Skift Travel News Blog

Tripadvisor filled in the blanks, naming two executive appointments to flesh out a reorganization of its core business that the company disclosed during its fourth quarter earnings call a week ago.

Sanjay Raman, who had previous stints at Airbnb, Greylock and Google, starting working in January as chief product officer, a new position within Tripadvisor’s core business segment.

Likewise, Kristen Dalton, who has served in Tripadvisor roles since 2019 as vice president of financial planning and analysis and interim head of the company’s business to consumer group, started serving in January as chief operating officer of the company’s core business. That is a new position, as well.

Core Business Is Distinct From Viator and TheFork

What is Tripadvisor’s core business? Tripadvisor defines it as “Tripadvisor branded hotels, Tripadvisor branded display and platform, Tripadvisor experiences and dining revenue, and other revenue,” including cruise. Tripadvisor recently de-emphasized vacation rentals, flights, car rentals within its “other revenue” category.

Although Tripadvisor experiences and dining revenue are part of the core segment, the separately branded Viator experiences and TheFork dining revenue don’t fall within the core business. That means the January appointees won’t be responsible for Viator and TheFork, which have separate teams.

With the appointments and the reorganization of Tripadvisor’s core segment, Tripadvisor now had functionally led teams in operations (led by Dalton), marketing (John Boris), product (Raman) and engineering (Sugata Mukhopadhyay).

Under the prior structure, the teams were organized along business to consumer and business to business lines.

While Viator reached 171 percent of 2019 revenue levels in 2022, TheFork hit 99 percent, and Tripadvisor’s core business generated only 79 percent of 2019 revenue.

Frontier Airlines is now automatically seating children with a family member or adult in their party for free.

It announced the new measure on Tuesday, and said it applies to children under the age of 14.

Its booking engine now automatically assigns seats based on family members’ ages before the check-in window opens.

The new feature follows United Airlines’ launch of a new seat map and policy that allows passengers to switch flights for free — amid calls to remove unfair fees.

“We recognize the importance of seating children next to an adult with whom they are traveling,” said Daniel Shurz, senior vice president, commercial, at Frontier.

Last July, Wyndham Hotel & Resorts unveiled an effort to help Black dealmakers, franchisees, and developers join the club of hotel entrepreneurship. The U.S.-based hotel franchisor updated the media on Wednesday about the U.S. effort, saying it has signed deals for 18 hotels.

Wyndham — which calls its program Bold[Black Owners and Lodging Developers] — highlighted two Black hotel investors as examples.

Twin brothers Dubi and Chuchu Ajukwu, had invested before in residential and commercial real estate as co-managing partners of VANA Partners. But they hadn’t considered investing in hospitality until the Wyndham program.

“Participating in BOLD by Wyndham has not only enabled us to break into competitive markets with immense growth potential but also allowed us to leverage the scale and resources of the world’s largest hotel franchising company,” said Dubi Ajukwu.

The developers wanted a segment with strong long-term growth in markets that most excited them. It helped them identify the extended-stay sector and to set a goal of owning several properties throughout Florida and the Southeastern U.S., with the brothers hoping to break ground on their first hotel, an ECHO Suites Extended Stay by Wyndham brand, in Daytona Beach later this year.

The U.S. will receive 62.8 million international visitors in 2023, according to the National Travel and Tourism Office. That’s a 21.2 percent rise from 51.8 million in 2022, but it’s still below its 2019 level of 79.4 million.

Next year, international visitor volume will be around its pre-pandemic level. The National Travel and Tourism Office forecasts it will hit 79.9 million in 2024, slightly up from its pre-pandemic 2019. Volume will surpass 2019 levels and be fully recovered with 82.4 million in 2025. By 2027, the total will reach 91 million.

At its current recovery pace, the Commerce Department will exceed its strategic goal to have 90 million international visitors by 2027. The National Travel and Tourism Office sits under the Commerce Department.

Inbound travel from the U.S.’s overseas markets, which excludes Canada and Mexico, will be 29.2 million in 2023, down from 40.4 million in 2019. Overseas volume won’t reach its pre-pandemic volume of 40.3 million until 2027.

