Skift Travel News Blog

Tours and activities online booking platform GetYourGuide has unveiled a fresh look on its homepage this week, and with it, a new series of Originals by GetYourGuide.

The Originals offering, previously put on hold towards the end of 2022, was run in partnership with local operators in popular destinations. Now the operator has shifted the focus to one-of-a-kind experiences, exclusive to the platform and inspired by the exclusive ‘Turning the Lights On at the Vatican Museums‘ in 2022, which saw 15,000 people applying for a coveted seat on one of the seven tours in 2022″.

The homepage refresh is seeded across core themes such as culture, food, nature and adventure, and Originals tours are now prominently labeled. New in the series is an exclusive guided experience through the Museum of Modern Art in New York, without the crowds one hour before the regular opening hours together with a professional art historian; or the chance to experience Barcelona’s La Sagrada Família in a private twist to explore Gaudí’s masterpiece on one’s own, accompanied by the live soundtrack of the famous local organist Juan de la Rubia.

The reveal of the new site was further supported by a new Make Memories campaign launched across the U.S. and Europe, and an Artificial Intelligence study that showed for 42 percent of participants, travel experiences were one of the three most emotionally intense memories. See the artificial intelligence experiment video below.

Membership Collective Group is best known for its Soho House upscale member’s clubs and hotels and for being unprofitable for decades. The London-based company wants to change both of those things, it said during a Wednesday earnings call.

In a few weeks, it will change its name to Soho House & Co., and its executives said they have a path to profitability.

On Wednesday, Membership Collective Group reported that it had narrowed its losses in the fourth quarter, year-over-year. It had a loss of $13 million on revenue of $270 million.

“We’ve raised prices by a double-digit percentage this year,” Carnie said on Wednesday. “Since we’ve increased our new member pricing, we continue to see super high applications, which shows the strength of our business.”

Total members grew to 226,830, up 7 percent on the previous quarter.

The company forecasts that its 2023 revenue will come in between $1.1 billion and $1.2 billion. That partly reflects a moderation in the pace of its network expansion. The company is returning to a 5 to 7 openings a year pace — which is a pace that’s easier to streamline and keep profitable.

The company’s streamlining push has a few key areas, including analyzing data to find operational efficiencies.

Data analysis has, for instance, shown that its members are using their facilities just as much post-pandemic as before Covid, but they’re doing so at different times. So the company has adjusted how it schedules its staffing to reduce its in-house operating expenses.

“Wages as a percentage of revenues dropped approximately 1,000 basis points in December versus August last year,” Carnie said of this initiative’s impact.

The company has been trimming the production of content, digital, and other corporate expenses. In one example, it will cut its “editorial content” expenditure by about 40 percent “going forward.”

In recent months, the company said it has found “sizable opportunities” to be more cost-efficient in how it procures supplies for its food-and-beverage offerings.

“The changes we’ve made in our F&B program continue to drive growth margin expansion with like-for-like F&B margins 230 basis points above the final quarter of 2019,” Carnie said.

“It’s still early days in terms of driving the benefits of these profit initiatives, and we have much more to go,” Carnie said. “But we’re on track, and we feel confident that this will help us generate stronger, more [consistent] earnings going forward.”

Sustainable tourism organization Fairbnb.coop has launched in the UK. 

Bologna-based Fairbnb.coop, which promotes community-powered tourism, has launched in the United Kingdom, with a goal to bring in B&Bs, inns and other private accommodations. Fairbnb.coop connects conscious travelers with hosts who aim to create sustainable and equitable communities around the world. 

Fairbnb’s 15 percent commission is used partly to cover operating expenses and the other half is donated to fund local community and social projects. In the UK, the coop will work with UK-based charity Big Issue Foundation and guests booking accommodations via Fairbnb in Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk, will be directing 50 percent of its booking fees to East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices. 

The platform also encourages hosts to adopt sustainable practices, such as using eco-friendly cleaning products, providing guests with information about local public transportation options and by providing information about local shops and trades.

The move for expansion comes at an opportune time for organizations like Fairbnb — reports suggest that the growth in the number of eco-conscious travelers is key for the growth of the sustainable tourism market from 2022 to 2027. Specifically, France, Germany, and the UK are the countries that will acquire over 50 percent of the market in the European region by 2027. 

Currently, Fairbnb operates in Belgium, Italy, France, Spain and Portugal. 

JetBlue Airways flights to Paris will takeoff at the end of June, with the city of lights joining London as the second European destination on the carrier’s map.

The New York-based airline will initially offer one daily flight to Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport from New York JFK beginning June 29, JetBlue said Tuesday. It also plans a nonstop flight to Paris from Boston at a later date.

The new Paris service is part of JetBlue’s push to disrupt premium travel between the U.S. and Europe with its popular Mint business class. The airline targets cost-conscious business travelers and premium leisure flyers with a lower price point for the lie-flat seats than legacy competitors, like British Airways and Delta Air Lines. JetBlue executives have repeatedly described its debut to London in August 2021 as successful.

