Sean O'Neill

This week, travel startups, including TravelFlan, Beachy, HalalBooking, and GuruWalk, announced more than $63 million in funding. Most notably, Domio disclosed a $50 million Series B round, underscoring the ongoing growth in the short-term rental of apartments with hotel-style services.

This week, travel startups announced more than $139 million in funding for concepts including extended-stay corporate housing, short-term rental-style pop-up hotels, co-living spaces, and landing ports for flying taxis.

The short-term rental market is a long-term growth sector. Yet its dynamics are being upended as professional management becomes popular and online travel companies seek smarter ways to sell the lodging. Here are several takeaways from Skift's first event to focus on the sector's opportunities.

Kayak is making a landmark departure from its current strategy. It will add a tool to its mobile app to let users who book select short-term rentals and boutique hotels through it check in and check out via its app. That moves the travel metasearch player beyond merely listing accommodations to actually providing extra services for guests at partner properties.

Mark Okerstrom’s time as CEO of Expedia Group ended abruptly Wednesday after merely two years. Here’s a recap of Okerstrom’s tenure and why controlling investor Barry Diller felt Okerstrom failed to keep an eye on the ball.

This week, travel startups announced more than $101 million in funding for a range of concepts, including cross-border payments technology, short-term property management services, digital marketing help, and hotel tech.

It's rare for airline contract disputes with distribution companies to reach this outcome. Finnair will suffer financially until it cuts a deal. Sabre, for its part, risks embarrassment if it's seen as bullying a midsize carrier. Nobody usually ends up winning in these classic games of chicken.

Oyo has disclosed a surge in losses in documents related to its $1.5 billion in new funding. The hospitality company claims it will turn profitable three years from now, yet Skift Research dug beneath the headlines to deliver analysis substantiated by Oyo's latest income statements.

Is there anything that Trip.com Group (formerly Ctrip) won't do? LvYue Hotel Group is its upscale counterpart to Oyo, a set of hotel brands run in partnership with local operators in 10 Asian countries and run on cloud-based software.

Airlines Reporting Corporation's expansion into providing services around direct bookings is intriguing. We'll be watching how it handles the challenge without vexing the travel agencies that will remain its core customer.