Bold and Outrageous Predictions for the Travel Industry in 2020
Skift Take
One of our goals is to always surprise our readers. So we asked our editors to push the envelope on making predictions for the New Year. They did not disappoint, from Amazon buying Expedia to JetBlue going away. What we are really trying to do here is prepare our readers for more of the unexpected in 2020 — and we'll be there to cover it.
The changing of a decade is no time to play it safe. We asked the Skift team of editors and reporters to come up with predictions for 2020, some bold, some quite outrageous. We acknowledge many of these will never happen, but with others — hey, you never know.
To learn our serious forecasts, Skift Research subscribers can read Skift Global Travel Economy Outlook 2020. For a free excerpt, head here.
Amazon Buys Expedia, Trip.com Group Acquires TripAdvisor
OK, let’s get these perennial acquisition targets out of the way and off the books in 2020.
Amazon has been playing around in travel, in fits and starts, for years. Instead of merely making half-hearted gestures by offering domestic flights and bus tickets in India with Amazon Pay cash back as a come-on, why not just go all in by finally acquiring fellow Seattle public company Expedia? With Expedia in disarray and, as of this writing, still hunting for a new CEO and chief financial officer after forcing the duo out in early December, a big-pocketed Amazon could acquire Expedia Group and its full-service travel businesses on the cheap. Will there be vacation desks in Whole Foods sometime soon?
Expedia has had problems coping with inroads by Google Travel while Amazon is the best example of a company standing up to Google and thriving. There could be learnings all around.
Meanwhile, Ctrip, which rebranded as Trip.com Group, entered into a joint venture with TripAdvisor in 2019 as a means of jump-starting its outside-of-China businesses. TripAdvisor has been growing its tours, activities, and restaurant reservations businesses, and it has user-generated travel content to die for. But TripAdvisor’s hotel and vacation rental businesses have been a yawner. Ctrip could greatly expand its global profile and steal TripAdvisor at a bargain. You heard it here first. — Dennis Schaal, Executive Editor
JetBlue Airways Goes Away
Sorry, New Yorkers. Your hometown airline isn't getting the job done in a world where megacarriers control the bulk of the market. JetBlue is the sixth-largest U.S. airline, and while it has built scale in New York, Boston, and south Florida, it's an afterthought in most other markets. It's still big, though — the airline had about 250 aircraft at the end of 2019 — and some of its competitors covet its pockets of strength. Analysts have wondered if United Airlines, which does not fly to New York JFK and is small in south Florida, might want to acquire JetBlue. Southwest could also
