This week...findings from World Travel Market, are cruise holidays too much value and Adobe says HTML5 is the future for mobile.

It was a very busy week in travel last week what with World Travel Market, there was some very interesting topics that were discussed and some great social events. To help catch you up with the whirlwind that was last week we’ve picked out for you the most talked about news in travel and technology. Of course we’ll be filling you in with CWT Digital news as well, we hope you enjoy.

CWT Digital News:

Social Media Audit-14th November- You can still enter our Big 10 competition to win a free social media audit for your company. Social Media is a hot topic in online marketing and one that was consistently mentioned at WTM last week. If you want to make sure you’re heading in the right direction then a social media audit will help give you a clear vision of where you should be heading with your campaigns. You can enter now here.

Travel News:

Are cruise holidays still too low cost?- 9th November- At WTM last week Richard Fain, chairman and chief executive of Royal Caribbean spoke out against heavy discounting in cruise and how it is damaging the sector. Fain expressed how it’s important to make sure people understand the value in cruise holidays stressing ‘we need to do better at getting that message out’. The concern of discounting in cruise has been a long debated topic, with the mass audience now expecting heavily discounted prices for what are actually high end holidays.

Are cruise sites engaging?-11th November- During the ‘How cruise is harnessing the potential of online marketing and the power of social media’ seminar at WTM on Wednesday cruise sites social media strategy was questioned. Stefan Hull from search agency Propellernet claimed that there was an ‘information shortfall’ on cruise sites, which gave users a lack of information on sites. Dan Caplin, CWT Digital MD reacted to this, stating that some cruise sites are getting this right, in particular cruise.co.uk who have used a series of questions and answer platforms creating user generated content and customer information. Dan also predicted that that players such as On the Beach and Expedia will move into the cruise sector.

Google shows that travel is behind in personalisation- 14th November- More findings from WTM showed that travel, in particular airlines, are far behind when it comes to becoming more personalised to it’s customers. Google’s new flight search tool and use on context of search is believed to have had an influence last week. EasyJet have admitted that they don’t do enough in terms of personalisation and now aim to invest in CRM to start recognising consumers who come direct to the site as well as the ‘high value business customer’.

Technology News:

Adobe announces flash for mobile is finished, but HTML5 is the future-11th November- Adobe announced they will stop development of the mobile browser version of Flash and instead focus on HTML5. One of the reasons for the failure of Flash on mobile browsers was Apple’s refusal to adopt the technology on the iPhone or iPad. Adobe state that HTML5 will give a ‘similar level of ubiquity that the Flash Player provides on the desktop’ so have therefore decided to focus resources on this.

Google Music Store shortly to launch-15th November- In another attempt for Google to take over the world, Google Music, a platform created to rival iTunes is to be shortly released in the US after a selcetion of journalists were invited to have 1st peak at the3 platform. Google Music Store will have similar as well as extra features to iTunes such as free song of the day, recommendations and sneak previews. It is unknown when the platform will reach the UK but there has already been some screen shots leaked in the US which you can see on TechRadar’s article here.

That’s all the top picks that we’ve selected this week we hope you found them useful. Of course as always you can keep up with us during the week by following us on Twitter or liking us on Facebook, have a great rest of the week.