GroundLink.com

"The ground transportation category has largely been ignored," said Charles Fraas, CEO for GroundLink, a global car service.

When air travelers touch down at an unfamiliar airport, they have a few options for the next leg of their journey.

Rent a car. Take a taxi. Step onto a shuttle. Board a bus or a light-rail train.

Or hire a private car service.

While online travel agencies such as Hotwire, Orbitz or Travelocity make it easy for travelers to book a rental car when they make flight and hotel reservations, customers who prefer not to drive have largely been left to their own devices once they're on the ground.

"The ground transportation category has largely been ignored," said Charles Fraas, CEO for GroundLink, a global car service. "For years, it has really never met the consumer’s needs."

The industry is widely fragmented with numerous local suppliers, Fraas said. That's made it difficult for travelers to find broad, geographic coverage and reliable service, he added, and there's a wide discrepancy in pricing. “We’re really challenging the travel industry to think broader.”

GroundLink lets customers book a car via phone, online or through a mobile app and offers 12 classes of service, from sedans and sport-utility vehicles to stretch limos and party buses. Customers can see the price of their car before they book and view their driver's location.

GroundLink currently is available in 5,000 cities and 110 countries. “Many of these countries, you can actually book a car with us with one-hour notice,” said S. Daniel Leon, general manager of mobile for GroundLink.

Limos.com

Limos.com lets travelers see results that include price comparisons and customer reviews.

“Many places in New York, you can get a car with us in five minutes,” Leon said, adding that the company plans to expand to more U.S. cities in 2012.

Another option for travelers is Limos.com, an online marketplace for private car service. CEO T.J. Clark said his company's mission is to make it as easy to book a car service as it is to book a hotel or flight online.

“What is so surprising is that less than 5 percent of the bookings in this category are being done online,” Clark said.

Limos.com has aggregated 2,000 local suppliers from around the globe and entered them in a single, common interface that lets customers input, for example, the number of passengers and where they are going, and see instant results that include price comparisons, star ratings and customer reviews.

Limos.com will be live with five of the 10 largest airlines, two of the four largest hotel chains and three of the top six online travel agencies in early 2012, Clark said.

“Car service is a great service,” Clark said. “It’s reliable, safe and it can be affordable.”

Clem Bason, president of Hotwire Group, told msnbc.com that until about six months ago it was difficult to compare prices for ground transportation options. He thinks limos.com and GroundLink can help fill in that information gap. “It’s clearly meeting a need,” he said.

Bob Lewis, director of ground transportation for Sabre Travel Network, the world's largest global distribution system, said corporate travel agents often are able to book private cars for their clients but he sees significant opportunity for growth in the leisure-travel market.

"I’m not sure that a cab is always the most comfortable choice,” Lewis said.

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Joy Jernigan is a senior travel editor for msnbc.com. Follow her on Twitter.

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. -- Travelers face no shortage of challenges, from finding the right hotel to making the most of their vacation to knowing which restaurant recommendation to trust.

On Tuesday, 32 companies looking to make the travel experience better presented their products at the Travel Innovation Summit at this year’s PhoCusWright conference before their peers in the travel industry, a circle of critics and a panel of judges.

Among this year's winners, announced Wednesday:

• GroundLink: a global, private car service that can be booked online or via mobile.
• Gtrot: a website that provides travelers with targeted content such as deals or things to do in a specific city, based on their friend's social media activity through sites such as Facebook or Foursquare.
• Evature: Eva, its Expert Virtual Agent, is designed to understand travel requests submitted in natural language, also known as free text.
• Hipmunk: offers a flight and hotel search that now integrates with a traveler's calendar and features a heatmap for cities throughout the world based on, for example, the density of shopping or nightlife in a particular neighborhood.
• ReviewPro: a customer intelligence tool that hotels can use to profit from the social web and manage their online reputation.

The judges also gave runner-up nods to two companies: Tru, a global mobile carrier, and TripLingo, a language-learning app that includes, among other things, a Slang Slider that helps travelers find the best translation.

“Travel is still very open to innovation,” Gregg Brockway, co-founder of TripIt and one of this year’s judges, told msnbc.com “I think we saw some companies that are answering really interesting problems.”

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Joy Jernigan is a senior travel editor for msnbc.com. Follow her on Twitter.

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. -- For any international traveler who's ever been surprised by a whopping cell phone bill upon their return home, global mobile carrier Tru has a solution.

“Our innovation is aimed at one goal: to serve the communication needs of the international traveler,” said Gary Cohen, senior vice president and general manager for the Americas for Truphone.

