-- Indiatimes Travel has inked a deal with the Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC), Italy’s largest privately owned line, and has launched a cruise booking service for customers in India. Given that IT has entered the cruises segment, there should be more deals in the offering with other cruise lines - why restrict customers to just one cruise line? As a customer, I’d probably use IT for price comparison, and then go to the agent who offers me more options.

-- Travel meta search engine Ixigo has announced the launch of a hotel search, which covers around 4500 hotels in 320 cities, covering 30 national and international hotel sites including aggregators like Expedia, Travelocity, Orbitz, Desiya. As per the release, HotelsCombined is an exclusive partner. Question for Ixigo: what’s with sending 4 press releases (and a “have you received the release” call) for one story?

-- Cleartrip is finally going to launch its International products, reports the Hindu. They’d mentioned plans for International travel back in 2006. The company will offer airline tickets and hotels in about five weeks time. The site will cover 135 destinations, offer 70,000 hotels, and focus on offbeat destinations. Some numbers: 7,500 domestic air transactions a day and over 190-200 room nights a day.

On a related note: I’m a little skeptical about hotel booking sites - I tried all of them last month when I was travelling to Mumbai for Frames, and I couldn’t find consumer reviews for many (except at tripadvisor). Eventually, I called up friends in Mumbai to help me out. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t quite trust ratings.