2009 was a year of extreme conditions for the travel industry: the U.S. online travel market declined for the first time, the corporate travel market faltered, and the groups and meetings industry is looking for a new normal.

TravelCLICK, the leading provider of ecommerce solutions for hotels, today announced a new technology to improve the quality of promotional advertising on select Global Distribution Systems (GDS)—coupled with a new methodology for measuring advertising reach to a travel agent audience that yielded over $8 billion in hotel bookings in 2008.

Innovata LLC has signed a long-term contract to supply its worldwide schedules data, worldwide minimum connect time data and its full range of reference support files to Sabre Holdings.

Travelport GDS, one of the world’s leading global distribution system (GDS) providers, and the Air Berlin Group have today jointly announced a new, full content agreement for Galileo and Worldspan-connected travel agents worldwide.

GenaRes Worldwide Reservation Services announced the promotion of Ursula Rhode to executive vice president, global services.

Cendant Corporation today announced that its Travel Distribution Services (TDS) division has acquired Sydney, Australia-based Flairview Travel, a leading online hotel distributor that specializes in the distribution of international hotel content throughout Europe and the Asia Pacific region through its merchant hotel brand, http://www.hotelclub.com/ and its last minute Web site, http://www.ratestogo.com/. Established in 1995, Flairview Travel is one of the market- leading online accommodation providers in the Asia Pacific region, with a rapidly increasing presence throughout Europe. This acquisition enhances Cendant TDS’s growing global travel portfolio, and accelerates the planned international expansion of its online travel offerings. Terms of the cash acquisition were not disclosed, but are not material to Cendant. The transaction is not expected to have a material impact on future company earnings.