Tripadvisor CEO Is Leaving and 9 Other Top Travel Stories This Week

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.

Tripadvisor CEO Steve Kaufer to Leave Post in 2022, Search Is On for Successor: Steve Kaufer had a great run at Tripadvisor, transforming a company with a small office over a pizza shop in Massachusetts 20 years ago into a global, household-name brand. The issue for Tripadvisor isn’t necessarily who will replace Kaufer, but what innovations will it take to revive the company.

Hotel CEOs Concede a Lasting Labor Shortage May Reshape Guest Experience: Finally, there’s some honesty about the hotel labor shortage crisis, and it doesn’t just hinge on pandemic-related unemployment benefits.

Hotel CEOs Make These Bold Predictions for 2022: The Delta variant didn’t evade major hotel companies from profitability on their most recent quarter. Barring some massive pandemic setback, many of these optimistic outlooks are possible.

U.S. Travel Agencies Can’t Cope With Demand Because of Advisor Shortage: The U.S. travel agency industry will only make a complete recovery when it manages to replace advisors cut during the pandemic. A lack of staff has often made booking trips difficult for people eager to use travel advisor services.

What the Leisure-Led Travel Recovery Means for Future Hotel Development: Real estate is a long-term play that generally isn’t impacted by downturns, but the pandemic accelerated efforts to beef up some development offerings in the leisure and luxury orbit.

Apple Privacy Changes Could Give More Leverage to Big Online Travel Agencies: Personalization initiatives aside, Apple’s privacy changes are a great win for travelers, but a big headache for online travel companies. The result is the biggest players have the potential to gain advantage over smaller competitors.

4 Airbnb Takeaways From the Third Quarter: We are just asking the question: With all of the disruption in the travel industry over the past 12 months, is it reasonable to believe that the number of hosts on Airbnb hasn’t changed an iota?

This $1.5 Billion Deal Signals a Major Hotel Brand Trend: Wyndham’s move to terminate its management contracts with an acquired CorePoint has significant implications around where major companies want to focus their resources in a post-pandemic hotel environment.

U.S. Airports, Railroads Prep for Influx of $1 Trillion in Infrastructure Funds: President Biden’s more than $1 trillion infrastructure plan provides an unseen-for-decades investment in U.S. transportation. But achieving its lofty goals could pose new challenges, which is something former President Obama knows well after partisan politics stymied some of his infrastructure ambitions.

Could Tripadvisor Spin Off Viator and TheFork?: Tripadvisor could likely have more resources to invest in Viator’s growth if it spun out the tours and activities brand into a separate public company. A nice way to better compete against Softbank-funded GetYourGuide and Klook.