Top Stories
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Priceline completes acquisition of Kayak
DigitalPriceline completed its $1.8 billion acquisition of Kayak today, meaning Kayak ceases trading as a public company, and becomes a Priceline subsidiary. Game on. Priceline says it paid $522.4 million in cash and issued more than 1.5 million shares of common stock to pay for the right to meld the travel metasearch company into the Priceline [...]
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VisitEngland teaches businesses how to attract travelers with special needs
DestinationsVisitEngland, the country’s official tourist board, wants to help businesses promote themselves as accessible and welcoming to disabled travelers. Expanding on the organization’s online tools, VisitEngland launched a free marketing guide Speak Up! aimed at educating hotels, tour companies, and restaurants how to communicate with this important customer. The guide explains why accessible is a [...]
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Five startups that want to define the future of travel in five different ways
DigitalBetween business and leisure travel, transportation that ranges from planes to bikes, and booking platforms for everything from hotels to tours, there are endless opportunities to define the future of travel. This week’s SkiftSeedlings speaks to that breadth of opportunity by including everything from a media company looking to launch the world’s largest consumer travel [...]
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Anthony Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” episode 6 recap: Peace signs in Libya
DestinationsIf Quebec was Bourdain’s most gluttonous episode to date, Libya is its most austere. Geopolitics and Libyan culture are the snippets that viewers and Bourdain feast on in this week’s episode; and images of Libyan children offering the peace sign serve as a decadent dessert. Bourdain calls episode 6 of Parts Unknown “the best piece [...]
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Do Hailo and Uber taxi e-hail apps defy a NYC judge’s orders? Nobody knows
TransportNew York City’s much-anticipated e-hail app program was cut short by a temporary restraining order (TRO) just days after launch, but that hasn’t halted the operations of the two startups that were already approved for participation. Hailo and Uber‘s cab drivers continue to pick up passengers via the companies’ mobile e-hail apps every day. Why do they [...]
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New American Airlines won’t repeat Pan Am and TWA mistakes, official says
TransportPan Am and TWA, two iconic airlines that were grounded for good in 1991 and 2001, respectively, got “out-competed” domestically by rivals such as United, American, Delta, Continental and Northwest, and that contributed to the duo’s demise. To be sure, the reasons Pan Am and TWA went bust are complex, but US Airways president Scott [...]
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Thus proven: stop-motion travel video, so much more fun than timelapse
DestinationsTimelapse, that staple hipsteresque video format that rose to new heights with the rise of YouTube and later Vimeo, tends to overshadow another somewhat underappreciated format: stop-motion video. After a while all timelapses blend into each other, with a languid soundtrack laid over beach/sunset/clouds/buildings/cityscape/people/desert sky/Northern Light vistas. Stop-motion videos meanwhile, are just a lot more fun [...]
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New York’s Penn Station is still a mess, and it will likely stay that way
TransportThe busiest passenger train station in the United States is a 1960s-era, utilitarian labyrinth in the basement of a basketball arena. Pennsylvania Station, a gateway to the nation’s biggest city, was designed to accommodate about 200,000 riders a day. Now, it is packed with more than 600,000. At rush hours, it resembles a human demolition [...]
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TripIt reveals preferred seat tracker details for TripIt Pro subscribers
TransportTripIt made good on its pledge and released a Seat Tracker feature in its premium TripIt Pro product. Subscribers to the $49 per year TripIt Pro service can share their itineraries, identify their seat preferences (window or aisle, front or back of cabin, exit row or bulkhead), and then Seat Tracker alerts travelers when a [...]
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U.S. airlines trade group blasts customs agency on Abu Dhabi Airport program
TransportArlines for America, the U.S. airline trade group, lashed out at the way U.S. Customs and Border Protection allocates resources considering its goal of speeding the clearance of 90 million passengers who arrive on international flights annually. In the A4A’s crosshairs is the recent CBP agreement with Abu Dhabi Airport to establish a preclearance facility [...]
