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,

CFO Europe Research Services, in collaboration with Amadeus, have published the report ‘Cost Control and Beyond’. This report is referring to their study to determine whether Chief Financial Officers are satisfied with the level of savings delivered by corporate travel programmes in their company; Several CFO’s from international companies were asked to participate in a survey which resulted in concluding that less than 40 percent of CFO’s are indeed satisfied with the levels of savings delivered.

The full report can be downloaded here (pdf), following is a summary of the findings and conclusions.

The rise of online booking tools, price comparison sites and third party internet suppliers, as well as technological progress, have revolutionized corporate travel, leading to cost savings, more choice and more productivity for business executives. Chief financial officers, the decision makers within many companies, were asked whether they are aware of the opportunities corporate travel can take advantage of. Here are the key findings from the report;

In a press release Tripadvisor announced it now features more than 20 million traveler reviews and opinions, up from 15 million earlier this year and 5 million two years ago. Tripadvisor also experienced rapid growth in the number of registered members, which increased from more than 5 million in January 2008 to over 9 million today.

With Tripadvisor domains now being available in India and Japan, Tripadvisor is now operating in 8 countries outside the United States. More than half of Tripadvisor’s 25 million unique monthly visitors come from outside the United States. Tripadvisor is also expected to launch their service in China in the coming months.

This article is part of an ingoing project about social media used within hospitality and travel industries.  Purpose of this project is defining social media and looking for examples of companies which successfully implemented social media in their marketing efforts.

One of the major cruise companies worldwide is Miami-based Carnival Cruise Lines. Carnival Cruises is part of Carnival Corporation & PLC, the world’s largest cruise company with over 80.000 employees and about 13 billion U.S. Dollar revenue recorded in 2007. Carnival Cruises is operating 22 ships which are expected to carry over 2.6 million passengers this year.

Already following Carnival Cruises through microblogging service Twitter for quite some time, we already got a taste of how Carnival Cruises is implementing social media in its marketing activities. In this article we are elaborating on what specific social media Carnival is using and learning how Carnival is interacting with consumers through social media.

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.