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.

Europe’s biggest low cost carrier Ryanair today released a press statement in which they confirm that they have given a 30 days notice to Expedia that its exclusive hotel contract will end, following Expedia’s failure to honor payment terms.

Ryanair
The agreement between Ryanair and Travelscape gave Expedia exclusive rights to sell hotel accommodation on Ryanair.com (Europe’s largest travel website) and gave Expedia on-line access to Ryanair’s 58 million annual passengers.

Major airline carriers are continuing their ongoing efforts to gain back control over their own distribution channels. One of the recent problems airline carriers are facing is the practice of screen scraping, which means as much as downloading or extracting fares and flight schedules from a global distribution system for use on another technological platform. Where screen scraping is leading to additional traffic and sales, it is also becoming a problem for both airlines and hospitality industry.

Ryanair is one of the first carriers that is no longer accepting bookings through screen scrapers, and has announced that as of per August 11, the airline will cancel all bookings made through these channels. This measurement could lead up to 1000 Ryanair passengers finding themselves stranded, as a result of the aggressive new policy of the Airline.

Travel agent Thomas Cook is putting four of its brands’ individual travel websites offline, as it is planning a complete redesign of ThomasCook.com which will be representing all of the Thomas Cook brands. The new Thomas Cook website will feature all different services and brands, and will operate like a retailer, offering everything what is available on the market. All the former websites of Manos, Panorama, Escapades and Aspro will thus be closed before the end of this week, after which customers will be automatically forwarded to Thomascook.com.

Not being much of financial expert, it’s uncommon for me to post major news about financial results of companies active in online travel and hospitality. This time however, we stumbled upon a review and summary of recent financial figures during the 2nd quarter of 2008, released by the thee key online travel companies Expedia, Priceline and Orbitz. For the full article head over to seekingalpha.com, or continue reading for short highlights of the article.