Travelocity Shakes Things Up

Thanks for this post go to Author Tom Botts of Hudson Crossing

Travelocity just announced the departure of Paul Nelson who is leaving the company at the end of the year. Filling his shoes as President, Global Partner Marketing is long-time Travelocity vet Noreen Henry. Noreen has most recently been VP of North American Hotels and Packaging.

Noreen's step up to the big chair created the proverbial domino effect and allowed Leslie Harris to step into Noreen's role. And filling Leslie's former role as VP of Travelocity Business will be Yannis Karmis who currently heads Sabre's global customer care team.

Nice to see some great people get promoted and a company with solid succession planning in place.

CHH CEO on EXPE: LRA and MFN

Thanks for this post go to Author Tom Botts of Hudson Crossing

Choice Hotels' CEO Steve Joyce just spoke with Hotels Magazine about the current issues at hand - taking the fight into the streets.

According to Joyce, it sounds as if the issues came down to six letters: LRA and MFN. In other words, Expedia is asking for Last Room Availability whereby they will have access to the entire hotel's inventory during both periods of market strength and weakness. MFN refers to a Most Favored Nation clause by which Expedia is asking for parity vs. other channels.

Choice is concerned that they will still have to offer rooms to Expedia (at the standard margin) even when the hotel is expected to sell out, depressing yields. In contrast, Expedia's concern focuses around providing consumers with inventory at all times, not just when the hotel "needs" business - it is about product consistency.

Choice would also prefer not to offer Expedia all rate plans and programs - possibly to allow special rates or packages on their branded websites etc. Obviously, Expedia would like to always have competitive pricing in order to keep consumers coming back in a hyper-price competitive marketplace.

These are gross simplifications of the issues at hand - Expedia is certainly not getting any style points right now in what is being pitched as a David vs. Goliath war.

JetBlue: $31 Fares on the 31st - Everywhere!

Thanks for this post go to Author Tom Botts of Hudson Crossing

JetBlue is really starting to get creative in using unique pricing to generate consumer buzz - the latest is $31 seats on Halloween.

Using seats that would otherwise probably go empty to generate media excitement is a very smart strategy. It differs from Ryanair and others who often price at 1 Euro - consumers in Europe have grown accustomed to those"teaser" fares that actually end up being much higher after all sorts of fees and taxes are lumped on.

Rather, JetBlue is making the story the pricing with very targeted sales around specific holidays or ideas. We saw $9 fares on 09/09/09 and who can forget the media blitz that ensued after the All-You-Jet Pass.

Now JetBlue is offering seats on Halloween evening for just 31 bucks. Again, Saturday nights are generally pretty light in terms of traffic and that is probably even more acute this Saturday night as it is Halloween. So, rather than flying around a bunch of empty planes, JetBlue is going for another media sensation. $31 flights from JFK to the West Coast? Even if it is Saturday night, that is a an amazing fare - and here we are writing about it. Case closed. Nice move, JetBlue.

Choice Hotels and Expedia: We've Seen this Movie Before

Thanks for this post go to Author Tom Botts of Hudson Crossing

Hotels Magazine just broke a nice story on a squabble that has erupted between Choice and Expedia that is eerily reminiscent of a fight between Expedia and IHG several years ago.

This time around, Choice Hotels brands are no longer showing on Expedia and Hotels.com. This even includes white labels such as Expedia's co-branded AARP product. It is unclear if Egencia users are also shut out from Choice properties. It also isn't clear (yet) if Choice made the move or Expedia did but one thing is for sure - it is lights out for Comfort Inn et al on Expedia.

As you may recall, the last time we saw a major, public hotel riff was when Intercontinental Hotels (IHG) and Expedia went to war several years ago over a number of issues including display, content and, of course, margin. All the parties closely involved in that dispute (on both sides) have moved on to bigger and better things (think real estate site Zillow for the Expedia gang) but everyone we've talked to would largely like to forget the incident. There were no real winners in the long term.

The timing of this fall-out is interesting. The lodging sector is hardly strong right now - most hoteliers are looking for every penny of revenue they can scrape - harder to do when you are not appearing on the world's largest online travel agency. And Expedia has been working hard to cultivate a new culture of positive supplier relations. On the other hand, the budget-oriented chains such as Choice have fared better in this downturn than the up-scale brands so maybe Choice felt they could withstand going dark in order to make a point.

So, did Expedia make a choice or did Choice make a choice? We'll be watching this closely....

Wi-Fi is Wi-Free on Virgin America Over the Holidays!

Thanks for this post go to Author Tom Botts of Hudson Crossing

Virgin America just announced free Wi-Fi over the holidays - and it is quite a definition of the holiday season - almost as long as Bloomingdales defines it - November 10th to January 15th.

Google and Virgin have partnered to make Gogo Internet Wi-fi free as "two California-based companies known for innovation, entrepreneurialism and for connecting people in new ways, have again joined forces to give Virgin America fliers the gift of in-flight connection." Wow.

Possibly of greater interest is that Virgin estimates that 12-15% of their passengers are using the service with 20-25% of passengers on long-haul routes using it. That is some serious ancillary revenue for all the airlines.

Boston - Baltimore: Low Cost Carrier Battle Royale!

