In 1998 Travelocity changed direction and became more �travel deals orientated�. They did this by in

Travelocity.com / Travelocity.co.uk is owned and operated by Sabre Holdings squirt cruising guide � a products, distribution and technology solutions company focused on the travel industry. Their consumer direct and business direct side of the business is Travelocity. Travelocity has several million registered users and booked $4.9 billion worth of travel business in 2004. [Sabre-Holdings.com]
At the time of writing, Travelocity is the second most popular brand in the world in the Internet travel marketplace. Travelocity.com is also the 386th most popular website in the world, whilst the British version, Travelocity.co.uk squirt cruising guide is the 4884th most popular. squirt cruising guide [Ranking.com]
In 1998 Travelocity changed direction and became more �travel deals orientated�. squirt cruising guide They did this by incorporating the availability to book flights, hotels and car hire directly from their home page. [Archive.org]
In 2000 Travelocity became squirt cruising guide more aware of the need to market themselves as a brand. This resulted in 2002 with a complete re-design of the website to make it more user-friendly and encourage return visitors.
Travelocity�s present day website (designed in 2004) �look and feel� is starting to rely more on a higher percentage of graphics. This offers website users a more visually appealing experience, although it does rely on the user being more likely to have a slightly faster Internet connection than they used to. [Archive.org]
Travelocity.com squirt cruising guide is a fun, friendly, informative, useful and easy to use website. squirt cruising guide In addition to this it is professional and reliable. This demonstrates that Travelocity is comfortable to try and be a �love all, serve all� Internet Travel Portal.
Travelocity is however a company with an aggressive stance. It does not form strategic alliances with other companies in order to promote affiliate-marketing programmes. In addition, it regularly seeks out potential competitors to buy.
In 2000, Travelocity purchased another early web travel company, Preview Travel, [Answers.com] whilst in 2002 it purchased Site59.com � a New York based travel business that specialise in late bookings.
On 12th May 2005 it was announced that Travelocity had agreed squirt cruising guide to buy lastminute.com for �577m � creating Europe's biggest online travel retailer. [Silicon.com] Part of the reason why Travelocity wants to gain dominance quickly in the Internet Travel Marketplace and grow by acquisition is that it understands that the market is growing and evolving quickly.
It wants to be the first choice squirt cruising guide in the majority of consumers� minds for future travel purchases. This is therefore one of their major strengths. squirt cruising guide Whether or not their decision not to evolve by forming strategic alliances may thwart this aggressive growth strategy is yet to be seen.
To a certain degree, opportunities within the Internet travel marketplace for Travelocity are still limitless. They can still expand to cover more countries Internationally, they can still improve upon their overall marketshare and they can still expect both Internet users and the amount of Internet squirt cruising guide users willing to book online to increase significantly.
Travelocity are striving towards ensuring that their brand is the most recognised and trusted available in the Internet Travel marketplace. Their most important core competency is to offer an integrated, easy-to-use and intuitive website that keeps people wanting to come back to it much more that any competitor in the field.
These seven key customer issues have been highlighted to demonstrate why Travelocity believe that they are better than the competition. Travelocity want their brand to represent trust, reliability and service and therefore define what they believe their competitive advantage to be.
The merchant model is without doubt the most competitive Internet squirt cruising guide business model for the travel industry. The two main worldwide competitors � Expedia and Travelocity have chosen to focus upon price and service level differentiation respectively. squirt cruising guide It could be argued that Expedia however focus on their value-adding activities � their existing squirt cruising guide infrastructure in order to derive squirt cruising guide their core competencies of efficiency and price. Travelocity on the other hand rely upon their �bill of rights� core competency in order to drive their �value adding activities�.