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Egencia builds cutting edge, multi-platform user experience for business travellers with consumer-inspired technology …

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-- The business travel branch of the Expedia group is leveraging technology investments from the world's largest travel company to help create the business travel of the future.

LONDON, PARIS and MUNICH, Feb. 4, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Today at the Business Travel Show in London Egencia, the corporate travel company of the Expedia group (NASDAQ: EXPE), launches its exclusive mobile-only hotel discounts for the Egencia TripNavigator mobile app and the most recent enhancements to its integrated online booking and customer service model.

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Consumer-inspired mobile technology and offers During his keynote speech at the Business Travel Show today, Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of the Expedia group explained how the future landscape of business travel will be driven by the demand for consumer-inspired, integrated booking platforms. With an intuitive, next-generation interface, the recently launched Egencia TripNavigator incorporates technology from the Expedia brand's acquisition of Mobiata, a creator of best-selling mobile travel apps. Egencia is building on this platform by offering 'mobile only' hotel discounts to its customers. The service will offer deep discounts to approximately 7,200 hotel properties. This initiative will appeal to travellers looking for best value last-minute hotel bookings and help companies drive down the cost of late reservations.

"When our travellers change their itineraries on-the-go, TripNavigator helps us keep track. We always know where they are and they always know that they are booking hotels in policy," says Travel Manager, Jerome Bonnepart at Arkema, a France-based chemical company with operations around the world. "We are also looking forward to using the application's mobile only deals, for further savings on our hotel spend."

Rapid development cycle for next-generation booking and customer services "Our strategy is to offer our customers a combination of global technology and local service," says Christophe Peymirat, Senior Vice President, Egencia EMEA. "We leverage Expedia technology and insights to more quickly build the best user experience across all devices. Developing our own technology also helps us to deliver the high level of customer service that business travelers and arrangers demand."

With its customer service and technology platforms developed under one roof, Egencia is constantly bringing new innovation to the market. With Agile development methods, the company was able to increase its ability to introduce new core functionality from 4 to 24 releases a year. This nimble process allows the company to better incorporate customer feedback into the product design. Over the last 18 months, Egencia has enhanced its entire product offering, including 3-step booking with a consumer-style interface for air, hotel and UK rail reservations. Today, Egencia is officially launching a new best-in-class car booking experience, the latest addition to the company's proprietary technology offering.

Egencia's booking system is fully integrated across devices, uploading all reservations automatically into TripNavigator as soon as online bookings are complete and downloading all mobile hotel reservations into the web-based platform. Travellers immediately have access to step-by-step directions for all stages of travel and alerts for changes in itinerary, scheduling or next steps, such as filling the car with petrol before returning it to the hire agency.

You can meet with Egencia at stand 1130 during BTS, test this stunning new app and get a glimpse of the new car platform's design and features.

About Egencia Egencia is a leading full-service travel management company delivering innovative business travel technology and expert local service to more than 10,000 clients in over 60 countries around the world. As part of the Expedia group, the world's largest online travel company, Egencia provides forward-looking companies with the ability to drive compliance and cost savings in their travel programmes, while meeting the needs and requirements of the modern business traveller. For more information please visit us atwww.egencia.co.ukor connect with us on Twitter @Egencia_UK.

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Egencia builds cutting edge, multi-platform user experience for business travellers with consumer-inspired technology ...

World traveler, Iowa style

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Next Christmas when your rich relatives brag about their trips abroad, join in the discussion. Crow about your trips to exotic places and no one will have to know you never left Iowa.

Introducing the Tight Wad Iowan World Travel Service. Yes, folks, we will take you on a world tour on a very small budget. For your comfort we will travel in a luxurious 1973 school bus operated by our veteran driver, Happy Harry Lugnut.

Our "European Excursion" will excite the most adventurous soul. Our first stop is Madrid in Boone County. The natives prefer that you use the local pronunciation MAD-rid. You won't find any bullfights here but a couple of cows have been known to tease the bull on their farm north of town.

From magnificent Madrid we travel to Holland in Grundy County. Though there are no canals or windmills in this Holland, we will park the bus along a drainage ditch west of town and enjoy a cup of coffee while Happy Harry sings "Tulips from Amsterdam."

