Travel Industry News

Airline Workers Face More Pain as Crisis Worsens
March 31, 2005 -- Pilots, flight attendants and mechanics who have already seen their wages, benefits and pensions slashed by billions of dollars face even more pain as struggling airlines swing the cost cutting ax anew. More »

Moscow A Major Factor In New U.S. Airliners
Critics of the U.S. commercial aviation industry have long lamented the comparatively small percentage of some commercial airliners that Boeing actually builds. According to the Financial Times, even the plane's engineering has been outsourced to a substantial degree. The article says that Russian engineers, part of what is called the "Boeing Design Center," are assisting with the design of the company's new 787 project. More »

Groups Weigh-In On New Passport Privacy Issues
Various privacy, consumer, and trade groups are complaining about the U.S. Department of State's proposals to introduce electronic circuits into U.S. passports. The most frequent complaints involve security concerns. More »

Booking Business Travel via the Internet
March 31, 2005 -- Topaz International continues to provide comparative studies of corporate travel airfares between corporate travel agency booked itineraries and various internet sites, including Orbitz, Expedia and Travelocity. In 2004, the Topaz findings show that business travel itineraries booked by a designated corporate travel agency averaged $80 less that the same itinerary booked on a public internet site .

For the past four years, the results have been very similar. Each year showed that when booking business travel, the traditional travel agencies obtain a lower or equal fare over 90% of the time. However, the differences between the prices paid increased from a $69 in 2003 to $80 in 2004.

The independent corporate travel services offered by Topaz International provided an additional comparison in 2003 that showed interesting results in 2004 as well. The results were broken down into three groupings based on the travel volumes of the corporations. Smaller corporations do not see the same differences in price paid for airline tickets, versus corporations with larger volumes of air spend. Corporations with less than $20 million in annual air spend saw an average savings of $73 per itinerary, while corporations over $100 million experienced an average savings of $151

"The Topaz evaluation of airline distribution channels shows that the differences between online alternatives and traditional agencies are stagnant" said Bradley Seitz, President and CEO of Topaz International. "But even more interesting are the results by volume of spend, reflecting the ability of the agency servicing the large corporate clients to get lower fares and, in most cases, to utilize corporate airline discounts. However, even for the smaller corporations, agency fares continue to be less expensive on average."

These studies offer comparative data between traditional booking sources and internet sources, giving corporations the ability to measure performance against various distribution channels. Topaz will continue to evaluate corporate travel and online travel services to ensure an independent third party evaluates the performance of various travel distribution products. Download Complete Report(PDF)

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Cashing in on the pet travel boom
April 4, 2005 -- Spill-free water gadgets, car booster seats and freeze dried pure organ meat are also among the hot-selling products fueling the booming travel segment in the $36 billion pet industry. More »

Survey: JetBlue No. 1 for airline service
April 7, 2005 -- JetBlue was once again ranked as offering the best service in an annual survey that also found five of the top six airlines are low-fare carriers.

AirTran Airways, Southwest Airlines and United rounded out the top of the national Airline Quality Rating study, released Monday. More »

You've got a ton of frequent-flier miles, but can you redeem them?
April 7, 2005 -- That's the focus of The Detroit News report which finds that fliers say redeeming miles for award tickets is harder than ever. That's especially true if you're on Northwest, The News says. It quotes InsideFlyer.com as saying that, on average, fliers succeeded just 37% of the time in obtaining a frequent-flier ticket or upgrade for their preferred dates and times. More »

Reacting to U.S. measure, Canada may require passports of Americans
April 7, 2005 -- Canada's borders are still vulnerable to terrorist attacks because of "serious weaknesses" in the public security system, the country's auditor said Tuesday, as another official sniped at a new U.S. passport requirement. (Related story: Passport needed for U.S. borders). More »

Tighter guidelines for border crossing draws mixed reaction
April 7, 2005 -- Flashing your driver's license when returning from jaunts to Mexico, Canada or the Caribbean won't be enough in a few years after federal officials announced plans to tighten re-entry rules. More »