Visit Finland has begun a quirky marketing campaign which aims to create music from DNA. The ‘Symphony of Extremes – Born from Finnish DNA’ initiative uses software from Professor Jonathan Middleton of the University of Tampere. The technology is said to create sound from the base pairs in DNA. The…
It has been trendy for travel companies to create startup accelerators – think Marriott, British Airways-parent IAG and Travelport. A seemingly less well-trod route is partnering with an external expert although there are companies, including CWT and easyJet, that have gone down this path. Enter TUI – the tour…
Thomson has added a new concept store to its 600-strong retail estate in the UK which includes the use of in-store VR headsets for the first time. Other UK high street agents have had VR is shops for some time – Tnooz first reported that Thomson’s big UK rival…
Ixigo.com has claimed the number two spot in India’s online travel market and believes that its growth comes from using machine learning techniques to provide products which solve the problems of real Indian travellers. Its CEO Aloke Bajpai told Tnooz that Ixigo is now second only to the combined…
This is a regular roundup of some of the latest mobile application startup launches in travel covering everything from trip inspiration and planning to virtual assistants. 4Suites What is it? The enables hotel guests to manage their stay via smartphone. Services with the mobile app include pre-check in, opening…
I’ve spent the past four-and-a-bit years of my life working on marketing and selling technology solutions for the tours and activities industry. This time is more or less evenly split between my time as a founder and with TrekkSoft. Like many, I was attracted to the industry by the…
The corporate travel sector is attracting a huge amount of attention from the startup community currently. They see a booming sector, generating big money, but great inefficiency in processes, and think there must be a better way. And, the investment community also seems to have the appetite to put…
Expedia Inc’s HomeAway has signed a partnership with ecommerce giant Rakuten as the home rentals sector in Japan bursts into life. HomeAway will start selling inventory from “Rakuten Lifull Stay”, a partnership between Rakuten and housing and real estate information service Lifull which was only announced a few weeks…
Wave goodbye to YY, and enjoy the new age of the Flex Fare. After decades of service, the international standard YY fare will become a ghost of travel past on 31 October 2017, according to IATA. These multilateral inter-lineable fares were established in 1945 in keeping with the Chicago…
Worldpay, the largest payments processor in the UK, is to be acquired by Vantiv, a 40-year-old credit card processor based in Cincinnati, Ohio. The deal is valued at £7.7 billion ($9.95 billion). It was confirmed as JPMorgan Chase said it was dropping out of the bidding. Vantiv described the agreement…