2026 › February

United is overhauling its MileagePlus program to give more awards to those with the carrier’s credit cards as it looks to attract more high-spend travelers.

Travel executives are hopeful for a rebound, but visits to the U.S. remain well below pre-pandemic levels.

Accor’s Essendi update signals a complex, multi-shareholder deal that hinges on governance talks, not just price, with management still targeting a 2026 close.

AI booking platforms could become the new gatekeepers of travel demand. Wyndham is among the hotel groups plugging in their inventory and hoping to capture bookings at a lower cost than through OTAs.

Premium travelers, led by U.S. outbound, are keeping Europe’s network carriers profitable even as demand in the rest of the plane – and other parts of the world – softens.

AI is now a non-negotiable in the travel industry. But how every company uses it is what is setting them apart.

We sometimes think of independent hotels as relatively powerless given the strength of the OTAs and the big hotel chains. Will agentic AI turn the tables?

The asset-light hotel model has a blind spot. Wyndham just found it.

A billion dollars in acquisitions across three continents, and this is still a story most Western travel executives couldn't summarize.

In 2018, Airbnb had a "superguest" loyalty plan in the works to reward frequent guests with premium benefits, but it never came to be. Might the loyalty benefits being tested resurrect some of those plans?