Sean O'Neill

This week, travel startups Volocopter, Atlas Obscura, KKDay, AmazingCo, Living Map, Sojourn, and Davinci Travel Systems announced more than $93 million in funding. The venture capital sector clearly isn't spooked by talk of recession in some markets.

The joke goes that the only people who make money in mergers are the lawyers and the bankers. If litigation continues over Sabre's acquisition of Farelogix, the lawyers may be laughing all the way to the bank.

The popular but unprofitable visual search company needs to crack more big-budget marketing accounts to make its financial picture more attractive. This year Pinterest began offering the ability to target ads to subsets of users based on their travel interests. That will help.

Setting up a site for selling plane tickets is fairly easy. Building a startup into a globally recognized travel agency is much harder. Kiwi.com's CEO Oliver Dlouhý believes his company can defy the odds. But what comes next may be the toughest part of the journey.

HotelTonight's acquisition by Airbnb last March represented a happy outcome, but it wasn't inevitable. Back in 2015, HotelTonight faced layoffs and fundraising hiccups. Here, co-founder and CEO Sam Shank shares some of the ways he got his company back on track.

Airline tech vendor Datalex had a spectacular accounting meltdown in 2018. Lufthansa, its largest customer, wants to kill its contract. Meanwhile, Datalex's auditor threw up its hands and quit. What a mess.

Look beyond monthly jobs reports to see a bigger picture. The U.S. leisure and hospitality sector will cut its employment growth by roughly half over the next decade, according to a government forecast. Hoteliers will cope by boosting the productivity of their existing workforce through training.

The funding of business travel management startup Hotel Engine underscores how there's a lot of money and energy pouring into the sector.

Amateurs cut rates to fill hotel rooms. Pros take more sophisticated approaches, such as coordinating to stimulate demand from the most profitable customers.

This week travel startups announced more than $46 million in funding. Of note, two of the companies, Smartair and Tastemakers, are making bets on Africa's online travel growth. Meanwhile, online travel company Hostelworld has invested in Tipi, a software provider for hostel managers.