The round also included previous investors in the company, Thayer Ventures and Baroda Ventures.

ID90T specialises in building SaaS-based systems for airline to help reduce costs around ticketing and assist in booking employees through various discounts on routes.

The company already works with the likes of United, Aeroflot and Alaska Airlines.

The latest round of funding will be used to build out additional features to its suite of services as well as increae sales and marketing activity.

ID90 (as it is also known on its airline employee-facing services) launched in 2003 with an interline fare calculator.

Other tools now include a employee discounting tool, interline and online ticketing service and listing service for airlines to include their industry employee discounts.

We’re very proud of hitting this mark with our mixture of news, analysis, opinion and data (most of it original content, with a few bits and pieces from our recent PublishThis initiative – Talking Other Tech – thrown in for good measure) within just 3.5 years and would like to thank you all for your loyal support.

Anyway, we’re not usually ones to blow our own trumpet constantly, but we thought we’d point out some data-points and other factoids for you to mull over with your Monday morning/afternoon cup of coffee/tea/margarita…

• An average of six new articles every day.

• Facebook page (8,500 fans and counting) reach in the past two months: 40.5% are female, 57.7% male… London is the most popular city for folk “liking” our stories on Facebook, followed quickly by New York, San Francisco and Moscow… 11,500 individuals every week are seeing content from Tnooz on their timeline.

• 530+ new businesses featured as a TLabs Showcase of up and coming travel startups.

• Around 33,000 comments since we started, an average of four comments per article. How’s that for an engaged audience! However, this article about travel bloggers remains the most commented with 102.

• Average number of times a week we receive a pitch for a guest article: 24. We always go back with a link to this somewhat pointed post explaining Tnooz’s strategy on guest articles (some of the replies we get are hilarious, so it’s worth two seconds of our time responding).

NB: Eight x 1,000 notes image Shutterstock.

The Austria-based startup (TLabs here) has won the undisclosed angel round from Blachford and Jörg Trouvain (former CEO of HolidayCheck, Christoph Prinz (ex-f:wz aviation system provider which sold to Sabre), Markus Wagner of Vienna incubator i5invest and Speed Invest, an Austrian angel fund.

The investment will allow TourRadar to expand its consumer-facing services to compliment its existing B2B social and mobile applications.

The company currently works with around 500 tour operators in 220 countries around the world, giving it approximately 20,000 tours on the portfolio.

The push into B2C comes as the marketplace for tours and activities continues to heat up in recent months following GetYourGuide’s $14 million injection from Spark Capital and Highland Capital Partners Europe.

Pittman says:

“Digitalising, contextualising and shortening the sales process of multi-day tours (so not relying on phone calls) has not yet been successfully done and is something TourRadar is addressing for all operators (niche and multi-national operators).”

Blachford, Trouvain and Speed Invest’s Daniel Keiper-Knorr will join Sebastian Heinzel (founder of social travel guide Tripwolf) on TourRadar’s Advisory Board.

Whilst Salesforce.com, arguably the first true SaaS product built from the ground up, gets much of the attention as the most successful company within one of the trio of concepts, spare a thought for the platform and infrastructure guys as they continue to grow and, indeed, often baffle technicians as to their true definition.

This handy infographic from ProfitBricks may help:

And what about all those fabulous new pals children would make when on their annual holiday? Friends for life, a few teenage holiday romances thrown in for good measure – all a far cry from the daily grind at home.

Right?

It probably (and hopefully) still happens, of course, but it appears that parents are struggling to turn off from their own digital lives when on a trip and are also continuing to feed the tech habits of their children.

Online travel agency BonVoyage asked almost 1,300 British travelling adults (aged over 25, with at least one child) and found that two-thirds take gadgets away on a trip “specifically to babysit their children”.

The average number of devices hauled overseas (for the sole purpose of keeping kids away from, err, enjoying themselves and seeing the world) was three per family for a one-week trip.