Thanks for this post go to Author Tom Botts of Hudson Crossing

The Boston to Baltimore air market is starting to look like the Boston to New York bus market with fares almost at the same level of the Fung Wah bus! Of particular interest, BOS-BWI is one of the few markets where all three of the nation's largest low-cost carriers compete head to head - and that will make it fun to watch.

Just last week, Southwest announced an increase in flights (to 7) in the Boston-BWI market starting in March. As you may recall, Southwest recently entered the Boston-proper market with 5 daily flights to BWI as well as several other cities.

Fellow low-cost carrier AirTran has served the Boston-BWI market for some time and now operates, count 'em, nine daily flights in the market.

Not to be out done, JetBlue also began operating four daily flights in September on the same route. And today, JetBlue announced a further increase in service next year by adding an additional round trip for a total of five daily flights. JetBlue's press release takes a funny swipe at Southwest: "Customers in Baltimore have discovered what those in Boston have known for years: JetBlue offers more than just an unassigned seat and a handful of peanuts to their destination"

This makes a somewhat incredible 21 daily flights in the Boston-BWI market. Unreal.

And these are not rinky-dink regional jets. Those have already been driven from the market with the exit of Delta and American over the last few years as AirTran in particular has ramped up service.

Translation of all this: get ready for a blood-bath. Fares, even without a sale, are often $39. We've seen them as low as $29 or even $19 during a sale. And JetBlue has offered a one-day sale with fares starting at $9 one way. AirTran is offering free wi-fi on all flights in the market. And Southwest is offering all the peanuts you can eat....

http://hudsoncrossing.blogspot.com/2009/10/boston-baltimore-low-cost-carrier.html

Orbitz new homepage - where's the love? TLC no more?

Thanks for this post go to Author Tom Botts of Hudson Crossing

This morning Orbitz rolled out a new home page - gone are the jarring deep blues and oranges of the old site. Many of the changes are subtle but overall, it has a much cleaner look and feel. The site has also gained some heft with a new wider display - all the rage these days.

Most surprising is the total removal of the Orbitz TLC branding. TLC has been at the heart of the Orbitz brand for years and has been featured in all kinds of commercials and goodness knows how many airline in-flight magazines (no doubt where it was often viewed by someone who was on delayed flight that didn't book with Orbitz!)

We actually viewed TLC as a differentiator in the otherwise commoditized airline ticketing space - something that Orbitz had that even the airlines themselves couldn't match. But with Orbitz pushing hard on hotels, maybe it was decided that TLC needed to take a back seat. TLC isn't even listed under "Why book on Orbitz" on the home page. (TLC is still there, just reached from a rather boring link titled "Traveler Update")

Speaking of hotels, Orbitz is also taking an interesting approach with the chain hotels with direct link-offs to branded landing pages right off the home page - the first we've seen such prominent placement of Marriott, Starwood and the like on an OTA home page.

We also just noticed that hotel search results also have a new "sponsored listing" area at the top of each sort. Similar to Expedia's Google-esq listings, clicking on this advertisement brings you to a landing page for the specific hotel. Oddly, clicking on the ad brings you to a different landing page than clicking on the hotel in the regular sort order.


 
Thanks for this post go to Tom Botts

Airline offers free luggage (tags!)

OK, so we are not usually excited about luggage tags, but this is a pretty cool promotion from KLM. Click here and order up some luggage tags complete with family (or other) pictures along with the usual name, address and phone deets on the back. Best of all, they are free.

No word on if they actually improve the odds of actually getting your luggage when you arrive. The real question is how long it will be before United offers something similar for the low price of $15. Or $25 if bundled with Economy Plus.

United Allows Unlimited Upgrades and Goes After Competition

United just announced that they will allow unlimited complimentary upgrades for all Mileage Plus elite members. Not only that, but in an email from United, they make the elite benefits of the Mileage Plus program pretty clear vs. the competition. We haven't seen this aggressive of competitive positioning (by name, no less) from an airline in a long time - remember the Shuttle wars?

How long will it take American to match this change for AAdvantage members? We bet not too long - UA and AA match pretty much everything the other does in the loyalty space within days. And what of United's newest Star partner, Continental? They dont fare too well in this (decidedly one-sided) accounting - but we bet United would love to have a lot of CO passengers start crediting over to UA.... 

Tweetyourtrip - win a trip!

Voyage.tv is running a cool promotion using Twitter to drive traffic and awareness. The rules are simple: Tweet your perfect vacation to @voyagetv and become a follower. Every Friday, they announce a winner. What caught our eye was last week's winning tweet from jeffreynordrum:

@voyagetv CPL FRM BOS DRE-AAM ABO-UTT PTY/FUN INN THE SUN AND MAI-TAI/SEE PAN-AMA CAN-AAL INN LUX-URY/NIK-KKI RES-ORT THE LOC-ALE TOO BEE


Maybe it is just the airline geek is us, but we love the creativity this winner used by Tweeting in airline codes! Not all of them are real but the requested destination, PTY, is Panama City - a great destination that is just getting discovered. Decode your airline codes here

This is one use of Twitter that doesn't SUX. (And yes, that is a real code - poor Sioux City, Iowa.)

More details on tweetyourtrip here