Travel Megatrends 2021: Renewed Strength Matters in the Future

There are winners and losers coming out of any crisis, and by 2025, many of these are evident. But it isn’t always a yes or no, clearly defined thing because there are nuances, too.

More generally, In the online travel competitive sweepstakes in 2025, the clear winners are Booking Holdings, Airbnb, and China’s Trip.com Group, formerly known as Ctrip. In these instances, the strong clearly get stronger.

These companies emerge from the pandemic with ample cash, and leap-frog competitors, carried by a wave of consolidation, and the failures of and liquidation sales at smaller online travel agencies like BookIt.com and short-term rental firms like Stay Alfred. Both of these booking sites — like countless others in every travel sector — fell by the wayside in the early stages of the pandemic like forgotten footnotes in a college term paper.

Many of the big online travel players are still competing vociferously among themselves in 2025 while also partnering with one another in typical frenemy fashion,