July 20, 2010 at 3:09 pm | Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments
Tags: hotel blog, hotel industry, hotel revenue management, hotel sales, social networks
We all tend to have good feelings about Google and its company culture. Google is about to become a major force in the online travel space with its acquisition of ITA.
“ITA currently provides airfare data to many of the industry players, including Orbitz, Kayak and Bing; … The businesses that are most likely to be hit soonest are those known as travel meta-search engines, like Kayak and Bing Travel. … Google itself said on its site that it “has no plans to sell airline tickets to consumers.” (Wall Street Journal, 7/5/10). However, 10% of all Google searches are travel related. With Google already testing featured hotel rates on ‘searches’ (will they decide to sell hotel rooms?), the addition of the functionality of researching air fares could make Google a major force in online travel and Kayak should be very afraid.
We are alll waiting to see how all this plays out and how Google will pull these elements together.
What will Google Travel look like when it’s all integrated? Good question but with budget season upon the hotel and travel industry, it might be wise to add a few extra dollars in a contingency online advertising line item.
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