2015 Archives

Flash sales or not, travelers will find value in Secret Escapes if it can indeed negotiate exclusive deals.

These are the aviation trends we were talking about this week.

These are the digital travel trends we were talking about this week.

Chalk up a victory for one big city and the hotel industry, which likes to see the online travel agencies' get squeezed. The case dealt with sales taxes on hotel sales and a not the more common occupancy taxes. It was harder for online travel agencies to argue they aren't "vendors" than it is for them to convince courts that they are not "hotel operators."

The emergence of TripAdvisor as a viable booking site is a wake-up call to Expedia and the Priceline Group, who have been TripAdvisor's largest advertisers in recent years. It wouldn't be surprising to see them cut the spending spigot a bit.

Collaborating with non-travel brands is a smart way for travel brands to capture a new audience that may not necessarily be current flyers, guests or visitors.

We don't expect Wi-Fi to be breezing at 35,000 feet but there's no shame in holding airports on the ground accountable for faster speeds at this point and it looks like they've listened to demand.

What we should really be asking is: if these airlines can compete with suites, why doesn’t everybody else? The fault is in the dark shadows of cabin footprint strategies. That's a story for another day--very soon.

Despite Kelly's rhetoric about being "the low-cost carrier," Southwest has probably transitioned beyond that positioning. Still, the largest U.S. domestic carrier indeed has room to grow in the U.S. and internationally, as well.

Is Kayak abandoning metasearch? Not likely at all. But why not test photos and merchandising messaging on a site that is a Kayak offshoot instead of a Booking.com clone?