ASTA-American Society of Travel Agents largest network of travel. Welcome to Tourism Industries. U.S. Travel Association. United States Tour Operators Association: Smart Travel with Tour. WATA World Association of Travel Agencies : Incoming - Outgoing. Whole Travel tries to redefine travel, with sustainable vacation. Would you base your next vacation on how environmentally friendly, economically beneficial, socially conscious or economically beneficial to the surrounding community a resort is? Do you ever want to plan a trip based on activities or atmosphere, rather than destination? The idea of doing any of the above, admittedly, conjures up images of granola-crunching hippies, rather than the Bermuda short- and baseball cap-clad throngs of American tourists famous for spreading their lucre worldwide.
But Whole Travel, a new site launching today, is betting that the pool of thoughtful travelers is growing rapidly. While most people are familiar with the idea of searching for, say, plane tickets and a hotel in Las Vegas, Whole Travel presents a search box with a question prominently displayed above it: “What’s your grand adventure?” That last, a measurement of various environmental and social considerations for each vacation destination, is the keystone of the site. HereOrThere launches social travel offensive. RideCharge snags $4.6M for business travel apps » VentureBeat. Ever feel the need to book your ground transportation from the airport while you’re still sitting on the runway? Or pay a taxi fare with a click of one button? Maybe not. But that’s the concept behind RideCharge, maker of TaxiMagic — an app that lets business travelers book and pay for ground transportation from their mobile phones (iPhones, Blackberrys and phones running Windows Mobile, for now).
The Alexandria, Va. -based company just brought in $4.6 million in second-round funding to bolster its marketing campaign.Most of the new funds came from Concur Technologies, an automated travel company that can make restaurant reservations via OpenTable, save airport parking spots through Park N Fly, and connect travelers with rental car, hotel and rail reservations through a variety of vendors. Concur’s mobile technology also provides users with e-receipts for any purchases made on their phones with its services.
Travel deal finder cFares lands $3.1M, names new CEO » VentureBe. At first glance, cFares operates pretty similarly to other discount airfare sites like Travel Zoo and Cheap Tickets, but there’s a twist. The Redwood City, Calif. company gives site members access to much cheaper “wholesale” airfares, particularly to international destinations. In the past, we’ve referred to it as the Costco of airline tickets because it charges a $50 subscription fee for this access (a feature some displeased users have complained about). Also separating it from the pack is the ability to set up a continuous search for a particular flight. If a ticket becomes available, the site puts a 24-hour hold on it. The new CEO, Tom Kalinske, is joining the company from learning-toy developer Leapfrog, where he held the same post.
Before that, he worked at Knowledge Universe, Sega, Matchbox and Mattel. cFares hopes he will apply the brand-building skills he refined in those earlier roles to turn it into a more recognizable name. Vacation rental site HomeAway gets $250M to buy up the world’s t. Consumers may not feel like traveling much these days. But that hasn’t stopped HomeAway, the online vacation rental marketplace, from raising an astonishing $250 million in venture capital. The Austin, Texas-based HomeAway will use the money to continue a bold strategy of buying about every travel site in the world. It will make strategic investments and debt repayments. Technology Crossover Ventures, Institutional Venture Partners, and Redpoint Ventures led the round, which the firms say is the largest minority investment in a U.S. Internet company in the past eight years, according to data from VentureSource.
Brian Sharples, chief executive, said the company was happy to secure the round despite the financial crisis. The U.S. vacation rental marketplace is valued at more than $24 billion, according to a research study by Illuminas, an international research consultancy that did the research on behalf of HomeAway. HOW TO: Use Social Media for Travel Research. Whether you're traveling to another city, state, or continent, putting in a few hours to do your homework can mean the difference between a great vacation and a week full of headaches. Finding great local restaurants, comfortable sleeping accomodations, and hidden gems should be on the top of your travel list, no matter if it's a one day business trip or a permanent move to Thailand. In the past, this type of information was exclusive to travel agents and generic travel books.
However, with the rise of social media and stronger interconnectivity, you can get the real story, avoid the tourist traps, and meet real locals. This guide provides an overview of tips and tools for using social media as a travel research tool. Step 1. A wealth of information and tips are available in blogs, user comments, and wiki articles. Step 2. Picking out the best restaurants is tough, so let others do the work for you. The most common user review website for travelers are Yelp, and Tripadvisor. Step 3.
Travel Hacking: Essential Sites for Summer Travelers. Going on vacation this summer? For control freaks and geeks like us, there are now hundreds of sites to help organize your itinerary, discuss travel plans with people around the world, research the weather and landmarks before you go, share your travel photos and videos on the go, find traveling partners, book accommodation and transport, map out your journey and blog your trip from start to finish. For your weekend reading, we've picked out some of our favorite new sites and services in this category. Travel Planning & Management: TripWiser takes travel planning to the next level, by letting you pick any location to travel to, then plan out each individual day.
With the planning complete, you can write notes about your trip, upload photos and keep all your friends and family updated. Add to all this the ability to find hotels, activities, destinations, and restaurants, and you've got a very handy site indeed. Iloho is a Digg-like service for super-organized travelers.
