priceline added a new functionality to it's site adding great value to their price conscious customer base. considering that destination and source market is mainly us-based, their map-api choice is not too much of a deal breaker, however look at my post below showing the priceline inventory for bangkok hotels - bing doesn't provide any relavant map material. they have evolved nicely though with three sliders which i haven't seen on any other price map so far.
agoda, an affiliate of priceline, chose google maps to visualize the hotel locations but has just recently abandoned the sort-by-price feature - apparently it pays off as they have not reverted back to the old sorting options.
still, bing maps is probably a smart choice considering there are so many geo marketers out there that are optimizing for google maps.

Itinerary monitoring and travel alerts

Get text messages about flight delays, cancellations and gate changes.

Alternate flights

Get the best options for any flight problem, including flight status and open seats.

Point Tracker

Track your frequent flyer miles and hotel points in one place.

Inner Circle

Automatically share every trip with key people, like your spouse or office assistant.

Charter Member Perk

20% off a Virgin America flight*

One-time special discount for travel dates between Aug 26 and Nov 11. Book by Aug 16.

sounds pretty decent, huh? for only 49 usd it's a steal the first year if the incentive of a 20% voucher off of your next flight is something you can use - and most of us frequent travellers will, right? i've so far only been using their basic service and was wondering how tripit will monetize as they are also offering free access for ota's and developers to their api - so in essence everyone could even develop this service by themselves or maybe come up with another monetization feature.

tripit would like to see ota's integrate their api but i don't really get where this makes sense as they offer such great usability already - it would only dilute the ota's brand perception as of now... are you using tripit only to brag on linkedin or do you really have great use of it so far? what's your thought on tripit's new offering?

For the past three years the web-based application has been providing smaller hotels with benchmarking, channel management and booking engine functionalities primarily for the Asian and African markets. eRevMax now plans to expand the reach of the distribution management product - SimpleDistribution – into Europe and America tailored to small, independent hotels with 40 rooms or less starting from €750 per year.

after the deal closed with trust two weeks ago, this is for sure giving erevmax some further leverage by being the only player in the industry that has a channel management solution specifically tailored to smaller and independant hotels although there are so many more solutions out there that are able to cover the same functionality at a more competitive price tag - but it's all about roaring out load, rrright?

additionally, erevmax announced that their development center in kolkata will now be the base for their first sales office in asia - when are we going to see localized versions with more competitive prices for the small inn's, b&b's and homestays?

In anticipation of the official opening of Beijing’s newest landmark of luxury, Fairmont Beijing have reached out to the online community using the web’s fastest-growing media platform, Twitter. This ‘tweeting’ journey which began on April 30 has since grown to have more than 1,600 followers.

apart from the fact that 1600 followers are not really a sign of success for a twitter campaign as it's the relevancy of the followers that counts it's sad to see that impactasia had just today sent out a press release to gain further momentum where the account is actually suspended.
lets hope for all involved that they are able to resurrect the twitter account and lets hope the agency is getting the terms straight. the chosen general hashtag 'countdown' yields just too many irrelevant results...

update:
http://status.twitter.com/post/136164828/restoring-accidentally-suspended-acc... - man-made error is most likely to blame for the suspension of the account

BabelWith.me is a simple, free group chat tool that lets you communicate in one language or multiple languages (up to 45). Enjoy real-time conversations without language barriers - BabelWith.me automatically translates each message as you type.

obviously, this is still in it's infancy, wearing a big 'alpha' badge atop the logo. yet, the idea to peruse the translate.google.com api for a realtime chat is genius considering some translations provided are amazingly close to your natural usage of the language. at least it is a solution that could offer smaller hotels the opportunity to communicate with not only those potential guests that master the matching language but anyone of the 45 languages on offer. just don't refer to my previous blog on localization where i'm slamming down the quality of the localization provided...

Hotels.com has announced the launch of its new Chinese website, part of the company's continued expansion into the Asian Pacific region 

i know i'm quite late to realize, yet i wanted to share this information. expedia group now has it's own localized hotels.com version and expands it's presence in china in addition to the jv with elong.cn. this is seems like the last major language for hotels.com after they have just recently launched their arabic version (although fanadeq doesn't capture the arabic feel and leaves space for other entrants). hotels.com now boasts 25 different languages, more than any other hotel reservation site. this should be a strong foray into the apac region where currently other players such as priceline's agoda and booking as well as wotif's laterooms and asiawebdirect as well as orbitz's hotelclub/ratestogo have been historically strong. who's going to launch the next localized version? population-wise, the majority should be well covered except for malay language sites, capturing the techno-phile country as well as a share of the close to a billion indonesian citizens... who's up for a grab of that share except for agoda.com.my?

Microsoft Corp. signed a deal with Global Hyatt Corp. to put hotel ads on Verizon Wireless phones, part of a bid to turn around its shrinking advertising business by expanding beyond personal computers.

The Hyatt ads will encourage people to sign up for a frequent-guest program, as well as letting them book rooms and check in using their phones, said Charles Johnson, Microsoft’s general manager for mobile media. The companies plan to announce the deal today at an ad-industry conference in Cannes, France.

report doesn't really reveal too much info, let's wait and see what that ad-instustry even will bring forward. there's definitely opportunities out there for mobile ads but limiting your adspend on one network would be like displaying banner ads for one isp only... i guess this will probably grow with bluetooth capabilities as u can target phones in a more selected way, e.g. at airports

Trust International and RateTiger have announced a new cooperation to expand automated distribution of Trust partner hotels to additional Internet Distribution System (IDS) travel sales channels.

the first one of the big distribution players to offer channel management to it's customers. great move forward for both - who will follow suit?