(* Source: Sara Inés Calderón *)

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(* Source: Leena Rao *)

Leena says...

We’re big fans of TripIt, a nifty site that creates customized travel itineraries from travel confirmation emails. Today, the service is becoming even more useful by integrating Yapta.com, an airfare and hotel tracking service, into its platform.

Yapta lets you track fares from most of the major domestic and international airlines, allowing users to select flights to track, and then be alerted when the price fluctuates. If the price declines after you purchase it, Yapta will help you get a refund or credit from airlines that have lowest guaranteed fare policies. Travelers can now forward their flight confirmation emails to plans@tripit.com and can choose to have Yapta start tracking their flights for airline refunds or credits. TripIt members can then link their account to Yapta in order to be alerted when they are eligible for a refund or credit based on an airline’s “guaranteed airfare” policy.

Yapta, which has been able to gain a steady group of consumer followers since its launch in 2007, is revealing a few compelling statistics about airfare price fluctuations. To date, Yapta has conducted approximately 500 million airfare price checks, showing that seat prices on 45 percent of flights will drop before the cabin door closes. Approximately 15 percent of these flights are eligible for a refund or credit and since May 2007, Yapta has identified over $250 million in savings for its members, an average of $334 per traveler each year.

Yapta stands to gain a new influx of users with the integration with popular service TripIt. It’s made Michael’s list of products he can’t live without for three years running, and is quickly gaining fans among frequent travelers. Yapta also offers a companion hotel price tracking service.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Sean P Aune *) 

Sean says... 

With airfare on the rise, planning a trip can be expensive and complicated.

We’ve lined up over 30 tools that let you do everything from finding more affordable tickets to predicting the best time to buy them, and even using a 3d map of your plane to select your seat.

Domestic

CheapAir.com - Searches for all regular and sale fares at the same time and allows you to filter the results on the fly via Ajax so there are no reloading delays.

Momondo.com - Offers search for nearly 500 airlines http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline in nine languages.

Vayama.com - Uses an interactive map to help you choose your airports http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airport . Also generates 3D seat maps for your plane to help you choose your seat.

CheapFlights.com - Also operates CheapFlights http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheapflights .co.uk. In the US they assist you with finding cheap tickets via JetBlue Airline-Mergers , American Airlnes, Orbitz and Priceline amongst others.

CheapTickets.com - Offers up flights, car rentals, cruises and even train tickets.

Expedia.com - Besides being able to search all the major airlines, you can also book hotels, cruises and more.

Hotwire.com - Sells unsold inventory from major companies and offers them at a large discount by not showing you the name until after you book.

LessNo.com - Specializes in flights in the USA, the UK and Indochina.

Orbedia.com - A metasearch that allows you to check Orbits, Expedia, Travelocity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travelocity , Hotwire, CheapTickets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CheapTickets and more in one shot.

Orbitz.com - Books all forms of travel from airline flights to trains & cruises.

Priceline.com - Name your own price for airfare, hotels and car rentals, and then see what they return to you to meet your bid.

Trabber.com - Searches 30 websites for the cheapest tickets for users in the USA, Germany, Spain, France, Italy and the UK.

Travelocity.com - Probably as famous for their spokes-Gnome as their booking, they do go the extra mile giving you phone numbers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telephone_number to speak to an actual human if you need to.

Wego.com - Focuses heavily on international flights by searching numerous foreign carriers as well as domestics.

Yahoo Travel - Search all the major airlines with only low booking fees.

Non-USA

Airline-Network.co.uk - A UK-based search that focuses on long haul flights to overseas destinations.

Cleartrip.com - Flight and hotel booking inside of India.

DoHop.com - Part-owned by CheapFlights.co.uk, gives you the ability to search over 660 airlines worldwide.

FlightChecker from MoneySavingExpert.com - Focuses on budget airlines, offers charts to show you which part of the month is the cheapest time to fly.

Ixigo.com - Cheap airline search limited to flights inside of India.

Jetcost.co.uk - Jetcost searches multiple ticket sites such as Expedia, British Airways and more to help you find the cheapest prices.

Kayak.co.uk - Searches over 140 airlines and travel agencies and gives you the tools to book directly through them.

Liligo.com - Offers localized search of hundreds of airlines for Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Hungary and the UK.

Skyscanner.net - Leans towards broader searches for those with flexible travel dates. Also offers suggestions for those who just want to go somewhere, but can’t think of anyplace themselves.

Miscellaneous

AirlineQuality.com - A site for rating airlines, their seats, airports and their premium lounges. Also offers chat rooms for people to discuss everything related to the airlines.

