Sean O'Neill

CEO Greg Mount persuasively says many independent hotel operators are overpaying for operational software that's inadequate. Red Lion is savvy to try to woo independent hoteliers by promising preferential commission rates with online travel agencies. Still, execution will be difficult.

Investor 777 Partners has bought tech company Air Black Box, while online agency Kiwi has taken a stake in reservation system AeroCRS. These deals hint at a growing interest among airlines to use tech to build marketing alliances that differ from traditional codeshares. The true winner may be smaller airports, which stand to gain traffic.

This week travel startups BookingPal, Instawork, Withlocals, Ayenda Rooms, and Questo together announced more than $30 million in funding. Of note, famous venture investor Bill Gurley took a stake in Instawork's hiring marketplace, and mammoth investor Softbank is betting on Ayenda Rooms as Colombia's version of budget hotel franchisor Oyo.

The Argentine economic crisis continues to drag on Despegar, but the online travel agency's continuous investment in mobile is setting it up for long-term growth across the continent.

Points.com is still too dependent on its mainstay business of loyalty currency swaps for just a few major travel suppliers that are primarily in the U.S. Hopefully, its new cross-marketing deal with Amadeus will help.

"Everything is converging in hospitality," according to one Skift 2019 Megatrend. Selina embodies this Megatrend perfectly in how it pushes the bounds of co-living and co-working. But the company needs to execute its plans on time or else business partners will lose faith.

As an airline, AirAsia has led its peers in many metrics, especially on cost control. But its new effort to nurture startups has the odds against it. Will this effort bring strategic gains for the company? We’ll know in a few years.

Hotels are hiring companies to clamp down on online travel sites displaying cheap rates against their wishes. One of those startups, Fornova, has just bought smaller rival HotelsBI to broaden its rate-detection service. The deal is partly justified by the increasing tech spending on a cat-and-mouse-game between hoteliers and providers of rogue rates.

It's not clear there's enough market demand for a mobile app that books only independent and boutique properties. But some hoteliers might welcome the new app One Night if it can bring down its distribution costs, even marginally.

Amadeus has long talked about diversifying its business, branching out from distribution into software services for hotels, airlines, and airports. But 2019 looks like it will finally be the year that the new businesses gain nearly equal importance to the old ones.