Expedia.com launched a new interactive “Drive Getaway” ideas tool, developed in partnership with TripAdvisor, the world’s largest travel community. The Drive Getaway tool provides users with ideas for driving-distance trips accessible from their starting city on a single tank of gas or less.
Bob Diener and David Litman, the founders of Hotels.com and pioneers of the online hotel industry, have launched www.getaroom.com. The new company said that with money-saving non-published rates, travelers booking accommodations with getaroom.com get the benefits of opaque pricing without being kept in the dark about where they will be sleeping.
Thomson Holidays is to launch a personal pre-departure website for online customers at the end of the summer. Named MyThomson, the site’s aim is to enhance customer’s pre-departure experience by providing all their holiday details and information in one place.
Zonder, a vacation rental company offering real-time availability for a large portfolio of vacation rental homes, has announced a new site designed to meet the growing needs of consumers and property managers in the vacation rental market. The new http://www.zonder.com/ site is the first vacation rental site to show exact nightly rates and exclusive last-minute deals directly within the search results.
Amadeus said a suite of mobile solutions will become available to the business traveler this summer. This includes the possibility of having efficient approval workflow while on the road and itinerary-based location information upon demand, as well as an employee security tracker. The new solutions will function on all the major mobile operating systems such as Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry.
DealBase.com, a hotel deals website, has released hotel deal email alerts that are fully customizable to a traveler’s preferences. Travelers tell DealBase.com which destinations they want to visit (out of over 700 destinations), the star ratings of hotels they prefer, and the maximum nightly rate they want to pay, and DealBase.com sends email alerts about deals that match their preferences.