The most popular item taken away is the tablet computer (iPad et al) at 51%, with kid smartphones (43%), games consoles (41%) and laptops (32%) also featuring.

Sadly, the average amount of time spent playing with the gadgets was two hours per day, with one in five parents admitting they allowed kids to use technology “for as long as they like”.

There is hope, however (!) – 78% of parents in the study claim their children are not playing with devices for as long as they do when they are back at home.

NB: Child tablet beach image via Shutterstock.

So we took up a challenge laid down by OpenJaw Technologies to peer ahead into what the world of travel retailing could be like in the years to come.

The result was a 45-minute speech at the Ireland-based company’s annual conference for customers in Dublin last week.

The slides for the presentation (t-Retailing 2023 – A Future You Will Create?) are included below, but here is a brief summary:

We can presume that as ancillary products because increasingly important to travel suppliers and intermediaries, then how those products are sold will become more like other retailers on the web.

Over time, consumers will be faced more than ever with a range of services and functionality on travel websites and other devices which help push such as products.

This will be a natural evolution and more than likely will help rather than hinder the travel shopping, buying and sharing ecosystem.

Will certain demographics or age groups accept this evolution more than others? Probably not – the days of one generation being more tech-savvy than other are over – the only wrinkle in the argument is that younger consumers are already interacting with brands in a different way to, say, Baby Boomers or kids of the 70s and 80s.

Think touch interfaces, rather than keyboard or point-or-click.

There are two distinct process that will affect the development and evolution of travel retailing:

• in the B2C world it is around improving the ability by the user to manage their own trips and inventory, being served with better and more relevant products, improved up-selling tools and massively enhanced online user experience.
• in the B2B world the focus is on utilising Big Data techniques to learn more about customers, mining the social graph, being more flexible with partnerships with other entities around the industry (sharing knowledge and data are key) and pushing consumers into valuable and worthwhile loyalty schemes.

Here are some examples of how all this might evolve in the years to come:

NB: Disclosure - author was a guest of OpenJaw Technologies, which supplied travel/accommodation during the event.

TripAdvisor confirmed in January this year that pilots of the new service were under way for both mobile and desktop versions of the site, with full roll-out expected in a few months.

With the metasearch tools now fully integrated into the existing site, CEO and co-founder Steve Kaufer has taken the obvious and sarcastic step of apologising to visitors for years of serving them with countless pop-up ads for prices from hotel and online travel agency partners.

“Our bad. We want to help travellers plan and have the perfect trip, not drive them crazy with endless annoying pop-ups before they’ve booked it.”

Kaufer says the move “was the most logical step in the evolution of TripAdvisor”, but a fully functioning metasearch for hotels also comes as Google continues to make some headway with its Hotel Finder service and online travel agencies such as Priceline and Expedia eye the media model with their Kayak and Trivago deals respectively.

What the TripAdvisor metasearch has which others have less ability to do is deep integration with existing hotel reviews – for example, a number of filters allow users to obtain results not only by the overall rating from members but also by whether it is ideal for business travellers, families or those looking for a luxury or romantic stay.

Holiday rentals are also included in the platform and the Trip Friends functionality so users can see immediately if any of their Facebook friends have stayed in a property listed or elsewhere in a destination.

TripAdvisor launched a flight search tool in 2009.

American Airlines is opening up its Admiral Club services for 24 hours to anyone with a score of 55 or higher on the social media measurement service Klout.

Klout works out how “influential” an individual is by examining their presence in a range of social networks (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Foursquare, etc) and how they share content and engage with other users.

So, for example, CNN leads the media organisations with a Klout Score of 99, whilst Bloomberg has 88; comedians Stephen Fry and Steve Carell have 90 and 86 respectively; in the travel world, blogger Matt Kepnes is at 72, Jen Leo at 65, Henry Hartveldt at 61.

You get the idea.

American Airlines is not alone – Cathay Pacific and Virgin America have both played with the Klout model.

