Articles tagged “sharing economy”

The Priceline Group can acquire a restaurant reservations platform in OpenTable and add tons of vacation rentals to its Booking.com unit, but Expedia Inc. plans on sticking with its guns and focusing on the hotel business. Will that focus win out? Expedia certainly has been making strides, but this is still the beginning of the beginning.

Everyone loves the concept of the sharing economy, but when it comes close to home, feelings about it are a lot more nuanced. Lots more research needs to be done at the local and neighborhood level on the effects of the sharing economy, positive and negative.

The new relationship shifts some of the responsibility of informing and educating hosts to Airbnb, which can use its platform to ensure they comply. This is a model that will likely be copied in other markets looking to legitimize the short-term rental economy.

It is interesting to see that the Travel Technology Association, which takes the online travel agency side on the hotel tax issue, is siding with members HomeAway and Airbnb on short-term rental legislation.

The sharing economy may breed a few small entrepreneurs, but it doesn't have much use for professionals. In this world, everyone is an independent contractor.

Despite some differentiation, Only Apartments faces a daunting task of standing out in new markets where some of its competitors are advertising on TV and have so much money to burn. If it can scale up by using channel managers, so can everyone else.

This "review" is positioned in such a way that it could only come out with a pro-sharing stance, which in itself is not a negative but undermines the real work that needs to be done to legitimize such businesses while protecting workers' and consumers' rights.

In certain settings and circumstances, and that includes airports and business travel usage, Zipcar is turning out to be an attractive option. Hey, even AARP members are getting on board.

We’re launching a new annual State of Travel presentation. Inspired in part by Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends presentations over the last decade, Skift has developed its version of a…

Uber and Lyft have the advantage that they are travel apps that, like Google Maps, many people use every day. More travel apps should find a way to be relevant more often.