Sean O'Neill, Skift
IHG represents a broader industry trend in that it's getting tougher with online travel agencies and wholesalers in the West while becoming more experimental with online travel sellers in Asia, where it needs help to grow its sales. Its use of new technologies to try to keep its strategy coordinated and to boost revenue are eye-catching.
6 days ago
Sean O'Neill, Skift
A few months ago, activist investor Elliott Management took Amadeus rival Travelport private. Elliott also happens to be the largest shareholder of Whitbread, the parent company of Premier Inn. That hotel chain has now dropped its contract with Amadeus for software services. Coincidence?
1 week ago
Bloomberg News
This sure looks like the first step to global ambitions of Chinese payments giants WeChat Pay and Alipay. Those who think Tencent and Alibaba see the world outside as small, relative to home market where chat-and-wallet is the norm, must think again.
2 weeks ago
SessionM + Skift
Airlines are taking cues from sectors outside the travel industry, including dining, wellness, and retail to better target and engage with their passengers. The key to success is delivering personalized messages through the smarter and secure use of customer data, experts said.
2 months ago
Sean O'Neill, Skift
Tech provider SiteMinder is the latest firm to make it easier for smaller hotels to adopt new tools from other third-party vendors to manage their properties. The trend could give the little guys more weaponry in online sales — and help SiteMinder become more valuable for hotels.
2 weeks ago
Sean O'Neill, Skift
To paraphrase Sabre executives, airlines in North America are too fat and happy to be bothered to mimic the experiments with direct distribution happening in Europe. They're probably calling that right.
2 weeks ago
Jesse Westbrook, Bloomberg
If the Facebook-inspired Libra cryptocurrency were ever to be one of the solutions travel and other companies might deploy to resolve global payment issues, they might want to fire up alternative currency solutions. Libra is all but dead, gone, and buried.
3 weeks ago
Yixin Ng, Skift
Timeshifter, brandishing NASA-approved science, wants to revolutionize how the travel industry helps guests fight jet lag. The science has won consumers over — and is a no-brainer for airlines. But in Asia’s cutthroat hotel business, how it can integrate the app into different branded programs is perhaps a different science.
3 weeks ago
Dennis Schaal and Sean O'Neill, Skift
A federal appeals court has asked for a partial do-over in antitrust litigation between US Airways and travel tech firm Sabre. After more than eight years and millions of dollars in expenses, the case has partly been reset to square one. Remarkable.
2 months ago
Sean O'Neill, Skift
Airline tech vendor Datalex had a spectacular accounting meltdown in 2018. Lufthansa, its largest customer, wants to kill its contract. Meanwhile, Datalex's auditor threw up its hands and quit. What a mess.
2 months ago
Sean O'Neill, Skift
Amateurs cut rates to fill hotel rooms. Pros take more sophisticated approaches, such as coordinating to stimulate demand from the most profitable customers.
3 months ago
Sean O'Neill, Skift
New data from China's travel tech giant TravelSky shows that the country's pace of air travel growth slowed in the first half of the year. But the country remained the fastest-growing region in the world in terms of aviation and traveling.
3 months ago
