holiday insurance saga travel

Looks like they've secured advertising fvrom hotelclub.co.uk, alpharooms.com and hotelconnect.co.uk amongst others for the launch.

Lest we forget, Easyvoyage's founder Jean-Pierre Nadir told us they would spend around two million Euro on PPC keyword buying to support the launch of the UK site.

When does a start-up stop being start-up?
Question of the Day...

Le Web 2008 in Paris held a start-up competition over the course of the event for European companies.

The overall winner was Viewdle, an intriguing site from the Ukraine which uses old military technology for online video facial recognition. Sounds cool huh!

Anyway, Webnode won the silver medal and user review site Zoover picked up the bronze.

Zoover is an interesting case. It's a classic travel UGC offering and is clearly trying to position itself as an alternative to Tripadvisor.

The About Us says:

"Zoover is the largest independent travel website in Europe which has free access for all visitors and is a orientated website with reviews and opinions of hotels, destinations for travellers by travellers."

Now, of course, not only would Tripadvisor disagree with the opening statement but the likes of Trivago - another start-up, backed by David Soskin and Hugo Burge's Howzat Media investment vehicle - might have something to say, too.

The question, however, is this:

Given that Zoover launched in 2004 in the Netherlands, can it really claim to be a "start-up"? Or, more importantly, when does a start-up cease to be?

When it has secured X number of funding rounds? Number of employees reaches point X?

A housekeeping note about comments

We have recently had some issues behind the scenes with the commenting system for the blog.

Apologies for those that have waited for a lengthy period of time to see their comments appear against posts. This problem should be rectified shortly.

Over and out...

First ever travel technology press release via Twitter?

A bit of Twitter-blogger naval-gazing here, but.....

To his credit, Alex Bainbridge of TourCMS doesn't pass up an opportunity to try something new - and then claim it as an "industry first".

Today he has "issued" a press release via Twitter.

Now some might suggest that having the Twitter limit of 140 characters doesn't lend itself well to context and quotes. [and it's lazy?]

And it would fail completely in its inability, in Bainbridge's words via an email, to provide any 'notes to editors'.

Anyway, this is what the 'press release' had to say:

"+++exclusive+++ TourCMS (07 to 08 year on year) booking numbers up 500% (yeah that was the press release). Will do more numbers in Feb09"

There is actually some context on the TourCMS website.

Not sure if we'll be putting it in our press releases section on the website, but fair play to TourCMS.

But a Twitter first?

Chrome-like timing from Google

Don't you just hate when you get scooped!

Heard from a pretty reliable source very early this morning that Google is about to take its Google Chrome browser out of beta and open it to the wider world.

But then discovered on TechCrunch by the time I got to a connection (I've been cocooned at the Travel Weekly Globes' judging session) that vice president Melissa Mayer announced it at Le Web 2008 in Paris just an hour or so ago.

Anyway