Travel Ideas: Travel Toolbox: 75+ Online Travel Resources. If you're in the Northern Hemisphere, there's still time to enjoy a summer vacation. We've rounded up 75+ sites to help you on your way, including travel search, deal sites, travel social networks and user-generated reviews. Bon voyage. For more brevity, Travel Hacking: Essential Sites for Summer Travelers Fare Finders/ Search Engines FareCompare- An insightful fare comparison service, good for acquiring a base of information towards an educated buying decision.
SideStep- One of the premier ways to find cheap flights and hotels. Kosmix Travel- Search and find flights, hotels, and cars. Trabber- Nicely implemented, multi-site, flight search engine. FareChase- A powerful flight and hotel search engine, one of the best out there. boo.com- Travel search engine, price comparison, and review service. Tripbase- Personalized travel research "assistant". Kayak- Ranks among Farechase and SideStep as the best ways to find cheap flights and hotels. JustStepsAway- Vacation rental search engine. Other. 30+ Tools For Finding Cheap Travel Accommodations. With gas prices and airfare on the rise, you probably want to save money on every aspect of your trip. Cheap hotels are one idea, but vacation rentals, furnished apartments and even youth hostels can be lower cost alternatives.
Browse this list, do your research, and see what sort of deals you can find to save even more money on your next getaway. Hotels CheapTickets.com - Best known for cheap airfare, Cheaptickets also offers deals on hotel rooms and vacation packages. ConcertHotels.com - Find hotels near concert venues in the United Kingdom, USA and Spain. Expedia.com - A full service booking site that lets you book hotels as well as flights, rental cars, vacation packages and more.
Hotels.com - Search for hotels, condos, bed & breakfasts, vacation rentals and more. HotelClub.net - Part of the Orbitz system, HotelClub offers last minute deals, group bookings, worldwide listings as well as over 1.4 million customer reviews. Others Hiusa.org - A directory of youth hostels in the United States. 30+ Tools For Cheap and Convenient Air Travel. With airfare on the rise, planning a trip can be expensive and complicated. We've lined up over 30 tools that let you do everything from finding more affordable tickets to predicting the best time to buy them, and even using a 3d map of your plane to select your seat. Domestic CheapAir.com - Searches for all regular and sale fares at the same time and allows you to filter the results on the fly via Ajax so there are no reloading delays. Momondo.com - Offers search for nearly 500 airlines in nine languages. Vayama.com - Uses an interactive map to help you choose your airports.
CheapFlights.com - Also operates CheapFlights.co.uk. CheapTickets.com - Offers up flights, car rentals, cruises and even train tickets. Expedia.com - Besides being able to search all the major airlines, you can also book hotels, cruises and more. Hotwire.com - Sells unsold inventory from major companies and offers them at a large discount by not showing you the name until after you book. Non-USA Miscellaneous. HOLIDAY SURVIVAL GUIDE: 20+ Tools for Family Travel. The holiday season is fast approaching, and with it, hectic travels. This is the busiest time of the year when it comes to traveling, especially for families. Luckily, online and mobile tools help make the experience much more manageable.
From travel planning sites to navigation apps and services to help you keep track of your spending, here are over 20 resources to help you survive the holiday travel season. Planning Your Vacation – Has a useful site dedicated to families on the go. Believe it or not, they don’t just recommend that all families just go to Disneyland or Disney World! There are plenty of excellent suggestions for activities and sites to see. – Also provides a tremendous amount of ideas for family travel and vacationing. . – Has a special section just for family travel and vacations. . – Like an online travel agent that works with the information you provide on the type of trip or vacation you want to take. . – A travel planning service specializing in group trips.
BTS | Long-Distance Travel Increases by One-Fourth During Christ. Expedia Eliminates Fees for Booking Flights Online. Travel Weekly. Hotel News Now | Hotels News - Article. Fresh off of a fourth quarter that many would like to forget, there are a few high points as we look back at 2008 performance by geographic regions. As the economic slowdown began to chip away at consumer confidence and businesses began to place restrictions on travel, the revenue per available room gains made early in 2008 began to fade in the second half of the year.
In October 2008, RevPAR went negative in year-to-date performance and finished up with a 1.9-percent decline at year’s end. Performance, however, varied across geographic regions of the United States. Top performers Focusing on the nine geographic regions of the United States, the West South Central region led all others with a RevPAR gain of 5.5 percent for year-end 2008. Given a relatively flat occupancy growth rate over the first half of the year, the West South Central region drove RevPAR with strong rate growth. Regional overview. Hotel News Now | Hotels News - Article. HNN Newswire HENDERSONVILLE, Tennessee—The U.S. hotel industry finished 2008 with a 60.4-percent occupancy rate, an average daily rate of US$106.55 and revenue per available room of US$64.37, according to data released today from STR. The occupancy rate was 4.2 percent lower than industry-wide occupancy at the end of 2007 (63.1 percent), while ADR was 2.4 percent higher than 2007 (US$104.04), and RevPAR was 1.9 percent lower than 2007 (US$65.61).
“After a reasonably good start to 2008, the industry fell into an extremely negative pattern during the last four months of the year,” said Mark Lomanno, STR’s president. “The data during the last quarter of 2008 experienced a dramatic decrease, and that led to the disappointing year-end numbers.” Lomanno said the company doesn’t expect things to get better any time soon. For the year, only two of the Top 25 markets posted occupancy gains: New Orleans, Louisiana (+8.6 percent) and Houston, Texas (+2.6 percent).
December 2008 performance.