Travelocity has signed a contract to renew its partnership with Yahoo. Under the terms of the agreement, Travelocity will remain the exclusive booking provider for all air, car and hotel packaging options, and the new exclusive provider for cruise and vacation packages, available on Yahoo Travel.
The ability to combine the Travelocity and Yahoo networks through the agreement will allow users to view and share content, such as travel reviews posted to both sites, and open the door for additional joint marketing opportunities, the companies said. → Read More
Yahoo! brought its Trip Planner out of a 9 month beta period today and it’s an interesting example of cool Web 2.0 apps aimed for popular adoption. Users can drag and drop Flickr photos from a pop-up of their Flickr sets to illustrate travel destinations. Maps are put to a commercial use beyond illustrating the geography of search results. Blogging via Yahoo! 360 takes destination narrative to the next level, beyond short reviews. This may well be part of what mainstream adoption of Web 2.0 looks like. Travel is a crowded vertical, but Flickr is a strong asset for Yahoo! to bring into the game. Likewise, Yahoo! Maps doesn’t have to be the ugly step-sibling of Google Maps. It’s a nice system itself and will likely be well received by online travel site users. I imagine that more things like this are liable to come out of the new practice of holding Yahoo! Hack Day events. Obviously the company has a whole lot to work with. Interesting integrations of multiple applications seem like the lowest hanging fruit. → Read More
