Brian Clark Joins Hudson Crossing

We are excited to announce Brian Clark has joined the Hudson Crossing team.

Announced at this year's PhoCusWright conference and only slightly overshadowed by the Kayak IPO news, Brian's deep commercial airline and online travel experience will bolster the Hudson Crossing team's rich operational experience.

"Brian’s real-world accomplishments, creativity and strategic foresight are the perfect complement to the Hudson Crossing team" said Tom Botts, Hudson Crossing Managing Partner. “He has distinguished himself as a true industry visionary with his accomplishments at both Virgin America and Fly.com.”

Brian has spent nearly 20 years in the travel industry and was most recently Senior Vice President and General Manager for Fly.com. In this role, Brian was responsible for launching Fly.com in the US and Europe, including the business and financial plan development, product planning and site design, marketing and PR, airline and online travel agency partner contract negotiations, and overall operations of Fly.com. Prior to launching Fly.com, Brian was a founding officer at Virgin America where he was Vice President, Planning and Sales, responsible for all commercial planning functions including route network planning & scheduling, pricing and revenue management, distribution, sales, and loyalty marketing. Brian began his career with US Airways where he held roles of increasing responsibility in revenue and schedule planning as well as operations.

"Hudson Crossing has created an excellent brand and contributed to the success of dozens of travel industry clients over the last several years," said Clark. "I look forward to continuing the tradition of strong industry leadership and to creating new opportunities and delivering superior results for our clients."

Welcome Brian!

And Virgin Jumps in with Free Holiday WiFi as well

Virgin America has joined Delta and AirTran in offering free holiday WiFi via GoGO in conjunction with Google.

We have to wonder where American, one of the first airlines to offer WiFi, is in this game? And we aren't talking just about this promotion.

American started out fast offering WiFi on 767-200s and selected MD-80s and 737s. However, "selected" seems to, unfortunately, be the norm with AA. None of the 757, 767-300 and a good number of the MD80 and 737 fleet are so equipped. Alas.

Dueling Delta and Airtran BOTH Announce Free Holiday WiFi with Google/GoGo

Have to laugh at this one. Delta and AirTran, arch enemies extraordinaire have apparently both been played by Google for the holidays.

In press releases issued minutes apart, both senior marketing types at Delta and AirTran announced free GoGo wifi for the holiday season courtesy of Google Chrome. A great boon for travelers but how ironic Google managed to get both AirTran and Delta signed up for the same deal.

Delta opines about their 540 aircraft that have GoGo installed (including a DC-9 I was recently on!) while AirTran states they are the only major airline with 100% GoGo on their entire fleet.

The promotion dates are even the same - November 20th through January 2nd.

Lets hope we can use Firefox and still get it free.

Gnomes in Citi's Future?

Bloomberg reported today that Citigroup CMO Michelle Peluso (and former Travelocity CEO) has hired former Site59 and Travelocity co-conspirator Tracey Weber away from Barnes and Noble.

Tracey joined BN.com only in April after leaving Travelocity where she was COO.

The Gnome never sleeps......

Tripit Gets an Elf - and even a Unicorn

TripIt has taken a Narnian turn by adopting Elfs and Unicorns in their newest product demo, uploaded last night and sure to be a viral hit among travel junkies and fantasy seekers alike.



And in more serious news, TripIt also announced a great new feature for TripIt Pro users which monitors submitted flight itineraries for fare decreases. Using internally developed software, TripIt re-prices user's flights to scan for potential fare decreases. If TripIt Pro finds a user's fare has decreased (in Yapta-esq fashion) and that the consumer is in the black after the airline change fee, an alert is generated complete with sample language to feed the airline reservations agent to process the re-issue.

Virgin: Come Sleep With Me

This morning Virgin Group launched a new website, virginhotels.com which gives a small peak into Sir Richard's long rumored plans to shake up the lodging space. Don't look to book a room just yet - Virgin is still looking for hotels to convert into the Virgin Hotels concept.

Taking a page from Virgin Atlantic Clubhouses, Virgin aims to create "unique spaces where our guests can get some work done, nourish and refresh themselves, meet other interesting people, or just take a break from the hustle and bustle of the city."

Virgin has long operated small, uber-exclusive properties around the world under the Virgin Limited Edition brand but Virgin Hotels aims to bring the Virgin experience to the masses with a four star product in "major urban markets." Those markets just happen to be large markets for Virgin America and Virgin Atlantic.

Virgin lists hotel industry hitters Raul Leal (ex- Desires Hotels) and Paul Whetsell (ex- Interstate Hotels) as leading their efforts as they push into hotels.

Ready to get into bed with Virgin?

TravelCLICK Maximizes: Max Rayner joins as new SVP Product

Max Rayner, who was formerly CIO at Travelzoo (TZOO) until he departed several months ago has resurfaced as SVP of Product Engineering at TravelCLICK. The appointment was communicated internally today. Interestingly, Rayner will remain in the Bay Area where we expect he will grow TravelCLICK's internal IT resources and development capabilities. Given Rayner's title, we are betting TravelCLICK's growth plans include a host of new hospitality products.