Communications and system management service RoomChecking has raised a €750,000 funding round from a trio of investors. Astotel Group, Maurience Hurand Hotels and BPI are backing the company in the investment. RoomChecking is part of the Microsoft Ventures Paris startup programme. It provides technology to properties so that they can manage…
Holger Bartel, CEO of deals publisher Travelzoo, has prioritised giving its 29 million members more exclusive offers and a loyalty scheme after a disappointing start to the financial year. For the first three months of 2017, Travelzoo’s revenue was down in all three regions it operates in: North America…
More multi-digit deals in the global taxi app sector, the biggest of which is China’s Didi closing a $5.5 billion funding round. Bloomberg says this is the biggest ever funding round for a tech business and values Didi at $40 billion. Reuters puts the valuation north of $50 billion….
Airlines that are implementing flavours of the IATA New Distribution Capability standard are, ironically, adding complexity to air distribution. And, so far, this goes against initial claims that NDC would simplify distribution. Bosses from large travel management firms would like to be able to easily add more airlines but…
There’s no denying that ideal pricing is important to an intelligent revenue strategy. A hotel’s pricing strategy significantly contributes to profitable revenue management approaches, with surges in technology, social media and online booking platforms providing sheathes of data to incorporate into pricing decisions. NB: This is a viewpoint by…
Facebook will now allow airlines to target users of the site with content based on when and where people perhaps want to travel. The functionality is available on both Facebook and its sister photo-sharing service Instagram. The ads can be based on location, time and other factors, tapping into the…
Capturing the unmanaged travel spend of SMEs is the corporate equivalent of herding cats. And in India, where there are an estimated 50 million SMEs, that’s a big herd. Not all these SMEs need or want to have their business travel managed, but as they account for some 40%…
One year ago at its F8 Conference, Facebook announced that it was opening its Messenger platform, giving developers the ability to incorporate chatbots into the conversation. And exactly one year later, again from F8, Facebook released version 2.0, this time with an even more advanced suite of tools to…
Great brands are the ones that tell the best stories and, at last, it seems there is going to be an effective platform to help travel brands tell their stories. Facebook is the latest social platform to get on board with a “Stories” function, launched by Snapchat and copied…
Storytrail claims it is the “world’s first platform of video city guides” – inevitably raising the eyes of many others that do it. The company’s videos allow the user to explore cities around the world with a virtual guide. The clips are pulled together into walking trails (or, indeed,…