American’s lounge access promotion works well on a number of levels: it gets all the social-loving and Klout-obsessed media and blogs writing about the project; it demonstrates to the wider industry how in tune it is with a buzzy social media site; and will probably introduce a raft of new people to its normally rather exclusive services.

And therein, some suggest, lies a potential problem.

Not in my backyard

Should apparent influence in various social media channels give a passenger the same perks (i.e. access to a classy lounge) as someone who has, say, paid north of $3,000 for an air ticket?

It would appear not to some, thus the earlier comment in the opening line about having to share such facilities with folk not from these parts.

For American Airlines and others, perhaps they all see the trade-off in populating their normally exclusive services with social media-types and other celebrities as a worthwhile endeavour, despite potentially upsetting their regular, high-spending travellers?

Given that the AA offer is just a 24-hour pass to its Admiral Lounge, members will arguably either not realise or indeed care that they are hanging out with various Twitter and Facebook maniacs.

In a few months it will, of course, be interesting to see how the AA project has worked out.

For example:

• How many of those given access to the lounges did actually tweet about its presumed brilliance or share pictures around their respective social networks?
• What was the overall ROI of the initiative?
• Did any of those taking up the offer decide to become fully fledged members of its loyalty programme?

But perhaps a bigger question revolves around what REALLY is social media influence and does it have any long time value?

The idea behind the Klout system, depending on who you ask, is either knee-tremblingly awesome (!) or a complete waste of time, especially when the subjects users are supposedly influential in are examined.

The platform can be gamed (giving people the nod – a credit – for a particular subject matter is dead easy) and the results are often weird to say the least.

[NB: the author was hugely influential, according to Klout, in "Lady Gaga" and "obesity" for a ridiculous length of time despite never having mentioned either in the two channels - Facebook and Twitter - that the service monitors]

But Klout remains wildly popular and is clearly seen as a tool worth using by brands to get their message or services out to, well, influential people.

What’s your impression?

Related directly to the Klout system is the concept of “social media impressions”.

The term is used extensively by all sorts of organisations and individuals these days as a way of illustrating the apparent reach of activity in social media.

For example, content and other activity from last weekend’s TBEX blogger conference in Canada supposedly had a “reach” of 19 million.

Meanwhile, the weekly #TTOT Twitter chat says it “reaches up to more than two million users” and achieves “impressions” of around 30 million.

The metric is usually worked out by calculating the number of people tweeting (or retweeting) with a particular hashtag, then counting the number of followers each has and then multiplying it by the number of tweets.

Going by the same formula, the reporting team members and the main account at Tnooz mentioning this article just once will give it upwards of 40,000 “impressions” on Twitter – this is before anyone amongst the general readership decides to do the same.

If, for example, just the Lonely Planet decided to mention the story in a tweet then the impression count would soar to 1.12 million.

For fear of doing Tnooz a disservice, using the example above, our stories are not being read by well over a million individuals every time. And even without LP’s involvement, impression figures based on Twitter “reach” are nowhere near the actual hits on an article.

But it’s a currency, especially when figures with the word “million” at end of them materialise, which sounds jaw-droppingly impressive, so it is therefore no surprise that is being used increasingly by marketers or PRs to demonstrate the impact of a message or conversation.

In short, however: it is completely impossible to say an “impression” is actually anything of value at all. It would be the most connected and engaged conversation of all time if every follower of an individual just happens to be logged on… reading every tweet… constantly.

Presumably most people can see beyond the mountain of zeros at the end of such figures to realise what is going on – it is, after all, just playing around with figures.

But as the trend grows, it demonstrates two things:

• So-called social media influence and impressions, as concepts and measurable marketing tools, remain as shaky as this author’s knowledge of Lady Gaga.
• There is a real and urgent need for a more robust way of obtaining the GENUINE impact of activity in social media.

Until then, don’t believe the hype.

NB: Influence image via Shutterstock.

NB2: Author’s Klout score, for the record, is currently 66. Other Klout scores correct at time of writing.

