Travel Industry Earnings Coverage

With 1,000 customers signed up for its open-booking platform, and 5,000 new clients enrolled in all its products over the last year, Concur is getting increasingly mainstream in the corporate travel industry. That's a challenge for establishment companies such as American Express, Carlson Wagonlit Travel and BCD, which must pay heed to the insurgent.

HomeAway is not about to be another Booking.com, but Google is going to get a new and large global customer when the vacation rental site ramps up its search engine marketing, probably next year.

Kjos and Norwegian's backers are making a big bet that they can disrupt trans-Atlantic traffic. You need a bit of chutzpah to make that happen.

Perhaps Virgin America can build on this good year and begin adding more cities to its stingy route map.

Orbitz will feel the most pain from the end of its exclusive relationship with Kayak, and will try to make up for it by forging new relationships with other metasearch players around the world.

Expedia's hotel business has momentum, and the acquisition of Trivago and its strategic marketing agreement with Travelocity are fueling the trend.

Increased advertising, lowering cruise prices and trying to win back the hearts and minds of travel agents have been key to Carnival's brand-rebuilding efforts. Advanced bookings for 2014, even though they are on par with last year's lower pricing, have been sluggish, pointing to the challenges ahead for Carnival.

The changing of the guard is now official -- in more ways than one.

eLong is putting its money, specifically $100 million of it, precisely where the company believes its future is, in mobile hotel technology. This initiative has certain parallels with what Concur is doing in using its own, larger investment fund, to encourage the development of travel startups doing interesting things.

Barger is seeking to maintain JetBlue's middle ground between ultra low cost and network carriers, but investors' new love affair with Spirit Airlines and others of its type will keep the pressure on JetBlue management.