A federal judge in Texas has decided 11 online travel companies must pay $55 million to cities in a dispute over hotel occupancy taxes. U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia of San Antonio set total damages and interest. Garcia had requested that both sides reach an agreement on the amount owed as he prepares to enter his final ruling in the 2006 class-action case. The lawsuit to recover tourism tax revenue named online travel groups including Expedia Inc., Hotwire Inc., Hotels.com, Priceline.com and Orbitz Worldwide Inc.

Ameranth, Inc. announced that it has greatly expanded the enforcement of its broad 'data/display synchronization' patent portfolio, now having filed suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of California against many of the leading hotel, travel site, ticketing, point of sale and other hospitality companies. New patent infringement suits have been filed against Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt, Starwood, Travelocity, Kayak, Hotwire, Expedia, Orbitz, Hotels.com, Usablenet, Inc., Hotel Tonight Inc., Ticketmaster, StubHub, Inc., Micros, EMN8, Inc., Orderin, Subtledata, ATX Innovation, Inc. and Wanderspot LLC. The explosive growth of the use of smart phones, social/affinity group networking, wireless networks, payment processing and mobile wallets on/via smart phones, cloud based computing, and related technologies now make the use and licensing of Ameranth's patents essential to achieve a totally synchronized hospitality system, that is the 21st Century Communications(TM) system -- conceived/invented in September 1998 by Ameranth's visionary inventors.

Hotwire, Inc. announced that its chairman, Kristin Syltevik is leaving the company, she launched 12 years ago. Kristin Syltevik is set to leave the company at the end of July 2012. The company reported that it s not looking to replace her. Before establishing the company, Syltevik was MD of Shandwick's technology practice in Europe.