Mews says AI can remove the handoffs that once slowed work and hurt margins. Now it has to prove a leaner structure can bring hotels closer, not leave them with less.
Chinese OTAs have long offered airport transfers and chauffeur services through third-party partnerships. If completed, Tongcheng's Dida acquisition would make it one of the first to own the ride-sharing marketplace itself, rather than plugging into someone else's.
Hilton and Navan have launched a direct booking connection that skips distribution middlemen, giving the hotel group more control over retailing. It's an early step in a broader corporate travel push to overhaul how road warriors book hotels.
Concerts, festivals, sports and cultural moments are changing where and how the world travels, and the shift is proving durable. Most operators still treat it as a calendar event. The Skift Live Tourism Summit, presented by Live Nation, is the room where they learn to build around it.
Event tech vendors are starting to implement bring your own AI (BYOAI) policies. That means organizers can keep their data and pick their own tools, instead of handing the platform the interactions behind them.
Travel apps inside AI chatbots are starting to look like real referral channels. The catch, Skift's testing found: A brand can be connected and still get skipped.