Dennis' Online Travel Briefing

Staying in professionally managed short-term rentals is no guarantee of an optimum guest experience. When your host's profile picture turns out to be a free stock photo, you can guess how this ended up.

It's a nice step for Google to provide more information about hotels' sustainability practices in search results. But will the company have the guts to get "political," in the eyes of some, and push hotel listings higher or lower based on environmental practices?

Google's attractions ticket beta has been among its least elegant in travel to date. This has angered many tour operators because it couldn't have come at a more inopportune time.

As happened with major online travel agencies, there will eventually be several winners in short-term rentals beyond Airbnb. But will these come from the independent property managers trying to build consumer brands, or will the larger players take them out as is customary?

Consider Tripadvisor's excruciating marketing decisions: It wants to shout to the world that travelers can save hundreds of dollars on a Hilton or Marriott booking for their next trip when enrolled in the subscription program, Tripadvisor Plus. But that's going to piss off Hilton and Marriott.

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?

Tripadvisor's travel-planning help by text for Tripadvisor Plus subscribers plays to the company's strengths — user reviews and a global roster of hotels, restaurants and things to do listings. It really can't compete, though, with a real travel agent who has visited the destination and knows the hotel general manager personally.

Airlines have complained about the hidden costs of online travel agency web-scraping for years, but Southwest takes that sensitivity to a much higher strategic level. Kiwi apparently is adept at out-maneuvering Southwest's page-scraping roadblocks so the courts will have to sort it all out.

Business school students can probably debate this question endlessly and there would be merit in either position: Should smaller companies copy their larger rivals or vice versa? In the Google era, marketing power often wins the day — but differentiation still counts.

Hopper makes more money on add-on, fintech-oriented services than on selling travel — even the usually juicy hotel business. The business isn't profitable but who cares when grabbing market share is on the agenda.