator.

The Global Business Travel Association welcomed the news that the TSA is expanding PreCheck to an additional 28 US airports, noting that participating passengers volunteering for the program are subject to risk assessments prior to their arrival at the airport.

“The expansion of the PreCheck program is something our members have been hoping for and GBTA has been advocating for, since the pilot program was announced last summer,” says Michael McCormick, executive director and COO of GBTA. “As an association, faster, more efficient and smarter travel processes that ensure the traveling public’s safety are our top priority and essential for business travelers.”

Users merely enter a departure airport, the month they want to travel, the maximum they want to spend per person and length of stay, and then Trip Explorer fills a map of the world (primarily the US, Canada and the Caribbean with a bit of Europe) with vacation package possibilities.

So if you want to depart from Chicago O’Hare in February for 5 to 7 nights and want to spend up to $2,000 per person, Trip Explorer might find you a $1,007 per night and per person package flying American Airlines to Curacao and staying at the Wave Hotel & Cafe.

And, when you click on the link, you navigate to an Expedia.com vacation packages page where Expedia also tries to upsell you on a more expensive trip ($1,625 per person) to the Renaissance Curacao Resort & Casino, which has an advertisement on the top of the vacation package listings.

Having a vacation inspiration tool such as Trip Explorer is becoming an ever-more popular feature for an online travel agency or airline these days. With an assist from Amadeus, Lufthansa has pioneered such features on some of its global websites.

Andrew Griffard, senior manager of merchandising at Expedia, says of Trip Explorer that “customer feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. They’ve given us plenty of great ideas for enhancements to the tool, which we are busy developing now.”

That’s because the American College of Chest Physicians published new guidelines designating “sitting in a window seat” on long-distance flights as one of the risk factors for deep vein thrombosis.

“Long-distance travelers sitting in a window seat tend to have limited mobility, which increases their risk for DVT,” the ACCP says.

Curiously, the ACCP lists “immobility” and “sitting in a window seat” as separate risk factors for DVT, a condition which can lead to a fatal blood clot in the lung.

The following are the risk factors associated with long-distance air travel, according to The Antithrombotic Therapy and Prevention of Thrombosis, 9th edition, American College of Chest Physicians Evidence-Based Clinical Practice Guidelines:

• previous DVT;

• malignancy;

• recent surgery or trauma;

• immobility;

• advanced age;

• estrogen use, including oral contraceptives;

• pregnancy;

• sitting in a window seat, and

• obesity.

In addition, even if you can’t afford extra legroom in coach on your flight, the ACCP disparaged the notion that economy class travel is a risk factor for DVT, or that business class is healthier than economy class.

“Traveling in economy class does not increase your risk for developing a blood clot, even during long-distance travel; however remaining immobile for long periods of time will,” says Mark Crowther, a medical doctor from the Department of Medicine, McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

The ACCP guidelines also indicate there is no evidence to support the notion that alcohol consumption or dehydration increase travelers’ risk of DVT.

On flights of six hours or longer, travelers who have an increased risk of DVT should move around frequently, stretch calf muscles, sit in an aisle seat, or use “below-knee graduated compression stockings,” the ACCP advises.

Taking aspirins or anticoagulant therapy should be avoided as a means of combating DVT on long-distance flights, the organization says.

Getting symptoms of DVT is rare, the ACCP says, but the possibility is strongest on flights of 8 to 10 hours or longer, the ACCP says.

“For travelers who are considered to be at particularly high risk for DVT/pulmonary embolism, the use of antithrombotic agents should be considered on an individual basis because the adverse effects may outweigh the benefits,” the ACCP says.

Most travelers who do get these symptoms have one or more risk factors, the ACCP says.

Note: Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

The flash sales site and Expedia partnered and launched hotel sales in July 2011. There had been some talk, including from Priceline CEO Jeffery Boyd, in particular, wondering whether Expedia was making a mistake in promoting a brand other than its own.

The two companies may provide some more information about how Groupon Getaways is doing in the next couple of days as they both release their fourth quarter and full-year earnings results, but for now, at least, Expedia appears to be all in.

When you select the Groupon Getaways tab on Expedia.com, you navigate to a Groupon Getaways page with hotel deals geared to your home region as a starting point.