Next we zip to Paris, a wide spot in the road in northern Linn County. The bad news is there is no Eifel Tower here. The good news is you won't have to learn how to ask, "O sont les toilettes?" In this Paris you can ask for a restroom in English; if, in fact, there is a public toilet in Iowa's Paris.

We then travel to Norway in southeastern Benton County. Our tour guides will be Ole and Lars, Norwegian bachelor farmers who moved here from Lake Wobegone, Minnesota, a few years ago. A highlight of our visit to Norway will be a performance by Ole and Lars' high diving mule, "Yumpin' Yimminy."

After a roadside lutefisk luncheon we will motor to Moscow in northern Muscatine County. You won't see Red Square in this Moscow but there is a nice red barn south of town.

The last stop on our European Excursion is Hamburg in Fremont County where we'll enjoy a supper of what else? Tacos!

If you prefer domestic travel we're proud to offer our "Great American Cities Tour."

Our tour begins in Little Rock in northwest Iowa's Lyon County. This Little Rock is not the former home of Bill Clinton and a past chairman of the Lyon County Republicans will tell us why he doesn't care. We'll also treat you to a side trip to the neighboring town of George where we'll visit a farm, by George.

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World traveler, Iowa style

World Banks Greek Welfare Fix Shows Shift From Emerging Markets

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The World Bank, best known for helping developing nations from Kenya to Pakistan combat chronic poverty, is advising euro-area members Greece and Cyprus on how to strengthen their economies in the wake of debt crises.

About 55 World Bank staff have spent some time in the Mediterranean nations to advise them on competitiveness, welfare policies or public administration, according to Dirk Reinermann, who manages the programs. Based on the collaboration, Greece this month plans to announce a new system to simplify the process of setting up a business, Development Minister Kostis Hatzidakis said in an e-mail.

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim is taking on little-publicized consulting work from developed nations to find a new outlet for the banks expertise in a test of the demand for services that would otherwise be provided by private companies. Officials in Greece and Cyprus, initially reluctant to work with a poverty-reduction agency, are indicating the partnerships are starting to show results.

In some parts of the world, some parts of Europe, we have a bit of a perception of being the bank of poor countries only, Reinermann said in an interview last month in Washington. As we work in more countries, this perception will fade over time.

Kim, a physician and former president of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, has set a goal of ending extreme poverty by 2030 and boosting the income of the poorest 40 percent. Offering advice to wealthier members may also bring in business once the number of borrowers starts to dwindle, said Eswar Prasad, who teaches economics at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

The World Bank might be strategically positioning itself for a future where, if it is successful in its mission of poverty reduction, it will have to seek other avenues of engagement with a broader group of its member countries in order to maintain its relevance, said Prasad, a former International Monetary Fund official.

Demand for such advisory services has doubled to $95 million this year from 2012, covering 70 programs in 14 countries, including Poland and Romania, according to the bank. The Greek and Cyprus services combined are billed at about $6 million to Cyprus and the European Union, which led bailouts of the two crisis-stricken countries.

Its a small business for the Washington-based agency that has about 15,000 employees and made $53 billion worth of loans, investments and guarantees last year. The bank says it doesnt profit from the consulting activities, charging just enough to recover costs such as salaries and travel.

While still limited in scope, Kims expansion of advisory services beyond the worlds poorest countries is drawing criticism that its unnecessary and is spreading the lenders capabilities too thin.

We do fear that the bank is simply testing the water before seeking to increase significantly these sorts of consultancies, said Sargon Nissan, a program manager at the Bretton Woods Project, a London-based watchdog of the bank and the IMF. He said the banks advisory work does much the same as the IMF, yet at a more micro level.

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World Banks Greek Welfare Fix Shows Shift From Emerging Markets

JULIANAS WORLD TRAVEL & TOURS Celebrity Millennium Incheon Airport & N Seoul Tower, South Korea – Video

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JULIANAS WORLD TRAVEL TOURS Celebrity Millennium Incheon Airport N Seoul Tower, South Korea
Incheon International Airport is one of the largest and busiest airports in the world. For seven years in a row (2005--2012), it was rated the best airport w...

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JULIANAS WORLD TRAVEL & TOURS Celebrity Millennium Incheon Airport & N Seoul Tower, South Korea - Video

Pan African travel market launched

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Cape Town - Reed Travel Exhibitions (RTE), organisers of the World Travel Market (WTM), has announced its intention to expand this flagship event into the African continent with the launch of World Travel Market Africa. This two day event will be held at Cape Towns International Convention Centre (CTICC) on Friday 2 and Saturday 3 May 2014.

