Page 71

Skift Travel News Blog

Short stories and posts about the daily news happenings around the travel industry.

Airlines

JetBlue Names Paris as Second European Destination

1 year ago

JetBlue Airways will land on the European continent next summer with new flights to Paris.

The New York-based carrier will first connect its New York JFK base to Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport, with additional nonstop flights from Boston planned in the future. The addition of the City of Lights to JetBlue’s map will come two years after it entered the transatlantic market with service to London in August 2021.

As with JetBlue’s entrance on the crowded New York-London route, the airline hopes to similarly disrupt the New York-Paris market by offering a more affordable premium option with its lie-flat Mint business class product. But Paris is different than London, La Compagnie already offers a more affordable premium product between Newark and Paris Orly; an option that was not available in the New York-London market. JetBlue also faces competition from Air France, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, French Bee, and United Airlines, Diio by Cirium schedule data show.

“So far, it has been fantastic,” JetBlue President Joanna Geraghty said of the airline’s London flights at the Skift Global Forum in September. “Load factors have been through the roof, and I’d say it’s pretty tough to get a Mint seat flying across the pond.”

Competition won’t be JetBlue’s only challenge on its new Paris route. Production issues at planemaker Airbus have delayed the delivery of new A321LR aircraft that the airline needs for its transatlantic routes. The situation forced JetBlue to fly less optimized aircraft on select London flights this summer and fall.

Airlines

Newark Airport Sets Opening Date for First New Terminal in 34 Years

1 year ago

It’s not often that travelers have something to look forward to at Newark Liberty International Airport. The new $2.7 billion Terminal A will open in December, the latest in a series of major airport projects opening around the U.S. this year.

The first 21 gates of the 33-gate facility will open on December 8, officials said Tuesday. The remaining gates open in 2023. Air Canada, American Airlines, JetBlue Airways, and United Airlines will operate from the terminal initially, and Delta Air Lines will join them next year. The old Terminal A, which opened in 1973, will be demolished.

The last new terminal to open at Newark airport was Terminal C in 1988.

Inside the new Terminal A at Newark airport
The security checkpoint in the new Terminal A at Newark airport. (PANYNJ)

United, which has a large hub at Newark, will use up to 15 gates in the new Terminal A. The airline plans to operate flights to around 23 destinations — including to Atlanta, Austin, Dallas-Fort Worth, Nashville, Raleigh-Durham, San Diego, and Seattle-Tacoma — from the facility, Newark Chief Pilot Captain Fabian Garcia said in September.

The new terminal at Newark is the latest in a series of big airport investments around the U.S. this year. New or expanded facilities at Denver, Los Angeles, New York LaGuardia, Orlando, Phoenix Sky Harbor, Seattle-Tacoma, and Washington Dulles airports have all opened in recent months.

Construction of Terminal A at Newark began in 2018.

Travel Technology

Dubai-Based Silkhaus Raises $7.7 Million Seed Funding to Digitize Short-Term Rentals

1 year ago

Silkhaus, a United Arab Emirates-based platform for short-term rentals, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $7.75 million in a seed funding round.

Following this investment, Silkhaus has said it will accelerate its expansion across Middle East and North Africa region, as well as in South Asia and Southeast Asia. The company had earlier identified a $13 billion target market in these regions.

Having raised its seed round, the company said in statement that it would will focus on growing global supply on its platform. Silkhaus anticipates its market opportunity to grow to $18 billion by 2026, across Middle East and North Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia. 

Investors joining this round included Dubai-based Nuwa Capital, London-based Nordstar Partners, Berlin’s Global Founders Capital, Singapore-based Yuj Ventures, India’s Whiteboard Capital, and VentureSouq from Dubai.

Highlighting the global rise of short-term rentals, Aahan Bhojani, CEO and founder of Silkhaus, noted that the management of such properties is highly fragmented and largely offline as property owners lack the technology and know-how to deliver a world-class and standardised experience.

“We are building the operating system for property owners — large or small — to operate high quality short-term rentals,” Bhojani said.

Skift had earlier in an article highlighted how the tourism boom in the United Arab Emirates has allowed short-term rentals to thrive.

The Dubai-based company calls itself a platform that builds cutting-edge technology to provide asset owners with tools to monetise and manage their properties as short-term rentals.