Hotel deals and packages might include a one-night stay for two adults ($178) at the Westport Inn in Westport, Connecticut, an 11-day guided safari with airfare and meals for two adults and up to two kids (from $939) in Tanzania from Safari Ventures, or a five-night stay for two at the Nikki Beach Bungalow Resort with massage ($599) in Thailand.

Groupon Getaways comes with an Ask a Question feature for each deal which other online hotel sellers might consider emulating.

With Ask a Question, travelers can ask hotel management or other merchants questions about the property or the deal.

So if you’re considering buying the deal for the Mana Island Resort and Spa in Fiji, you can peruse more than 125 questions and answers about the property and the deal details, with most of the answers provided by someone from the property.

The questions and answers range from how to get to the property from the airport to costs associated with bringing three kids and availability dates.

Groupon spokeswoman Julie Mossler says Groupon began using the Ask a Question feature in 2009 and adopted it for Groupon Getaways soon after launch.

Many social travel sites, from Gogobot to World Nomads, have implemented question and answer formats, and Groupon’s twist — a question and answer setup between consumers and hotels — is a welcome addition.

There was no such thing as an iPad in 2004.

Maria Sharapova beat Serena Williams in two sets at Wimbledon that year.

And, in 2004, Kayak issued Blackberrys to all of its engineers so they could “communicate instantly 24/7,” according to a recent blog post.

Not that Kayak engineers getting Blackberrys as standard issue was as momentous an event as IBM exiting the PC business, but it was a sign of the times.

And, now the times have changed. Kayak announced that it is dropping support of its Blackberry app, meaning there will be no new features, updates or bug fixes.

“RIM [Research in Motion] was a smartphone pioneer and we thank them for what they’ve done, and wish them renewed success,” Kayak states. “BlackBerry was (and is) an amazing messaging platform. But it’s not working out to be a great channel for consumer mobile applications, which is what leads us to this sad post.”

It sounds like Kayak isn’t placing its bets on a RIM turnaround, although Robert Birge, Kayak’s chief marketing officer, says the company would reconsider support for its Blackberry app if RIM’s prospects change.

“We definitely want to support people who use BlackBerry but unfortunately RIM has been very unsuccessful in developing their platform for apps in anyway that makes it an attractive channel for a developer to invest,” Birge says. “It really was a simple cost/benefit decision — no/low growth, low usage per download, etc. Hopefully their updated mobile browser will make it easier for BlackBerry users to access services like Kayak via m.web.”

Kayak recently announced that its various apps have been downloaded more than 12 million times.

“We’ll invest resources against any successful platform,” Birge says. “Right now, we believe that iPhone and Android will be successful and hold out hope for Windows Phone.”

And, eight years from now … who knows.

Wait. Expedia recently spun off TripAdvisor so perhaps the axes can be sheathed.

OK, the statement about Expedia’s alleged undue influence over Priceline is tongue in cheek, but new research from Citi shows that Expedia was indeed the largest traffic source for Priceline with an 18% referral share in January 2012. And that mark represents increased clout when compared with January 2010 (15%) and January 2011 (16%).

Perhaps Priceline should reconsider throwing all that dough into Google and do a little more advertising on Expedia sites. (OK, the tongue’s wagging again.)

Mark Mahaney, managing director of Internet research for Citi Investment Research & Analysis, says Expedia’s influential role as a traffic referral source for Priceline “highlights the extent of comparison shopping that occurs in the online travel vertical.”

After Expedia, the leading sources of traffic for Priceline in January 2012 were the Kayak network (12%), Google sites (12%), Microsoft sites (9%) and Yahoo sites (6%), according to the Citi’s Annual ‘Net Influence Report.

In turn, Priceline and Orbitz Worldwide acted as a source of Expedia traffic at a pace of 7% and 4%, respectively, while Google sites (16%), Yahoo sites (7%) and Microsoft sites (6%) also chipped in as traffic drivers to Expedia in January 2012, the Citi research shows.

Among other online travel agencies, Orbitz’s top traffic driver was Google (14%), which just edged Expedia (13%) as a traffic source to Orbitz.

Other leading referral sites for Orbitz weren’t even close to Google and Expedia. Yahoo sites referred 5% of Orbitz’s traffic in January 2012, followed by the Kayak network and Microsoft sites, which were responsible for 4% each of the Orbitz traffic.

