Travel Blog
The latest news and notes from the Travel team
S7 Airlines launches QPX to allow improved flight shopping across channels
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
S7 Airlines, one of Russia’s largest airlines and a
one
world alliance member, recently launched our
QPX™
pricing and shopping technology. S7 now offers their customers a more accurate and efficient way of shopping for flights across multiple channels -- on
www.s7.ru
, within the call center and with their
Android™
app.
This is part of a larger effort in which S7 deployed a new booking platform with a modern design. As part of this first release, S7 used QPX pricing and shopping technology to allow their customers to shop for flights across the S7 network and their partner networks.
Dmitriy Chuyko, S7 Airlines E-commerce Director said, “Using QPX pricing and shopping technology gives our customers a more accurate, robust and efficient way to shop for flights. The initial launch was really smooth and we’re looking forward to releasing some of the new features we’re working on, like reward shopping and the ability to support refunds and reissues.”
We’re excited to welcome S7 as a customer.
To learn more about QPX visit
www.itasoftware.com
.
Nicola Simionato, General Manager, Travel EMEA & APAC
Finding good flight deals just got much easier in Europe
Wednesday, January 22, 2014
(
Cross-posted on the
UK Travel blog
)
Travelers searching for a good flight deal in Europe may have needed to check multiple online sites to be sure they found the lowest airfare and best flight options. Now with the addition of Ryanair flight information in Google’s Flight Search, it is much easier to find the lowest fare -- at lightning speed.
We are delighted that Ryanair, which is Europe’s largest airline and the largest airline in the world in terms of flown international passengers and which is known for its low fares, has joined the Google Flight Search family.
Using Google’s Flight Search, travelers in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain (as well as Canada and the USA) can quickly find, filter and compare flights, view prices in their local currency, save the results for later, or book directly with any of our booking partners.
Since we launched Flight Search in 2011, we've worked hard to add new features that make it fun, fast and easy to shop and book airfares
Best Flights and Tips
- Quickly get the best answers with suggestions for alternate dates, airports, and trade-off between price and convenience
Interactive Maps - users are able to explore possible destinations and view live ticket prices by surfing an interactive map
Saved Flights
- Results can be saved to track price changes, helping users make smart booking decisions
Google Flight Search is fast, easy to use and interactive so business people, parents and star crossed lovers can quickly book their travel and get back to their work, parenting or pining. We want to give users as many flight options as possible, so introducing Ryanair is very exciting. We are working to expand our relationships with other airlines and travel partners to bring Flight Search to more countries in Europe and around the world.
Posted by David Robles Fosg, Partner Development, Travel
China Southern Airlines signs up for QPX air shopping
Thursday, January 09, 2014
China Southern Airlines, a SkyTeam member and the largest airline in Asia, signed a multi-year agreement to use our QPX™ pricing and shopping technology to improve the international airfare shopping experience for their online users.
With China becoming one of the world's fastest growing travel markets, China Southern Airlines is the first Chinese airline to take advantage of our technology to enhance the overall shopping experience for their customers. “QPX is the most advanced air ticket pricing and shopping engine in the market. QPX will help us innovate our online air ticket shopping and drive our online direct sales, which will allow us to slash distribution costs.“ said Mr. Jerry Hu, CIO of China Southern Airlines.
China Southern Airlines plans to use QPX for international revenue and reward redemption pricing and shopping, as well as ticket exchanges and refunds. The rollout will take place in phases, with the first release expected in Spring 2014. When launched, China Southern Airlines will provide a faster, more accurate and easier to use online air ticket shopping experience for their customers.
To learn more, visit
www.itasoftware.com
.
Posted by Kevin Wang, Strategic Partner Manager, Travel
Virgin Atlantic sees success by improving user flight shopping experience
Monday, December 16, 2013
Over the past year Virgin Atlantic completely redesigned
www.virigin-atlantic.com
and expanded the way they use Google’s QPX™ pricing and shopping technology to
simplify and improve the flight shopping process
.
Their hard work has definitely paid off, as Virgin Atlantic has seen a significant increase in flight search conversions and the overall value of completed bookings since launch. Additionally, Virgin Atlantic was recently named the
Lovie Award’s 2013 Web Futures Gold Winner for Best User Experience
.
