From time to time I go back and have a look at the amazing thread of quotes and comments from a bevy of travel industry thought-leaders on Dennis Schaal’s blog (Dennis now writes for Tnooz). The discussion is about the “legacy” OTAs, or online travel agencies, and their lack of innovation around the online travel planning and shopping experiece. I agree with much of what’s written here. The... 

Website: www.amadeus.com Headquarters: Sophia Antipolis, France Leadership: Philippe Chérèque Petra Euler Tomas Lopez Fernebrand Eberhard Haag Jean-Paul Hamon David V. Jones Luis Maroto Dénis Lacroix Amadeus Affinity Shopper is an innovative solution for travelers searching for airfares on airline Web sites. With Amadeus Affinity Shopper technology, the traveler no longer needs to conform... 

Website: www.speedrfp.com Headquarters: Santa Barbara, CA, United States Leadership: Kelly Foy, CEO Bradley Pirman, CIO SpeedRFP is the first and only online request for proposal (RFP) tool that is completely portable. When planning an event, meeting or incentive trip, SpeedRFP lets you take your RFPs along anywhere on the Web, and submit an RFP on any site that accepts SpeedRFP—in as... 

Website: www.exalead.com Headquarters: San Francisco, CA United States Leadership: Patrice Bertin, Co-Founder and CTO François Bourdoncle, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Stephane Donze, Vice President of Services Exalead provides next-generation smart search technology to travel sites to improve the relevance and trust of travel search and booking experiences. Today, typical online... 

Website: www.everytrail.com Headquarters: Palo Alto, CA, United States Leadership: Katherine Bose Kate Handel Joost Schreve, Founder and CEO Dan Seligson GlobalMotion is launching its next generation EveryTrail iPhone and Android apps in November 2009. EveryTrail for iPhone and Android lets users search, download, navigate and share trips while on the go, creating an unprecedented deep travel... 

Website: www.localyte.com Headquarters: San Mateo, CA, United States Leadership: Guillermo Baensch, CEO Localtye is a growing community of over 40,000 local experts who actively help travelers at their destinations. It is the world’s first living, breathing travel guide and is available on the Web, through mobile devices, and now—for the first time—through third party travel sites.... 

Website: www.milestoneinternet.com Headquarters: Santa Clara, CA, United States Leadership: Benu Aggarwal Anil Aggarwal EBuzz Connect is an online social-media management system for hotels, restaurants and businesses to monitor and manage their online reputation and social-media channels from an integrated single interface. The system enables hotels to respond to reviews and comments from... 

Website: www.planetism.com Headquarters: Covina, CA, United States Leadership: Yameen Salahuddin, Co-Founder Shayan Salahuddin, Co-Founder As the world’s first travel Web site to empower users to research and book vacation options based upon their budget, rather than a particular destination, www.planetism.com will forever change the way people shop for vacations. This is how people... 

Website: www.tourabout.com Headquarters: Brookvale Sydney, NSW, Australia Leadership: Ben Jackson, Co-Founder and CEO Carl Jackson, Co-Founder and CMO Mark Jones, Co-Founder and CIO Tourabout has created a real-time Social GDS™ for vacation operators, destination activity companies and DMOs. A range of interlinked social, media and product technologies merge commerce and community to enable...