Online travel is booming. In fact, it’s expected to grow to $86 billion this year. Along with the growth will come the pressure to innovate travel sites, like TripAdvisor.com and Travelocity, to offer more interactive features that help potential vacationers in their searches.
For example, TripAdvisor.com now allows users to post videos and become involved in one-on-one chats with other users.
Travelocity offers airfare alerts through a gadget in Microsoft’s Vista operating system. Along with those features, sites will also begin integrating information, called “mashups.” So, users can look up their original search and find related information quickly and easily.
Yahoo! Travel director Jasper Malcomson predicts someday there’ll be a system linking unused inventory of airplane seats and hotel rooms with a traveler’s interest and availability. So, when everything clicks, the traveler would be alerted, grab their bags and head to the airport.
This way, no plane would ever take off with an empty seat, and every hotel room would be filled every night.
Photo by Ian Britton.
FranchiseBrief.com on April 5th, 2007 at 5:51 pm
Before spending money in “gadgets”, travelocity should spend wise by getting a customer service department. I don’t know why this company is still in business. I experienced problem with them twice (and then i stopped using them) and i heard the worst nightmare stories from a couple of my friends because of travelocity…
Peter Morgan on July 24th, 2007 at 6:42 am
Have to agree with FranchiseBrief. They need to work on their basics before rolling this kind of initiative out. They have a terrible reputation!