Topics covered in this interview include: Travel 2.0 | Emerging technologies which change the landscape of online travel distribution | Consumer empowerment, peer reviews and social networking | Impact of Travel 2.0 | Podcasts & user-generated content vs. brand-generated content | Metaseach and vertical search in travel | A preview of the PhoCusWright Travel Conference.

John Bray is the Vice President of Advisory Services at PhoCusWright Inc., where he leads the strategic consulting and custom research practice. He specializes in understanding and forecasting the positive disruptive power of technology in travel distribution, devising strategies for new market entry, marketing and sales improvement, IT planning, guest services and managed travel procurement, bringing over 17 years of industry experience to this role.

Prior to PhoCusWright, he led the travel and hospitality practice at Sapient, where his project background included consumer impact analysis for a simplified rate structure for Carlson Hotels, implementation of an eCRM solution for Harrah's, development of a business case for the selection and adoption of dynamic packaging technologies at JetBlue, and designing the strategic enterprise architecture (EAP) and business plan for technology adoption for Opodo. Previously, Mr. Bray worked at iXL where he was Sr. Vice President of the travel practice and led the technical delivery of projects for Globus, Amadeus, and Budget. Before iXL, he was Chief Technology Officer for Siemens Nixdorf's Travel & Transportation Division, where he oversaw technical direction and development for several products, including an open platform relational airline reservation system (ReserVision), and one of the first Internet-based airport kiosk check-in systems.

Mr. Bray's travel industry experience was grounded at Galileo (Covia), where he developed the Intelligent Queue Manager (IQM) product, and the Roommaster TPF hotel reservation system. He began his career at EDS, holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Colorado University, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Eastern Kentucky University. Mr. Bray is based in Colorado, USA.

About PhoCusWright | PhoCusWright Inc. is an independent travel, tourism and hospitality research firm specializing in consumer, business and competitive intelligence. The company conducts and publishes primary work focused on strategic assessment and segment forecasting, offers a wide range of custom research and strategic consulting services and produces a series of high-profile executive conferences. With pioneering roots in sizing the market's notable online sector, clients now emanate from six continents across all facets of the industry's value chain and they use PhoCusWright's information on a daily basis. H2c consulting represents PhoCusWright in Europe.

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