Previously, its travel search was powered by Lastminute.com and only allowed for searches for the dotcom's own preferred suppliers. The new service is provided by technology company Adprecision. The company has also worked with Telegraph.co.uk to improve the relevancy of the contextual advertising surrounding its editorial content.
Janet Urwin, Telegraph.co.uk's product manager for travel, explained that keywords would be extracted from both the editorial and the text of advertising to ensure advertising is relevant and there is no wasted advertising. "There will be no headline 'holiday to Brazil' and then links for holidays in Africa."
Urwin also claimed that Telegraph.co.uk was the first travel website to use this type of contextual advertising. She added that although contextual advertising was commonplace in online advertising, "it is more controlled by the advertiser, so there is some wastage. This cuts that out and the primary focus is relevancy".
The newspaper sister site is also launching a website to coincide with Ultratravel, a travel supplement aimed at the high end of the holiday market. The supplement will launch on 2 September. The website address will be telegraph.co.uk/ultratravel.
The changes to the travel website come at the same time as other developments. These include the business pages, which now include economic snapshots, such as unemployment, inflation and interest rates. The property pages now include data on historic prices. The jobs channel has an interactive board allowing jobseekers to receive notification of new positions by e-mail, as well as their application's progress.
The blogging website, where users can share their views with columnists Celia Walden, Ben Fenton and Hilary Alexander, has also been redesigned.
Annelies van den Belt, Telegraph Group's new media director, said: "These latest changes to the website not only provide an improved proposition for our advertisers and users alike, but reflect the direction of the group as it moves towards becoming Telegraph Media Group."
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