Skift Take

In Skift's top stories this week, Sabre reveals that it's lost of Expedia's business in North America, Trivago's CEO predicts when travel will return to normal, and Hyatt makes significant inroads in Europe.

Throughout the week we are posting original stories night and day covering news and travel trends, including on the impact of coronavirus. Every weekend we will offer you a chance to read the most essential stories again in case you missed them earlier.

Sabre Loses a Chunk of Expedia’s North America Business: It was a coup for Sabre to reach a global distribution deal with Expedia 17 years ago when most online travel agencies partnered with just one such distributor. It’s certainly not a positive for Sabre to lose that business now

Booking Holdings Sees New Flight Offering as a Key Growth Driver: Shouldn’t Booking.com have launched flights at least a decade ago? In retrospect, yes, but now it is making up for lost time, and the upside could be substantial.

Hotels.com Faces a Brand Problem: What’s in a brand? When it comes to those like Hotels.com, probably hundreds of millions or billions of dollars. The inconvenient truth is that vacation-rental-selling Hotels.com isn’t likely to rebrand anytime soon.

Trivago Sees the Travel Market Returning to Mostly ‘Normal’ Starting Mid-2022: With the exception of business travel, Trivago officials argued that travel will be back to a semblance of normalcy by next spring or summer. That would be great for Trivago, but none of that is assured.

SoftBank Invests $150 Million in Tech Provider Cloudbeds: SoftBank’s high profile, despite some renowned misses, gives Cloudbeds some cachet. Still, Cloudbeds faces stiff competition in trying to break through with larger hotels.

Will Hyatt Finally Report a Profitable Pandemic Quarter This Week?: Most hotel companies have posted a profit at least once during the pandemic, and Hyatt needs to do the same this week to avoid shareholder and analyst scrutiny.

New Graduate Hotels President Sees Bigger Opportunities Beyond College Towns: Graduate Hotels is a company already roaring ahead with expansion into new countries and major cities. The pandemic can provide further investment opportunities for the college town-focused company to elbow into new destinations.

Marriott Hits Profit Setback Due to Delta Variant: It was still a strong quarter for Marriott, but the Delta variant weighed heavy on the company due to its greater exposure to China and reliance on big corporate travel contracts.

Hyatt Floods Into Europe as $2.7 Billion Apple Leisure Deal Closes: Hyatt’s focus on European growth instead of Asia looks like a smart call in light of the erratic recovery in China, where many of Hyatt’s competitors have focused their development pipelines.

Tourism Marketing Is Evolving Quickly With These New Priorities: Developing more innovative and stable sources of funding remains critical for this important, expanded destination management role to succeed. Some DMOs are on it, but many more continue to rely primarily on hotel bed taxes. Is the rapid return of travel dampening the sense of urgency?

MGM Resorts Eyes Sale of the Mirage Amid Growth in New Sectors: Out with the old. In with the new. The Mirage is the aging grand dame in the MGM Resorts Las Vegas portfolio compared to newer trophy deals like managing the Cosmopolitan.

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Tags: booking holdings, booking.com, expedia, gds, hotels.com, sabre, top stories

Photo credit: Sabre lost a significant portion of Expedia's business in North America. Michael Coghlan / Flickr

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