David Bulman, Director of Information Technology, Virgin Atlantic, “One of the biggest benefits we realized since launching QPX is the dramatic increase in booking values. It’s easy for customers to quickly compare the different classes of service and realize the value they can get for different fare families. This means customers are frequently trading up and in fact, booking values on our flight search page have increased over 17% year-on-year. Working with Google and implementing QPX technology played a critical contribution to this success.”
We work with our travel partners, like Virgin Atlantic, to make the travel experience better for our users and help them innovate to accomplish their goals. You can check out the
video and details about Virgin Atlantic's recent success
. Way to go Virgin Atlantic!
Posted by Nicola Simionato, General Manager, Travel, EMEA & APAC
Dreaming where to go with your AAdvantage miles?
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Want to go on that dream vacation with your American Airlines’ AAdvantage miles but not sure where you can fly? Redeeming miles for flights just got easier now that American has launched the new
Award Map
, powered by our
QPX™ Reward Shopping
feature.
This new tool helps users quickly and easily search for and book award travel using their AAdvantage miles. Users simply search with criteria, such as destination category by region or interest, and the miles they wish to use, in addition to regular search parameters like their departure airport, dates of travel and cabin preferences. Behind the scenes the QPX Reward Shopping engine quickly computes a huge number of possibilities to present the user with all available award flight options within their desired mileage amount. Available destinations are then displayed on American’s intuitive Award Map, making it easy for travelers to evaluate all their options and book using their AAdvantage miles.
“We’ve had a long standing relationship with American Airlines, helping them innovate with pricing and shopping since 2004,” said Gianni Marostica, Commercial Director for Travel at Google. “We were thrilled to help them take this latest innovation from idea to implementation in a few short months. Congratulations to the team at American Airlines on this exciting and successful launch.”
Posted by Nate Nottke, Senior Technical Account Manager
One year later -- proven and ready to weather any storm!
Thursday, February 28, 2013
One year ago, Cape Air
launched
our new
airline platform
, a 100% completely new, scalable and modern airline passenger service and reservations system. After 130,000 flights and three New England superstorms, we can say the system has been fully tested and is proven, reliable and efficient.
Hosted on two parallel systems, disaster recovery is integrated into the very architecture of the system. When unplanned events strike, or major infrastructure upgrades are required, we have the capability to move between parallel systems without downtime or interrupted service -- and in a matter of minutes. There is no need for experts to fly data tapes to another safe location or spend hours transferring large data files, as with some legacy systems.
Having a redundant architecture allowed us to move Cape Air from their primary reservations environment to their secondary environment and back again, a number of times over the past year. Even during Nemo, Superstorm Sandy and the recent Nor’easter, Cape Air employees were able to offer uninterrupted service to their customers, getting them where they needed to go -- as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Since launching, Cape Air has seen additional benefits and efficiencies, including:
The new system made it easy for Cape Air to roll out a steady stream of new features and releases that lighten the load for customers and employees. In the past 12 months, Cape Air integrated 464 improvements with an average integration time of only 30-45 days.
The integration between the reservations and departure control components allows Cape Air employees to easily shift between the call center and the airport -- using a system that looks and feels the same across these very unique functions.
Agents love how easy it is to check in passengers and baggage, and to add other additional information, to better serve their customers.
Cape Air customers often cite the ease of use, convenience of booking with a profile, how quickly and easily they can change and cancel reservations, and the general intuitiveness of the system.
Dan Wolf, CEO of Cape Air, said “The past year has been full of success moments, in large part thanks to the team and technology provided by ITA. The launch was just about the smoothest I’ve ever seen, and we’ve been able to roll out new features without missing a beat. More importantly, our passengers are finding the way they search, book and travel to be faster, easier and more personal. ITA’s airline platform did not disappoint!”
We’re thrilled with the success Cape Air has had over the past year, and look forward to the exciting updates they’re planning for 2013. To learn more about how Cape Air is making history and delighting its travelers, you can read the full
case study
.