It aims to emulate the success of sister events, WTM (which has taken place in London for the past 53 years), and WTM Latin America. Forming part of Africa Travel Week, WTM Africa will be one of three co-located Reed Exhibitions events during the week of April 28 to May 3 2014.

Africa Travel Week will target Africas inbound and outbound markets under RTEs established portfolio brands of WTM (World Travel Market), ILTM (International Luxury Travel Market) and IBTM (Incentives, Business Travel & Meetings). As the finale of Africa Travel Week, WTM Africa will showcase a wide range of tourism products from pan African and international exhibitors and will attract a broad audience of local, pan African and international visitors from all tourism sectors focusing on both inbound and outbound travel markets.

In addition to this, an insightful and topical Africa-focused education programme, brought together by key industry figures, will run during the two days of the event.

It will cover topics such as responsible tourism, including the business benefits of sustainable tourism, education within the African tourism industry, blogging and how businesses can successfully work with travel bloggers, travel technology and the latest trends in the region.

The Hosted Buyer Programme will bring in 300 high-profile buyers from across the globe looking to source products and services from the WTM Africa exhibitors.

According to Kate Shepherd, marketing manager of WTM Africa, there is a huge interest in the tourism industry in emerging markets like Africa due to the growing middle class on the continent.

"Our vision is clear: We want to deliver the best business contacts and we are able to do this due to our international profile," Polly Magraw, exhibition manager of WTM Africa told Fin24.

"We are not trying to replicate the Tourism Indaba in Durban. We do not have a political agenda and our exhibition is open to the whole industry."

She said WTM Africa offers added leverage because of the global spread of RTE's events.

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Pan African travel market launched

Couch surf the world

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Couch surfing at 60 is the way I am going to travel from now on. The Kombi vans we travelled the world in decades ago have been replaced by the multiple people-to-people options opened up by the internet. Couch surfing is a vibrant, healthy, cheap and cosy way to traverse continents and countries, couch by couch, host by host, seeing real people in real time, without sitting in a Big Red Topless Bus with other tourists, looking down on the local population like ants.

When your kids tell you they are travelling the world, they don't tell you they are couch surfing, because, as with everything else, you wouldn't understand. You would think it was a dating site, a pick-up venue, a dangerous place to go, like Kings Cross. Couch surfers are drawing up real profiles with real facts, looking for a bed and a human exchange.

Couch surfing is exactly what it says. It is about enjoying the world's surfeit by using the world's hidden generosity.

Travel is about people and experiences, not about temples, shrines or pyramids. It is not about the Empire State Building, but about the people who work in it, if you can be lucky and vital enough to meet them at their home, on their couch.

No matter how much or how little money you have, the couch is the best way and, like good fishing holes, it is the best-kept secret among the younger generation. They know better than to put it on Facebook, where parents prey like mantises. They have hideaways devoted to hosts and guests around the world. It's like a digitalLonely Planet, where the information is disclosed by the couch owner in exchange for the experience of the traveller. It is new but seems as old as the Silk Road.

I am not a good traveller. My couch-surfing profile will tell a few little white lies, about my age, my professional status, and the breadth of my amazingly disparate interests. I want to impress potential hosts, who will haggle with each other for the right to offer me a couch.

In couch surfing, like everything, I want to leave a lasting impression not a stain. My profile does not suggest I carry pills and potions that soothe and pharmacologically treat my many physical and mental disorders. If you want to succeed, do not ever mention words like depression, herpes, baby wipes, special needs, needles or blood. Learn to eat vegan and lie that you are, because vegan hosts are very trustworthy and gentle souls.

Seek out hosts who share your interests. If you are female, and unless you enjoy it, don't couch-request BDSM photographers, slave masters, angry Islamists, college fraternities or curious couples seeking to expand their experiences.

The best way to start is in the next suburb, stay overnight in Surry Hills and say you are travelling to London in short spurts from Darlinghurst - baby steps.

Declutter. Travel lightly but with a healthy credit card. If you don't have one, buy a debit card that looks like a credit card and load it up. Although you might look penniless, you can not be penniless or you risk everything.

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Couch surf the world


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