Dragon Go! app adds Expedia support

Nuance’s popular Dragon Go! app, which is available on both iOS and Android, received a major update earlier this week that is sure to be a hit with travelers. The software, which has been accepting voice commands long before Siri graced us with her presence, now offers support for Expedia, giving us the ability to book flights and find hotels, simply by asking.

Dragon Go! has been around for a couple of years now, and over time, Nuance has continued to add new content providers to the app. With the inclusion of Expedia, travelers can now simply say things like “Show me available flights between Los Angeles and New York in April,” and the software will present a list of options that will include flight schedules and pricing. There is even a link to the Expedia’s website, allowing users to book the flight directly from their phone. The voice search options also allow travelers to search for hotels near their current location and find reviews on destination resorts as well.

Dragon Go! can do a lot more than that however, as the app also allows travelers to get weather reports on their destination, play music for the trip, and look up movie times at the local theater. It helps users find the best restaurants or shops in their area, and even shares their travel experiences on Twitter.

Best of all, the app remains completely free and is available to download in both the iOS and Android app stores.

Vacation deprivation study says beach vacations rule

Expedia’s Vacation Deprivation study is an annual analysis of vacation habits across multiple countries and continents. Taken from the results of a survey by Harris Interactive, 7,083 respondents were surveyed in total across 20 countries with some surprising results.

“226 million vacation days will go unused this year resulting in some 50 million Americans becoming vacation deprived,” travel company Monograms reports on TravelBlackboard.

The 2011 study spans North America, Europe, Asia, South America and Australia. It reveals who gets – and takes – the most vacation time, as well as attitudes toward vacation. Common themes impacting how and where respondents vacation include money, romance and disapproving bosses.

When asked, “How many vacation days, if any, do you receive from your employer each year?”, Germany, France, Spain, Denmark and Brazil all tied for first place with 30 days. UK workers came in a bit less with 25, Canada 16 and the U.S. 14 but in last place was Japan with 11 days. Of those 11 they only used 6 on the average too.

According to the survey, most of the world likes to take a mix of short and long vacations, mostly in the Summer months and beach locations won out over others as the most preferred kind of holiday.

The sample included a nationwide cross-section of the employed adult populations fielded the online survey on behalf of Expedia.com from September 19 – October 9, 2011. Complete results of the survey can be found on the Expedia website.

Flickr photo by Moyan_Brenn


Trippy launches, aims to transform travel planning into a social experience

When it comes to travel planning, your friends are the best source of information. Such is the motto of just-launched social networking site for travel planning, Trippy.

Using a simple integration with Facebook, members can create trip planning templates with the click of a button. Fill in just a few details and the site will auto-populate suggestions for hotels, activities, and restaurants, plus provide a comprehensive list of your Facebook friends who are from, live or lived in, have visited or went to school in the destination. Then, using a personalized trip link, you can privately message friends to ask for suggestions about your upcoming trip.

As you piece together parts of your vacation, Trippy helps organize the information into an itinerary that can be sent via iPhone app or email. While you’re traveling, you can easily snap a photo with your smartphone and send pictures to the friends who helped you plan. The itinerary is also easily saved, so other friends who use the site can copy your travel plans at a later date.If you don’t have friends in a certain spot, the site’s handy auto-complete feature pulls in data from Factual.com, Google Places and the site’s own internal database. More features will be added soon.

Entrepreneur J.R. Johnson is behind the site. Once the brains behind VirtualTourist and OneTime.com (sold in 2008 to Expedia), Johnson aims to develop a new kind of traveling model. “There’s too much user generated content out there now,” Johnson said. Trippy is based on the principle that the best information is “friendsourced” rather than “crowdsourced.”

It’s becoming more and more difficult to rely on sites that don’t vet reviews, Johnson said. One never knows if the reviews are posted by paid travelers or the properties themselves. With Trippy, travelers will know that the information they’re getting is from a trustworthy source – their friends.

Trips can be planned for real, upcoming stays, or for a “dream” vacation. This process, Johnson says, helps travelers make the leap from dream to reality – the site soon showcase easy booking integration with sites like Expedia, where users can check rates and book right within Trippy.