Posted by Ed Orciuch, Manager, Software Engineering, Travel
MileWise lets you search flights in cash, miles and points on Android devices -- including Nexus 7
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
MileWise uses our QPX™ pricing and shopping technology on
milewise.com
to give users a faster and more comprehensive flight shopping experience.
Now, Android and Nexus 7 users have access to the same great speed and broad range of search options.
In addition to these benefits, QPX also enables other innovative features for MileWise Users:
Combo Fares let users combine two one-way tickets with different carriers and payment types, for big potential savings
Price Alerts let users instantly know if the lower-tier mileage seat or a great cash fare has become available
Search Filters give users a full set of filters, making it easier to find exactly what they're looking for
Users also have access to several innovative MileWise features that allow them to:
Track 500+ programs (including airlines, hotels, credit cards and many others)
Explore places to go, using individual rewards or cash
Get expiration alerts to make sure they never lose hard-earned miles and points again
Receive activity notifications when status level or balance changes
MileWise lets users see real-time flight prices in cash, airline miles, and hotel and credit-card points -- on one screen. They track reward program balances, status and expirations, combining that data with travel and redemption preferences, to recommend the best way to pay.
Congrats to MileWise on their successful launch. MileWise for Android is available for download in the Google Play Store at
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.milewise.app
.
To learn more about ITA by Google, visit
www.itasoftware.com
.
Posted by Asif Khan, Sales and Business Development Manager
ITA by Google and MileWise let you search flights in cash, miles and points on your mobile phone
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Recently, we
introduced
MileWise as one of our newest QPX™ customers. MileWise presents users with real-time flight prices shown in cash, airline miles, and hotel and credit-card points -- on one screen. MileWise also tracks traveler reward program balances, status and expirations, combining that data with travel and redemption preferences, to recommend the best way to pay.
Now, MileWise users can search with our QPX pricing and shopping technology on
milewise.com
and
their iPhones (Android will be available in Q1 2013). This means MileWise users have improved speed and range of search options whether they’re using their desktop, laptop, tablet or mobile device.
Here’s a snapshot of some of the features MileWise users have access to with MileWise for iPhone:
Innovative search features enabled by QPX
Combo Fares: combine two one-way tickets for big potential savings
Recent Searches: quickly re-try searches to see if that mileage seat has opened up
Search Filters: full set of filters so users can find exactly what they’re looking for
More innovative features for MileWise users
Track 500+ programs (including airlines, hotels, credit cards and many others)
Explore great places to go using individual points and rewards
Expiration Alerts: never lose hard-earned miles and points again
Receive Price Alerts
Activity notifications when status level or balance changes
Sanjay Kothari, Co-founder, MileWise, said “To become the best one-stop travel search engine, we needed an amazing mobile offering. With ITA's help, we believe we were able to deliver that. And, our Android mobile and tablet versions will be released in the first quarter 2013.”
Congrats to MileWise for their successful launch. MileWise for iPhone is available for download at
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/milewise/id548797388?mt=8
.
To learn more about ITA by Google, visit
www.itasoftware.com
.
Posted by Asif Khan, Sales and Business Development Manager
ANA renews QPX™ agreement with ITA Software
Wednesday, December 05, 2012
We’re happy to announce that All Nippon Airways (ANA), Japan’s largest airline and one of our first QPX™ customers in Asia, has signed a new multi-year agreement for continued use of ITA’s pricing and shopping engine.
ANA launched QPX in 2008, utilizing our advanced airfare shopping tools to provide international airfare search on
www.ana.co.jp
. ANA has since expanded their international search capabilities to incorporate calendar, flexible date shopping and multi-city. Most recently, ANA added slice-by-slice search capabilities which allows travelers to customize their itinerary by selecting departure and return options separately.
Headquartered in the Shiodome area in Minato, Tokyo, ANA operates service to 49 destinations in Japan and 31 international routes. They’ve been a great partner and we’re excited to continue supporting their growth and expansion into other international markets over the next several years.
To learn more about ITA Software, visit
www.itasoftware.com
.
