Articles tagged “skift research”

Middle East travelers are blending faith, family, and digital sophistication to redefine what meaningful, modern travel looks like.

The global car rental sector is a resilient $92 billion market, driven by leisure travel, with the Americas being the largest market. The sector is rapidly digitizing with 74% of bookings online, with direct bookings driving as much traction as intermediaries.

MENA travelers are redefining global tourism — blending faith, family, and cultural identity with digital fluency and a growing appetite for authentic, experience-led travel.

In this video from Skift Global Forum, McKinsey, Marriott, and Kayak discuss how understanding and acting on agentic AI’s potential could mark the winners and losers in the coming decade of travel innovation.

In Europe’s airline market, cost discipline beats scale — ultra-low-cost carriers lead on margins, while legacy giants rely on consolidation and strategy to stay competitive.

Global travel maintains resilience at 1% annual growth, but operators must abandon traditional seasonality models and leverage flexible pricing to capture demand that is now more evenly distributed throughout the year.

Profitability, not demand, is now the key metric for investors tracking the U.S. hotel sector.

We don’t believe that talent is a topic that should be confined to meetings with HR or recruiters. We believe that talent is a board-level conversation and deserves to be treated as such. Hiring, training, and retaining top talent should be a core focus of every travel leader, everywhere. ​

Despite strong demand and hiring momentum, travel is stuck in a cycle of churn — with pay gaps, skills shortages, and weak career pathways making talent the sector’s biggest growth challenge.

The global cruise industry generated $71 billion in revenues in 2024 and is projected for strong growth, with a forecasted growth rate of 5% year-on-year, to reach $78 billion by 2026.