This week...TUI reports record breaking profits, Google Flight Search now in SEO results and Groupon in trouble with the ASA.

It’s impossible to ignore the fact that Christmas is approaching, which of course means you’re planning your office party (you may have even had it) and preparing for the break. Many of you will be getting ready for the January peak, one of the busiest times for online, in particular travel. To make sure you’re up to date with all the latest in travel and technology, we’ve selected the most popular news for you. We hope you enjoy!

CWT Digital News:

Congratulations to Bookabed and Holiday Taxis!- Two of our clients, Holiday Taxis and Bookabed, have won a 2011 Irish Travel Trade Award. Bookabed.ie won the award for Best Accommodation Provider and Holiday Taxis won Best Resort Transfer Company. Congratulations to both of of you, very well deserved!

Big 10, coming soon-5th December- Our Big 10 Social Media Audit prize closed last Friday. We will be looking through all of our entrants over the next week and will announce a winner shortly. The next Big 10 gives you the opportunity to win a 12 month Online Marketing Strategy incorporating all aspects of online marketing including PPC, SEO and social media. This is a great prize which will prove invaluable to your website.

Travel News:

TUI reports record breaking profits-5th December- In a big contrast to Thomas Cook’s announcement last week rival TUI have reported a £22 million increase in profit from last year. The company believe that this profit is down to it’s ‘differentiated and exclusive products’. This year TUI have concentrated on online sales which has proved to be the biggest channel for the brand. The news of TUI’s success will in no doubt encourage customers to use their service over rival Thomas Cook, whose financial difficulties were openly discussed in the press last week.

Google Flight Search now ranks in SEO results-2nd December- Google Flight Search has now expanded and is showing in SEO results (as the top result). Originally flight search could only be accessed by clicking on a flights tab on the left hand side of the search page, but now is being incorporated into all organic searches. The news of flight search joining the SEO results has annoyed major US-headquartered OTA’s who believe Google Flight Search has pretty much shut them down and once Flight Search is rolled out to the UK, other flight searches such as Kayak and SkyScanner will most likely react in a similar fashion.

Technology News:

Groupon investigated by OFT-2nd December- Daily deals giant Groupon are to be investigated by the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for almost 50 breaches of UK advertising standards. The company has failed to comply with several UK advertising standards, the most recent being an offer on cosmetic surgery which the ASA believes forces consumers to make a hurried decision on potential life changing surgery. The company has faced a series of criticism from the ASA (Advertising Standards Association) since this July when the investigation started, claiming that Groupon fail to provide evidence that offers are available and as well as an exaggeration of savings claims.

Facebook to add new sentiment feature- 5th December- It has recently been revealed that Facebook are testing out a negative sentiment analysis feature for page insights. The feature, which will appear on the engaged users metric, will show administrators the number of people who are responding negatively to their brand posts and statuses. Up until now sentiment analysis was only included in social media monitoring tools such as Radian 6 so this will in doubt come as a welcomed feature to Facebook page owners.

That’s all from us this week. We hope you enjoyed our updates and now feel ready for the week ahead. As always if you want to keep in touch with us during the week then you can follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook.