Skift Travel News Blog

Blaming Twitter for changing its terms and conditions, Air France said on Friday it would stop offering customer support via the social media platform’s direct messages for its accounts worldwide. KLM, a sister brand, has yet to make a similar move.

Update: 4pm ET: An Air France spokesperson clarified, “Twitter’s recent change in access to its API has led us to adapt our commercial policy in terms of customer relations.”

Changed pricing terms for accessing its APIs (or application programming interfaces — a way of exchanging data) is a key reason. Twitter recently changed its product offerings for business clients, creating a new “enterprise” level for commercial users that use it heavily. There’s no public price list, but quoted price hikes of thousands of dollars a month, Platformer and The Verge reported.

New York City’s subway and bus operator said on Thursday it would no longer use Twitter to post real-time service alerts because of the new pricing, the New York Post reported.

In recent years, some travelers have found it more convenient to chat via Twitter with the French flag carrier than by phone or online contact forms.

“It would really be a shame if airlines and hotels would have to stop providing support via Twitter DM as I found this to be very effective, and it has saved me on more than one occasion. Especially communicating this way while currently being on a plane works wonders.

—Sebastian Powell, a contributing editor at Loyalty Lobby

We’ve yet to see other travel brands make a similar move. We asked Twitter for comment. Here was its auto-reply:

Yelp has for months been testing how it could use the latest generation of artificial intelligence (AI) without undermining the trust of the consumers who use it to find business listings. On Wednesday, the U.S.-based user-generated reviews company released an updated search interface based on these advances.

For instance, a search for places serving “breakfast” will no longer merely return listings with the specific word “breakfast” tagged or mentioned. It will now also highlight listings that mention relevant words, such as eggs and pancakes, said Craig Saldanha, chief product officer.

Yelp’s search does tricks like this by taking advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) and so-called large language models to help match consumers with the most relevant local businesses when they have a specific or nuanced need. It’s tapping technology similar to chatbot ChatGBT and other generative artificial intelligence programs.

“By leveraging these technologies to analyze the vast amounts of our user-generated content, in the future, we’ll be able to quickly, precisely, and succinctly summarize insights and provide personalized recommendations based on your search intent,” the company said.

The changes were among several others announced by Yelp on Wednesday.

Skift readers can get context by reading this month’s roundup on generative AI’s impact on the travel industry. Skift Research subscribers can learn more with the just-released report: Generative AI’s Impact on Travel.

When Ad Age announced its “2023 Creativity Awards” on Monday, it handed one to Hilton for having the year’s “best rebrand.” The hotel giant’s brand platform, “It Matters Where You Stay,” helped the U.S.-based hotel giant differentiate itself from competitors, the trade publication said.

Ad Age praised Hilton’s campaign — created by agency TBWA\Chiat\Day New York — for specifying services and amenities that other hotel chains and online travel agencies such as Airbnb can’t consistently provide, such as confirmed online reservations for connected hotel rooms, digital keys, and pet-friendly accommodations.

“In an era when so many travel brands feature pristine beaches, soaring mountaintops, and other glorious destinations, Hilton got real with its first-ever global marketing platform,” Ad Age said.

Chris Silcock, Hilton’s chief commercial officer, spoke about the campaign at the Skift Future of Lodging Forum in London. He said one of the ads, a TikTok video featuring Paris Hilton, had received 40 million impressions as of a month ago. Here’s a clip of the TikTok and Silcock’s explanation of the thinking behind it.

Ad Age wrote an inside piece on the creation of Paris Hilton’s 10-minute TikTok here.

Overseas buyers have made up nearly half of the recent investment in Japanese hotels because of the yen’s relative weakness to other currencies, Japan’s lower interest rates compared to rates in many other major countries, and a rebound in international tourism.

Bloomberg News reported the following striking statement:

“Overseas buyers were responsible for 47% of the 494.3 billion yen ($3.7 billion) invested in hotel deals that closed in the past 12 months — the highest proportion since 2014, according to data at the end of March from research firm MSCI Real Assets.”

Savills recently issued a report predicting low upcoming hotel supply, which will help hotels sustain pricing power. On the demand side, the country is making a concerted effort to reach record levels of inbound tourism, perhaps with a 60 million a year target for 2025.

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG Hotels & Resorts) CEO Keith Barr told the Financial Times this week that “several shareholders” had asked his team at an investor roadshow last month if it would consider a switch away from listing on the London stock market to New York’s exchanges.

