Busy week? You probably missed these three need-to-know travel stories. So get a brew on and ease your way into the weekend with our picks from the past 7 days:
Have you been skewed by Google?
Google has been manipulating travel search results. Unsurprisingly this didn't fly with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC for short). It's hardly surprising that the search engine placed its own services for shopping, travel and local businesses at the top of results, deliberately pushing down competitors.
What does this actually mean? We'll give you an example. Searches from Google’s own flight-search tool come up top in place of those from rivals. How helpful. Until you discover that those results don’t include all the flights that are out there.
If you searched direct you'd find others and start wondering whether the flights you're seeing actually exist. Cue travel booking anxiety.
France lags behind in mobile bookings
‘Mobile’ does the rounds as a topic at trade shows month after month. Panels and roundtables constantly ask: how can you adapt to the mobile booker? If you’re targeting the French market you might want to reconsider trying to find an answer.
New research found that 80% of French internet users booked travel on their computers. What’s more, mobile advance bookings were rare – just 5%. No doubt this number will soon increase, but for now c’est non merci pour mobile bookings.
Want direct bookings? Show competitive pricing
We’re slightly biased on this one. This week our Chief Tease Charlie spoke to EyeforTravel about metasearch. To make your direct channel more effective you should display competitors' pricing. Consumers have come to expect it and without it you risk losing them to other channels. Don’t believe us? Read more from Charlie on EyeforTravel.
If you've still got some tea left in your mug then head to our blog to read other stories from the week. Or you could catch up on this morning's solar eclipse as seen from a dismal London - god bless British weather.