Travel Trends

Consolidation: it’s a dirty word right now. The big boys (no girls) of online travel – virtually all of them US based multinationals – seem like they’re in a mad race for territory like the colonialists of old.

Leading the charge is TripAdvisor, which has bought seven or eight companies over the few months, followed by Expedia, Priceline and others, though their recent acquisitions have been much bigger (Kayak/Priceline, Expedia/Trivago). More …

Entrepreneur Ian Cumming has closed down his airfare sale search site GetFlight.com.au after two years. "We led the way for Australian flyers to see where they could go for how much using sale airfares from Jetstar, Qantas, Virgin Australia, and a host of other airlines," he said. But "there's a lot of competition for airfare search that has made it challenging to keep our business viable." More …

Webjet has once again recruited from Travelport, employing Hui Wan Chua as CEO, Singapore. Ms Chua, until now Travelport's Senior Regional Director – Asia, will be responsible for the Zuji and Webjet brands in Singapore. She'll report to Webjet Managing Director and ex-Travelport employee, John Guscic. Webjet's Chief Operating Officer, Shelley Beasley, is also from Travelport. No mention of who will manage Zuji's operations in Hong Kong and Australia.

Who would have thought… People are better at closing sales than technology, though the two work best together as the Mantra Group has found. It has just revealed that online booking conversion rates have increased 40% since the company introduced live chat 18 months ago across the Peppers, Mantra and Breakfree websites. More …

Defying a weak global economy, travel retail giant Flight Centre today forecast a record annual pre-tax profit of up to A$340 million for the 2012/13 financial year. Flight Centre MD Graham Turner said: "Year-to-date our 10 countries are profitable and several are on track for record contributions. This includes Australia and the United Kingdom, typically our largest profit generators." The news sent FLT shares above A$39. They were A$25 in Dec.

Holiday rental website HomeAway has continued its push into Asia-Pacific, announcing a partnership with Tripvillas which adds 2000 regional listings to its inventory. The TripVillas agreement follows distribution deals with AP websites Tujia.com, Wego.com and travelmob, all signed in the past five months. TripVillas is based in Singapore and was founded in 2009.

Asian online travel agent Zuji, recently bought by Webjet from Travelocity, is switching its GDS affiliation from Sabre to Travelport with migration to the new platform under way. Travelport will now exclusively provide the airfare inventory to Zuji, in addition to other content such as hotels when needed. Webjet MD John Guscic claims Zuji is the "number one OTA for air ticket sales in Singapore and Hong Kong".

A pictures tells a thousand words, right. Well, with No Vacancy Southeast looming on June 25, take a visual stroll down memory lane with these shots from 2012. This year's event will be great, too, with a strong program and excellent speakers. See you there? More …

Expedia's sales and marketing costs continue to blow out with the online travel giant on track to spend around US$2 billion in this area in 2013. In the March quarter Expedia spent US$492 million on pushing product. That's almost half of every dollar it brings in – 48.6% of revenue, an increase of almost 3% on 2012.

It was one reason Expedia reported a net loss of US$104.2 million for the quarter despite increasing revenue 24% to just over US$1 billion. Investors have reacted badly sending the stock down 14% over the past few days. More …

Good news for travel marketers – Asia's middle class is expected to grow almost 500% to 3.4 billion people over the next 20 years, according to a report from the United Nations World Tourism Organization and Tourism Australia, which has five Southeast Asian countries in its sights: Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam.  "The crucial factor behind the growth of travel out of the Asian markets is the increasing middle class," TA Managing Director Andrew McEvoy said. More …

Hotel markets in Southeast Asia strongly outperformed the rest of Asia Pacific during the March quarter, according to STR Global, recording year on year increases in occupancy (2.4%), room rate (5.8%) and revenue per available room (8.4%). The rest of Asia Pacific, with the exception of  Australia and Oceania, which was marginally up, performed poorly. Hotels in Northeast, Central and South Asia were hurt by falling occupancy and rates.

Interesting to see that, after the all the hype, some industry leaders are starting to adopt a harder edge with mobile, questioning its expense, return on investment and complexity. Expedia SVP global market management, Cyril Ranque, put matters into perspective at the World Tourism Forum Lucerne when said: "Mobile is the fastest-growing channel, but it is just 7% of our room nights. It is complex and every next move is expensive." See full story at Travolution.

Virgin Australia's proposed acquisition of 60% of Tiger Airways Australia has been approved by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which said the deal "is unlikely to lead to a substantial lessening of competition in the Australian (domestic) market". More …

Forget the rhetoric, it's money that counts. Accor Australia today said its hotels have reduced gas and electricity consumption by 5.1%, while water use is down 20.5% in the past year. "These savings have been achieved thanks to the use of energy saving technology such as Voltage Power Optimization and Building Management System controls which monitor and adjust the CO2 performance of the hotel," the company said. "LED lighting, chiller upgrades and Jemflow water saving devices have also been installed to conserve energy." Meanwhile, Accor has planted more 3m trees around the world as part of its Plant for the Planet project.

STR Global reports that the Philippines is expecting Southeast Asia's biggest increase in hotel supply (+35.7%) "if all 14,048 rooms in the country’s total active pipeline open". Also facing significant supply increases are India (+29% 54,478 rooms in the active pipeline); Indonesia (+24.2% 30,942 rooms); Vietnam (+18.7% 8,500 rooms); China (+13.9% 211,118 rooms); Malaysia (+12.9% 14,245 rooms); and Cambodia (+12.3%  1,755 rooms).

Derek Sharp

Travelport says its new Merchandising Platform is a game-changer as the company makes a concerted bid to reinvent and differentiate itself from competitor Global Distribution Systems.

"It is critical for us," said Derek Sharp, Managing Director, Global Distribution and Sales at Travelport, in Singapore yesterday.

“There was a period of time where our heads were down and we were very inwardly focussed.

“Then three or four years ago we decided that we couldn’t be the same old GDS.” More …

Asia is the largest, fastest-growing and most competitive market for air travel according to fresh analysis from Amadeus Air Traffic Travel Intelligence. Air traffic volume in Asia grew 9% between 2011 and 2012, almost double the global growth figure of 5%. More …

Quickbeds.com, the online accommodation division of retail group Flight Center, today announced a second major distribution deal in a week – an agreement with Travelport Rooms and More to distribute its inventory of 4200 Australian hotels through Travelport's global agency network. The announcement follows last week's news that Quickbeds inventory will now be available through the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse. More …

Ideas flowed at the first THack Sydney yesterday. It brought together around 50 travel tech tragics who saw seven teams present their hacks at at the co-op work space Fishburners. Most of the hacks addressed either of two "problems" – 1) multi-model travel or 2) mobile travel assistance. All of the hacks had merit but of course it was a competition so the judges had to choose two winners. More …

The two biggest players in the backpacker accommodation market are set to become one. Web Reservations International, owner of Hostelworld.com and Hostels.com, has agreed to buy rival HostelBookers.com, subject to regulatory approval.  WRI’s Chief Executive, Feargal Mooney claimed such scale is necessary to compete with the 'big beasts' of the online travel world like Expedia and Booking.com. More …