Barr told FT reporter Oliver Barnes: “There’s no clamoring” for a switch in listing from shareholders, and management was “not currently considering” the matter, but acknowledged “that could change at some point in the future.”

Barr added that London was “not a very attractive place” for listed companies and called on authorities to encourage more liquidity and loosen regulations.

In a follow-up piece on Friday, the Financial Times Lex column offered some analysis:

“For IHG, moving its shares to the US would make sense. The Americas, led by the US, are its biggest regional market by both revenue and operating profit.

Analysts assess IHG using a forward enterprise value (market value plus net debt minus cash) to a multiple of earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization, a proxy for cash profits. The ratio is currently about 13 times, which is roughly in line with its five-year pre-pandemic average.

This means the group trades cheaply to US peers operating similar “asset-light” models. Marriott trades on more than 14 times and Hilton nearly 16 times, according to data provider S&P Capital IQ.

Even so, that gap does not look huge. Barr will want to weigh up the costs of moving the primary listing against the benefits of pricier shares.”

The carpet is not always plusher in neighboring rooms.”

—FT’s Lex column

Ennismore, the lifestyle hospitality group, said on Thursday it’s in exclusive talks for “a long-term partnership” with Cain, a privately held investment firm, to scale the hotel brand Delano worldwide.

The companies didn’t disclose the terms of the proposed deal. French giant Accor has a majority shareholding in Ennismore.

Under the plan, Cain — which has $15 billion assets under management — would get a minority stake in the Delano brand and give unspecified help to Ennismore in its development pipeline, which includes planned Delano openings in Seoul, Istanbul, and Cartagena. Cain’s capital would also fuel the renovation of the original, flagship Delano property in the Art Deco district of Miami’s South Beach, and also fuel the growth of the sister brand Maison Delano.

Cain has a history with the Delano. In November 2020, it took over the strategic repositioning of 1685 Collins Avenue, formerly known as The Delano South Beach, to eventually bring it back as a 194-room Delano.

It has a history with Accor, too. Between 2016 and 2018, Cain International helped SBE Entertainment Group finance and institutionalize their business and acquire Morgans Hotel Group. Then Cain sold its stake in the $1 billion of assets (including brands like SLS Hotel & Residences, Delano, Mondrian) to Accor.

Cain is best known for last year joining Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund in a $900 million in Aman Group, the ultra-luxury resort brand. Other past investments have included the Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills, the Beverly Hilton Hotel, the Raffles in Boston.

Cain — led by CEO and co-founder Jonathan Goldstein — has also done hotel deal and development work involving brands such as Raffles, Six Senses, and the Rosewood Hotel Group and has a host of other leisure businesses, such as the Swingers Crazy Golf chain.

The conventional wisdom back in 2015 was that travel agencies were a shrinking business. But that year, Spanish entrepreneur David Hernández thought he saw a whitespace for creating a fast-growing travel agency business, and he launched plans to create Pangea.

Fast forward to 2022, and his “travel store” invoiced close to 50 million euros in sales, Hernandez told the Spanish publication Time on Monday. In the first quarter of 2023, Pangea doubled its revenue year-over-year. This year, it expects to generate close to $75 million (€70 million).

What factors are enabling Pangea to grow quickly, having now served more than 20,000 travelers in only a few years?

In 2019, Hernandez raised an approximately $11 million (€9 million) round of venture funding, led by led by Axon Partners. The funding helped the company survive the pandemic and open four stores: in Madrid, at 1,500 square meters; in Barcelona, at 1,700 square meters and with a restaurant; in Bilbao, with three floors; and in Valencia, in the heart of the city.

The physical stores have attracted a new generation of travelers, just as some online-first direct-to-consumer brands like eyewear maker Warby Parker have opened physical stores as a marketing technique. Pangea’s Madrid store last year had a turnover of about $35 million (€30 million). Roughly a fifth of its customers were walk-ins.

“People fill out an online questionnaire, and based on their interests and characteristics, we find the best advisor for them,” Hernández said. “We have expert professional advisors in diving, volcanoes, safaris… anything you can imagine.”

Hernández doesn’t neglect technology. But he sees it as supplemental rather than the full offering — mainly as a way to make back-end and routine processes more efficient. His services are within a rounding error of the cost of fully booking trips online but save customers time, Hernández claimed.

“We have been developing a global technological tool for a year that aims to help further digitize the sector,” Hernández said, who aims to launch the tool at the travel trade fair Fitur early next year.