It is interesting that although Orbitz and Kayak have been at odds during the last couple of years over changes that Kayak made to its advertising practices, which Orbitz alleges violated a contractual exclusivity provision, Kayak has steadily acted as a referral source for Orbitz at a 4% clip over the last three January’s, the Citi research shows.

Citi breaks down Travelocity’s traffic-referral sources as Google sites (12%), Yahoo sites (8%), Expedia (7%), Micrsosoft sites (5%) and Priceline (2%).

Among other leading online sites in the U.S., Southwest Airlines doesn’t look to online travel agencies for referral traffic because the airline refuses to distribute its flights through the OTAs. Citi depicts Southwest’s leading traffic referral sources as Google (16%), Yahoo sites (15%) and Microsoft sites (7%).

When looking at the leading websites in the travel vertical, Google is the most influential source of traffic and has been slowly, but steadily, increasing its referral share from 12% in January 2010 to 13% in January 2011 and 14% in January 2012, the Citi research shows.

In addition to its gains in the travel vertical, Google has also been increasing its influence as a traffic referral source in the finance vertical (13%). But, Google has seen its influence wane somewhat in the media (22%), retail (15%), autos (14%) and health (15%) verticals.

JetBlue.com not only has a simplified and clean “look and feel,” but it also jumps on the personalization bandwagon by displaying fares from your most recent departure airports and real-time flight updates when your departure time nears.

And, a new Pick Me Up feature for the websites and mobile app enables you to send your itinerary, replete with directions to the airport, to the person retrieving you from your flight.

JetBlue also integrated Akamai technology into the redesign not only to enhance the websites’ speed, but also to enhance personalization with a targeting engine based on geo-location, travel history and preferences, the airline says.

And, Jetblue’s new iPhone app features a so-called “smart home screen,” which provides timely updates about your upcoming flight on the app’s home screen.

On the merchandising front, app users can view the DIRECTV schedule and SiriusXM Satellite Radio channel line-up for your upcoming flight.

And, signing into your TrueBlue loyalty program account makes both the websites and mobile app experience more personal, the airline says.

Digital agency Rokkan handled the redesigns and Double Encore served as JetBlue’s mobile app developer.

 American Express Global Business Travel surveyed nearly 100 of these businesses about their corporate travel policies and found several shocking gaps, including one related to mobile adoption.

“None of the travel policies addressed the use of mobile applications or even referenced tools they may have available for travelers to use on the road or when working remotely,” American Express states.

That is “none,” as in zero out of 100.

All agree that business travelers have been early adopters of mobile technologies for travel, and many of the surveyed corporations undoubtedly have developed or offer mobile tools for their employees.

But, it all went missing in their corporate travel policies.

“A successful travel policy should include rules for these resources and help travelers find and take advantage of them to save time and increase compliance,” American Express says.

Without referring to the mobile issue specifically, American Express Global Travel suggests that corporations should get employees involved and revisit travel policies for “relevancy.” If corporations do so, they undoubtedly will take up the mobile issue in their subsequent policies.

“Establish a policy team with representatives from all stakeholders, including those that can represent the traveler, and charge them with the maintenance of the travel policy,” American Express suggests. “Then communicate changes to travelers so everyone can stay current.”

The mobile gap in corporate travel policies wasn’t the only omission uncovered by the travel management company.

The American Express Global Business Travel survey also found:

• 80% of the policies failed to address reimbursement of ancillary fees for add-on purchases at hotel and car-rental companies, as well as bag fees and reservations changes;

• Only 12% of the policies covered traveler security issues; and

• 70% of the companies provided no specific guidelines on when it is appropriate to book a cheaper flight through a nonpreferred airline.

Fewer than one-third of the policies reviewed had been updated over the last year, the survey found.

Note: Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

The destination marketing organization is giving away tickets, dinners, hotel packages and other perks each day in February and, after “liking” the group’s Facebook page and entering some personal details, fans can return each day to enter the sweepstakes and be eligible for that day’s prize and to improve their chances of landing the grand prize, a red Vespa.

One way to look at it, with the goal being user engagement in social media, is that the DMO could have chosen to run the campaign in January because the month has 31 days instead of February’s 29.

On the other hand, shaking off the New Year’s hangover can be difficult, adding to the challenge of getting anything done marketing in January. And, at least 2012 is a leap year so you have that extra day in February to get involved with Facebook fans instead of the usual 28.

