Three Travel Industry Changes Which Will Affect You

1. Airline industry consolidation: You ain’t seen nothing yet.

The airlines, which reported earnings over the past 10 days or so, have gotten a good degree of control back, in relation to oil prices. While that hasn’t sent them from losses to earnings, except in the case of Southwest, it has still eased the problem.

What to expect next: consolidation including likely foreign ownership of U.S. airlines. According to Qantas CEO Geoff Dixon, for example:

Higher fuel prices and an agreement on loosening U.S. foreign ownership regulations could lead to a consolidation of the global airline industry into just a few companies…. I don’t believe any airline… will be able to avoid consolidation

2. More and more travel sites compete for your attention.

We’ve been reporting on some new travel sites that are trying to take your attention away from the bigs like Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity.

At the same time we’ve commented how the airlines and hotels are determined to get you to buy directly from their sites and cut out expensive middlemen websites.

There appears to be no end in sight to all this and new and better sites just keep coming. Consumer generated content (reviews) seem to be at the top of the list of important site components.

Here are a few more sites to check out:

• Dopplr: Lets you share your travel plans with friends and colleagues.
• Driftr: Helps you keep track of your travels, share your photos, reviews, and blogs with friends, and research destinations before you book a trip.
• TripTie: An online community of travelers devoted to planning, storing and sharing their trips and itineraries.
• TripWiser: A trip planner where users share trips, places, and reviews.
• TravelMuse: Wants to be your destination for a lifetime of travel by helping you with travel planning and research.
• TVtrip: A video guide that provides “unbiased” videos to help you in making the best choice.

3. Mobile travel sites.

With GPS coming to virtually all cell phones, expect the travel industry to quickly jump on board with many mobile offerings.

These will include, among other things, the ability to receive all sorts of geo-specific communications as you travel about.

Focus areas will include restaurants, local attractions, events, directions to your hotel, last minute availabilities, promotions, coupons, traffic, safety and weather information.