Rafat Ali

Nearly 20 airline leadership changes in recent months. So we wrote them a fictional group chat. Because at this point, why not.

The best airlines in America are also the most personality-dependent. The premium era is flattering both boards into thinking succession is a problem for later. It isn’t.

Recency bias is the most expensive cognitive error in travel business. And right now, it’s mispricing Dubai.

“Incredible India” was built to attract outsiders, but the center of gravity in Indian travel has shifted from selling the country abroad to building for travelers at home.

The travel industry’s advocacy groups were built to lobby Congress, but the executive branch has all the power. The mismatch was undeniable this past week.

Six big assumptions broke in one quarter. The CEOs still running the January plan are sleepwalking into a margin trap.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

The travel industry celebrates loyalty member counts the way it celebrates sustainability commitments: loudly, frequently, and with very little evidence the numbers have changed anything.

The travel industry edited Covid into a convenient story about resilient demand while ignoring the system’s fragility. We’re seeing the cost of that rewrite in real time.

The travel industry’s most important ecosystem story may be Montreal, where aviation DNA, patient capital, and a single Expedia office accidentally created a $15 billion infrastructure layer that much of the industry now runs on.

The entire incentive structure of the creator economy pushes toward exoticization over understanding, sensation over context.