It is a Labor Day tradition for AAA to report the number of people traveling by car for the long weekend. This weekend is no different. Highest Labor Day Travel Numbers Since Recession AAA Travel projects 34.7 million Americans will journey 50 miles or more from home during the Labor Day holiday weekend. This makes …
The numbers don’t lie – stop the obsession with the air traveler Read More »
Don’t you miss the good old days in the travel industry when everyone liked one another? When American and United respectively (and respectfully) built Sabre and Apollo (now operating under the Travelport banner) and changed the travel agency industry forever? I think I hear Sam Gilliland and Tom Horton both playing ukelele on this rendition …
GDS and airline executives exposed as being the backup band for the Seekers Read More »
As the GDS/Airline battle is being waged in a courtroom in a state district court in Texas, I’d like to take this opportunity to put to rest the discussion about the profitability of airline direct versus the GDS driven agency channel. This is the first in a series of blogs this week about the …
The Online/Brick and Mortar agency gap is widening on domestic ticket sales Read More »
There is no secret to the fact that there is enormous revenue at risk here and enormous stakes in the outcome of these discussions with the GDSs, and that’s why, candidly, they have wound up in court, because we are trying to break some of these monopolistic practices. …
The winner of the “Statement of the Obvious Award” is AA’s Gerard Arpey Read More »
In Jim Davidson’s blog “Ask the Question” this morning, he posted a question about the death of innovation. [if you missed his blog click HERE]. Before reading his post, I had just finished posting this quote to my status on the various social media networks. It is completely apropos to begin my response with this …
Response to Farelogix post today on The Death of Innovation Read More »
I promised a shorter blog today. So we’ll get right to the point. I am an information hound and have an extremely short memory for numbers (aka prices), so my favorite thing by far with Orbitz is their screen utilization. As I mentioned, they invented the Matrix™ display and while others have copied it, they …
Smarter than a travel agent? OTA Series: Using Orbitz Read More »
In the second of our “Smarter than a travel agent” series, we are going to look at the use of the top Online Travel Agency (OTA), Expedia. We are going to be consistent with yesterday’s blog and use the same itinerary, Tampa to London’s Gatwick airport, outbound on the 8th of July and returning on …
Smarter than a travel agent? OTA Series: Using Expedia Read More »
UPDATED – March 12, 2014 Well, in the world of travel distribution on the OTA side of the equation, if Travelocity was the “come home to papa” story, then Orbitz is the “child running as far away from the parents as possible” story. Well, at least one of its parents…. more on that later. Orbitz …
Travel Industry Pedigree Series: Orbitz (Updated March 2014) Read More »
The Online Travel Agencies (OTA) are an important part of the travel distribution story. Today’s feature is Travelocity. Travelocity’s pedigree is somewhat simpler than Expedia’s. This is what we call the “come home to papa” story (with Papa being Sabre). The story actually started a bit before the 1996 date shown in the graphic …
This is part 3 of 3 in the discussion about the distribution portfolio of American Airlines. In the previous two posts, we’ve looked at the internal CRS environment of the airline (which for AA is Sabre’s Airline Solutions) and we’ve looked at the technology necessary on the consumer front to power the website and to …