The timing and thrust of the sweepstakes is just fine because visitor research shows a getaway with a spouse or partner is the #1 reason for leisure visits to Philadelphia in January, February and March, says Cara Schneider, a spokeswoman for the tourism body.

In the first two days of the sweepstakes, the Philadelphia Facebook page picked up 2,271 likes and 3,046 sweepstakes entries. (People who already liked the page didn’t have to like it again to enter the sweepstakes.)

And, the page now has more than 108,000 fans.

“Our ultimate goal is ‘heads in beds,’ and 13 of the 29 dates involve a hotel stay or hotel restaurant,” says Schneider, who adds that the group wanted to “hit home a subtle ‘hotel’ message.”

So, the DMO has figured out a way to give a lift — or leap — to its Facebook page, with users opting in and perhaps viewing more news about greater Philadelphia and its tourism allures.

The 29 Nights of Dates is VisitPhilly’s first sweepstakes, although last summer it posted photo albums on Facebook with fans uploading images of themselves in a 3-D replica of Citizens Bank Park, the Major League Baseball stadium of the Philadelphia Phillies.

When a local tourism body gets involved in and creative on Facebook, you just have to “like” it.

During February, both the exterior and the interior of the subway shuttle, which runs from Times Square to Grand Central Station, has been decked out to appear like a Royal Caribbean ship.

The cruise line is calling it the Royal Shuttle.

And, Royal Caribbean International has created a photo album on its Facebook page and has asked fans to upload photos of the shuttle and to tweet them to @RoyalCaribbean, with the hashtag #RoyalShuttle. Here are a few of the images:

Where else can you step off your stateroom balcony right into Grand Central Station?

The marketing blitz comes at a sensitive time for Royal Caribbean, which like Carnival Corp., has seen cruise bookings plunge over the last few weeks because of the Costa Concordia disaster.

Costa is a Carnival brand, but it has hurt bookings for Royal Caribbean and other lines nonetheless.

While booking volumes for Royal Caribbean have declined “by low to mid-teen percentages” in North America, Royal Caribbean says, the drop-off in European bookings has been “higher.”

Royal Caribbean attributes booking declines in Europe, which “vary significantly by country,” to extensive media coverage in the region about the tragedy off the Italian coast.

The fallout from the January 13 Costa Concordia accident occurs during Wave Season, the busiest time of the year for the cruise industry.

Many cruise lines and travel agencies curtailed marketing immediately after the incident, but now they are getting back into gear.

Clearly, if there was any query fallout for Kayak from the All American Muslim controversy in December, it was short-lived.

The jump to 100 million requests for travel information on Kayak sites and through its mobile apps in January was apparently a substantial increase considering that the travel metasearch company previously revealed it averaged 75.4 million queries per month for the first nine months of 2011.

Kayak was on TV with its advertisements a lot in January and assuredly this helped it reach the milestone.

“Thanks for deciding to go meet face-to-face instead of using a Web cam,” a Kayak blog post quipped about the 100 million mark.

And, if you are keeping count, Kayak says its mobile apps have been downloaded more than 12 million times through January 2012.

In November 2011, in its most recent financial filing in connection with a potential IPO, Kayak stated that about 7% of user queries during the first three quarters of 2011 “resulted from traffic-generating arrangements” with search engines, such as Google.

Kayak’s traffic-generating arrangement with Google apparently is bearing fruit as US searches for “Kayak flights” leapfrogged 190% in the previous 12 months, Google says.

And, that search pace eclipsed increases for other flight-related searches for online travel agency, metasearch and airline brands in the US on Google. Consider these increases for travel-brand-related flight searches:

• Expedia flights, 110%,

• Google flights, 90%,

• Priceline flights, 70%, and

• JetBlue flights, 50%.

And, Google users continue to look for flight-search bargains. Consider the increases for cheap-flight-related searches:

• Super cheap flights, 140%,

• Cheap airline tickets, more than 50%,

• Cheap Florida flights, 40%, and

•  Cheapest flights, 40%.

Who and what are you (including personnel and backgrounds)?

Guestmob is a next generation opaque hotel booking system that uses big data, social data and predictive analytics to re-invent the model pioneered by Priceline/Hotwire.