Posted by Lewis Chang, Sr. Technical Account Manager
ITA by Google and MileWise let you search flights in cash, miles and points
Monday, October 08, 2012
As one of our newest customers, MileWise recently launched our QPX™ pricing and shopping technology on
milewise.com
. MileWise presents users with real-time flight prices shown in cash, airline miles, and hotel and credit-card points -- on one screen. MileWise also tracks traveler reward program balances, status and expirations, combining that data with travel and redemption preferences, to recommend the best way to pay.
Using QPX improves the speed and range of options for their users -- and limits results to only those that are available. QPX also enables MileWise to better deliver innovative features for their customers such as Price Alerts, Combo Prices and Explore.
Price Alerts notify travelers when a “Saver” award or cheap cash fare becomes available for a desired trip.
Combo Prices let travelers easily mix and match different ways to pay for a flight. These prices can be cheaper and let travelers with less rewards still use them for travel.
Explore inspires travelers by showcasing awesome award prices and fantastic fares for dream destinations and popular places.
Another feature popular with MileWise users is the WisePrice index that ranks flights based on total price, miles earned (including bonuses) and personalized reward values.
Sanjay Kothari, Co-founder, MileWise, said “The choice for us became clear. To be a one-stop travel search engine, we need the best cash fare inventory, fast response times and powerful search capabilities. That meant partnering with ITA. We’re now able to provide more personalized and flexible searching capabilities and return the lowest prices for vastly more routes.”
We’re looking forward to working with MileWise as they continue to expand their offerings.
To learn more about ITA by Google, visit
www.itasoftware.com
.
Posted by Asif Khan, Sales and Business Development Manager
Club Premier achieves rapid results in only six months
Friday, August 10, 2012
Six short months ago, Club Premier
announced
it would be using QPX™ to power online award shopping on
www.clubpremier.com
. They’ve accomplished quite a bit since then, and we wanted to share a quick glimpse:
Grew online flight award redemption nearly 30% by making it easier for members to shop for and redeem Aeroméxico flight awards on their new website.
Introduced calendar shopping for Aeroméxico flights, allowing members to view all available flights within the week or the month they’re interested in traveling.
Improved look to book ratios by more than 2x, a statistic that is well above the industry average.
Dramatically reduced call times for their members and customer service agents, by deploying the same advanced functionality in their call centers.
Jeremy Rabe, CEO at Club Premier, Aeroméxico said, “We’ve been very happy with the initial launch and how quickly we’ve been able to add new functionality to our site since. Our Club Premier members now have even more flexibility and value for their loyalty.”
Check out the full
case study
to learn more about the early results Club Premier has achieved with QPX™.
Posted by Brian Mulvey, Program Manager
Frequent fliers vote American AAdvantage the best overall loyalty program
Friday, May 04, 2012
This year we sponsored the annual
Freddie Awards
, an awards program started by "frequent flyer guru" Randy Petersen, founder of
FlyerTalk.com
and editor of
Insider Flyer Magazine
.
Our customer American Airlines and their AAdvantage loyalty program won the Overall Airline Program of the Year (Americas). American uses our Reward Redemption product to allow AAdvantage members to shop online for flights using miles. Suzanne Rubin, President, American AAdvantage Loyalty Programs, accepted the award.
According to the Freddie Awards blog, “AAdvantage treats elite members well. Many members would say that the program offers the best domestic award availability of any U.S. airline and AAdvantage miles offer some of the most lucrative international award redemptions in the industry. Members are clearly happy after all these years.”
The Freddie Awards were inspired by Sir Freddie Laker, who was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his contribution to commercial aviation. Winners are determined by members of frequent traveler programs who vote for their favorite program in a variety of categories. This year over 1.3 million global program members voted for their favorite programs.
The awards ceremony was held on April 26 at the Renaissance Hotel, Newark Airport. Over 400 travel industry executives, journalists and bloggers attended the gala event. The son of Sir Freddie Laker, Freddie Laker Jr., made a special guest appearance and helped emcee the event along with Randy Petersen and actor Robert Wuhl.
Congratulations to American Airlines and
all the winners
!
