Ryanair and Ticket Cancellation

Whatever the legal merits, their CEO has a wonderful and admirable talent for cheap and effective marketing: Ryanair is all over and Ryanair manages to again create the impression of cheapness, while others cost more. Great.

US Airways to charge extra for some coach seats - CNN.com

US Airways to charge extra for some coach seats - CNN.com

USAirways is having a hard time: Delta and Nothwest are gone, and United and Continental may tie the knot, leaving USAir the odd man out. Rising fuel costs, higher operating cost and more eating away at margins require innovative measures. Like charing for a premium aisle or window seat in the first few row of coach. Ingenious. You will appreciate this if you ever had the good luck to sit in 23B.

The joys of air travel!

Meta Search takes off...200 MIO $ investment in Kayak

Meta Search seems to take off in earnest: the proliferation of meta search sites in the last years has shown a trend in travel that we have witnessed in other areas: aggregation of pricing information in one site has potential and attracts users. Kayak, a US based search site, late last year, raised 200 Mio US-$ in funding, turned around, and bought SideStep, another search site, with a different technological hinge point. The blogosphere is awash, and some insightful comment can be found here.

Show me the miles!

Airline and other Loyalty Programmes will feature in the Leisure Industries Section panel at the IBA Singapore conference tomorrow. The session will also look at questions posted by members of such programmes on www.flyertalk.com.

First session a success! Hotel, Casinos and Gambling draw a crowd

The first session of the Leisure Industries Section, dealing with Hotels and Casinos in the SE Asia region, drew a full room. The session, chaired by John Vernon, brought together speakers from Hungary, the United Kingdom and Singapore.

IBA Conference in Singapore under way

The IBA`s annual conference in Singapore is well under way - with more than 3,500 particpants a record breaking event. Minister Mentor Lee, a lawyer by training, gave the keynote speech and remained for a Q&A session, sharing his views and the reasons for Singapore's success with the audience.

Blackstone acquires Hilton

Blackstone continues to gobble up travel players: after they bought the travel part of Cendant, putting them behind some of the more notable online intermediaries, CRS and aggregators, they have now decided to buy Hilton. Hilton, having just bought the owner of the international brand rights possibly will now look at major investment. Certainly, Starwood profited from being bought out and set up as REIT.

It will be interesting to see, whether integration continues beyond the already mentioned LaQuinta - Hilton angle. If I just dream, this could be a preferred channel through Blackstone-owned intermediaries, integrating certain CRS functions, synching of customer data beyond platforms and more. Details can be found at NYT.

Oh, and on a lighter note: will Paris Hilton get demoted from Diamond (or above?) status, once the acquisition has gone through?