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Hotwire launches airfare price-drop site in race to the bottom
TransportOnline travel agencies several years ago would talk about how they were committed to enhancing the travel experience, and that it would be foolhardy to be totally about price. With the announcement today that Hotwire launched a new site, TripWatcher, so consumers can monitor prospective trips for airfare price drops, the online travel agencies might [...]
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Midsize airports hit with large-scale flight cuts
TransportAirline mergers, a deep recession and surging fuel prices have led to sharp cuts in airline service around the country. Hardest hit: medium-size airports. In California, Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, John Wayne Airport in Santa Ana, LA/Ontario International Airport and other mid-size airports lost an average of 26.2 percent of their flights from 2007 [...]
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Tulsa Airport’s nonstop flight plight is a familiar one for small cities
TransportTulsa business travelers are tired of missing out on nonstop flights to Los Angeles, Kansas City and Orlando, according to a survey that’s part of the Tulsa Regional Air Service Initiative, a recently launched effort by Tulsa International Airport. Airlines already have nonstop flights from Tulsa International to seven of the top 10 most sought-after [...]
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Yahoo acquires MileWise flight-search service and shuts it down
TransportMileWise announced today that its “team will be joining Yahoo,” and that the MileWise service, which showed flight options based on your reward mileage, will be shutting down. It’s been tough going for mileage-tracking services such as MileWise and TripIt, to name a few, as four major U.S. airlines — Southwest, United, American and Delta [...]
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Does anyone really need another flight-search startup?
TransportHere’s some unsolicited advice for entrepreneurs: If you want to launch a travel startup, avoid building a flight-search startup, and focus on hotels or something else. OK, the hotel sector is over-crowded, too, but you’ll have more of a chance of surviving than trying to subsist on flight commissions (they only exist for huge OTAs [...]
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Flyers don’t need airline apps to book, but they want them to improve flights
TransportTravelers don’t articulate it this way, but many hunger for a HotelTonight-like app for flights. In other words, they are longing for the ability to book flights in a few taps. That’s one takeaway from a March survey of Flightview app users, released yesterday, which found that nearly 50% of respondents expressed dissatisfaction with airline [...]
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The new tool from Momondo that will tell you when to buy that airline ticket
TransportLet no flight or route go unrated, and let the data crunchers unravel the reasons fares spike high or low. That seems to be the flight-search mantra of late as travel metasearch site Momondo unveiled a tool that takes a route and analyzes six factors that determine the price you’ll end up paying for the [...]
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Italy fines Ryanair for lack of fare transparency
TransportItaly’s competition watchdog slapped a 400,000 euro ($521,200) fine on Irish budget airline Ryanair for falling down on commitments to simplify online ticket sales. The regulator said the airline failed to provide an overall clear price at the very outset of the online booking procedure. In the period December 1-February 7, Ryanair introduced at the [...]
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Priceline: Mobile users booking lots of one-way flights
TransportNearly half of travelers booking airline tickets using Priceline’s mobile apps and mobile website booked one-way tickets for domestic and international flights, Priceline says. That was one of the nuggets that Priceline released today about the habits of customers using its iPhone and Android apps, as well as the company’s mobile website. Priceline, Expedia and [...]
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The seven new types of Millennial business travelers
TransportA generational shift is under way in business travel: Millennials will supplant Gen X business travelers in spending by 2020, according to a new study. Boston Consulting Group’s Traveling with Millennials traces their spending habits and posits that Millennial business travelers, age 18 to 34, will account for 46% of spending on business flights from the [...]
