Mark Gilbreath of LiquidSpace predicts that the driving force of the sharing economy will become time, and the companies that can do business in real-time will occupy a more strategic, and profitable, place in the ecosystem. Read More »
Tech
Gogobot, a social-powered travel service that launched a year ago, has raised $15 million led by Redpoint Ventures with Battery Ventures and the CrunchFund participating. Gogobot helps people plan their trips by tapping the recommendations and suggestions of their friends. Read More »
HipGeo aims to put all details related to your travel — photos, check-ins, comments — in one place with an app that passively keeps track of your movements. Afterward, you can easily create a slick, animated travel diary. Here’s what I found when I used it… Read More »
Where Google goes, people follow. Bruno Perez of Revpar Guru weighs in on Google’s excursion into the travel industry with Google Hotel Finder, seeing the move as a logical part of the company’s strategy to challenge established markets such as Facebook and Groupon. Read More »
Travel bookings giant Priceline.com is updating its iPhone app with a service that lets customers book hotels at the last minute. The company said Friday that its Tonight-Only Deals service for iOS will specifically target the 70 percent of last-minute hotel bookings it already sees. Read More »
The iPhone and Android app that helps you find day-of deals on hotels is expanding from a small number of major cities to last-minute vacation destinations. Hotel Tonight, currently in 23 major markets, is announcing 14 new, smaller markets where it will offer curated day-of deals. Read More »
Hipmunk, the San Francisco-based travel search startup, has finally brought its travel search application to the Android operating system. Hipmunk for Android, which for now only facilitates flight searches, is impressive because it retains all the slickness of the company’s web and iOS offerings. Read More »
With the rise of user-generated content, brands have faced challenges. People are talking about brands on social media sites in ways that brand managers can’t control and often can’t even detect. With 50 million reviews and counting, TripAdvisor is shaking the travel industry to its core. Read More »
This is a moving weekend for me so I am going to keep the list of recommendations to read this weekend very short. So without much ado, here are some posts that are worth reading this weekend. Read More »
Mobile is turning travel on its head, and much like it’s changing the way thousands of other companies do business, it’s also changing how Expedia thinks about its product. Instead of searching and booking travel, a mobile device can provide a concierge-like level of service. Read More »
Russia’s biggest online commerce company, Ozon, is about to get bigger thanks to a huge injection of cash and ambitious plans to take its business to the next level. But is it biting off more than it can chew? Read More »