Amazing what a Factiva search can throw up from time to time. The current Travel Trade Gazette (what do you mean, you're not a subscriber?) is just the latest trade journal to see the blogosphere as a battle between customers and companies - this time, it's travel firms (last time, it was lawyers):

Lastminute, Thomson and Cheapflights are all making pre-emptive strikes in the battle against bloggers by establishing their own staff-written blogs and encouraging customer feedback.

Littered with combative language like "fight", "war" and "attack", it's only on the next line we discover that "Thomson set up a blog on its website two weeks ago [posts actually go back to January] to improve its web presence."

A little bit of research later (no link to the blog from the main site - bad Thomson), I came across the Thomson Holidays Blog (but only after delving into their RSS feeds). It's kind of interesting, and kudos to Jo Disney who appears to be the brains behind the whole thing.

So far, not many comments so it's one-way traffic. But it sounds like Jo is genuine when she says that "We really want to hear from you, and we hope you send in loads of great comments so we can get a good discussion going."

The only thing I dislike is their definition of a non-acceptable comment as one which is "negative in tone". Sorry guys, you gotta take the rough with the smooth. Negative comments will actually tell you much more than positive ones, assuming you really want to listen, that is.

I think they have a bit of work to do, but the intentions are clearly honourable. Good luck, Thomson team.

BONUS LINK: They have podcasts too!