Articles by Martin Kelly

Experian Hitwise is now ranking TripAdvisor.com.au as Australia's most popular destination and accommodation website, narrowly overtaking Wotif.com for the first time in the week ending January 28 with 5.92% market share compared with 5.83%. Given that parent site TripAdvisor.com is in 4th place with a 4.09% share, fair to say the consumer review site is now dominant Down Under. TripAdvisor Senior Vice President Julio Bruno will be speaking at No Vacancy Sydney on March 30.

Qantas and Jetstar have told the Australian Stock Exchange they are raising airfares (or surcharges) due to sustained high fuel costs and new carbon pricing schemes in Australia and the European Union. But will their real fares actually increase or are these just paper price rises? Surely, market forces will dictate what these carriers can charge and competitor activity will be the ultimate factor. Qantas is already losing market share and really can't afford to give up any more.  More …

An estimated 16,000 Chinese tourists holidaying in North Queensland helped drive a 218% increase in regional bookings for the Mantra Group over the Chinese New Year period. Mantra CEO Bob East said: "The response has far exceeded our expectations". More …

Australia's largest holiday house site, Stayz.com.au has entered the "Daily Deals" market on a trial basis. It is offering 50% off five properties a day through the ‘Great Stayz Get-together’ promotional website.  If successful, it may become a permanent feature of the Stayz product offering. More …

Hard to believe but according to reports there are now no Aboriginal guided walks at Uluru in Central Australia after the closure of operations by Anangu Tours because of financial issues. In some ways it is a tourism tragedy because research has repeatedly shown that international visitors are deeply interested in Aboriginal culture, More …

You know something is up when six of the world’s biggest hotel groups join forces to create their own booking website to directly compete with online travel agents.

Choice Hotels International, Hilton Worldwide, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, InterContinental Hotels Group, Marriott International and Wyndham Hotel Group all own a piece of the new site – Roomkey.com. More …

Round one to Qantas CEO Alan Joyce, who last October grounded the entire Qantas fleet to prevent further rolling strike action from three miltant unions and force them into official arbitration with Fair Work Australia (FWA). Yesterday the FWA tribunal endorsed an workplace agreement between Qantas and the Australian Licenced Aircraft Engineers Association (ALAEA) that's effective through to the end of 2014. More …

David Bayes has resigned as CEO of Choice Hotels Austalasia and will be succeeded by Trent Fraser, currently GM Development & Operations, on April 2. Mr Bayes is leaving full time employment to develop his career as a Non Executive Board Director. Choice staff were told yesterday.

History repeats, that’s for sure. Remember how bullish we all were before the Global Financial Crisis? Many of us thought the good times would never end, even though history showed that was complete and utter nonsense. More …

The program and speakers for No Vacancy 2012 have been announced. It's being held in Sydney on March 30. It will be a great day. Here are some images taken at the 2011 event to whet your appetite… More …

A surge in orders for the new fuel efficient A320 medium-haul aircraft gave Airbus 64 per cent share of the commercial jet market over arch rival Boeing with 36 per cent in 2011, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

Airbus won 1608 orders compared with Boeing's 921. But in 2012  Boeing is forecast to do better than its rival thanks to sustained demand for the 737  MAX from low cost carriers in a softer market.

Emirates, the Middle Eastern airline, is the only travel company among the 50 fastest growing brands,  according to a new book from Jim Stengel and Millward Brown. The 'Stengel 50' were chosen because they had built the deepest customer relationships and achieved the greatest financial growth from 2001-2011. They are: More …

Amadeus, a global distribution system for travel agents, has signed a product distribution agreement with the German-based Hotel Reservation Service (HRS), which has a hotel database of 250,000, including 50,o00 hard to access independent properties. System integration is under way and will be complete by July.

This really shouldn't be a story but it is. Virgin Australia is now offering all travellers, even those on the cheapest fares, flying its business routes – state capital to state capital – free beer and wine from Monday to Friday between 4pm and 7pm. Those on leisure routes will still have to pay. In other news, Virgin today launched Business Class across most of its network. The carrier's come a long way from its low cost roots.

Tourism spending continues to grow and contributes almost $35 billion – or $94.8 million a day – to the Australian economy, according to new figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). "Despite a year of global economic challenges and natural disasters, tourism growth was supported by …. an increase in the number of visitors from overseas (up 3.8%). More …

Drive holidays seem have been forgotten in the frenzy by Australians to fly to their destination, either here or overseas.

But the reality is that, despite the lack of hype, road trips are far from dead with Tourism Research Australia estimating that 71 per cent of domestic overnight trips still involve a car.

So fair to say that getting in the car and driving somewhere is at the very heart of the Australian regional tourism economy. Yet road trips and drive holidays are undergoing rapid change. More …

Premium domestic airfare prices are falling sharply in Australia due to weaker demand, according to Goldman Sachs. Meanwhile, the Qantas business travel market is also under fresh attack from Virgin Australia, which announced it will operate a wide-bodied A330 in the morning peak between Sydney and Melbourne, Australia's busiest corporate route.

Six of the world's biggest hotels groups – Choice Hotels International, Hilton Worldwide, Hyatt Hotels Corporation, InterContinental Hotels Group, Marriott International and Wyndham Hotel Group – have partnered in Roomkey.com, a new accommodation meta-search site that urges visitors to "Search, Book, Relax". More …

A survey of almost 2500 travellers by Travelzoo Australia reveals that almost one in three Australians believes airline passengers should be charged according to their weight.  Debate on this controversial topic was sparked yesterday by former Qantas Chief Economist Tony Webber who argued that “overweight” passengers should pay more to fly because airlines incur higher fuel costs to transport them. More …

Jetset Travelworld has just announced a restructure that leaves former wholesale boss Simon Bernardi, who returned from holidays on Monday, without a job to start 2012. Bernardi was hired 15 months ago to lead the company's wholesale operations after the JTG-Stella Travel merger. More …