Travelport today broadcast their investor call to talk about their results. I am struck by two things. First, Gordon Wilson shared that their “attachment rate” of a hotel to an air ticket is up to 43 hotel segments out of 100 air tickets sold. While on the face, this sounds really wonderful, the focus on …
Marketing Mischief: Travelport 2014 Results – $3.5 billion left on the table Read More »
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 …
The last Einstein quote that I’ve selected for this series (pardon the one week break) is this: A clever person solves a problem. A wise person avoids it. I have been busy being clever. Very clever in fact. And I used to think clever was good, until I read this quote on @AlbertE_Quotes on Twitter. …
Put on your Jetpack and escape status quo – 10 of 10 Einstein LIfe Hacks Read More »
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. The three main players are Sabre (based in Dallas), Amadeus (based in Madrid) and Travelport (based in Atlanta with executive offices in the UK). However, yesterday, …
What would you say if I said that it just doesn’t matter who is in fact the biggest GDS? Read More »
This week, Bloomberg announced that Sabre raised $627 million in its IPO. Actually I don’t think you should be allowed to call it an Initial Public Offering when you have already been public once. It should be an SPO. The former unit of AMR Corp. was traded on the New York Stock Exchange from 1996 …
As I look back through all of my blogs, the second most popular one is “Who is the biggest GDS”. (For those wondering what the first most popular blog was, it was the one “To Delta Airlines: I would have built the website for $80 million…..“). Well, it is time to put this argument to …
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 »
Zombie image courtesy of Farelogix (airplane made out of dollar bill and dinosaur courtesy of Solutionz Media) Thanks to Jim Davidson of Farelogix for the fodder for my blog today. It had been a little while since I’d taken time to write and I so love new inspiration! The Global Distribution System companies (aka GDS …
The Zombies vs the Dinosaurs: The Battle of the Century? Read More »
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 …
The Shifting Distribution Landscape – Kayak gets bigger value than Worldspan 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 »