We played with the site for an upcoming visit to Chicago and found it easy to use. We were able to reach out to several friends we didn’t even know were in or from the area and added a few great suggestions to our upcoming itinerary. A few kinks are still being worked out, as in any beta version, and integration with sites like Twitter and Foursquare is soon coming. We look forward to testing the iPhone integration in a few weeks, but the free app is available for download now.

Gadling readers get early access to the beta site with code GADLING.

Expedia a step closer to ditching TripAdvisor

Travel industry … welcome to high finance! By the end of the year, online travel agency Expedia is expected to spin off its TripAdvisor unit in an initial public offering, according to MarketWatch. And, the deal could be worth as much as $4 billion.

Think about it: all those hotel reviews you’ve written, photos you’ve posted and advice you’ve sought could be worth as much as Facebook generates in advertising revenue this year. Clearly, you’ve been working hard to churn out all that free content for your fellow travelers.

So, here’s the cosmic justice in all this. Expedia, the largest online travel agency in terms of revenue (which is what really matters), is set to benefit in a big way. But, you don’t post to TripAdvisor for fame and fortune. You do it to help your fellow travelers. Well, imagine how much traveling the folks cashing in on this IPO will be able to do. Maybe they’ll take your reviews to heart!

Look for the IPO filing in a few weeks … and celebration by a handful of people around the Christmas holiday.

[photo by jollyUK via Flickr]

The anatomy of Expedia’s Best Rate Guarantee failure

Shortly into my third week in the battle to get over $1000 refunded by Expedia‘s Best Rate Guarantee program, despair sets in. The thin, smooth glass on the surface of my smartphone is caked with layers of sweat and the anytime and rollover weekend minutes that I once cherished are now memories long lost. I’ve started telling the agents in the call center which options they need to be choosing on their local screens before they ask and preparing for long waits, taking 20 minutes here and there to leave my phone at my desk and go for a stroll or get a sandwich. It finally occurs to me that perhaps this is part of Expedia’s strategy: frustrate the users so much, make them so physically angry and emotionally drained that they give up the fight for their refunds and just give up in disgust.

This is now how the Best Rate Guarantee program should work. A feature used by many Online Travel Agencies (OTAs), a Best Rate Guarantee is a tool that creates equilibrium in the travel pricing market. Say, for example, you run a search on your favorite airline website and find an itinerary that costs $500 in a certain fare bucket at a certain time. If you find that exact same ticket for a higher price on Expedia, all that you need to do is book the higher ticket, call their agents and ask to be refunded the amount of the difference. As a reward, Expedia also offers a $50 coupon for later travel. The refund, on the other hand, should be issued within 5-7 days. In theory.
It’s the OTA’s way of keeping your loyalty. If they can convince you to habitually book on their website then they can reap the reward of your business down the line.

In my case, however, that system broke down. After verifying a fare difference of $1292.79 between an Air Canada ticket booked via Vayama and that which was booked on Expedia, I got approval for a refund and a transaction number from an overseas agent. My refund was slated to be returned shortly.

With no credit a week later I started to worry. Following up to @Expedia on Twitter, I sent a direct message to inquire about the refund. In a stoic response, Expedia’s Twitter team responded that a top tier agent was looking into the issue. Nudging the team again two days later and then again five days after that, I was first promised that the issue was being addressed and then obtusely asked for my itinerary number — as if the issue had been lost and restarted again.

Frustrated, three weeks after the initial purchase and BRG authorization I returned back to the phone agents, who after 90 minutes on the phone could only conclude that the refund was on its way. An email arrived in parallel: a refund had been authorized — but to the wrong card in my account — that of a colleague’s. And the refund wasn’t for $1292.79 but rather $1143.43, almost $150 less than the original amount. How had this happened?

Back on the phone for two hours with customer service over Memorial Day weekend, a few answers came into the limelight. The discrepancy in refund was due to the fact that the BRG only can be applied to the base fare. Any taxes and fees incurred after the base fare as charged by the OTA don’t count, suggesting that Expedia tacks on an addition $150 of superfluous fees that Vayama does not.

But what about the refund? Neither my colleague nor myself have seen a refund on either card, now 25 days after the BRG authorization.

For my part, I vow to continue the fight, even if I have to walk to the Expedia’s corporate offices, knock on the front door and bring milk and cookies. But for the $50 coupon (and the higher booking fees in the future), this program is no longer worth it.

[flickr image via Don Hankins]