A new flight search site, hipmunk, positioned as “Better Flight Search” has been launched by Steve Huffman and Adam Goldstein. “Most flight search sites haven’t changed in years. They have an intimidating search page and endless pages of flight results. Finding the right flight often takes all afternoon—or all week,” the company says on its [...]

Selling ancillary services is now imperative as travel companies seek to enable travellers to “pick and mix” the services which deliver the most value to them. Unbundling travel is recognition of the fact that no two travellers are the same, and even the same traveller may have different needs at different times. The challenge for [...]

Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, announces the results of an end user study, 2010 U.S. Consumer Choice of Commercial Airlines. The survey evaluates airline preferences among 1,000 U.S. air-traveling consumers who have traveled at least once within the past six months. The survey measures consumers’ awareness of commercial airline carriers (network, non-network, and regional) [...]

In March, Google added hotel links to its Maps application, listing hotels with room rates available to some users. Google also is reportedly in talks to pay $1 billion to acquire ITA Software, which develops fare-shopping software for online travel agencies, airlines and fare-search-only sites, such as Bing Travel and Kayak. Incorporating fares into Google search [...]

European travel-reservation company Amadeus IT Group SA launched a new Internet booking system Tuesday that aims to boost airline ticket sales by letting consumers search more naturally than current systems allow. The new online interface primarily targets leisure travelers. Dubbed Affinity Shopper, it allows users to search within a set budget, along general interests — [...]