Back in August we reported about Ryanair being the first carrier that no longer accepted reservations through screen scrapers. Screen scrapers are ‘crawling’ supplier sites such as Ryanair.com to retrieve fares which they then publish on their own website, often including an additional markup.

Per August 11, the airline threatened to cancel all bookings made through these channels. Also, Ryanair published an extensive list ‘naming and shaming’ some of the major online travel agencies.  Next to this change in their approach, Ryanair also filed a complaint against European Authorities in their efforts to prevent screen scrapers to search for fares and distribute them to their clients as having direct access to Ryanair fares.

Main purpose of these efforts for Ryanair was improving site performance (which had problems with the amount of search queries requested) , improve customer services and increase their direct sales.

Now, almost three months passed,

At this year’s World Travel Market Eyefortravel is hosting The Travel Leadership Forum, where industry professionals are discussing the future of online travel and hospitality, through several presentations, networking events and panel discussions.

In preparation of this forum, Eyefortravel is releasing some of the discussions they had with industry leaders, which can be downloaded as podcasts for your convenience. In their most recent podcast they are discussing the future of online travel with Mark Charron, managing director Europe at Tripadvisor, an online hotel review website with close to 30 million visitors each month and the living example of how user generated content is shaping the online travel industry.

Nowadays many marketeers are still struggling with a huge challenge and opportunity for companies; implementing social media as a marketing channel and marketing instrument. Many marketeers do realize the importance of social media, however are struggling with successfully implementing social media as a part of the marketing campaigns and driving value from social media.

In an ingoing project about social media used within hospitality and travel industries we are defining what social media really is, looking for examples of companies having successfully implemented social media in their marketing efforts and determining whether social media really can no longer be ignored by travel and hospitality industry professionals.

Already in 2005 initial contracts were signed and agreed upon between Tralliance and ICANN (Internet Corporation for assigned names and numbers) which resulted in Tralliance being eligible to operate the .travel top level domain for travel industry related businesses. While over 3 years have passed since the initial contracts were signed, we are now wondering where .travel stands today.

This article functions as an introduction and update to the .travel top level domain and what impact it can have on travel and hospitality and internet in general.

In it’s second and last day, the Eye for Travel Sales & Marketing in Travel Summit Europe is focusing on social media, user generated content and online marketing strategies within the travel industry.

At the opening and keynote of the summit, Sandra Leonhard, director web strategy and business development for TUI Travel, discussed the usage of social media and web 2.0 across all countries and brands TUI is representing and explained how a huge organization such as TUI is using social media in their online marketing strategies. TUI Travel, operating in over 180 countries and serving over 30 million customers, consists of over 90 brands, including Thomson and First Choice.