601 not out

Every hundred posts I do a quick summary of what has been dominating the blog. A regular "not out series" to keep readers up to date. Started first with 101 not out and continued with 201, 301, 401 and 501 not out.

A number of different industry themes came out in the last few months

• Gotcha Capitalism - how companies (including travel companies like Budget) hide fees and charges that undermine the advertised price. Not even Moose Hunters are safe.
  
• Airline Bad news is everywhere - bad news days for airlines became band news months and weeks. But clearly it is all the fault of those thieving, stealing, cheating oil speculators
  
• Start up changed names as the URL trading industry heated up - Kango became UpTake, Vailoma became TripSay and Bezurk became Wego
• BAR - I argued that BAR does not build brand in hotels
• India - Expedia entered the market, maybe bought a slice of TravelGuru and Ram from PhoCusWright and I talked and talked about what this meant for a heating up region. Revenue Management seems to be the first thing to be burned
  
• Content: is there money in it and if so what is the mode?. TripAdvisor think so and are buying up everything they can to prove it. The money is also starting to flow in Asia. But there is also trouble as the eyeball chasing advertisers are beginning to hold onto their money
  
• Last-minute model on hiatus: I called the Last-minute booking model on hiatus and maybe dead (model not company). Others picked up the story (without crediting me); and
• Mobile : I started the first in a series of thoughts on mobile technology and online travel.
  

And on the fun/quirky/ranting side

• Qantas to decided to give up on rewarding frequent flyers by introducing a flawed and plain out nasty to consumers AnySeat rewards program. You now have to fly to the moon (literally - 2.5 million miles) to be able to book a first class seat to New York
  
• BOOT made it into the Australian Financial Review but that did not stop Google from accusing me of being a Spam merchant
  
• We had a first competition on the BOOT with rude consequences
• As always the most consistent part of the blog - that no matter how much hope it wont be the case, the in-flight entertainment system on Qantas failed again and again; and
  
• Phillip Wolfe of PhoCusWright (with a lot of help from Rod Cuthbert of Viator) brought together a great group of online travel players in Sydney. The BOOT tried to the same thing in London and ended up with a much smaller (but no less interesting) group of bloggers.

And the BOOT got his butt kicked with a genuine, take not prisoners, hopefully never to be seen again Royal Flush.

I am still writing, hope you are still reading.