Farecast.Live.com - Microsoft powered service to search multiple sellers and predict for you if you should buy your ticket now or hold off for a possible price drop.

FlightArrivals.com - Check on flight arrivals, departures and reschedulings in the USA and Canada.

FlightAware.com - Track all of the flights in the United States in real-time. You can also narrow it down by carrier and see exactly where a flight is at any time.

FlightStats.com - Check the status of airports in regions all over the world, flights, rate the airports and discuss on the forums.

FlightView.com - Get real time updates on flights and the status of airports.

FlyMyCase.com - A shipping company specializing in picking up and delivering your luggage to and from just about anywhere in the world.

SeatGuru.com - Detailed plans for different models of planes that gives you ideas of what each seat is like in advance so you can choose the best one for you.

Posted by brian tiong at 09:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

(* Source: Erik Schonfeld *) 

Patrick Grady has spent the past eight years of his life building the ultimate personal Web assistant in relative obscurity. But now his company, Rearden Commerce, is quietly emerging as major force among enterprise startups. He has confirmed that, as previously reported, Rearden has closed a $100 million round of funding from investors that include American Express, JPMorgan Chase, Oak Investment Partners, and Foundation Capital. American Express already invested in a previous round and is Rearden’s single largest customer—its corporate travel business resells Rearden’s all-in-one Web travel booking service to 1,300 corporate customers.

All in all, Rearden now offers its services to more than 1,700 corporations, up from 92 two years ago before signing AmEx as a partner. Pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline alone has about 60,000 employees on Rearden. Collectively, those corporate customers have about one million employees using Rearden to book flights, cars, hotels, dinner reservations, baseball games, theater tickets, conference calls, and even ground shipping. (See our review from last year).

To put that into perspective, that is about the same number of employees who use Salesforce.com. Of that million, about 15 percent are active in a given month, and all together they are well on their way towards spending $1 billion on travel-related services this year through Rearden. That is a tenfold increase in transactions over last year, and every step of the way Rearden takes 6 percent to 25 percent of every non-travel dollar spent. Updated: The fees on travel transactions like flight and hotel are low-margin commodities. It’s the extra stuff like dining, event tickets, conferencing, car services, airport parking, meetings and shipping where there are more margin and more savings to be had that Rearden makes its 6 to 25 percent cut. It also has other revenue streams, including third-party apps and advertising (see below).

The company has 316 employees, going to 400 this year. Most of those are engineers, since AmEx has hundreds of sales people pushing the service. And AmEx will soon expand the offering to its UK customers as well. So far, Grady has built his business by signing up big enterprise customers. But now he is ready to take his first step towards the consumer market.

That’s where Chase comes in. In addition to being an investor, Chase has also signed on as Rearden’s second giant customer. It plans on offering Rearden’s personal Web concierge service to its 90 million bank card holders. Anyone with a Chase bank account, whether business or personal, will be able to use the service. Eventually, Grady plans on opening up the service to all consumers, but AmEx and Chase are making it worth his while to give them exclusivity for at least another year.

In addition to the transaction fees, he also charges application developers 25 percent to 50 percent of their subscription fees to gain access to all the corporate customers on Rearden. And he also sees an opportunity on the upside for highly targeted advertising in the form of real-time offers from local restaurants and other businesses. He explains:

I am coming to New York. What does my Rearden Commerce personal assistant know about me? It knows I am a CEO of a Silicon Valley company, I will be staying downtown, I will be in midtown during the day, and it knows I like sushi.

Rearden has done the hard job of integrating different travel services together all through a single browser interface. Updated: The hard part is not only the technology—which is all about integrating an unruly mess of APIs and Web services—rather it is signing commercially binding service level agreements with 135,000 merchants across the world. . What’s more the system ties in your personal preferences with your company’s travel rules, restrictions, and negotiated rates to give you a customized view of what’s available to you. Think of it as Kayak, TripIt, StubHub, Zagats, OpenTable, and WebEx all rolled into one. Updated: But instead of having to go to ten different sites to find and book a flight or a restaurant for a business meeting, Rearden provides a mash-up of all the services. The two slides below, which are from a presentation Grady gives, illustrate the scope of what Rearden is trying to accomplish:

Rearden might be an enterprise play, but its software already has a consumer look an feel. Today, the difference between the two experiences is fast going away. Grady says:

If this isn’t addictive, if people don’t find this to be like an iPhone or Blackberry, then we have failed. It is only a productivity tool if you, the user, think it is better than Kayak, StubHub,or Kayak. Addiction is job one.

Grady has come along way from surviving the nuclear winter back in 2001. At the time, one investor, Jafco, tried to sell the company behind his back. Grady had to do a cram-down round and fire 45 employees to stare Jafco down and keep control of the company. Despite raising $200 million total so far, he says he has never taken a dime off the table. That’s hardcore.

