Congrats to former Hotwire (Expedia-purchased) colleague Gregg Brockway on the launch of TripIt.com (http://www.tripit.com) at the TechCrunch40 event happening this week in California.

TripIt is a kind of pull-it-together travel itinerary tool, whereby you can make reservations in multiple locations and still end up with a single itinerary. In Gregg's words:

"TripIt helps you organize your travel plans. You simply forward all your travel confirmation emails to TripIt and we automatically create a master itinerary with your combined plans plus daily weather, local maps, directions and more. Then you can expand your master itinerary and share it with your friends"

It's not hard to see other possible revenue sources via affiliate relationships, meta search or advertising. As more of the US market's vanilla air / hotel / car business continues to move from third parties to suppliers, this type of a service starts to make a lot of sense.

(via BlackBerry)

Somebody check the weather, because it could be that Hell has frozen over. Why? Well, I just made my first purchase on Priceline.com - and I am feeling pretty good about it. Now, as the guy who wrote the business plan for Expedia.ca and then was Chief Marketing Officer for Expedia.com, that's pretty scary stuff.

Here's the deal. We are heading to Halifax for Easter with the Grandparents, and as such need flights and a car. Well, for flights we had pretty specific requirements, so we went the traditional route (which in this case meant booking directly at AirCanada.com because it was $600 cheaper than on Expedia or anywhere else, but in fairness that's not always the case. Frequently, the online agencies have better deals, depending in when and where you travel - just not this time). We don't need a hotel, but do need a car. I went to Expedia.ca, Travelocity.ca, Hotwire.com (an "opaque" or you-don't-know-what-you've-bought-until-you-buy-it part of the Expedia family) and finally, to Priceline.com.

With due respect to my friends in the business, when you are picking a rental car up at an airport for a leisure trip, a rental is a rental. Though I do value the service bells and whistles when I am on business, when I travel on my own dime I will gladly trade a little convenience for savings. And for an airport pickup, you know who the choices might be, so what's the big fear?

So, in a nutshell? Priceline beat the pants off of everybody else. By a mile. And they have a neat little tool that guides your bid into likely-to-be-accepted territory. And I ended up getting the car from Hertz.

So, what will happen when I get there? Will it all be awful? Will I regret having done this? Will I hate William Shatner more than I do now?

We shall see. I will provide a full report when I get back.

Technorati tags: priceline, expedia, travelocity, online travel, william shatner