Just before the weekend United States based Travelzoo, known for it’s travel offers from various other travel companies, announced that it purchased the domain Fly.com for an astonishing amount of $ 1.800.000,00.

Whereas other travel companies are limiting their expenses, Travelzoo is looking confident in making such an investment. According to Travelzoo’s announcement the fly.com website will be relaunched in February and will feature a new travel search engine.

Last week business oriented social network site LinkedIn launched its opensocial application platform called InApps as an answer to the similar platforms found on competing social network sites such as Myspace and Facebook. Major difference between the application platform on competing sites is the intention and quality LinkedIn is looking for with these applications; all applications will have to go through a quality assurance process before being accepted by LinkedIn and all applications are limited to business purposes.

At the launch of the platform LinkedIn is featuring several interesting applications such as a presentation sharing application from slideshare and google presentations, feed articles from Wordpress, reading list application from Amazon and several application which were developed inhouse. Also, one of the more interesting applications available at launch was a trip application from social travel website TripIt.

Following a recent move of Expedia, which is trialling using Google’s adwords’ sponsored links next to their travel search results, other major online travel agents are considering their options to further monetize their websites. According to Travolution, online travel agents have not ruled out following Expedia’s example but are also not sure of allowing competitors to advertise through their own website.

There is doubt whether sponsored links will result in increased revenues or instead result in higher exit percentages. In reality, these sponsored links have strict exclusions for competitors and thus these sponsored links will have low relevance, resulting in lower click through percentages.

Lifehacker.com is one of our favorite websites providing us with suggestions and ideas in order to get things done. Over the last week, lifehacker.com has asked its readers for suggestions and opinions on what the best travel websites are where affordable tickets and hotels can be found.

After their initial request for suggestions, lifehacker.com has created a shortlist containing 5 popular and well known travel websites after which users could vote for their favorite website. The following websites were included in the shortlist;

While consumers and companies within the online travel and hospitality industry are already adopting to new technologies, it is expected that both the supplier and consumer side will continue to evolve during the coming years. Due to an increase in information overload from a consumer’s perspective and the future development of technology, presentation of information within the travel and hospitality industry will be more simplified and transparent; more developed at the supplier’s side and more accessible for consumers.

Jitendra Jain, who is employed with Starwood Hotels & Resorts in Dubai as an E-Commerce Manager involved with online marketing & distribution, has published an article forecasting future developments that will revolutionize online hotel marketing. The following article is elaborating on Jain’s forecasts and supporting his statements.