Our company was formed over a year ago by Yann Ngongang, CEO (former-CEO, eSmog – Partner, Mercer/Microsoft, Bell Labs,other startups, Stanford MBA); Alan Kaiser, CTO (former Chief Architect, Liberate Technologies, other startups, PhD/CS), Damien Keller, Director Hotel Ops (Dir of Sales, Joie de Vivre group)

What financial support did you have to launch the business?

We raised a seed round last summer from Eric Chen (co-founder Tinyprints, investor Palantir), Fabrice Grinda (CEO, OLX), Jose Marin (Chairman ViajaNet, investor eDreams), Ron Rofe, Vaizra fund (vkonkatke.com/facebook of Russia), Joe Lonsdale (co-founder, Palantir), and many others.

What problem are you trying to solve?

For consumers, we offer a much more flexible opaque booking solution. Guests know exactly what hotels they’re getting, and our bookings are refundable: no secret hotel, no bidding, no gimmick!

Our prices are lower than published rates by up to 50%: we track and show the numbers. For hotels, in addition to helping with yield management/filling empty rooms, we solve a timing problem around discounts.

Describe the business, core products and services?

Guestmob core innovation lies in the concept of hotel collections, coupled with a magic pricing algorithm.

Our team spends hours reviewing & curating hotels into collections of 4-8hotels of the same class/location/ratings – we tend to eliminate 30-50% of hotels based on quality.

Then our pricing engine uses an adaptive algorithm to determine day by day the appropriate discounted price at which we will accept booking and guarantee customers a room at one of the hotels in the collection.

These prices tend to be 20-50% lower than the published prices of any hotel in the collection.

The pricing system anticipates the level of discount we are to get from hotels during our regular mob auctions.
Sometimes, we loose money on these transactions, but we guarantee our guests a booking at one of the hotels in the collection.

We see our company as a pricing technology company, as we’re applying the supply & demand science from airlines to hotels. But we do not sell cheap rooms.

We focus on building quality baskets of hotels and optimize for price within these baskets.

Who are your key customers and users at launch?

At a top level, we are going after hotel shoppers with a little flexibility on hotel choices. We serve value-driven customers, but we remove all the friction points of current opaque sites: non-refundable bookings, secret hotels, last minute mobile only, complex bidding.

We’re still learning exactly who that customer profile is.

But based on our initial launch in San Francisco this past fall, lots of people loved our offerings and they tended to book longer stays, well in advance, and were more methodical about finding discounts because they were booking more room-nights.

Did you have customers validate your idea before investors?

We spent lots of time surveying & talking to prior customers of companies like Hotwire & Priceline, lots of time talking to major hotel managers and investors to also understand how to position ourselves effectively for them.

What is the business AND revenue model, strategy for profitability?

We have a traditional merchant model where our revenue is the delta between the discounted price we get from customers, and the mob price we pay to hotels after auctions.

SWOT analysis – strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats?

Strengths:

• Experienced startup guys
• Strong technology
• Disruptive model

Weaknesses:

• Team needs to be rounded up
• Team’s ability to scale fast
• Potential complexity of our system for consumers

Opportunities:

• Big data
• Social data and machine learning
• Consumers becoming savvy

Threats:

• Traditional online travel agencies (OTA) expanding their opaque-type models such as the Expedia-Groupon partnership

Who advised you your idea isn’t going to be successful and why didn’t you listen to them?

Some experienced OTA executives were most skeptical of our model, especially those that fought the battles of the past 10years.

While we have to simplify, simplify, simplify, we stayed the course because our platform brings significant/measurable benefits to consumers, as well as hoteliers.

What is your success metric 12 months from now?

In a year, we will continue to grow rapidly, and will not limit ourselves to the US market.

NB: TLabs Showcase is part of the wider TLabs project from Tnooz.

The visual social network, which enables you to “pin” images to your pinboard and Facebook Timeline from around the Web, and share them with your friends and others, has become an emerging force and was the subject of a brief discussion during an Association of Travel Marketing Executives panel on 2012 travel forecasts in Manhattan today.

Will droves of travelers one day do their travel planning, sharing inspirational images, on Pinterest, and will it provide leads to airlines, hotels, cruise lines and online travel agencies?

After ATME chairman Henry Harteveldt asked the panelists about their take on Google, Facebook, Apple and Pinterest entering the travel arena, Dennis Corrigan, vice president of sales and revenue management at JetBlue, noted that “a lot of our customers are Gen Y and we want to be where they are.”

