Travel Industry News - Features

The global economy is uncertain at best, travel is a hyper-competitive landscape with new services and products are launching daily and the travel consumer becoming ever more savvy, fickle and demanding. In this environment how can travel companies possibly survive, let alone thrive?

The current multi-channel, multi-screen, 'always on' world is giving rise to a new form of storytelling, dubbed 'transmedia,' that unfolds a narrative across multiple media channels, including television, movies, comic books, video games and Twitter feeds. Look at how the worlds of Stars Wars and Indiana Jones have expanded beyond the original movies, says Andrea Phillips, who got hooked on transmedia in 2001 when she encountered a mysterious website railing against sentient robots. Phillips, now a full-time transmedia author, talked about the phenomenon, its allure and what it means for the future of marketing during a recent interview with Knowledge@Wharton.

Well over a month ago I wrote an article about a new definition for the word 'Destination' – a most worthy word in our world of Hospitality and Tourism.

To Jody Foster, disruptive people in any type of organization - from a big corporation to a major health center - can poison the atmosphere for everyone with whom they interact.

The office holiday party; the company softball league; the baby shower for the woman who sits three cubicles down the hall; happy hour with your co-workers: These are all part of the social rhythms and obligations of the modern workplace - some company sponsored, others initiated by employees - ostensibly meant to help us form and maintain close relationships with our colleagues.

In-Depth: In recent weeks the online travel company Orbitz has been in the news for supposedly directing Mac users to more expensive hotels than PC users. Ritesh Gupta and Pamela Whitby investigate and find that others may just have something to learn from this experience

Most travel brands use Facebook and Twitter but growing numbers are using Google+ to engage with users in a compelling way. Could this be down to the growing recognition that the boundaries between social and search are becoming increasingly seamless? Pamela Whitby reports

Skyscanner takes its growing multinational presence very seriously and social media plays a big part in this. But as Yara Paoli, the company’s social media manager tells EyeforTravel’s Pamela Whitby, the firm does this with a sense of humour and fun.

Tim Gunstone, EyeforTravel’s managing director, has been talking to top travel players and key innovators across the world about the next steps for a highly competitive, low margin industry. The customer experience, he finds, is at the heart of everything and getting it right will be the most lucrative thing you ever do.

As you fly off to your favourite holiday spot this summer, consider the following cost comparisons on the price of airline tickets. Let’s start with Europe. Imagine you book return flights between five pairs of cities: London-Edinburgh, Paris-Toulon, Milan-Rome, Dusseldorf-Munich, and Barcelona-Madrid.