“Who thinks Booking.com, to name one, has no margins?” Hernández said. “That you always find the cheapest on the internet is not always true. For a difference of five or ten euros, it is not worth giving up the after-sales service, the security, the customization that we offer… We [as travelers] don’t have enough time to spend more than 50 hours preparing a far away and complex trip, like Costa Rica, Japan, Tanzania, the USA, or the Maldives. .. In an agency, they solve it for you in 30 minutes with all the guarantees and professional advice.”

—David Hernández, CEO of Pangea

Hilton Worldwide said on Wednesday it was expanding its partnership with connected fitness-equipment maker Peloton to add its bikes to hotels in three new overseas markets: Germany, Britain, and “participating properties” in Canada.

Hilton had already added at least one Peloton bike to each of its 5,400 U.S.-based hotels by last December.

Hilton sees partnerships with non-travel brands as a key path to staying relevant. Connected fitness was a trend that surged during the pandemic.

“It’s a great example of what we call a ‘strategic mash-up’ that transcends individual brand standards,” Schuyler told Skift last month. “It matters at a Hampton, and it matters at a Waldorf. It’s delivering on the service expectations of new age travelers.”

Wellness is an increasing area of focus for hotel companies, as Varsha Arora, senior research analyst at Skift Research, explained in a presentation last week at Skift’s Future of Lodging 2023 event in London. Here’s a chart from her presentation that’s relevant:

As of today, Hilton’s loyalty program members who are first-time Peloton users residing in Canada, Germany, or the U.K. can also receive a three-month free trial of the Peloton App until July 4, as well as “preferred pricing” on some Peloton products.

Mondrian Singapore Duxton, a 302-room luxury hotel, has seen its opening delayed by a couple of months. The Straits Times has a fun profile by Louisa Lim of all the frenzy behind-the-scenes in how the joint venture by hotel group Accor and lifestyle brand builder Ennismore aims to get the five-star hotel just right.

An interview with Robert Hauck, the hotel’s general manager, explains how the brand — founded in 1996 by Ian Schrager and featured in the TV series Entourage and songs by rapper 50 Cent — needed to be customized for the local market, such as by obtaining art from Singaporean artists like illustrator Andre Wee.

To make the property a local hit, the manager has hired celebrated talents to lead the house restaurants Christina’s and Canyon Club. These include the 39-year-old Jacquelyn Yvonne Chan, a former Olympian for Malaysia, and the 59-year-old Lim Tow Seng, a tattoed ex-convict whose life has been documented on TV. A fun detail:

“Mr Hauck had vowed to track down “Ah Seng” after spotting him on German television. It took him three months to locate the 59-year-old at his workplace, a bak kut teh shop, and offer him a job.”
He reminisces about the moment: “Ah Seng was very shy and very reluctant. I asked why and he said, ‘I’m afraid… You know, I’m afraid people will look down on me.'”
Today, Ah Seng is the manager for Bistro 126, the hotel’s staff restaurant, and a walking poster child for Mondrian Singapore. “He practically ignited the whole campaign for us,” says Mr Hauck.

— Louisa Lim, for The Straits Times

The article echos themes about how lifestyle and luxury hotels need to emphasize locally-relevant and distinctive offerings and create experiences to talk about that were discussed in this video by Ennismore Founder Sharan Pasricha at Skift Global Forum 2022.

Subscribers can read the Straits Times article on Mondrian Singapore Duxton here.

Marriott International said on Friday it had received an okay from Mexico’s competition watchdog for its acquisition of the City Express brand portfolio from Hoteles City Express. The news clears the path for the $100 million deal, first announced in October, and which may now close before June.

The hotel group seeks entry into the affordable midscale segment by adding its 31st brand, City Express.

“We expect to grow that brand aggressively in the Latin America and Caribbean region,” said Anthony Capuano, president and CEO of Marriott, in an earnings call with analysts in February. “And, as we move toward closing that transaction, we are evaluating the applicability of that brand in other markets around the world.”

The deal includes 152 hotels with about 17,000 rooms. It will boost Marriott’s footprint in the Caribbean and Latin America by 45 percent, to 486 properties. 

City Hotels said its hotel occupancy in December 2022 stood at 104.9 percent of the comparable pre-pandemic 2019 level.

“We’re thrilled about entering the appealing midscale lodging category and offering customers even more choice in the destinations they seek for both business and leisure stays,” said Brian King, president, Caribbean and Latin America  at Marriott International.