Bold and Outrageous Predictions for the Travel Industry in 2020
Photo Credit: Airbnb CEO on stage at Airbnb Open in 2016 to announce its new products. Airbnb / Skift
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 Decem
