Orbitz new homepage - where's the love? TLC no more?

This morning Orbitz rolled out a new home page - gone are the jarring deep blues and oranges of the old site. Many of the changes are subtle but overall, it has a much cleaner look and feel. The site has also gained some heft with a new wider display - all the rage these days.

Most surprising is the total removal of the Orbitz TLC branding. TLC has been at the heart of the Orbitz brand for years and has been featured in all kinds of commercials and goodness knows how many airline in-flight magazines (no doubt where it was often viewed by someone who was on delayed flight that didn't book with Orbitz!)

We actually viewed TLC as a differentiator in the otherwise commoditized airline ticketing space - something that Orbitz had that even the airlines themselves couldn't match. But with Orbitz pushing hard on hotels, maybe it was decided that TLC needed to take a back seat. TLC isn't even listed under "Why book on Orbitz" on the home page. (TLC is still there, just reached from a rather boring link titled "Traveler Update")

Speaking of hotels, Orbitz is also taking an interesting approach with the chain hotels with direct link-offs to branded landing pages right off the home page - the first we've seen such prominent placement of Marriott, Starwood and the like on an OTA home page.

We also just noticed that hotel search results also have a new "sponsored listing" area at the top of each sort. Similar to Expedia's Google-esq listings, clicking on this advertisement brings you to a landing page for the specific hotel. Oddly, clicking on the ad brings you to a different landing page than clicking on the hotel in the regular sort order.
But what about that (new?) interstitial page between clicking on a hotel and getting to the booking page? Hmmmmm

Airline offers free luggage (tags!)

OK, so we are not usually excited about luggage tags, but this is a pretty cool promotion from KLM. Click here and order up some luggage tags complete with family (or other) pictures along with the usual name, address and phone deets on the back. Best of all, they are free.

No word on if they actually improve the odds of actually getting your luggage when you arrive. The real question is how long it will be before United offers something similar for the low price of $15. Or $25 if bundled with Economy Plus.

Tweetyourtrip - win a trip!

Voyage.tv is running a cool promotion using Twitter to drive traffic and awareness. The rules are simple: Tweet your perfect vacation to @voyagetv and become a follower. Every Friday, they announce a winner. What caught our eye was last week's winning tweet from jeffreynordrum:

@voyagetv CPL FRM BOS DRE-AAM ABO-UTT PTY/FUN INN THE SUN AND MAI-TAI/SEE PAN-AMA CAN-AAL INN LUX-URY/NIK-KKI RES-ORT THE LOC-ALE TOO BEE

Maybe it is just the airline geek is us, but we love the creativity this winner used by Tweeting in airline codes! Not all of them are real but the requested destination, PTY, is Panama City - a great destination that is just getting discovered. Decode your airline codes here

This is one use of Twitter that dosent SUX. (And yes, that is a real code - poor Sioux City, Iowa.)

More details on tweetyourtrip here

Full Disclosure: Tom's wife works at Voyage.tv

United Allows Unlimited Upgrades and Goes After Competition

United just announced that they will allow unlimited complimentary upgrades for all Mileage Plus elite members. Not only that, but in an email from United, they make the elite benefits of the Mileage Plus program pretty clear vs. the competition. We haven't seen this aggressive of competitive positioning (by name, no less) from an airline in a long time - remember the Shuttle wars?

How long will it take American to match this change for AAdvantage members? We bet not too long - UA and AA match pretty much everything the other does in the loyalty space within days. And what of United's newest Star partner, Continental? They dont fare too well in this (decidedly one-sided) accounting - but we bet United would love to have a lot of CO passengers start crediting over to UA....

Kayak Opens Up Search Data to Everyone

Our friends over at hotelmarketing.com are reporting that Kayak has opened up their logs to the rest of us to see how and what people are searching for and on. We can't tell how recent this development is since Kayak doesn't seem to blog anymore (last posting was back in May!) and they haven't issued a press release since May either but we don't remember seeing it before now.

Radio silent or not, the reports are pretty cool. You can do things like pull the most popular air search destinations trended out over time, check out upward and downward trends (which can get kind of silly due to small sample sizes) and more. Kayak also exposes the largest air search origins and destinations for a given city.

There is also something new called the "Kayak Travel Index" which is a blend of searched air and hotel prices to (and in) a specific city. Alas, they don't break it down to just air or hotel - which would provide some really interesting data for the marketplace and even corporate travel managers.

For hotels, kayak lists hotels by number of searches - cool stuff.

Check it all out here

or look at Boston specifically here

Book on Priceline and then get canned? No Problem!

Today, Priceline announced a new insurance product which protects against, among other things, job loss due to a layoff or involuntary termination. We've seen some other innovation in this area with Kia offering to cover car payments in the case of job loss and JetBlue awhile back offered to refund customer's tickets in the event they were laid off. Priceline's policy is a little different because it is not a "value add" for buying from Priceline - consumers have to actually pay for it - $16 for an air ticket and $5/ night for a hotel reservation. Still, anything that gives consumers more confidence to buy is a good thing. It will be interesting to see how it performs for hotel bookings as this is the 1st time we can remember seeing travel insurance for hotel.

On a side note, as usual, the air supplier web sites are still limited to hawking regular old travel insurance. Yawn. Once again, Priceline proves the OTAs can out innovate the suppliers - even without booking fees.

United: All you can check for $249 a year

United has come out with their latest offering in the ever creative world of airline fees: the all-you-can-eat plan for checked baggage. For $249 a year, United will allow you to check up to two bags (normally $20 and $30 for the 1st and 2nd bags) for a whole year. Any hangers-on (up to eight) in the same reservation also benefit from the deal. Think of how much the Eight-is-Enough family would have saved had this been around in their day.

It is a smart move for United, particularly if it builds any loyalty among travelers who may not fly enough to gain Mileage Plus elite status. And maybe those same people, after buying the option, will even pay a little more to fly United because they have some built in savings vs. the other carriers.

And if you are checking a surfboard or flying with gold ingots, you'll still have to pay the usual extra charges for large and heavy bags.