This Week...A new recruit, CCS is no longer using Amadeus and Google attempt to sneakily buy Yahoo

Another week has come and gone and to keep you updated we’ve added our usual dosage of all the top news for all things travel and technology. You can also catch up with all that’s been happening at the CWT Digital offices as well as the latest with the Big 10. We hope you enjoy !

CWT Digital News:

We have a new starter!- 24th October- Rob Lowdon joined us today as our new developer. We would like to welcome Rob to the team and wish him well in his new role.

Our Big 10 PPC winner is...-24th October- Congratulations to Triangle Travel who have won a full PPC Audit for their website. Triangle Travel is a new holiday site which offers a huge range of holidays including adventure and safari, family, driving, cruise and of course beach holidays.

There is still time...-24th October- Our Big 10 Mobile Web App competition closes on the 31st October so there is still time to enter for your chance to win a free Mobile Web App for your site, which will enable your customers to view your offers and deals in a simple, easy to use site. If you want to enter your site then please do so here 

Travel News:

CCS is no longer using Amadeus- 24th October- Complete Cruise Solution (CCS) announced this week that it will end its distribution through Amadeus Cruise at the end of this November. CCS claim that ‘with 95% of travel agent online bookings being made on completecruisesolution.com’ .Please be aware that the market leading CWT Digital Click to Cruise platform connects directly to CCS systems and gains live pricing and availability to cruise lines P&O, Princess and Cunard. If you have any questions or queries about the new CCS move then please do contact us.

Living Social proves successful in travel- 21st October- Flash sales site Living Social, which launched its Escapes brand 11 months ago have revealed that they have sold more than 500,00 hotel room nights at nearly 800 properties. Living Social believe that people react differently to travel flash sales deals to online booking, believing that flash sales purchases are a lot more impulsive. To back this up Living Social showed that 70% of Living Social Escapes purchasers indicated that they weren’t actively looking to travel and 30% of these bookings are made within 15 minutes of opening their emails. Online travel purchases usually takes consumers several searches on several travel sites and price comparison sites but when a price has a limited time users tend to be a lot more impulsive in their purchase behaviour, could this be the way forward for travel?

Technology News:

Google considering Yahoo takeover to edge out Microsoft- 24th October- With Yahoo up for sale things are very up in the air with both Google and Microsoft looking to bid for the search company. It is reported in the Guardian that Google are considering backing another company or group of companies with the financial support to bid for Yahoo in an attempt to beat Microsoft off. It is believed that Google will be unlikely to make a direct bid for Yahoo due to it’s already dominant share in the search market (65%), which would occur some regularity problems. If Google were to back another company it would diminish Microsoft's hopes of buying Yahoo and increasing its already struggling market share.

Facebook facing $138,000 fine for breaching privacy- 21st October- Facebook’s Ireland office is currently being audited for retaining deleted user data. A law student asked Facebook for a copy of all his personal data which Facebook sent to him via a CD. The CD contained deleted data which Facebook had evidently retained. Since this discovery a series of complaints have been collected and presented to Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner which has called for an audit of Facebook’s offices. Should Facebook be found to be breaching their own privacy terms and conditions they will face a fine of up to $130,000.

That’s it from us this week, we hope that our update was useful! Of course if you want to keep up with us and all the news as and when it happens make sure you are following us on Twitter or like us on Facebook!