Either way, often travel bloggers – especially those constantly on the road – have an interesting story to tell as their circumstances and the way they interact with readers and the industry is sometimes vastly different to so-called traditional writers in the mainstream media.

Following Keith Jenkins of VelvetEscape’s turn at a TEDx in Holland a while back, Uncornered Market‘s story (from husband and wife team, Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott) is also an interesting one.

Slightly whimsical in places, but interesting nonetheless to hear how a couple can put themselves on the road in 75 countries for over six years… and survive.

Maybe getting a TED gig is the new benchmark for success in the travel blogging community?

Just 0.13% market share separates the pair as third placed Expedia loses 1% of its own between March and April this year.

In the airline category, Virgin Australia continues to lose market share and is now some 10.5% behind market leader Qantas.

Most popular travel websites in Australia for April 2013:

Agency

Rank	Website	Domain	Percentage of Visits	Previous Position
1	Wotif.com	www.wotif.com	12.59%	1
2	Webjet Australia	www.webjet.com.au	12.46%	2
3	Expedia Australia	www.expedia.com.au	8.53%	3
4	Flight Centre	www.flightcentre.com.au	6.84%	4
5	Lastminute.com.au	www.lastminute.com.au	5.54%	5
6	Skyscanner Australia	www.skyscanner.com.au	2.72%	7
7	Best Flights	www.bestflights.com.au	2.39%	6
8	ZUJI Australia	www.zuji.com	2.15%	8
9	BYOjet	www.byojet.com	1.95%	9
10	au.edreams.com	au.edreams.com	1.89%	10

Destinations and Accommodation

Rank	Website	Domain	Percentage of Visits	Previous Position
1	TripAdvisor - Australia	www.tripadvisor.com.au	12.79%	1
2	Booking.com	www.booking.com	7.31%	2
3	TripAdvisor	www.tripadvisor.com	4.42%	3
4	Stayz	www.stayz.com.au	3.16%	4
5	Agoda Australia	www.agoda.com.au	3.09%	5
6	Agoda.com	www.agoda.com	2.01%	7
7	Hotels.com	www.hotels.com	1.98%	6
8	Viator	www.viator.com	1.85%	8
9	Totaltravel.com	www.totaltravel.com	1.36%	9
10	Lonely Planet	www.lonelyplanet.com	1.23%	10

Airlines

Rank	Website	Domain	Percentage of Visits	Previous Position
1	Qantas	www.qantas.com.au	23.07%	1
2	Jetstar	www.jetstar.com	18.95%	2
3	Virgin Australia	www.virginaustralia.com	12.55%	3
4	Tiger Airways	www.tigerairways.com	6.87%	4
5	AirAsia	www.airasia.com	6.11%	5
6	Emirates	www.emirates.com	4.00%	6
7	Singapore Airlines	www.singaporeair.com	3.04%	7
8	Air New Zealand - Australia	www.airnz.com.au	2.58%	8
9	Malaysia Airlines	www.malaysiaairlines.com	2.37%	-
10	FlyScoot.com	www.flyscoot.com	1.78%	10

Search Terms

Rank	Search Term	Percentage of Clicks	Percentage Paid	Percentage Organic	Previous Position
1	google maps	1.35%	0.11%	99.89%	2
2	jetstar	1.17%	0.91%	99.09%	1
3	qantas	1.15%	20.16%	79.84%	3
4	webjet	0.69%	7.77%	92.23%	4
5	tiger airways	0.59%	21.62%	78.38%	7
6	maps	0.55%	0.07%	99.93%	6
7	wotif	0.47%	2.36%	77.64%	5
8	flight centre	0.47%	48.39%	51.61%	8
9	virgin airlines	0.36%	64.29%	35.71%	9
10	singapore airlines	0.36%	18.21%	79.79%	-

NB: Data courtesy of Experian Hitwise

NB2: Uluru image via Shutterstock.

