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There seems to be a few cities in Texas that want the online travel industry to ante up millions of dollars in lost tax revenues - and there is a possibility this could move to the other states. Houston and San Antonio - guess Dallas would be next if the decider is towns with NBA teams - have filed suit against online travel companies for not paying the right amount of occupancy taxes dues.

“Hotels in Houston must remit to the city the hotel-occupancy tax of 7 percent, based on the price at which they sell rooms. The city uses the money to promote tourism and to pay off debt for Reliant Stadium, Toyota Center, Minute Maid Park and the Hilton Americas convention hotel”.

‘The city took in more than $57 million in the occupancy taxes in 2007,” a Houston City official told the Houston Chronicle.

“On Tuesday, a federal judge granted San Antonio’s motion for class-action certification in its lawsuit against 16 companies including Hotels.com, Expedia.com, Priceline.com and Orbitz. The San Antonio suit alleges the online companies collect hotel tax at the retail rate but only pay taxes on the bulk wholesale rate they are charged, ” WebProNews reported

Obviously the travel industry is claiming increased costs will have an impact on tourism. That is absolutely true, while the local governement may not collect the taxes and does lose - the money comes in the pockets of those who visit and thus the average spend of the customers will be less. So maybe the local chamber of commerces should think about that and talk to the mayor.

Bookings will be down slightly because of higher prices - even though the prices will just increase across the board so people will not recognize the jump. Either way in a time of high gas prices actions like this will only hurt the travel industry as a whole. There are not many travel agencies left and few would be looking to invest in one right now.

Priceline CMO Brett Kellner joined us this week at Google’s New York headquarters (via conference call) to chat about travel trends in vertical search, the robust health of paid search (PPC) campaigns, and integrating online and offline advertising campaigns.

Last year I predicted 2008 would the year CMOs “get search.”

Brett, who leads one of the world’s most successful online pureplays, “got search” years ago. His leadership in vertical search is one of the reasons why so many of his peers have started to see the value of search-driven branding and direct marketing campaigns.

While many CMOs are only starting to ask their VP or director of marketing how search works, Priceline has already started testing Google audio ads and Google TV ads. The early results? All good.

Brett didn’t try to sell us anything at Google. He didn’t even mention the upcoming launch of Priceline’s new vertical search innovation: Inside Track. So when HotelMarketing.com broke the news about Priceline’s Inside Track “search agent” we thought Brett and William Shatner deserve a plug.

Priceline has launched Inside Track, a new tool that allows users to create a personalized airline ticket “scout.” You can see the top 50 biggest savings routes for Priceline’s Name Your Own Price.

The tool also provides analysis of best days to travel as well as notifications of increases in decreases in airline prices in a given city. This will allow users to act on price changes as they occur instead of being tied to submitted travel terms.

SEW Blogger Nathania Johnson visited Inside Track and found it not unlike a financial services Web site with stock tickers (with the exception of William Shatner greeting Nathania upon arrival).

Clicking on a city pulls up a list of destinations served by that city. Next to it are up and down arrows showing whether prices to that location are rising or falling and by how much. Very cool dashboard that shows price changes and trends by top city pair.

Here’s Brett’s official statement: “With Inside Track, priceline.com delivers the kind of comprehensive market-wide price trend functionality consumers have come to expect from Web 2.0 travel applications, plus the savings that are unique to priceline.com due to our elimination of booking fees on published fares and our Name Your Own Price airline ticketing service.”

For the business traveler with flexibility, vertical travel search engines now provide ultimate transparency into the yield management systems of airlines.

We really do set our own prices. Online travel is a 24/7 real-time auction - and the forerunner of Google’s paid search algorithm and Yahoo/Overture’s innovative keyword auction.

The launch of Priceline’s Inside Track comes on the heels of an announcement by Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson of Virgin Charter, a vertical search engine that is targeted towards high-end corporate and last-minute airline customers.

Want a snapshot of the day’s search marketing news? Here we’ve collected today’s top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

• Yahoo Says, “You Like Me, Right Now, You Really Like Me”
  Like Sally Field, Yahoo recently felt the love and respect of “the academy” — Keynote Academy. They earned #1 Keynote rankings for “Search Assistance and Suggestions” and “Homepage Appeal.”
• The Tao of Crafting Strategic SEM Partnerships
  Every professional needs someone. This timeless axiom is especially relevant to both those who consume and those who provide search marketing services.
• Google’s Brin Calls a Microsoft-Yahoo Tie-up “Unnerving”
  Yesterday Google co-founder Sergey Brin described the Internet doomsday scenario if Microsoft wins its Yahoo takeover bid.
• SEW Experts: The Ginsu Guide to Search Analytics
  The ability to track online (and in many cases offline) advertising to offline conversions has been the biggest hurdle in measuring ROI for many Web-based or Web-involved businesses.
• SEW Experts: How to Market Your Search Engine Agency - Part 2
  Although we’re in the business of marketing, there are many different things to consider when writing your own marketing plan.
• SEW Experts: How Search Marketing Slays Seasonality in Travel
  The most sophisticated advertisers in online travel rely on years, even decades of data collection and analysis to formulate their marketing plans.

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Microsoft researchers teamed up with University of California, Davis researchers to pinpoint exactly where "the bottleneck" of Web spam occurs and how legitimate advertisers inadvertently end up in bad neighborhoods. The majority of spam, they found out, comes from the same few places, and the middlemen are some names you might recognize.
The study (PDF [...]