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IPO MIschief – The GDS Industry: An oligopoly where all three players have gone public twice. Really?

Consistently, as I look at the statistics on my blog, one of the top blogs is the one where I talk about the biggest GDS (Global Distribution System) company.  This week was no different.  I can only imagine that the rumors about Sabre buying Abacus are fueling the renewed interest in my 2011 blog “Who …

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Travel industry Distribution is like Sport Shoe Sales – or rather it should be.

What if Sports Authority only had one door into its sports shoe department and it was marked “professional athletes only”? That would make no sense whatsoever.  Right? What about the moms that buy sports shoes and the kids that wear them and the amateur athletes, oh and the dads. Sports Authority knows that they need …

Travel industry Distribution is like Sport Shoe Sales – or rather it should be. Read More »

The numbers don’t lie – stop the obsession with the air traveler

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 …

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Success Soup – D is for DARE to Differentiate

For my regular readers, I want to apologize for missing day four of the new series.  Sometimes life just gets in the way.  Miss the first post in this new series – Alphabet Soup of Success?  Click HERE and go back to the beginning. ——————————————————————- The next letter in our Alphabet Soup of Success is …

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The $100b spent online by travelers is still just a fraction of what could be

According to a report from ComScore, U.S. consumers spent more than $100 billion on online travel bookings last year, making 2012 the first year ever that the $100 billion figure was surpassed.  U.S. travel e-commerce sales reached $103 billion in 2012, up 9 percent from the previous year.  This is a big deal, right?  After …

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Want consumers to buy direct? Wishing won’t make it so.

Travel Distribution is an interesting, complex animal.  Shoppers are incredibly fickle and they love to compare prices.  And travel suppliers love to fill their airplanes, rooms, cruise ships, etc., at the highest possible rate of course!  There is an ongoing debate that is playing out in the marketplace about the value of third party distributors, …

Want consumers to buy direct? Wishing won’t make it so. Read More »

The Shifting Distribution Landscape – Kayak gets bigger value than Worldspan

To set the stage, we don’t have a lot of billion dollar transactions in the travel space.  So before you chide me for comparing the Kayak acquisition to the Worldspan acquisition in 2007, hear me out. Just six years ago, Travelport announced its intention to purchase Worldspan for $1.4bn.  Yesterday Priceline acquired eight-year old Kayak …

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Flashback 1995 – This is not a drill. This is not a drill.

Retrospective – Part 3 of a 4 part series (for Part 2 click HERE) In my last blog, we talked about how mini-computers impacted the travel ecosystem and how they helped travel agencies consolidate booking information from multiple sources for reporting and accounting purposes. They vastly improved productivity, accuracy and timeliness and were especially useful …

Flashback 1995 – This is not a drill. This is not a drill. Read More »

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