Booking Holdings Withdraws From Google Vacation Rentals and 8 Other Top Digital Stories This Week

Booking Holdings Is Withdrawing From Google Vacation Rentals: Behind the scenes, there may be abundant reasons that Booking Holdings and Airbnb, for that matter, won’t be dabbling in Google’s vacation rentals business for the time being. Perhaps they are seeking to boost direct traffic, or are unhappy with the economics, and user experience. Expedia may be positioned to take some advantage.

Airbnb to Shuffle the Leadership of Experiences Business at Critical Juncture: Is everything on target in the evolution of Airbnb’s Experiences business? It’s clearly not profitable yet after three years, and the leadership change at the top signals problems. That doesn’t mean it is fatally flawed although this isn’t precisely the portrait you want to paint on the cusp of Airbnb going public next year.

Does Airbnb Really Need to Join Google’s New Vacation Rental Business? As Airbnb marches toward going public in 2020, a key question in many minds will be how Airbnb deals with Google — and at what price.

Why Airlines Keep Creating Even More Types of Fares: Many airline executives insist that their so-called New Distribution Capability, or new method of sharing data for selling tickets, will hit a major target next year. But industry insiders say the target will be missed. To cope in the meantime, several airlines will expand the marketing for bundled fares under a confusing array of brand names.

Hotels Are Finding Cheaper Ways to Connect to Tech Vendors: Hotel tech innovation has been partly hampered by high tolls that property management systems charge for accessing critical data. Impala, Hapi, and other companies hope to bring that connectivity cost down, which could be a windfall for vendors.

Sojern Steps Up Asia Presence as Travel Marketers Boost Digital Spending: Asia-Pacific advertisers spend more than half of their budgets on digital marketing, the highest compared to other regions, according to a Sojern survey. It’s why the company is pouring more resources into Asia.

Why Is Wi-Fi at Events Still So Bad? A lot of the same issues that plagued conference Wi-Fi 10 years ago are still around today, even as good internet becomes more and more of a necessity.

Wi-Fi’s Frustrating Lack of Progress at Events: Many planners treat Wi-Fi as an afterthought, when really it’s become a central part of the event experience, just like food or beverage.

SoftBank Invests in Brazil’s Buser: Travel Startup Funding This Week: By investing in bus booking company Buser, SoftBank continues to add travel-related startups to its portfolio of investments, despite reports of trouble due to its investments in WeWork and Uber that have not met its expectations. Plus, we have this week’s news of funding for the startups Jiudianbang, Lyte, Situm, and Skyroam.