Articles tagged “research reports”

Humans still have a future in travel, but we need to get increasingly specialized and savvy about how we connect with the smartphone-enabled consumer. We must look to the in-roads between high tech and high touch and how these two factors work together to create truly unique travel experiences.

Whilst tech-innovation and hotels direct booking campaigns bring new challenges to the OTA world, Expedia has kept a solid growth over the past years and has a steady eye on upcoming disruptions.

Expedia has a lot going for it in the short to mid term but shifts in technology and consumer tastes have disrupted the travel space before, and will do so again. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and team will need to stay vigilant in addressing certain vulnerabilities, especially as they go up against the big platforms including Google, Facebook, Amazon and others.

While regulation is catching up with the Alternative Accommodations scene, the sector itself is still booming thanks to its social and tech-savvy consumers.

While regulation is catching up with the alternative accommodations scene, the sector itself is still booming thanks to its social and tech-savvy consumers.

How and where travel brands connect with the new experiential consumer will continue to evolve and shift along these three critical axes: Digital payments, mobile booking, and travel ad tech. Those that push beyond the best practices will take the most risk, but stand to gain the biggest reward.

The U.S. alternative accommodations market remains a one-horse race with Airbnb leading its rivals, but the brand's smart first-mover advantage has also turned it into the whipping boy for local tax authorities and hotel lobbies. This turbulent landscape leaves plenty of room for new consumer-facing brands but also opportunities across the broader alternative accommodations ecosystem.

Latin America's lodging industry remains very interesting to local and global investors alike. Economic headwinds and political upheavals have slowed but not stalled some of the world's largest hotels groups from capitalizing on opportunity in the region.

Get in early, understand how the Gen Z generation consumes media and the platforms that they engage with; understand what they want out of their travel experience; gain a better sense of their relationship to mobile technologies. What you find will surprise you.

The linear belief that youth is synonymous with incremental technology adoption doesn't necessarily hold true when it comes to travel. Travel marketers should keep this in mind as they look to the next generation of traveler; instead focusing deeper on channel preferences and content consumption patterns for those now coming of age in this digitally oriented world.