Travel tech news from btSocial, Momondo, OneFineStay, Goibibo, RateGain, Marriott Hotels, Mercator, Air Indiam, Unisys, United Airlines, Honeywell, WAYN, Air Asia and Google makes to the SCAN for April 24th.
Hotel
Dubai-based Flora Group Hotels has implemented RateGain’z RezGain across four of its properties as their channel manager application to increase revenue and control distribution costs.
In eight months of time, Marriott Hotels & Resorts has gained 1 million Facebook fans. The company has launched a new Facebook contest “#MyMarriottMillion” that offers a chance to win one million Marriott Rewards points. To enter fans have to submit a photo of their favorite travel experience on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram with the hashtag #MyMarriottMillion and lobby for the most votes.
Travel Portal
Business travel website btSocial has added an app to their offering, providing a mobile-based networking option to their regular readers. Aimed at connecting business travelers worldwide, users can “check-in” using a venue, city or other loose area. “Checking-in is our way of raising your hand and saying ‘Hi. I’m here and I’d like to network,” says President Tim Hines. The app is available now.
The Jammu and Kashmir government has decided to develop a tourism portal. Also a decision has been taken to deploy software applications to enhance e-governance in tourism department.
Online comparison site Momondo has unveiled its Flight Insight tool which shows the impact of six different variables on an airfare. The functionality currently works on 400 routes with more to be added. The factors taken into account are number of days in advance, time of day, day of the week, seasonality, airport and airline. The results are presented in a pie-chart and a graph showing the impact on flight price is also displayed.
Vacation rental service OneFineStay has redesigned its search pages to make them easier to use following feedback from customers. Here’s an example.
In an effort to boost bus bookings, India’s OTA Goibibo.com has vowed to offer 2X the bus booking amount if the bus is canceled and Goibibo is unable to find an alternate bus service.
Airline, Airport
Avantik, Mercator’s Passenger Services System (PSS) for low cost and regional carriers has experienced a strong year with the airline customer base touching 23. Recent airline clients were Algeria-based Tassilli Airlines, and Thailand-based start-up U-Airlines, Fly Georgia in Eastern Europe, Antrak from Ghana.
Air India’s nodal software system crashed for more than 12 hours, resulting in manual passenger check-in, boarding card issuance and ticketing process at the Mumbai airport.
Unisys Corporation announced that TravelSky, provider of information technology solutions for China’s air travel and tourism industry, has awarded a contract to Unisys China for the Unisys Airline Core Systems Solutions (AirCore) next-generation passenger system. TravelSky, which operates the reservations, inventory and departure control systems used by China’s air carriers, will use Unisys AirCore to streamline and modernize passenger sales and service (PSS) applications for its airline clients.
Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) became fully operational with the first precision approach flown by a United Airlines aircraft using Honeywell’s SmartPath Ground Based Augmentation System (GBAS) on April 22. This new system delivers a cost-effective solution to increase airport capacity, decrease air traffic noise and reduce weather-related delays.
People
AirAsia has appointed a new CEO for its Indian arm ‘AirAsia India’, but the name is not yet disclosed.
Other
Google has been fined about $190K by a German privacy regulator with the accusation that Google illegally recording signals from Wifi networks while it was taking photographs for its Street View service. Google’s roving Street View vans picked up large amounts of personal data such as e-mails, passwords, photos and online chat protocols, said Johanes Caspar, the commissioner for data protection and freedom of information in Hamburg city state.