Coming out of stealth mode, Silkhaus, founded in 2021, claims to have grown over 10 times through the past 12 months.

The company has said that it will grow the supply of properties on its platform, with a focus on hiring extensively for technology and strategic roles.

Hotels

Club Med Owners Consider Sale in Quest to Cut Debts

1 year ago

Fosun International Ltd. is pondering whether to sell French luxury resort chain Club Med as it’s looking to ways to reduce debts, according to a report in Bloomberg.

The Shanghai-based company has been informally fielding inquiries from potential buyers, people knowledgeable about the matter said. Fosun, which owns Club Med through its leisure arm Fosun Tourism Group, could value the resort chain at around $1.5 billion. Shares of Fosum Tourism Group have fallen 19 percent in Hong Kong trading this year, and it suffered a net loss of about $28 million in the first half of 2022.

However, it’s uncertain if Fosun will go forward with any transactions as a representative from the company said it has no intention of selling Club Med.

A Fosun-led consortium bought Club Med in 2015 for about $968 million. The Fosum Tourism Group has since expanded Club Med’s business, including opening three resorts in the first half of this year.

Hotels

Qatar’s World Cup to Benefit Hyatt and Accor Most: Analyst

1 year ago

The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 starts in five days, and Qatar is struggling to have enough lodging to house an expected 1.2 million football fans.

Qatar has only about 31,000 hotel rooms, according to benchmarking service STR, though Qatar Tourism says it has more hotels opening this month in time for the event — boosting its room count.

Many fans have looked beyond traditional hotels, booking more than 90,000 hotel rooms, tents, apartments, and temporary “portacabins” during the peak days of what’s called the biggest sporting event on Earth, Reuters reported. Three cruise ships from MSC Cruises turned into floating hotels are also welcoming visitors.

So which hotel companies stand to gain the most? Richard Clarke, the senior analyst for global catering, global hotels, and leisure at Bernstein Research, in a report on Monday, said Hyatt and Accor have the best on-the-ground positioning to take the most advantage of the top prices being charged during the event:

The Qatar World Cup has thrown up some interesting innovations for lodging, including the sustainable solution of using existing residential units rather than building new hotels, employing Accor as a manager of those residential properties to provide housekeeping and front desk services and the creation a dedicated booking platform rather than using existing OTAs [online travel agencies].

The upside for the World Cup for the hotel groups is likely 1-2 percent in the fourth quarter from the high price points (1000 percent mark ups) of their rooms during the event with Hyatt having the highest % of its estate in Qatar, but Accor likely benefits the most due to its unique deal.

The online travel agencies will likely benefit far less because of the existence of a dedicated booking agent, which has more choice for the event than the global platforms.

Richard Clarke, the senior analyst from global catering, global hotels and leisure at Bernstein Research.
Source: Global Hotels & OTAs: Who will win the World Cup? by Richard Clarke and team at Bernstein Research.

Expect some hotels in the capital city of Doha to charge entrance fees for anyone visiting its bars and lounges to watch World Cup matches, adding to hotel revenues.

Tourism

Colorado Communities Passed Ballot Measures to Shift Tourism Marketing Dollars

1 year ago

Multiple Colorado counties and towns approved ballot measures on November 8 to shift lodging tax revenue—a key funding source for tourism promotion— toward local community initiatives. The passage of the measures underscore the Skift megatrend that communities are no longer spectators in travel.

Ballot measures to increase lodging taxes to fund affordable housing and other community initiatives were passed in Estes Park, Summit County, Glenwood Springs, Dillon, Eagle County, Lyons, Nederland and other municipalities. The measures didn’t pass in the municipalities of Grand Junction, Centennial and Hudson

Many of the measures were passed with overwhelming majority support. In Estes Park, 63 percent of voters approved an additional 3.5 percent lodging tax extension on the local marketing district. 

Some local DMOs supported the ballot measures and their approval. “With the support of our board of directors and the community, we were able to not only support opening this funding avenue to support essential community needs, but to also work diligently to ensure that Visit Estes Park can continue to provide important marketing and management services to our tourism partners and guests by protecting our existing budget,” said Visit Estes Park CEO Kara Franker. 

The ballot measures came into play this year thanks to a bill signed by Colorado Governor that allowed municipalities to let voters decide how to allocate up to 90 percent of lodging tax funds to areas outside of tourism promotion.