Introductory Mint fares between New York and Paris are $1,899 one way, according to JetBlue. Delta, for one, is asking at least $3,382 one-way for a business class seat on the same route on June 29, the day JetBlue flights begin.

JetBlue’s European expansion has not gone as smoothly as executives have hoped. The airline has struggled to acquire slots at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, which has prompted a complaint with the U.S. Department of Transportation. Aircraft delivery delays at Airbus have slowed the launch of new flights. And, after JetBlue first unveiled plans to serve London in 2019, the pandemic disrupted transatlantic travel and delayed the start of flights.

Roch Ventures, a €150 million ($160.2 million) fund for travel tech startups in Europe and Israel, has made its first investment. 

The Luxembourg-based fund made an investment in WeSki, a startup booking engine focused on the ski and snowboard industry. Roch Ventures is leading the round with participation from Waze founder Uri Levine, TravelPerk CEO Avi Meir, and the founders of FlixBus. The size of the investment was not disclosed. 

This is the first of what will likely be another five investments from the fund this year, said Bobby Demri, managing partner of Roch Ventures. The firm plans to invest the fund into 20 companies, focusing on seed and Series A rounds. It’s focused on the European and Israeli markets, which Demri said is filling a gap for the travel tech industry there. 

“In Europe, people are very afraid about travel investment. You will find some investing in travel, but you will never find a firm specializing in travel,” Demri said.”

Roch was founded last year by Demri and Ludger Kuebel-Sorger of Boston Consulting Group, along with executives from Six Senses, Ennismore Brand, and Air France.

The firm is focusing on what Demri believes is the next revolution in the travel and tourism sector. 

He sees opportunities around digital nomad services, sustainability, the blending of corporate and leisure travel, and tech that could remove intermediaries like global distribution systems. 

As for WeSki, he believes the opportunity lies in what he sees as a rise of niche travel services. 

“I think that the travel sector is becoming a more specialized industry,” Demri said.

Tel Aviv-based WeSki partners with 60 ski resorts in seven countries in Europe. Next, it plans to enter the U.S. market, including mom-and-pop facilities that may not have had much online presence previously. 

The platform allows users to book all facets of a ski trip, including flights, transportation, accommodations, ski lift passes, ski gear rental, and more, all according to budget, party size, and level of experience. 

WeSki said it had a 300 percent increase in revenue between 2021 and 2022 and revenue growth of 1,000 percent compared to pre-pandemic levels.

American Airlines’ restructuring of its global sales team will involve the departure of three experienced senior leaders, Skift has learned.

The reorganization impacts its U.S operations and includes a number of layoffs. Other global regions are set to follow, with the cuts coming just weeks ahead of its move to shift more of its airfares to direct retail channels, including its own website.

“… I want to let you know that we are going to be a more streamlined sales team going forward, doing much more focused and deliberate work in areas where customers need us, and operating with greater efficiency and effectiveness,” wrote Thomas Rajan, vice president of global sales, in an internal memo viewed by Skift.

According to the communication, three leaders will “transition out of their roles” due to the new structure. They are Michael Albers, interim managing director, central and southwest divisions and Canada; Louis de Joux, managing director, leisure and OTA; and Shane Hodges, managing director, sales Western division and Asia Pacific.

Jim Carter, the airline’s managing director of the Eastern Division, announced his retirement last week. In January this year, American Airlines announced chief customer officer Alison Taylor was retiring.

The memo said the airline would look at the “subsequent layers of the domestic sales organization to align with our new world of work and structure.”

Rajan wrote: “To be upfront with you, that will mean reductions across the team.” Regions including Asia Pacific, and Europe, Middle East and Africa, will also be affected.

“We’re continuously evaluating how best to serve our customers’ evolving preferences. For example, a big portion of them have shown us they want to interact directly with American. Others have needs to interact with us through intermediaries,” the memo, which was dated Feb. 16, added.

American Airlines told Skift that it emailed its corporate partners on Feb. 16,  announcing it was reorganizing its North American-based sales team “to give us the ability to more quickly adapt to this evolving marketplace. This structure also allows us to deliver simpler solutions to intermediaries as well as provide a heightened focus for our customers’ entire travel ecosystem.”

Its email added: “As a result of these changes, we’re also evaluating our account management structure and will have more information to share in the coming weeks. In the meantime, please continue to partner with your dedicated account manager.”

Travelsoft, a company that offers software products focused on travel bookings, has added a third brand to its portfolio.

The Paris-based company said Monday that it acquired Spain-based Travel Compositor, a provider of travel booking engines, for an undisclosed price. 

Travel Compositor said its platforms handle €1 billion ($1.1 billion) worth of bookings annually and generate €11.5 million ($12.3 million) in revenue. The company is established in Southern Europe and is growing in Latin America and Asia.