The U.S.’s top inbound market recovery speeds will vary. Canada’s, the U.S.’s top inbound market in 2019, for example, won’t exceed its 2019 level of 20.7 million until 2025. India, in contrast, will exceed its 2019 volume next year with 1.5 million, according to the National Travel and Tourism Office.

Marriott International CEO Anthony Capuano on Tuesday toured the Evirma, the first sailing vessel in The Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection. Capuano said in an interview that yacht-style cruises on the 623-foot Evrima — which hosts fewer than 300 people at a time — represent an important pillar of growth for the world’s largest hotel operator by pulling the levers of loyalty and luxury.

More than 70 percent of the bookings since the first October sailing has come from members of Marriott’s Bonvoy loyalty program, and the company sees the yachts as a way to fill in the matrix of interest in its program members.

“Luxury is a big part of the appeal of the Bonvoy program and a big driver of engagement with Bonvoy,” Capuano said.

Fares on the Evrima start at a minimum of $5,000 per person for a week and can rise beyond $25,000 per person.

About 70 percent of Evirma passengers have never been on the cruise before. So the offering is a way to leverage the Ritz Carlton brand name for additional spending from an existing customer base.

“It is core to our strategy to continue to look for ways to connect ourselves with our loyal customers throughout their travel journeys, whether you and I were talking about Marriott Homes and Villas or the launch of a mid-scale like City Express or the Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection — they are all touchpoints that allow us to meet the needs of our consumers without ever looking outside the ecosystem,” Capuano said.

Yacht-style itineraries enable a more leisurely pace with more overnights in port than the typical large luxury cruise offers, plus the ability to access and explore smaller ports, such as Saint-Tropez, Ibiza, and St. Barts.

But playing in the luxury space has its perils. The more complex the product and the more high-touch the service, the more room there is for cost overruns. Spanish media have reported on financial filings from a shipyard claiming that the Evirma was budgeted at $300 million but cost twice as much.

Capuano said that the last few years brought a laundry list of “unusual challenges to owner economics,” with a mix of problems affecting supply chains. However, he said his company has long experience in executing luxury products well.

Marriott is the first of its hotel and resort peer companies to test the waters on yacht-style cruising, but three other companies in recent months — Four Seasons, Aman, and Orient Express — announced plans to offer luxurious yacht-style cruise lines.

More broadly, luxury is a key segment in Capuano’s vision for company growth.

“I continue to drive focus within the organization on luxury,” Capuano said. “Luxury represents about 10 percent of our global room inventory but about 20 percent of revenues through related fees. So from a purely economic perspective, the luxury portfolio and footprint are critically important.”

Marriott runs nearly 500 luxury hotels and resorts, with plans to open about 35 more luxury hotels this year out of a pipeline of roughly 200 properties.

“You can continue to see us make investments movements of dedicated capital to ensure that we maintain our significant lead in the luxury tier,” Capuano said. “We have a singularly unique portfolio in that we have a really compelling blend of classic luxury brands like Ritz Carlton and Saint Regis and emerging lifestyle luxury brands like Edition and W Hotels.”

United Airlines has launched a new seat map feature that dynamically finds available adjacent seats at the time of booking, while a new policy will allow passengers to switch flights for free if none are available.

The tweak to the online seat booking engine is designed to help sit children under 12-years-old next to an adult in their party for free, and follows calls by the Biden administration to ban airlines from charging family-seating fees.

If adjacent seats aren’t available prior to travel due to last-minute bookings, full flights, or unscheduled aircraft changes, United said on Monday that it will let customers switch for free to a flight to the same destination with adjacent seat availability in the same cabin. Customers won’t be charged if there is a difference in fare price between the original and new flight.

United said many airlines try and use a more manual process to seat families together that can include blocking random seats or asking agents to facilitate seat swaps at the gate. It claims those circumstances often result in more stress and a longer boarding process.

Polaris, First Class, and Economy Plus seats are excluded from its family seating policy change.

Customers traveling with children under 12 will start to see more adjacent seat options immediately, and the complete policy change will go into effect in early March.

Global Hotel Alliance gained from Spain’s tourism recovery in the fourth quarter of last year, following the addition of NH Hotels into the fold.