Tourism

Spain’s Tourism Minister Quits to Run for Madrid Mayor

1 year ago

Spain’s Tourism, Trade and Industry Minister Reyes Maroto will quit to run for mayor of Madrid, triggering a cabinet reshuffle, she said on Monday.

During her stint in government, Maroto took the lead on protecting the tourism sector during the pandemic and now heads negotiations over European Union-financed subsidies for industries such as car and microchip manufacturing.

Who will replace her in Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s cabinet is unclear.

“I have decided to step forward and run for mayor of the city of Madrid (…) I want to be the next mayor of Madrid and I am going to put my heart and soul into it,” Maroto told a tourism event on Monday.

TV station TVE and newspaper El Pais had reported she would be candidate earlier on Monday.

Municipal and regional elections in May will be a preview of the general elections to be held at the end of the year.

(Reporting by Inti Landauro, Additional reporting by Emma Pinedo; Editing by William Maclean)

Copyright (2022) Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions

This article was from Reuters and was legally licensed through the Industry Dive Content Marketplace. Please direct all licensing questions to [email protected].

Announcements

Merlin Entertainments Appoints Veteran Sports Executive Scott O’Neil as CEO

1 year ago

Theme park and resort operator Merlin Entertainments has appointed longtime sports and media executive Scott O’Neil as its CEO effective Tuesday. O’Neil replaces Nick Varney, who announced in April that he was retiring from the company he launched in 1999.

The 52-year-old O’Neill was the CEO of Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, which runs both the National Basketball Association’s Philadelphia 76ers and the National Hockey League’s New Jersey Devils, before leaving the position in June 2021. He also served as president of Madison Square Garden Sports, where he ran the business operations for the NBA’s New York Knicks, NHL’s New York Rangers and the New York Liberty of the Women’s National Basketball Association.

Merlin operates, among other attractions, 10 Legoland resort theme parks and hotels and Staffordshire, England-based theme park Alton Towers. The company also plans to expand throughout the United States and Asia, including opening three Legoland resorts in China.

New Merlin Entertainments CEO Scott O’Neil has worked extensively in sports (Merlin Entertainments)

Travel Technology

Former Sabre CEO Sam Gilliland Hired to Lead Airline Software Company Accelya

1 year ago

Sam Gilliland, who was the CEO of Sabre Corporation for 10 years, is taking the top role at Accelya.

The Spanish company, which makes software for the airline industry, said Monday that Gilliland has been hired as CEO. Gilliland replaces Jim Davidson, who is stepping into the role of vice chairman.

Accelya was acquired in 2019 by Vista Equity Partners, a software investment fund. Through that investment, Accelya bought Farelogix in 2020. Accelya has more than 250 airline clients and nearly 2,500 employees. 

Most recently, Gilliland was the CEO of Cherwell Software, a Colorado company owned by Ivanti that makes information technology software for corporations.

Gilliland had spent 25 years at Sabre, starting as a software engineer. He was named chairman and CEO of Sabre in 2003 and exited in the role in 2013. Skift had named him one of the highest paid executives in travel while he was there. He had led more than 10,000 employees in 60 countries. 

Airlines

Cathay Pacific Begins Pandemic Bounce Back

1 year ago

Cathay Pacific Airways, after worries that Hong Kong’s strict Covid rules could doom the airline, is beginning its post-pandemic bounce back as the Chinese special administrative region eases its border rules.

The Oneworld alliance carrier will resume a third of its 2019 capacity by the end of the year, Cathay said Monday. That means resuming about 3,000 daily flights between the end of October and year end. And, as travel is expected to surge back, 70 percent of its pre-crisis capacity by the end of 2023. The carrier anticipates a full recovery to 2019 levels in 2024.

“Our recovery trajectory is in line with other carriers that don’t benefit from a domestic market in terms of the time taken since borders began to open,” Cathay CEO Augustus Tang said. He added, citing the recovery challenges other airlines have experienced, that Cathay has “sufficient pilots, cabin crew and operational employees” to support its capacity recovery plans.

Cathay will return to Bali, Bangalore, Fukuoka, Sapporo, Tokyo Haneda, Xi’an, and Zurich, and add back flights in other markets, in the fourth quarter, according to Diio by Cirium schedules.

cathay pacific august 2019 Thomas Peter reuters
(REUTERS/Thomas Peter)