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Travel & Tourism Technology Trends

Road Warrior Chronicles: Top 10 Business Travel TipsDecember 9 2008

With the last of my Conferences behind me for this year, I am looking forward to (and not looking forward to) another conference packed year. This past year was one of my businesses travel years to date with almost one conference a month (excluding the summer vacation). They included:

I found myself, over the course of the year, improving my travel packing habits and streamlining my processes in order to reduce my stress while traveling. I want to share what I have learned with you because I know these tips work:

Travel Technology Profile: AdventureLink.comDecember 9 2008

AdventureLink Inc.

Product Description: AdventureLink is the first global distribution and reservation network for the adventure travel industry estimated to be worth $150 billion globally. This industry is continuing to grow at 10 to 12% per year as the baby boom generation ages and demands more experiential travel opportunities. AdventureLink has created the largest database of its kind with over 50,000 trips currently and will grow to over 100,000 trips by the end of the year. We provide a massive marketplace that connects to leading
online and traditional travel agents to give adventure tour operators access to a global market of millions of consumers and thousands of travel agencies.

Presenter: KELLY TOMPKINS Founder and CEO, AdventureLink Inc. Kelly has over twelve years of experience in developing leading travel applications for Sabre, Expedia, GetThere and Tickets.com. Kelly also founded LeisureLink, the leading GDS for booking vacation rentals. Kelly founded AdventureLink in 2006 with the goal of creating the first global reservation network for the adventure travel industry.

Download the PhoCusWright Travel Innovator Profile for Adventure Link Inc.

Headquarters: Pasadena, CA
Product: AdventureLink Inc.
Website: http://www.adventurelink.com
Category: Emerging Company
Principal(s): Kelly Tompkins
Investor(s): Anthem Ventures; Mail Room Fund; Farhad Mohit, Founder of BizRate/Shopzilla; Kamran Pourzanjani, Founder of PriceGrabber
Early Customer(s): Trisept Solutions—VAX Vacation Access. Next implementation will be with a leading OTA—most likely to be announced at PhoCusWright!

Business Model: AdventureLink is an aggregator, charging transaction fees for each booking generated, with gross margins ranging from 18% to 30%.

Funding: Recently closed a Series A investment with Anthem Venture Partners and The Mail Room Fund which will drive the company to a market-leading position.

Market Opportunity: $150B global market and growing by 12% per year as the baby boomer generation ages.

What PhoCusWright Says: Adventure Link is a great idea. It supports the growing trend of small specialty travel agents working out of their home and travelers looking for new and exciting things to do. Super way to monetize the Long Tail.

What T4 Says: I really like Adventure Link as well. It is head and shoulders above the competition in terms of interface, ease of use, and product mix. The focus on distributing the products through a strong agent base and in the implementation of a VOIP system for Adventure Experts is a smart way to penetrate the market and build agent loyalty.

Competitors: Adventure Central, Ekoventure, Adventure Engine

Kelly Tompkins presents Adventure Link at the Travel Innovation Summit,

PhoCusWright 2008 in Hollywood, November 17, 2008.

Breaking Travel News Exclusive interview with Kelly Tompkins.

November 17, 2008

The T-List in 2009 and BeyondDecember 3 2008

It’s amazing to me how much the T-List has grown since it was launched by Mathieu Ouellet back in March of 2007. It has been about a year and half now and the most recent list was posted by Happy Hotelier in his “Happy Halloween: Happy Hotelier’s 300 T-List Travel Related Blogs Ranked according to Technorati“. Here is a recap of how much the Travel Blogger community has grown over the last year:

March 2007 - Mathieu Ouellet creates the T-List
July 2007 - Jens Thraenhart and I decide to team to create the Tips from the T-List book.
Sept 2007 - 30+ bloggers contribute to the Tips from the T-List book project.
Nov 2007 - The Tips from the T-List book is launched at Canada-e-connect in Vancouver.
Nov 2007 - The FIRST

Battle of the Trip Planning SitesNovember 23 2008

The PhoCusWright 2008 Travel Innovation Summit was a showcase for two major types of websites. The first was Vacation Rentals, undoubtedly because of the recent PhoCusWright study about Vacation Rentals, and the second was trip planning. There were a number of trip planning tools represented at the show including:

This graph shows trends in popularity (according to Alexa.com) for Uptake.com, TripWolf.com, and TravelMuse.com.

TripWolf.com was not a participant in the Travel Innovation Summit, but they were at the PhoCusWright 2008 Conference. I included them in this comparison because it is interesting to me that both TripWolf.com and Uptake.com have a very similar growth pattern in their ranking and almost identical current Alexa rank given their start times

Mashable’s Open Web Awards Feature Two PhoCusWright InnovatorsNovember 19 2008

The round one voting for Mashable’s Open Web Awards were just released today at 12:00 EST and I’m really pleased to announce that the two winners of the emerging category from Monday’s Travel Innovation Summit at PhoCusWright 2008 are also features in the Open Web Awards. There is a lot of buzz around what TripIt and Yapta are doing in their respective spaces and I wish them both the best in both the Center stage presentations as well as the Open Web Awards. It’s great to see some really innovative travel companies get featured both at a travel industry conference and for the general Internet community.

You can vote for either (or both) by using the Open Web Awards widget. Note that closing of first round voting is November 30th, 2008, so get your votes in early!

TripIt Alexa Details

Yapta Alexa Details