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Microsoft’s Live Labs has introduced a new technology that synthesizes photos of a single destination from a variety of sources to provide an immersive experience for the user. Photo tagging is already a big part of Travel 2.0 and this technology has the potential to provide a travel shopper a true virtual experience of a destination by integrating photos taken […]

For the last 8 months I’ve been working with BlackHistoryTours (BHT). The company was founded 6 years ago by Eric and Lisa Alboher. Since its creation, the primary focus has been on escorted bus tours for inner city youth to African American cultural sites. By creating tours around African American heritage sites (e.g. National Civil Rights Museum, the National Voting […]

I thought I’d chime in on the current industry focus regarding total access fees and the renegotiation of GDS contracts. I tend to look at this issue in a very black and white fashion: Financial incentives for travel agents (and TMCs) are going away. Whether this is the first step (e.g. Sabre, Galileo) or a complete elimination (Worldspan) of these […]

Yesterday HP announced a new “inexpensive, wireless, battery-free microchip that can store documents, audio files or video clips. The memory spots are similar in some ways to the more simplistic radio-frequency identification tags. But they are far smarter and more secure: They can store more than 250 times as much data as RFID, transmit data more than 20 times faster […]

The travel press have been playing up ITA Software’s recent announcement with Air Canada as a sign that the GNEs have been unsuccessful in their quest to replace the GDS. Again I must reiterate a theme from my prior blog entries: this shift in distribution is not about us verses them (GNE verses GDS) but about the ever increasing likelihood […]

Last week I was again interviewed by Kyle Peterson of Reuters. The article entitled : “Internet Travel Agencies Losing Some Luster” talked about the drop in stock price of the leading OTAs (Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity). My comments were primarily directed at the underlying technology and UI of these large players and the fact that there has been little innovation […]