Corrigan noted that Google+ recently introduced corporate pages ”and as Pinterest starts to go down that road, we’ll be there, too.”

JetBlue is playing catch-up in the mobile arena — Corrigan hinted that a mobile app will be forthcoming — and apparently has its eyes on Pinterest in the event that it gets some real travel juice.

A Pinterest blog post states that “people use Pinterest to plan their vacations, redecorate their homes, and create menus for holiday dinners.”

By some accounts, Pinterest is larger than Google+ and people already are strategizing about how companies can use it as a marketing vehicle.

Other ATME panelists (from left: Scott Hyden of Travelport GDS; Terry Dale of USTOA; Greg Brown of Choice Hotels; Dennis Corrigan of JetBlue, and Joe Byrne of Tourism Ireland) discussed the emergence of new travel gatekeepers, as well.

Joe Byrne, executive vice president, North America, of Tourism Ireland, said he looks as these social networks, search engines and Apple as “important shopping windows and secondly they are distributors.”

Google wants to be part of the transaction in travel, which already is a low-margin business, Byrne said.

“That distribution cost, which doesn’t exist today, is troubling from my standpoint,” said Byrne, who also expressed concerns about “more fragmentation.”

But, Scott Hyden, vice president of sales in the US and Canada for Travelport GDS, argued that travel agencies are split on Google’s travel efforts and aren’t necessarily having nightmares over the prospect.

“Some people feel, just bring it on, bring on another competitor if they can provide another qualified lead,” Hyden said.

“For every FairSearch member there is, there is another competitor who isn’t scared,” Hyden said, referring to the Google opposition group.

On other tech-related matters, Hyden recalled how Travelport partnered with Worldmate on an itinerary management service in 2010, but said “it didn’t take off as much in corporate travel as we expected.”

He said these types of services have potential for business travelers seeking to pay a bag fee and for other services while they are in transit.

“But, until we get to the place that there is real booking capability, the itinerary management stuff has settled out,” Hyden said.

Both Greg Brown, vice president, loyalty, Choice Hotels, and Byrne of Tourism Ireland spoke of the importance of geo-targeting.

“Today’s retirees are not your father’s retirees,” said Brown, adding that they are more “digitally inclined.”

“This allows you to be a lot more personalized, a lot more targeted, a lot more direct,” Brown said.

Tourism Ireland, meanwhile, is allocating more than 40% of its marketing budget in 2012 for digital marketing and has identified 15 US cities as its “honey pots,” Byrne says.

The tourism body is trying to “focus on the right people” in these select markets, Byrne says, adding, “if you live in the 16th city you don’t see us.”

Unless, of course, a Pinterest user from that 16th city pins a photo of Kilarney, Ireland, and shares it with friends.

CheapAir, a California-based online travel agency, began placing icons next to flight choices to document which flights have these in-flight entertainment amenities — and which flights don’t.

The feature works for both domestic US and international flights.

If you search for a Las Vegas-San Francisco flight Feb. 14 to Feb. 21, for instance, CheapAir shows you that numerous Virgin America flights come with Wi-Fi, movies on-demand and live TV.

That Virgin America flights max out on in-flight entertainment options won’t shock its regular passengers because the airline is known for these features.

CheapAir’s new features come in more handy for airlines where some flights have Wi-Fi or movies and others don’t.

For example, in the following image you’ll see some US Airways flights from Las Vegas to Atlanta come with Wi-Fi and others don’t. Similarly, some Frontier flights have live TV and others are blacked out.

You’ll also observe a star icon next to Air Tran flight 773. CheapAir designates that flight as its Top Pick “based on price, total travel time, on-time percentage, airline ratings, comfort and on-board amenities.”

It’s all part of a CheapAir effort to make flight search more transparent.

And, with its Top Picks, CheapAir is taking a page from Hipmunk’s Agony Index, although CheapAir is handling it in a different way.

“Often, there are many flights that are roughly the same price, but there might be a huge difference in the onboard product,” says Jeff Klee, CEO of CheapAir.com. “In the past, travelers would have to do serious research to find out all these details, which can be incredibly frustrating and time consuming. But, now we’ve made it easy to compare in-flight amenities by having all the information in one place.”