Following the acquisition, Travelsoft said it will now transact bookings worth €5 billion ($5.3 billion) annually and generate revenue of over €35 million ($37.4 million). With 90 people joining Travelsoft via the acquisition, the company now has more than 200 employees globally. The company said it will also be able to invest over €5 million ($5.3 million) per year in research and development.

Travelsoft products are focused on helping the tourism industry sell travel packages by automating production and booking, handling data for marketing, and increasing conversion rates. The company works with 300 tour operators connected to 600 suppliers in more than 40 countries, mainly in Europe and the Americas.

Travelsoft also owns Germany-based Traffics, which it acquired in 2022, and France-based Orchestra. 

Traffics offers consulting, search, and booking systems for more than 6,000 travel agencies, as well as travel portals, airlines, hotels and travel suppliers. Orchestra said it allows travel professionals to produce, administrate, distribute, and manage travel packages on all distribution channel

Each of the three companies will maintain their names and brands.

“The need for booking platforms is growing and we see many opportunities for consolidation, so watch out for more acquisitions as we build the world’s leading travel SaaS,” said Christian Sabbagh, founder and CEO of Travelsoft, in a statement

Sabbagh remains the majority shareholder of Travelsoft, alongside the two founders of Travel Compositor and the two founders of Traffics. 

Shares in startups MOGU and Top Group Express, owned by Travel Compositor, will also join Travelsoft. 

The investors who participated in Travel Compositor’s only fundraising round in 2016 — including Caixa, Capital Risk, Inspirit (Didac Lee), Hotusa Ventures, and Venture Cap II — are fully exiting company ownership and multiplying their investment by 12 to 15 times, the company said. 

With hotels seeing a big bounce in bookings, so too can they expect to see more so-called rogue rates creeping back. These are rates that they’ve not authorized, and are a common complaint. Now one of the major bedbank players has developed a platform to help hotels fix any rogue rates they spot.

WebBeds, the accommodation marketplace owned by Australia’s Webjet, has launched a tool called Parity Monitor. It will first act as a hub where hotels can submit parity discrepancies to WebBeds, which connects accommodation providers to a network of 44,000 offline and online travel buyers.

It’s just the first phase of a program, as later it will let its hotel partners track, monitor, report back and eventually resolve rate discrepancies. WebBeds also said it had set up a centralised team dedicated to resolving parity issues.

“WebBeds is very aware of the frustrations that our hotel partners experience when there are rate parity discrepancies in the market,” said WebBeds CEO Daryl Lee.

Expedia Group and Marriott International have already partnered to curb the practice, and last year said they’d reduced the unauthorized distribution of wholesale hotel rates across metasearch websites by 80 percent.

OTA Insight, a London-based startup that helps hotels track competitors’ rates, will now include short-term rentals.

The company launched Rate Insight+, which it claims is the first service to give hoteliers a competitive landscape of both hotel and short-term rental data. 

At least 46 percent of travelers who paid for lodging in 2021 stayed in a short-term rental at least once, OTA Insight found. To give its hotelier clients a complete picture of what they’re up against, Rate Insight+ will factor in short-term rental prices in comparison to hotels.

“With the majority of booking sites offering both hotel and short-term rental accommodation, market convergence is accelerating, and traveler habits are changing,” Sean Fitzpatrick, CEO of OTA Insight, said in a statement. “Rate Insight+ enables hoteliers to take a comprehensive approach to analyze their market, understand the impact of short-term rental supply, and gain a competitive advantage.”

This launch comes after OTA Insight bought two data analytics services consecutively last year — Madrid-based Transparent and Dallas-based Kriya RevGen in March and April 2022 respectively. Transparent aggregates and cleans up data on more than 35 million vacation rental and short-term rental listings. And Kriya RevGen is a software company that consolidates reservation and related data for hotel chains and property management companies. 

At the time of the acquisition, OTA Insight had plans to supplement the data Kriya accesses with market-level and traveler-intent data from its flagship products, to include short-term rentals as a complementary market.

A shortlist of potential executives to succeed Disney CEO Bob Iger has surfaced, bringing a few surprises to the search for his replacement.

An unexpected inclusion, according to the list reported by Fox Business, is NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, who is currently under contract with the basketball league through 2024.

Kevin Mayer, co-CEO and founder of Candle Media, a U.S. production company, is also on the list. A former Disney executive, Mayer left the company to head up TikTok’s operations in America after Bob Chapek initially succeeded Iger.

Dana Walden, currently the co-chief of Disney Entertainment, has also been listed as one of the possible replacements for Iger. While previous reports indicated a possible succession by Josh D’Amaro, Disney chairman, he was not mentioned in this potential list.

Iger recently reorganized the company, adding a Disney entertainment business unit to be overseen by Walden and Alan Bergman. D’Amaro remains in charge of the third division within the company, Disney Parks, Experiences and Products.

Iger’s reappointment came with the stipulation that he would find his successor before retiring again in two years’ time. Disney has since set up a succession planning committee to help find the executive’s replacement, but there has been no indication of when Iger’s successor will be confirmed.