February 28, 2007

The World is Flat

In his 2005 book, The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman describes the unplanned cascade of technological and social shifts that effectively leveled the economic world, and “accidentally made Beijing, Bangalore and Bethesda next-door neighbors.” I experienced this phenomenon first hand recently evaluating suppliers for a consulting engagement. When it came down to the short list of suppliers that met this […]
February 23, 2007

Are corporate self booking tools becoming a commodity?

I have been involved with corporate self-booking tools since their inception in the early 1990s. At that time companies such as TravelNet and TTG (now TRX) pioneered a new concept allowing business travelers to book online, but restraining their activity through policy enforcement. Now in 2007 where corporate booking tools have become a mainstream part of a good travel management […]
February 15, 2007

Mobile Photo Sharing

M:Metrics released some detailed stats on 3G usage that should raise a flag for all in the travel industry. If you don’t know, 3G refers to the third generation wireless networks that provide more features and faster speeds than 2G networks. What caught my eye was the stat which concerns photo-sharing, which skyrockets to 45.1% monthly penetration among 3G users, […]
February 13, 2007

Peer to Peer Computing in Travel?

First they brought us Kazza and then Skype. Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom are now working on a new peer to peer (P2P) application that is taking on TV. Their Venus project, expected to be called Joost changes the playing field again by allowing users to view video content though on demand P2P network Is there any value of a […]
February 5, 2007

Article for The Beat

Today, the Beat (part of ProMedia http://www.promedia.travel/) released an article I created regarding the gap between emerging technologies and the travel industry. The focus of the article is on how the corporate travel industry continues to be behind the technology adoption curve. If you are not a subscriber to the Beat, I strongly encourage you to become a subscriber. The […]
January 29, 2007

Eye for Travel CRM Part II

I am glad to report that the remaining speakers at the recent Eye for Travel CRM conference in San Fransisco improved significantly from the first panel, (my prior blog entry). Eye for Travel still doesn’t get some of the basics of running a conference in 2007 (free WiFi, plugs for laptops, active blog), but despite these short comings, the Eye […]