The move comes as Carnival is trying to spur bookings and efficiencies during the all-important Wave Season and after a booking slump created by the Costa Concordia disaster.

Agents would earn points to redeem prizes if they carry out various activities on GoCCL.com or “GDSs,” which are defined as Amadeus, Sabre Cruises, Revelex, Travelport Cruise and Tour, FocalPoint or LeisureShopper.

Carnival is looking to have agents use these products for:

• New online bookings;

• Online payments;

• Servicing existing reservations, and

• Finishing Carnival Cruise Lines University training on GoCCL.com.

Carnival Cruise Lines, Princess Cruises and Holland America Line since late 2010 have been pushing agents to conduct more of their business online and Carnival’s new Travel Partner Rewards Program ups the ante.

In other cruise news, Spirit Airlines entered into a private label partnership with World Travel Holdings  to create Spirit Cruises, which offers sailings from nearly 20 cruise lines.

Members of the airline’s Free Spirit frequent flyer program would get an introductory offer of 15,000 award miles per cruise booking, Spirit and WTH say.

But, at least I wasn’t the only one.

The death of William Shatner’s The Negotiator character stoked some memories.

It was April 2005 in the Norwalk, Connecticut, office of Priceline CEO Jeffery Boyd and he was explaining the company’s strategic shift from being primarily an opaque seller of merchant hotel inventory through its Name Your Own Price service into a full-fledged retailer of air, hotel and car inventory.

More than a year earlier Priceline had debuted airline tickets on a retail basis and now it was adding hotels and cars so it could take on the then-much larger online travel agencies, Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz.

At the time, Priceline crunched only about 13% of the gross bookings that Expedia did, and Boyd said that day that Travelocity’s and Orbitz’s gross bookings were about twice that of Priceline’s.

So, the smallest of the four was going to make its move to become a full-service OTA and play with the big boys and girls.

And, Boyd thought there was no reason there couldn’t be a Big Four instead of a Big Three.

It’s unclear how much Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz heeded the threat, but Boyd clearly laid out the blueprint: Priceline would become a full-service OTA and expand through organic growth and acquisitions.

“Retail airline tickets was a big piece of that,” said Boyd, referring to a growth spurt in 2004. “If the new product launch of hotels is anywhere near as successful, I would expect our business would gain share and continue to gain share as we have done historically.”

Priceline had already acquired Active Hotels, would scoop up Bookings B.V. in July 2005, and tack on Agoda a couple of years after that as the OTA engineered a Europe and Asia marketshare grab in hotels.

Back in April 2005, however, the other OTAs were not surprised or particularly concerned about Priceline getting into the retail hotel business.

After all, they were focused primarily on the merchant model for hotel sales and were bigger and badder.

Michelle Peluso, then-CEO of Travelocity, said it made sense for Priceline to expand beyond Name Your Own Price, but Travelocity would have advantages because it could count on the resources of parent-company Sabre.

And, an Expedia spokesman said the company preferred its multi-brand approach — Hotwire for opaque hotels and Expedia for merchant and published rates — to Priceline’s tack of stitching it all together.

The Expedia spokesman wondered whether Priceline’s retail offering would cannibalize its opaque hotels business.

Boyd said Priceline had initially been concerned when it launched retail air that it would dilute the company’s opaque air business, but it found retail air brought incremental bookings.

Fast-forward to 2012 and Priceline, riding its global hotel offering, has a $26.3 billion market cap compared with the recently TripAdvisor-less Expedia at $4.7 billion.

In 2005, did Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz see all this coming?

Perhaps even Priceline would have been hard-pressed to predict the depth of its success.

Were the three other OTAs complacent in the beginning?

Were they over-confident based on their parentage or were they reading their own press clippings too closely?

Priceline and others undoubtedly will learn from all of this online travel history.

They should be cautious and cognizant that they shouldn’t count out Expedia, which apparently has fixed up its global technology platform, and has allied itself with Groupon and boasts of an exclusive agreement with AirAsia.

Sometimes online travel history — or perhaps we should say mobile-travel or social-travel history — unfolds before your eyes and you don’t recognize it right away.

There are tons of travel startups which have outlined their strategies in the Tnooz TLabs Showcase.

Is there a travel startup out there laying out its battle plan, calmly articulating how it will survive and thrive, and we just can’t recognize it through all of the noise?

Many people didn’t take Priceline seriously, either.