The tongue-in-cheek and rather funny clip is aimed primarily at English-speaking tourists (and highlights the fact that many Dutch speak the language extremely well) and plays on the idea that the country is at the top end of the cool scale.

The video part of a wider campaign – “The Original Cool” – where visitors will be encouraged to get involved with its Facebook page and “share the cool” through the usual pictures and messages.

The video was created by the Netherlands Board of Tourism and Conventions, KLM, Amsterdam Schiphol Airport and Amsterdam Marketing.

Priceline-owned Booking.com is less than 5% market share behind the user review site after adding another 0.25% to its tally between March and April this year.

It is now over 1% ahead of Hotels.com, which lost 0.25% of its own over the same period.

Most popular travel websites in the US for April 2013:

Agency

Rank	Website	Domain	Percentage of Visits	Previous Position
1	Expedia	www.expedia.com	14.10%	1
2	Priceline.com	www.priceline.com	10.77%	2
3	Travelocity	www.travelocity.com	7.22%	3
4	Kayak	www.kayak.com	6.77%	4
5	CheapOair	www.cheapoair.com	6.11%	6
6	Hotwire	www.hotwire.com	5.69%	7
7	Orbitz	www.orbitz.com	5.68%	5
8	Yahoo! Travel	travel.yahoo.com	4.83%	8
9	Travelzoo	www.travelzoo.com	3.25%	10
10	bookingbuddy	www.bookingbuddy.com	3.00%	9

Destinations and Accommodation

Rank	Website	Domain	Percentage of Visits	Previous Position
1	TripAdvisor	www.tripadvisor.com	9.09%	1
2	Booking.com	www.booking.com	4.38%	2
3	Hotels.com	www.hotels.com	3.34%	3
4	Marriott International	www.marriott.com	2.80%	4
5	Hilton Hotels Online	www.hilton.com	2.43%	5
6	Vacation Rentals by Owner	www.vrbo.com	2.08%	6
7	InterContinental Hotels Group	www.ichotelsgroup.com	2.07%	7
8	Carnival Cruise Lines	www.carnival.com	1.96%	8
9	Choice Hotels International	www.choicehotels.com	1.33%	10
10	Walt Disney World	disneyworld.disney.go.com	1.21%	9

Airlines

Rank	Website	Domain	Percentage of Visits	Previous Position
1	Southwest Airlines	www.southwest.com	23.54%	1
2	Delta Air Lines	www.delta.com	12.85%	2
3	United Airlines	www.united.com	10.51%	3
4	American Airlines	www.aa.com	9.21%	4
5	JetBlue Airways	www.jetblue.com	7.32%	5
6	US Airways	www.usairways.com	5.36%	6
7	AirTran Airways	www.airtran.com	3.71%	7
8	Spirit Airlines	www.spiritair.com	3.47%	9
9	Allegiant Air	www.allegiantair.com	2.79%	8
10	Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air	www.alaskaair.com	2.77%	10

Travel search terms

Rank	Search Term	Percentage of Clicks	Percentage Paid	Percentage Organic	Previous Position
1	mapquest	3.80%	0.21%	99.79%	1
2	google maps	2.10%	0.34%	99.66%	2
3	southwest airlines	1.15%	30.09%	69.91%	3
4	maps	0.86%	0.02%	99.98%	5
5	mapquest driving directions	0.81%	1.26%	98.74%	4
6	expedia	0.72%	50.44%	49.56%	7
7	united airlines	0.71%	3.74%	96.26%	6
8	american airlines	0.54%	10.78%	89.22%	9
9	travelocity	0.52%	58.62%	41.38%	10
10	southwest	0.50%	19.20%	80.80%	-

NB: Data couresy of Experian Hitwise

Staff.com, a large recruitment firm which finds jobs for candidates in its homeland as well as the UK, US and Canada, produced an infographic (below) this week to share its predictions of the demise of a string of jobs.