The country has now become the alliance’s second top earner, as it contributed $31 million in revenue in the last three months of 2022, the company said on Monday.

The United Arab Emirates, its traditional stronghold and where the alliance is headquartered, contributed $32 million.

Spain is catching up, as Singapore and Bangkok were the alliance’s second and third best-sellers, after the United Arab Emirates, during the first nine months of 2022.

Spain’s international visitors increased by 40 million last year, up from 31 million in 2021.

“The strength of recovery reflects the impact of the new GHA Discovery loyalty program, NH joining the alliance and bullish travel sentiment,” the company said.

NH Hotels also opened its first hotel, NH Collection Dubai The Palm, earlier this month, while the NH Collection La Suite Hotel Dubai will launch in 2024.

Room revenue generated by the 23 million global members of the GHA Discovery loyalty program exceeded 2019 levels from mid-November onwards. Room nights sold surpassed pre-pandemic levels by the end of its fourth quarter.

Business travel still lags however. The percentage of revenue attributed to international stays stabilized at 70 percent, the same amount as 2019, and the alliance said demand patterns were “returning to the old normal though leisure travel now dominates.”

The top feeder markets in the fourth quarter were the U.S. delivering $43 million in room revenue followed by the UK ($28 million), Spain ($26 million), Germany ($24 million) and Australia ($19 million).

China, which used to lead in outbound traffic, came in sixth place. The alliance, which counts 40 independent hotels brands as members, said China could “bounce back to number one in 2023.”

Total revenue for 2022 was $1.4 billion, up 60 percent on 2021.

TrekkSoft, a Swiss Saas startup for tour and activity providers has added Giant Monkey, a Berlin-based producer of visitor management solutions, to its stable.

Giant Monkey’s portfolio includes equipping museums with modern payment and omnichannel solutions. The acquired stake lets Trekksoft expand its reach to museums and cultural institutions throughout Europe, beginning with Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

The Trekksoft group has raised a total $3.4M in four funding rounds, with its last raise in 2015. It is an advanced connectivity partner for online travel agency GetYourGuide and has six portfolio companies that provide software solutions for various tourism service providers such as theme parks, ski schools and experience providers.

Mexican regional airline Aeromar closed its doors on Wednesday after it failed to reach a deal with creditors or secure new capital.

The airline was a small player in Mexico’s aviation market, flying less than 1 percent of the country’s domestic seats in February, according to Diio by Cirium schedules. However, flying smaller ATR turboprops, it lacked competition on many of its routes. For example, from Mexico City Aeromar was the only airline serving Colima, Ciudad Victoria, Ixtepec, McAllen, Piedras Negras, and Tepic, Diio data show.

Aeromexico, Viva Aerobus, and Volaris — the three airlines that dominate Mexico’s domestic market — have all offered to assist travelers stranded by Aeromar’s collapse.

Aeromar said in a statement that it planned to liquidate its assets, which include 10 aircraft.

The airline’s collapse is the latest in a volatile recovery for airlines in Latin America. Three of the region’s largest — Aeromexico, Avianca, and Latam Airlines — all restructured under U.S. Chapter 11 protection during the pandemic. Mexico’s fourth largest airline, InterJet, collapsed in December 2020. And Colombia’s Viva Air filed for the local equivalent of bankruptcy earlier in February; the airline may also be the subject of a bidding war between Avianca, Latam, and Chile’s JetSmart.

Greek startup Blueground has bought corporate housing specialist Travelers Haven to grow its footprint across the U.S.

Denver-based Travelers Haven sources apartments on-demand through its software and a network of vendors, giving it access to up to 20,000 U.S. cities.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Travelers Haven reported $100 million of revenue in 2022.

Blueground focuses on urban centers, with apartments in 11 cities in the U.S. and 19 cities internationally. It said the combined organization will employ 1,200 people, and is expected to reach over $600 million in revenue in 2023.

Traveler’s Haven currently employs 100 people. “Nobody will be laid off following the acquisition, and their day-to-day work will not change as a result as the two companies will continue to operate independently for the near future,” a spokesperson said.

This acquisition is also expected to add more clients to Blueground for Business, its corporate service division for human resource and travel managers.