Dennis Schaal, Skift
There are floors full of marketing folks and techies at Expedia, Booking.com, United, and American Airlines who are measuring whether consumers click faster on the yellow button or the red banner. Can airline websites afford to be cheerleader, confidante, and payment processor simultaneously? Very doubtful.
3 months ago
Dennis Schaal, Skift
TripAdvisor is leveraging its strengths — tours and activities, and restaurants — where it has leadership positions rather than choosing to devote the bulk of its energies in the crowded field of hotels and alternative accommodations. It is a wise choice to differentiate rather than be a mere clone of its competitors.
12 months ago
Dennis Schaal, Skift
If travelers aren't ready to book, feed them some inspiration and hope they'll hang around until they are. That is essentially what TripAdvisor's new travel feed is all about. Will the grand experiment work? We'll have to wait and see how the feature evolves.
1 year ago
Dennis Schaal, Skift
TripAdvisor will start showcasing content from long-dismissed professional reviewers so it can be more of a resource to visitors who aren't ready to book. Is nothing sacrosanct anymore?
1 year ago
Dennis Schaal, Skift
If some of the well-intentioned founders of travel inspiration startups might be accused of creating pie-in-the-sky business plans, investors are pouring their money into more grounded enterprises, with lots of sharing economy ground transportation startups attracting the highest funding on average.
5 years ago
Dennis Schaal, Skift
InterContinental Hotels is savvy to recognize that it needs to go beyond the low-hanging fruit of converting lookers into bookers, and needs to be involved in earlier and later phases of the guest journey. Amadeus has experience with some of these things on the airline side of things, but it remains to be seen how effective it will translate into hotels.
6 years ago
Dennis Schaal, Skift
When even a company such as Booking.com -- which is obsessed with transactions -- launches an Inspire Me feature, you know a trend is afoot. This next generation of travel inspiration features have something that earlier pioneers didn't: they are integrated lockstep with bookings.
6 years ago
