Articles tagged “superapps”

The likes of Alibaba, Grab, and Rakuten have billions of members. If hotels can tap into a just fraction of their users, and convert them to their own loyalty schemes, they'll be mighty happy.

The Grab-Altimeter Growth Corp. 2 merger immediately becomes one of the highest profile such transactions in travel. Grab already dominates its superapp sector in Southeast Asia, and the funding infusion should help it get stronger.

The blank check frenzy may be sweeping up companies such as Sonder that would otherwise have had to wait their turn to go public. It would certainly be an interesting comeback for the quasi-hotel company whose prospects were not looking particularly bright a year ago.

Running an airline isn't easy, and neither is launching ridesharing, financial services, and delivery businesses from scratch. AirAsia has its work cut out for it in terms of the required investments and trying to be everything to everyone in Southeast Asian markets with entrenched incumbents.

Google's advertising revenue and profits skyrocketed during the fourth quarter — although travel industry spend didn't drive the results. As with other industries, travel advertisers will likely flock to YouTube for brand promotions when demand returns.

Yanolja may seek a $4 billion valuation in its planned IPO next year. Its investment in Triple underscores its ambition to go beyond South Korea and become a global superapp and a hotel services provider.

Take a look at how Japan's most popular messaging app has approached travel marketing during the pandemic. It's a glance at how superapps might define the future of travel in Asia.

Trump's ban on the Chinese superapp WeChat may turn out to be a mere annoyance for many Chinese travelers. But it could cause real harm to some U.S. travel organizations.

Slowly but surely Amazon is building up a considerable travel presence in India via its app. How deep and far will it eventually decide to go?

What if you could use your everyday ridehailing app anywhere in the world? No more cumbersome downloads of another app or losing loyalty points from your app. That’s what Grab wants to achieve with its investment in Splyt. Too good to be true?