Posted by Cara Kretz, Sr. Manager Marketing, Communications and Public Affairs, Travel
ITA removes “agony” for Hipmunk engineers
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Hipmunk
, the winner of Travel + Leisure’s Best Travel Websites 2011, is known for their lovable logo and their commitment to removing “agony” from travel planning. “We wanted to find a way to give people the best high level understanding of results and make it easier to mentally narrow down what the best options are,” said
Adam Goldstein
, co-founder and CEO, Hipmunk.
Hipmunk integrated ITA’s
QPX™
pricing and shopping technology in January 2011, to give travelers more comprehensive results and more flexibility in how those results are displayed. According to Adam, “The way we standardized how the results are displayed was a huge differentiator, and a big reason why people love Hipmunk. We built a site to help users find a way to easily compare schedules, prices, lengths of flights and duration for example. As it turned out our users became passionate about Hipmunk and we see them sharing their Hipmunk experiences with friends, family and colleagues. What we’re doing does
take the agony out of the experience
, and it worked out far better than we hoped!”
Hipmunk recently implemented ITA’s Boombox, a comprehensive integration platform that provides a simple API and hosted service layer for QPX. Adam said, “QPX and Boombox certainly remove agony from our engineers’ lives, allowing them to work a lot more quickly and efficiently to roll out new features that help users.”
I sat down with Adam to ask him about his thoughts on travel technology, the success Hipmunk’s had with QPX over the past year and a few other personal thoughts.
What have you done with QPX that has helped differentiate Hipmunk or been really popular with your users?
There are several things we’ve been able to do with QPX that help remove agony from travel planning, such as:
Calendar shopping,
Multi-city shopping,
Search filters for multiple airlines and flexible dates,
ITA routing language that lets users fine tune search parameters before they click search, and
Integrated airfare shopping results with Google Calendars.
QPX lets us enable people to specify what they want and what they don’t want at the time of search. They can use
special routing notation
to search for certain airlines, cities, flights -- or even specify cities they don’t want to connect through, maybe because those airports are known for having terribly long layovers, frequent delays or weather issues -- all to return the most relevant search results right away. This has been pretty popular with frequent fliers.
Another thing that’s really popped is the ability to interact with people’s calendars. When users log in, they can integrate their Google Calendar with Hipmunk to easily see which flights fit within their schedules. QPX powers that flight search and is super flexible in supporting this integration.
How has Hipmunk benefited the most since working with us?
The quality and speed is great! This applies to the results we return to users as well as the speed in which we’re able to roll out changes to our site. We talked about the Boombox integration earlier -- but it’s nice that our users benefit from new features more often when we don’t have to worry about implementation.
What change in technology has had the biggest impact on the travel industry over the last decade?
The biggest impact? Probably smart phones. We recently saw our first day in which our mobile usage exceeded web usage. Even absent any macro trends, people are finding mobile experiences to be much more seamless and important. And, having the same power on your phone as you do on a desktop is incredible -- especially if you’re stuck in an airport and need to find a flight out. I think more and more of the technical power and experience we have on our mobile devices will migrate to desktops as well.
What have you learned about the travel industry that surprised you?
There are a lot of big companies in this industry that are slow to adapt to change. The systems and websites of some airlines and suppliers make engineering changes extremely slow. We’re really fortunate to be able to iterate as quickly as we do.
What's the funniest thing that's happened to you while traveling?
That depends on your sense of humor. I’ve been stranded and have bumped into people I know half way across the world, in Buenos Aires and Hong Kong. But, one especially funny incident; we were in Turkey, driving through the countryside between two cities about eight hours apart -- basically, in the middle of nowhere. We saw a restaurant called
Mantar Evi
- which means Mushroom House. It sprung up pretty randomly, and the entire menu was all mushrooms. I was pleasantly surprised. Honestly, it was the most delicious and best meal we had on our entire trip.
Check it out
if you’re ever in Korkuteli Turkey.
Hipmunk has been a great team to work with over the past year plus! I’m looking forward to helping them come up with new ways to remove “agony” from the travel planning experience. You can learn more about Hipmunk on their
Google+ page
.
Posted by Scott Myles, Senior Technical Account Manager
What do Air France-KLM travelers get with Affinity Search?
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
The best airfare deals across their combined global network, instantly!
Affinity Search uses ITA Software’s pricing and shopping technology to let travelers search the AFKL global network for the best deals. Results immediately display the lowest price for each destination with an intuitive Google Maps solution. It also includes filters that make it easy for travelers to select flights based on price, dates, duration and more.
When travelers select a point of departure, the new feature instantly returns prices to AFKL destinations worldwide for travel during a period of up to 180 days from the departure date. The traveler can then explore the results returned and complete a booking in a few simple steps.
Martijn van der Zee, SVP of eCommerce, AFKL said they selected ITA to develop Affinity Search because, “We knew they were the best partner for the job. We’ll be able to give our travelers useful features with ITA’s technology and we like their commitment to solving difficult airfare search problems.”
A global leader in air travel and Europe’s largest airline, AFKL has long been focused on driving value for their customers. They soft launched Affinity Search on
airfrance.com
for the Austrian, Finnish, Greek, Italian, Spanish and UK markets, and on
klm.com
for Finland, Greece and Austria. Now, they are progressively extending the functionality to their other country websites.
We can’t wait to see what AFKL does next.
To learn more about ITA, visit
www.itasoftware.com
.
Posted by Nicola Simionato, Head of Account Management, EMEA
Club Premier uses QPX to launch new frequent flyer programs
Monday, March 19, 2012
Mexico’s leading coalition loyalty program and the operator of Aeroméxico’s frequent flyer program, Club Premier, recently launched a completely new website,
www.clubpremier.com
that allows Club Premier members to redeem awards online. Powered by our QPX™ pricing and shopping engine, the new website makes it much easier for members to shop and redeem kilometers for Aeroméxico flights.
As part of the launch, Club Premier introduced two ways for members to use their awards -- using Classic Awards or Always Awards. The Classic Award program offers members the best value for their kilometers. This program uses traditional, fixed mileage awards based on limited availability. As you can see in the example below, Classic Awards are only available for the top two flights traveling from Mexico City to Cancun:
However, the Always Awards program is more flexible. Always Awards point requirements are based on the current availability and price of tickets, but are always available for redemption. This means if a Classic Award is sold out, Club Premier members can still book an Aeroméxico award seat with their Always Awards. This is great for popular routes that sell out quickly.
Using the same example where a traveler wants to go from Mexico City to Cancun, you can see they now have access to all Aeroméxico flights, even those that were previously unavailable using their Classic Award kilometers.
“We’ve been very happy with the product and the people who helped us implement QPX. It was a pleasure working with them” said Jeremy Rabe, CEO, Director General, Club Premier, Aeroméxico. “And, because of the new functionality, our Club Premier members will get even more flexibility and value for their loyalty.”
We’re really pleased to have Club Premier as part of the ITA Software by Google family. We look forward to seeing what comes next.
Posted by Mike Mo, Sales and Business Development Manager
Cape Air takes off with ITA Software’s new airline reservation system
Thursday, March 01, 2012
We’ve long been focused on making travel planning easier and faster for travelers, and helping airlines and travel companies deliver great travel experiences. We started with airfare shopping; today we’re pleased to introduce our new
airline platform
.
Cape Air
, one of the largest independent regional airlines in the U.S.,
launched our new airline platform
this past weekend. Dan Wolf, the CEO of Cape Air, said “It has been about the smoothest technology rollout as I have ever seen. It went so smoothly in fact most customers probably didn’t notice.”
The platform contains software required to run a passenger airline, including a reservation system, inventory control system, departure control system, and more.
We’ve built this system from scratch using modern, modular, scalable technologies. The system’s modern user interfaces make it easy to learn and use. The system’s modern, comprehensive database lets airlines offer customers more personal attention. The modular technology makes it easier to change the system as airline needs change. The system is built to scale to support airlines of all sizes.
The new websites for
capeair.com
and
nantucketairlines.com
enable Cape Air customers to quickly find and book the most relevant flights, and manage changes to their reservations.
We’ve worked to develop a system that is very easy to learn and use, and we’re pleased that Cape Air was able to train its reservations and airport agents in only two days.
Dan Wolf said “Our employees love the system, and we think our passengers will find the way they search, book and travel to be faster, easier and more personal. We’re also excited about our partnership with ITA Software by Google. We will have even more innovative and visionary things coming in 2012.”
In conjunction with this launch, Cape Air also rolled out a
Google+ Page
for its business to promote deals, hang out with customers, announce new products, services, and routes -- and build relationships with a greater number of people.
The system that Cape Air used until last week was first launched 48 years ago. Thank you to the hundreds of people from ITA Software/Google and Cape Air whose dedication and hard work have helped us launch Cape Air into the future.
Posted by Jeremy Wertheimer, Vice President, Travel
Customer relationships are key
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Each year we interview our QPX™ pricing and shopping customers to find out what we do well and where we need to improve. Since we started the survey in 2007, we’ve seen satisfaction with our products and service climb. We were especially pleased that this year’s survey yielded strong results. 100% of participants were somewhat or very satisfied with our QPX pricing and shopping products, and 96% were somewhat or very satisfied with the service we provide. One customer said that while there is always room for improvement, the service gets better every year -- from the engineers to the technical support staff to the customer-facing team.
While it’s great to hear the positive feedback, the real value is in what we do with the suggestions for improvement. Our internal teams look forward to hearing the survey results and are focused on coming up with creative solutions to address any suggestions identified by our customers.
My hat’s off to all the teams that focus on making our products even better and giving our customers the tremendous support that keeps them so happy. We’re committed to listening to what our customers want and partnering with them to make them successful. I think that’s what makes these relationships so strong.
Posted by Eli Sanders, Director, Technical Account Management and Customer Support
Roll the dice with VEGAS.com
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
It’s Vegas baby! From the lights of the famous Las Vegas Strip to world-class entertainment to celebrity chefs to the Hoover Dam, Vegas has something for everyone.
And the crew over at
VEGAS.com
are experts when it comes to what to do in Vegas. They offer amazing Vegas travel choices, from air packages to hotels to shows to tours to front-of-the-line nightclub passes and beyond. More than 2.5 million unique visitors visit VEGAS.com websites each month. VEGAS.com even runs the concierge desks at Las Vegas Resorts. They’re that plugged in! And now they’re making it easier to fly to their beloved city.
In November 2011, VEGAS.com launched our airfare pricing and shopping system QPX™, to help travelers quickly and easily find the best airfare deals available on their website.
Welcome to the family, VEGAS.com.
To learn more about ITA by Google visit
www.itasoftware.com
.
Posted by Mike Mo, Senior Business Development Manager
Star Alliance FareFinder app now available across all mobile platforms
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
The Star Alliance FareFinder app can now be used on Android, BlackBerry and iPhone. The free flight search app, powered by ITA Software by Google, lets travelers search, find and shop for the best airfares for domestic and international trips across all 27
Star Alliance member airlines
. It can be used by frequent flyer members and non frequent flyer members. FareFinder enables you to quickly find the best flight and offers an option to book your preferred flight directly from your mobile device.
Find out more about
FareFinder
and how to download or access the app on the Star Alliance website.
Posted by David Peller, General Manager, EMEA/India/Asia-Pacific
H.I.S. differentiates their online travel presence with ITA
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
H.I.S., one of the largest Asia-Pacific multinational travel agencies, wanted to make it easier for customers to plan travel online. They also knew they would need flexible and advanced airfare shopping tools to complete a critical project to reengineer their booking platform. After careful evaluation they chose our airfare pricing system, QPX™.
On November 15, 2011, the H.I.S. and ITA teams successfully completed the first phase of the project, launching QPX live on the H.I.S. consumer website,
his-j.com
.
With its global headquarters in Japan,
H.I.S.
is considered a leader in the retail agency domain. They have more than 280 walk-in outlets in Japan, with more than 108 branches in over 84 international cities.
Kiyoshi Takano, executive officer and general manager, information system division, H.I.S., said “I’m delighted to have selected and now deployed ITA Software. QPX will help us differentiate our online shopping experience, by offering more innovative and comprehensive airline products -- regardless of the point-of-sale.”
We’re looking forward to working with H.I.S. as they expand their global online presence.
To learn more about ITA, visit
www.itasoftware.com
.
Posted by David Peller, General Manager, EMEA/India/Asia-Pacific
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