2013 Archives

Lots of innovation in social media going on in hotel industry and lots of cross learnings to be had by highlighting the best.

Orbitz Rewards members aren't going to get huge savings initially, but they will be getting something right away. Whether this will be enough to be a meaningful boost to Orbitz's hotel ambitions remains to be seen.

Luxury brands across all sectors are entering the Middle East to tap into the local and visitor base of high-spending customers. Their online presence is as, if not more, important than their on-the-ground services.

TripAdvisor isn't an online travel agency because it doesn't take flight or hotel bookings. But, given its desire to expand further into a solution for in-destination tours and activities, you can make the argument that it is a more well-rounded one-stop shop for travel than many of the travel booking sites.

Most of the traveler leads that TripAdvisor passes along to online travel agencies and hotels don't come from its hotel metasearch search results pages. They come from the property pages where travelers read reviews and gawk at the photos. This is a huge differentiator from the competition and will afford TripAdvisor a big advantage in the long term.

For the last decade destinations have fought hard for airtime on reality shows, but we may be seeing a new metric for tourism success: the Bourdain Bump.

U.S. airlines are still way behind in creating watchable and shareable short videos, and could learn a lot from the non-U.S. examples listed here.

It can be argued that Africa is the next Asia, but the more difficult question is whether it wants to be. A booming tourism economy brings international dollars and job growth at the risk of environmental and cultural degradation.