Before I begin, I must admit my obsession with Google and its products, especially those with the trademark ‘beta’ tag attached to it. From the initial rollout of Gmail to Labs, Google Earth, Google Wave and most recently Buzz, I’ve always been captivated by anything new rolling out of 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway. This is why I am so excited by their strategy to finally make inroads in the travel... 

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.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.advertising.expedia.com Headquarters: Seattle, WA, United States Leadership: Doug Miller. Global Vice President, Media Solutions StorePoint Expandables take expandable rich media and marry it with micro-site content to deliver rich, highly relevant content that immerses travel consumers in an engaging micro-site experience captured within the expanded creative panel. The StorePoint... 

Website: www.gliider.com Headquarters: Brooklyn, NY, United States Leadership: Jared Richardson, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer Jordan Stolper, Co-Founder and CEO Gliider is a research tool that lets the user find and gather travel info from any site on the Web, then shows deals specific to that trip. It is the only travel tool that permits the user to grab content from any site on... 

Website: www.goby.com Headquarters: Boston, MA, United States Leadership: Mark Watkins, Co-Founder and CEO Goby is a new type of search engine for exploring new things to do in your free time, from taking a unique vacation to creating a weekend adventure. Originally developed as an MIT research project, Goby utilizes advanced, deep Web search technology to provide users access to information... 

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.traveltainment-group.com Headquarters: Aachen, Germany Leadership: Rudolf Hengefeld Pete LindowAndy Owen-Jones, CEO Lothar Schmidtz Jörg SchulerMelanie Sickenberger TravelTainment’s technology serves the next generation of leisure traveler with solutions that are more intuitive and dimensional, allowing them to search in the way they think, asking questions such as:... 

The days of straight forward travel booking on either an OTA or supplier site are rapidly coming to an end. The latest PhoCusWright report on Online Traffic and Conversion deals in great detail with this ever more complex landscape of what is also called the pre-booking phase. While the booking focused sites still dominate the market in terms of visitor traffic, a growing number of their present customers...