This week....Our Big 10 interview showdown, CCS lines announce early booking discounts and Google buys Motorola Mobility

It’s the start of another week, and it’s time for another update of ‘This Week’. As always in the world of travel and technology a lot has happened in one week so we’ve picked the best news to fill you in on. We also have some very exciting news about our Big 10 competition.

CWT Digital News

Cruise finalists interview to win Click2Cruise site-15th August- This Thursday (18th August) our 2 finalists from the Click2Cruise Big 10 competition which we launched back in April will be interviewed in an exciting interview day with CWT Digital and NCL at the NCL offices in London. We can now announce that the 2 finalists to win the full cruise site are Omega Travel and Cruise Answers. Travel Weekly will be covering the event so watch out for the coverage of the day in next week’s edition. We will also be covering the day live on our Twitter account so make sure you’re following us to get the latest news on the event. We would like to wish both companies the very best of luck on Thursday!

Travel News

UK bookings remain strong despite riots-12th August- Despite last week’s riots across the UK it would seem that tourists were undeterred by the scenes of looting and violence. According to the European Tour Operators Association there was a total of 330 cancelled bookings over the week out of more than 38,000 bookings to London, a mere cancellation rate of 0.17%. It is believed that the fact that no significant landmarks or tourists have been harmed are a major factor as to why tourists have not been put off visiting the UK.

Cruise News: CCS lines announce early booking savings- 15th August- P&O, Princess Cruises and Cunard all announced the launch of their Early Booking Spectacular. The promotion starts on 1st September and offers various discounts including up to 20% off on 2012 and 2013 bookings, free return travel from home to ship and balcony state rooms for the price of an outside state room. Agents will be given full support in selling these early bookings with webinars and marketing materials, to see full details of the discounts you can read TTG’s article.

Technology News

Google buys Motorola Mobility- 15th August- Google announced this morning that it had bought Motorola Mobility the mobile handset manufacturer for $12.5 billion. Now that Google has access to it’s own mobile and tablet device, the Android, other mobile providers will no doubt be watching nervously. Google insists that Android is still an open platform on which developers can still create apps, though there is a concern that Google will keep the ‘good stuff’ from Android for itself. Surprisingly Google shares have reported a 2% drop since the announcement, we’ll be interested to see how this new venture develops for Google.

Easyvoyage aims to boost content with review competition- 12th August- In an attempt to increase user generated content and come down on fake reviews, Easyvoyage have launched an online competition in which users are rewarded for adding reviews to their online review centre ‘EasyOptions’. Every 3 months a winner will be selected to go on a week long stay reviewing hotels. Reviews are increasingly becoming more important for travel sites, many with their own sites, not only are they a great way of creating confidence with the user they also provide great SEO and social benefits. If you’re looking to get your own review centre attached to your site then please do contact us today about our Travel Community Reviews.

Twitter adds photo sharing tool- 10th August- Last week Twitter added a small camera icon to the status box from which photos can be uploaded directly to your tweets without having to use a third party service. This will obviously come to a blow for companies such as Twitpic who in the past had been used heavily to share pictures on the social networking site.


That’s all we have for you this week, we hope that you found our update useful, as always you can follow us on Twitter or like us on Facebook to keep up with us during the week, have a great week!