Saying travel agents are going to be heading the same way as the dinosaurs has been on the lips of commentators for years, especially when retail agents’ online counterparts gained prominence in the late-1990s and 2000s.

Staff.com’s reason is as follows:

“When you visit a travel website, you speak into the computer and then the website will any questions they have to clarify your travel schedule. 30 seconds later it finds the cheapest alternatives.”

Many will say the prediction probably shows a lack of knowledge of how agents operate and will argue that even with voice-recognition technology, their role will never totally disappear. It will just evolve.

The job agency also suggests air traffic controllers will be consigned to the dustbin by 2038, with aircraft controlled by artificial intelligence.

Given the incredibly high protocols surrounding air safety, it seems, even in 25 years there will be some kind of human oversight in the world of ATC.

Anyway, here is the infographic:

The programme (aired globally on BBC World and BBC News in the UK last weekend) followed a recent report from HRS which discovered around two-thirds of properties out of its 125,000 portfolio in Europe are now offering free connections to customers.

The issue has evolved in the last year or so on from the previous black and white arguments (yes or no) to one based on the quality of the wifi. There is, after all, no point in offering free wifi if it takes an age to do anything with it once a traveller is connected.

Here is the segment from the show (including a section where we talk to presenter Keith Wallace about the GlobalGig portable wifi unit currently being road-tested for our TCritic series):

Not at all, in other words (we hasten to add).

Joe Public has learned over the years that anyone blindly offering to send them $20 million dollars if they deposit X amount in an overseas account is quite clearly pulling their leg.

But what about scams that operate within an industry, preying on customers and attempting to get into mix of the every-day workings of, say, the travel sector?

Indeed, what happens if a large, high-profile industry body suddenly sends an email asking for the settlement of a bill, often for arguably just a nominal amount (nowhere near the $20 million windfall being offered from those supposedly operating out of Africa)?

This type of scam is happening right now, using knowledge of the inner workings of high-profile international trade body IATA.

It starts like this:

Given that Tnooz is not an “airline code holder” with IATA, such correspondence from the industry group obviously set a few alarms bells ringing.

But imagine if the recipient was not a media brand and, instead, a customer that has applied for the “airline accounting code and airline prefix code” from IATA (guidelines and application form here).

The email comes from an .org email address (IATA-payment.org) and has valid contact details for the organisation’s offices in Montreal, Canada.

The reason for the redaction in the image above is that it corresponds exactly with that of a genuine employee in the accounts department at IATA in Monteal. A quick check on LinkedIn (as some worried about legitimacy might do) illustrates this:

Tnooz decided to start liaising with the sender of the email to get more details and see what emerged next (typically, entering into correspondence leads nowhere – fraudsters often want to complete the scam as quickly as possible).

On request, another email arrived:

This is the invoice containing details of the money supposedly owed by Tnooz:

After confirming the location of the bank, we asked LloydsTSB (a large UK retail bank) to verify the validity of the bank account details. LloydsTSB says due to the Data Protection Act in the UK it is unable to give further details regarding the account but confirms that its fraud team has been notified of potential fraudulent activity.

Tnooz continued to ask the sender of the original email for additional details relating to the account. This was not forthcoming (“my superiors are in charge of handling member contracts”), so we enquired as to whether it would be possible to elevate the query to a level of a supervisor or manager.

Expecting to hear no further from the sender, within a day we received the following email:

The email supposedly came from a senior individual in the finance department in Geneva (again, name redacted) and contained a scanned copy of Tnooz’s “certificate of accreditation”:

…and a copy of the “lease agreement”:

We then asked the sender to forward us a copy of the application we made for the certificate.

Once again, expecting the trail to go cold, events took an unexpected twist: the sender of the emails from Geneva called by telephone (number withheld).

In a very brief conversation (for fear of stereotyping, the accent of the caller did not sound like it belonged to that of the Anglo-Saxon or European name in the email), he tried to explain briefly that he was unable at that particular time to send the application and urged us to send the payment to resolve the “debt” owed by Tnooz.

This was clearly the last throw of the dice for those behind the original approach as direct correspondence with both the original individual supposedly in the admin unit in Montreal and the financial department in Geneva has now ceased despite a number of emails being sent to both asking for further clarification about the account.

Some interesting points to note about the activity outlined above:

• Use of genuine employee details in the correspondence.
• Knowledge of the terminology used by IATA with members and customers.
• Creation of IATA-headed certificates and accreditation documents.
• Multiple people involved in the approach.
• Use of the telephone to persuade recipients of the invoice to settle their debt.

In short: a very detailed and elaborate process which, despite not fully researching who the recipient might be (Tnooz is, after all, just a media company rather than an agent or other industry business), shows how determined its backers are when using as many methods as possible to obtain money from unknowing people around the industry.

IATA has since confirmed that the original email came from what it says is a fraudulent address.

There are a number of approaches that have been made in the past to industry organisations and individuals, using a variety of bank institutions (LloydsTSB is not one of those listed).

All communication from IATA will ONLY ever come from a @IATA.org address. No official variations exist.

The organisation asks that anyone who has received similar correspondence to notify the organisation on the following email address: information.security@IATA.org.

UPDATE: 

Astonishingly, despite the bank account being referred to the LloydsTSB fraud team (and Tnooz publishing the above article), in the past few days the second character involved in the correspondence has persisted in asking for the payment via email.

He then called again (number withheld) to reassure us that he would be happy to provide a copy of the application we supposedly submitted and would do so BEFORE we needed to make the payment.

We continued to go along with it and promised we would send payment after a copy of the application form was forwarded to us.

However, in the past few hours, after we emailed the sender to remind him that we were still waiting for the document, the email (finally) inevitably bounced back.

We presume this is probably the end of it all now, in terms of our correspondence – although the entire saga has thrown up plenty of surprises so far, so we’re not holding our breath just yet.

UPDATE II:

Well, perhaps we could’ve held our breath after all.

The team behind the activity forwarded the requested application form we supposedly completed to apply for the aforementioned license.

The sender also then called again.

We noted with him that the signature was a fake, to which he tried to explain was a result of a process used at IATA’s end to protect signatures of applicants.

Despite this, when asked when we would be making the payment, we assured him that once details were authorised at our end we would be forwarding it the bank account listed above.

Around ten minutes later we received another call.

“My colleague tells me you have been writing about us on the internet.”

We respectfully outlined the process we went through to obtain our information, including talking to the bank and IATA about the alleged fraudulent activity.

After an awkward silence, and before we could ask any further questions, we were simply told to look out an email and he hung up.

An email arrived a further 20 minutes later, simply saying: “YOU SMART??????????”.

No further correspondence received by Tnooz since then.

NB: Tnooz has passed to IATA all of the correspondence and materials it obtained during the course of the process outline above.

But what about that age group coming up behind them – early-teenagers now and perhaps those even younger? Social marketing company Lithium asked a few kids to share their thoughts about Facebook and social media in general.

Some of it is obviously quite cute, but a few quotes stand out: “Being social without being social” and, in the last moments, where a young chap says he wants to be friends with everyone on Facebook.

Networks of “friends” appear to be everything to this kid. Food for thought…

The former-Travelzoo executive is an evangelist for social media, of course, but in this TEDx presentation he asks what happens over time to all that activity users create when they snap and post pictures, contribute other content to social networks and generally engage with other people.

From an industry perspective, the same goes for brands and the footprint (or “digital shadow”, as Qualman calls it) leave behind.

Here is the clip (worth a watch):

NB: Cocktail umbrella shadow image via Shutterstock.

The Ireland-based HostelWorld pretty much tightened its already firm grip on the online hostel booking marketplace even further with its intention (subject to regulatory clearance) to buy Hostelbookers for an undisclosed fee.

Public comments and private back-channels were awash with concerns for both budget accommodation owners and consumers as a result of the two largest players in the market coming together.

