Earlier in the week I asked the following question on Twitter: Question: Who owns customer data? Supplier, Agency, Customer. I would like your thoughts on this? The discussion first came up at the Enter 2009 Conference in Amsterdam where I argued that we, as an industry, need to spend less time hording customer data and more effort in developing a mechanism for sharing customer information in a more efficient way and for the benefit of the...

So the response to my original post has been pretty good. I managed to stir up some emotions relating carbon offsets to snake oil, but that was after all my point. I didn’t really want to sensationalize it too much, but I did want to make the point that, right now, it is buyer beware. Scott, from Search Intelligence, Peter from Sustainable Travel, and Ian from Philathropic Travel all brought up really good points about the industry so I...

** Note: I updated the post based on feedback I received from Peter at STI. Thanks to Peter for helping to clarify some of the inaccuracies. Additions are noted in green. I was contacted recently by a client who wanted to integrate a carbon offsetting program into the checkout process of their travel booking engine. They had been recommended to partner with a company (who shall remain nameless) who sells Carbon Offsets. Upon further...

Kevin May at the Travolution Blog posted a great little factoid about business travel. In a nutshell, Johnson & Johnson’s business travel budget was $915 Million of which $643 Million was spent on Long tail products like events, tours, taxis, airport shuttles, and rental cars. On top of that, 64% of business travelers purchased event tickets. This tells me something very important. Firstly, activity and attraction operators play a...

Alex Bainbrigde over at Travel UCD wrote about a company called Your Travel Business (YTB.com). I had heard about this MLM travel business a few years ago when it first started and I paid it very little heed. I am quite surprised that it has managed to last this long. To my surprise it is now publicly traded and boasts over $226 Million in sales in 2006. I have to admit however, that my perspective is ofcourse that of a technologist and not...