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(* Source: Misha Cornes *)

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(* Source: Fred Guillet *) 

Royal Dutch Airline KLM has created a customer-centric online community catering to business-class passengers in Africa and China, according to Springwise.

KLM Club China and KLM Club Africa aim to enable and streamline contacts that would otherwise be made while waiting to board an aircraft, or over breakfast in business class. The clubs also offer a range of business and concierge services provided by partners; for example, a dedicated phone line gives details for translation agencies, legal bodies, hotels, and more.

Club China, the first to launch in June 2006, has signed up over 3,000 members so far, 40 percent of whom log on at least once a month.

Travel destinations are not the only basis for forming such clubs. KLM is also considering lifestyle, with its Flying Blue Golf Club is the first such effort.

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(* Steve Rubel *) 

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(* Source: David Feldt *)

Bill Marriott, Chairman & CEO of Marriott International has recently started blogging. In my view, he has captured the true essence of what blogging is all about (telling stories, listening, learning, engaging in a dialog, nurturing the community and sharing one's passion) and I love reading his posts.  Jonathan Schwartz at Sun may have some stiff competition on his hands :)

In character with Bill’s love of talking, the blog offers an audio link so you can listen to Bill’s story in his voice.

His first post, on 01/16/2007, entitled “Uncharted Territory” (quoted below) received 80+ comments at last count - not bad for a first post!

Here’s Bill on why he’s entered the Blogosphere:

“I’m venturing into uncharted territory as I launch this blog. A year ago, I didn’t even know what a blog was — until my Communications team began telling me about all the blog traffic on travel and tourism. Now I know this is where the action is if you want to talk to your customers directly — and hear back from them. Soon we’ll add an audio version of the blog. That’s how I’m most comfortable: telling stories and listening.

Pioneering new frontiers is how this company was built.

Blogging will allow me to do what I’ve been doing for years — on a global scale. Talking to the customer comes easily to me. I visit 250 hotels around the world every year. This year I’ll be traveling once again to China where we have 27 hotels, 16 under construction and many more in our development pipeline. At every hotel, I talk to associates, from housekeepers to general managers, to get their feedback. I call it “management by walking around.” Like my parents, I value the input from our associates at all levels. I make lots of notes — and my best ideas almost always come from our people in the field.

Our 143,000 associates are truly the people who make Marriott a world-class business. I want to share some of their stories with you in future blogs. We are a company that is built on opportunity, and that foundation has made us successful.

Bottom line, I believe in communicating with the customer, and the internet gives me a whole new way of doing that on a global scale. I’d rather engage directly in dialogue with you because that’s how we learn and grow as a company.

So tell me what you think, and together we’ll keep Marriott on the Move!

This blog allows us to hear from you and build on the community that we’ve nurtured for 80 years.“

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WAYN, a UK-based site that claims to be the world’s largest travel and lifestyle social network, announced today that they’ve raised $11 million in Series A funding from a group of investors led by Esprit Capital Partners. A number of angel investors have also piled in: most notably, Brent Hoberman, co-founder of LastMinute.com. LastMinute went public in 2000, and was acquired by Travelocity last year for $1.07 billion. Also among the investors: the co-founder of Jagex, which runs the popular online game RuneScape. The initial investment came from the founder of Friends Reunited, which is like a UK version of Classmates.com.

WAYN stands for “where are you now?”, and they claim to have 7 million users - up to 35,000 more join every day (650,000 last month). They plan to use the money to expand their technical team, which is based in Poland, add rich media and roll out new features.

I took WAYN for a spin today, and it’s certainly an interesting effort. Like many of these fast-growing sites, it insists on importing your email address book, to the extent that it’s virtually impossible to skip this step - that could explain some of the reported growth in user numbers. Users have profiles pages that can be edited ala Netvibes or Pageflakes - you drag and drop the elements and change their colors. You can also choose from a range of custom skins (like on Bebo), although there doesn’t seem to be the kind of CSS editing that would allow you to import MySpace layouts. Nonetheless, some users have figured out how to embed videos from YouTube. As for travel-specific features, you can mark locations on a map, edit the WAYN list (a wiki guide to locations), write blog entries related to a specific location and so on. The business model is a combination of ads and paid accounts: upgrading your account costs $2.99 per month, and provides unlimited messaging, advanced search, 10MB of picture storage and the ability to see who’s visiting your profile.

I wouldn’t say that WAYN is technically astounding, but what makes these sites valuable is a large user base. Provided a good proportion of those 7 million users are active, the growth curve should continue.

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