Iberostar, Hotelbeds, Egencia, Wego, eRevMax, GetYourGuide, Etihad- Jet Airways, JetBlue, SITA, mobile in China, Viator, TradeDoubler, 3rd Planet, Amazon Redshift, Southwest Airlines, Sweetbeam and Center Parcs all get a mention in our roundup of news and hot topics on Wednesday February 20.
Iberostar Hotels & Resorts has launched its latest brand initiative Inside Iberostar with a microsite featuring videos of guests enjoying their holidays as well as staff members saying how they ensure the perfect stay. Users of the site are asked three questions including who they’re travelling before being served up the relevant videos. The microsite is in six languages including Russian, Spanish and English and it will be supported by social media activity. A introductory clip to the Inside Iberostar can be viewed here.
Expansion
GetYourGuide in expansive mood after its recent funding round. The Europe-based tours and activities brand has launched in France, Spain and Italy. It also announced the addition of Qunar-founder Fritz Demopoulos to its board of directors.
Wego has opened larger offices in Bangalore, India and plans to double employee headcount this year. Since the launch of Wego India, its revenue has increased 446% and visits to the site have tripled. Wego recently opened an office in Dubai and its Singapore head office was also moved to larger premises. Earlier this month, Wego and HolidayIQ de-merged to grow their individual businesses separately.
eRevMax has boosted its sales team to help it push its RateTiger products in the Middle-East, Africa, Latin America and Thailand. The company has recruited eight new sales managers, all with backgrounds in hotels, hotel distribution or travel technology.
Hotelbeds is extending its hotel portfolio in Brazil with the target of 1900 properties in the destination by the end of 2013 and in time for the FIFA World Cup in 2014. The TUI-owned bedbank predicts a 47% lift in inbound sales to Brazil in 2013 while outbound sales are expected to increase 40%.
Airlines and airports
As the Indian carrier Kingfisher Airlines remains grounded, Etihad’s deal with Jet Airways advances with the airline reportedly in talks to pick up a 24% stake in Jet Airways for up to $330 million. Etihad’s chairman announced that the plan needs to be revised to take it forward.
JetBlue Airways has launched a refreshed iPhone/iPod app that enables customers in eight of its largest cities (Boston, Fort Lauderdale, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, Orlando, San Francisco, San Juan) to download boarding passes to their mobile phones.
When it comes to ancillary revenue, there’s a new toy in the toybox for airlines to play with. Southwest Airlines announced yesterday that it now lets passengers watch movies on their own tablets via on-demand WiFi video, which now reaches all capable aircraft, translating to 70% of its fleet (or all planes fling long enough routes to justify such a service). Passengers can pay either $5 per movie or $5 for flat-rate TV access on a WiFi device.
SITA will be equipping 25 airports in India with its passenger processing system, adding to the existing 13 AAI (Airports Authority of India) facilities already working with SITA for airport technology.
Other tech
Dubai-based hotel technology firm Sweetbeam today announced it is set to release its next generation Service Delivery Architecture (SDA).
On Friday Amazon Web Services launched Redshift, a fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service. Redshift lets users to store their granular, customer-level and event-level data for OLAP analysis and other purposes. The company says,
“It is optimized for datasets ranging from a few hundred gigabytes to a petabyte or more and costs less than $1,000 per terabyte per year, a tenth the cost of most traditional data warehousing solutions.”
Travel planning site uTrip has rolled out version 1.1 of their personalized trip planning experience. New features include one-of-a-kind itineraries crafted by experts in various fields from around the globe called Featured Trips, the ability to plan multi-city trips, and an updated algorithm that includes “grouping” and improvements to the geolocation optimization engine to help travelers discover new destinations.
“We have been receiving great press coverage and extremely positive feedback from customers and travel experts alike, but we are always striving to improve the Utrip experience. We are thrilled to announce that Utrip 1.1 will include a number of new European destinations and new features, taking another big step on our journey to reinvent the leisure travel experience.”
Partnerships
Viator got itself another partnership in the form of Beach.com. The tours and activities supplier will provide relevant product to the startup site via a new “activities” tab, including surfing lessons, diving experiences, cultural tours and helicopter rides.
Affiliate network TradeDoubler won the rights to run the affiliate programme for NH Hoteles, a major global player in the hotel space with 400 properties in 26 countries across Europe, US and Africa.
3rd Planet is partnering with the China Intercontinental Communication Center, a media production company, to co-organise the Wonders of the World online tourism initiative planned to launch early next year. The WOW consumer event aims to bring together travel companies, tourism organisations and other related businesses to an online showcase of destinations presented in 3D format.
Mobile
China emerges as the world’s number one smartphone (active iOS / Android mobiles and tablets) market.
And finally…
Here’s a cool 3D view of how the new Center Parcs in Woburn Forest will look when it opens in 2014. The £250m village in Bedfordshire includes 625 lodges, a 75-room hotel and spa and leisure facilities.