As Traveloka drops off from the once-hot special purpose acquisition company race, a $200 million funding would stand the travel tech unicorn in good stead, in case it decides to take the conventional IPO route.
Google's attractions ticket beta has been among its least elegant in travel to date. This has angered many tour operators because it couldn't have come at a more inopportune time.
Traveloka knows how to go local in Indonesia and some other countries in the region, and that's one element of its traction in these markets. But can local ever be too local when online travel agencies mull international expansion?
In Skift’s top travel stories this week, EasyJet partnered with Deutsche Bahn on combination tickets, Southwest sued Skiplagged, Sabre said it ha a chance of beating pre-pandemic margins, and a downsized regional airline plans to relaunch.
Airlines have complained about the hidden costs of online travel agency web-scraping for years, but Southwest takes that sensitivity to a much higher strategic level. Kiwi apparently is adept at out-maneuvering Southwest's page-scraping roadblocks so the courts will have to sort it all out.
PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and Hong Kong investor Richard Li are emerging as frontrunners with their Bridgetown Holdings venture to help this fast-growing travel startup finally list.
In its rough outlines, Expedia begot Trip.com Group while Kayak and ITA Software begot Google Travel. Get ready for a flurry of clones in fintech, superapps, and subscription services in travel. In fact, it's already happening.
Bookings Holdings Fintech boss Daniel Marovitz says payments is arguably the world's largest industry. Across the online travel universe, look for payments to eventually become a line item — and very material to companies' financials.