Tru's approach is called "least cost roaming," which helps companies save on roaming charges abroad by using local numbers. Tru offers multiple local numbers on one SIM card, allowing customers and contacts to reach one another -- without paying high charges for international calls, texting or uploading data. 

Too often, travelers abroad turn off their devices, which harms productivity, or bite the bullet and pay exorbitant roaming charges, said Cohen. He estimates that with Tru, companies can save 30 to 90 percent on roaming charges.

Tru’s service currently works in more than 200 countries, including the United Kingdom, and will be available in the United States in 2012.  

Rod Cuthbert, founder and chairman emeritus for Viator Inc., and one of the members of the critics circle at the PhoCusWright conference, said he uses the service and loves it.

“Your corporate strategy to me makes sense,” said Sophie Forest, managing partner for the venture capital company Brightspark Ventures, who is also one of this year's critics.  However, she pointed out that Wi-Fi is everywhere these days, so Tru's solution might make more sense for the business traveler than the leisure traveler.

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Joy Jernigan is a senior travel editor for msnbc.com and is reporting from The PhoCusWright Conference 2011. Follow her on Twitter.

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. -- Chris Lopinto wants air travelers to never get stuck in a middle seat again.

"Being in the middle seat is kind of like gambling," said Lopinto, co-founder and president for ExpertFlyer.com. “It’s next to impossible to get out of them on your own without some help."

Airlines today are averaging an 85 percent load factor, Lopinto said, which means roughly 66 percent of passengers get an aisle or window and 19 percent (since middle seats are the last to be filled) are stuck in the middle. “There are way too many unhappy travelers.”

To solve the problem, ExpertFlyer.com has created seat alerts. On its website, travelers can see a seat map for their flight and request the seat they want, whether an aisle, window or two seats together. “If you actually want to sit next to the person you’re traveling with,” Lopinto said.

Travelers can create one seat alert at a time for free. If the seat requested becomes available, travelers are notified via e-mail. Additional alerts are 99 cents.

ExpertFlyer also incorporates maps and seat reviews from TripAdvisor's SeatGuru.

Lopinto presented his product Tuesday before a critics circle, a panel of judges and an audience of his peers during the Travel Innovation Summit at this year's PhoCusWright conference, an annual meeting of travel industry professionals. Lopinto saiid ExpertFlyer has a 72 percent success rate in getting people to the seat they want.

But Jim Hornthal, chairman of trip-planning company Triporati and one this year's critics, noted that many airlines are now charging premiums for the best seat assignments. And there's no guarantee that you will get the seat you want. “I’m paying you a dollar for the hope that I get moved,” Hornthal said.

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Joy Jernigan is a senior travel editor for msnbc.com and is reporting from The PhoCusWright Conference 2011. Follow her on Twitter.

U.S. travelers who plan and book trips online are more likely to be early adopters of new technology, more likely to own a smartphone and take about three leisure trips a year, according to new research.

“The appetite for new technology is often coupled with a strong appetite for travel,” said Carroll Rheem, director of research for PhoCusWright, which tracks travel trends.

The findings were based on the soon-to-be-released results of PhoCusWright’s Traveler Technology Survey 2011, which surveyed 1,948 online travelers -- U.S. adults who have taken one leisure trip in the past 12 months that involved at least one flight/hotel stay and who planned their trip online.

PhoCusWright's Traveler Technology Survey 2011

According to the survey results, 47 percent of U.S. online travelers are on the cutting edge or are early adopters of new technologies.

Of those early adopters, 71 percent own a smartphone and take an average of 3.3 leisure trips a year, spending an average of $3,712 annually.

Of the 1,125 online travelers who access the Internet via a smartphone, 79 percent view maps or get directions, 62 percent research local activities such as restaurants or shows, 43 percent research travel products such as hotel rooms or flights and 42 percent reference existing travel information, such as itineraries.

The survey was designed to help companies better understand how consumers are bringing technology into their everyday lives and how that technology impacts their travel plans, Rheem said.

While the travelers surveyed were comfortable researching information on a smartphone, however, many were more inclined to switch over to a computer to enter credit card information. “They just naturally graduate to the right tool for the job,” said Rheem, noting that it is easy to mistype characters on a smartphone.

When it comes to online social networks, 79 percent of travelers said they participated in at least one, up from 70 percent in 2010.

“A vast majority of travelers are on social networks already,” Rheem said.

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Joy Jernigan is a senior travel editor for msnbc.com. Follow her on Twitter.