One particular worry focused on the fate of many of the newbies in the sector trying to gain a foothold.

Although the deal has yet to be ratified and no-one really knows how the marketplace will react to what some consider to be the equivalent of budget accommodation-focused Booking.com lording over the sector, one of the more high profile startups on the scene has come out in favour of the move.

Co-founder and CEO of WeHostels (formerly Inbed.me – TLabs here), Diego Saez-Gil, says the deal “validates the huge opportunity that exists in the budget accommodations market”.

“Because since we are partners with HW [a HostelWorld affiliate] it means that now we will be able to offer an even larger inventory of properties to our mobile users.

Saez-Gil argues that the so-called “big guys (Priceline, Expedia)” have always focused on the other, more expensive end of the inventory, which is essentially less fragmented and more profitable.

WeHostels also uses the Expedia Affiliate Network for some of its inventory.

But he believes such players are “starting to realize that there is a huge blue ocean market in the budget travelers that search for value accommodations and travel services”.

“We believe that there is a lot of room for growth for everyone.”

The opportunity, Saez-Gil believes, rests in the world of mobile travel – the area in which WeHostels operates with its booking service for hostels around the world.

“Our focus will continue to be on mobile services which we believe will represent the majority of bookings in coming years.”

Perhaps Saez-Gil is right and this is indeed where the land-grab for business will take place in the next wave of growth in the budget sector – although, of course, it wouldn’t take much for the new HostelWorld/Hostebookers mega-brand to gradually let some of its affiliate relationships run out if some of the more successful startups start getting too much headway.

Meanwhile, against this backdrop of consolidation and changes to the way travellers are expected to buy their budget accommodation (i.e. via handset), WeHostels is looking to expand into new markets.

First up is Europe, where the mobile-only brand will be launching with two new currencies (UK pounds and the Euro) and in four languages (German, French, Spanish and Portuguese) shortly.

Saez-Gil says:

“We’ve seen a big growth in Europe without having done much marketing efforts in the region.

“However we encountered that users were starting to complain about the fact that our app was only in English and we only showed the rates in US Dollars.

“The big challenge with expending international is that you have to understand the local culture when it comes to doing marketing, community management and customer support.”

WeHostels has enlisted the help of existing investor German Ventures to help out, gaining some logistical support as well as additional cash and services, including an office in Munich.

“Starting” is the word to note, of course, given that Google’s global ad revenue was north of $43 billion in 2012 compared to Facebook’s $4.28 billion.

But the omnipresent social network is resonating with some serious brands, such as car manufacturers, credit card firms and the usual marketing giants in the shape of P&G and Unilever, although unsurprisingly, apart from high PPC spender Booking.com, there are no other travel brands in either of their respective top ten advertising clients (unless you count Walt Disney).

Facebook clearly has a long way to go before it makes a significant challenge to the dominant position of its rival down the road in Silicon Valley, but this infographic from e-Intelligence has some great data to illustrate where the pair currently reside in the online advertising ecosystem:

RyanairTalk launched today, giving users the chance to phone any landline or other mobile device using a wifi or 3G data connection.

The app was developed in conjunction with global telecommunication provider WaveCrest and is available on both Android and iPhone devices.

The main, paid-for Ryanair app already includes many of the airline’s ancillary services, such as priority boarding, priority check-in, as well as the ability to buy tickets and manage a booking.

Almost inevitably, the earlier app does not exactly have gushing reviews in the iTunes App Store.

The launch of RyanairTalk comes a week or so after another app appeared on the scene. This time in the form of a game from Northern Ireland-based startup SendMyBag (Tlabs here).

In a thinly veiled poke at the Ryanair CEO across the border in Dublin, O’Greedy allows users to grab as many passengers as they move across a terminal, earning more points depending on the type of customer.

Silly and fun.

Surprised Michael O’Leary isn’t dreaming up a game of his own. For a fee, of course.