As part of its "connected trip" and loyalty strategy, Booking Holdings argued it can convince hotels and other partners to offer up substantial discounts and perks, and this would spur incremental bookings. But do hotels really want to be a cog in building the Booking.com brand?
Riding the hot vacation rental market, TurnKey Vacation Rentals did well for its investors — especially if the Vacasa stock price holds up in its pending public market debut.
As the saying goes, you can run but you can't hide. Skiplagged may be marketing Southwest flights for now and helping flyers book them, but this practice doesn't have a bright future.
It's not just all about Amazon Web Services anymore when Amazon reaches out to travel industry customers. It is still early days but Amazon Ads may one day crimp travel brands' spending on Google and Facebook.
Booking Holdings hasn't given adequate focus to its partnerships business in the past, ceding much ground to Expedia Group on that front. Acquiring hotel distributor Getaroom will give potential affiliates another reason to sign up.
Traveloka knows how to go local in Indonesia and some other countries in the region, and that's one element of its traction in these markets. But can local ever be too local when online travel agencies mull international expansion?
Oyo made headlines for offering hotels a minimum revenue guarantee in exchange for taking control of hotel operations. Bob Diener and David Litman are doing it with a twist — trying to drive demand to select hotels to steal business from their peers in exchange for hefty margins on each sale.
Did Hotels.com co-founders Bob Diener and Dave Litman do it again with Getaroom? Certainly not on the same scale, but Court Square's acquisition of Getaroom looks like a winner for the duo, who self-funded their latest venture in travel.
As TripAdvisor Instant Booking kicks into gear it appears as though it is breaking new ground and becoming a hotel-friendly channel -- for chains that sign up, that is. Chains such as Hilton Worldwide and InterContinental Hotels Group, which have not hopped on the bandwagon, can probably afford to sit on the sidelines for awhile to gauge how the whole thing shakes out.