Travel Technology

Wyndham believes AI tools will eventually bring relief to franchisee P&Ls, though not immediately across the board for all hotels.

Grab's consumer super app is becoming mapping infrastructure for Big Tech in Southeast Asia. Travel brands may not compete with it — but they may increasingly depend on it.

The biggest win for the hospitality sector will be the elimination of manual licensing and compliance checks that quietly drain operator time and margin.

Investors see AI creating a new generation of travel distributors, while others say the real work still runs through the old ones.

Demographic segmentation of Chinese outbound travelers is the wrong unit of analysis.

Even for superapps, mindless growth at all costs can be a trap that's hard to defend, while strategic, careful expansion aligning with a travel company's mission is a moat.

The companies that will matter are those with proprietary data, not ChatGPT wrappers.

"High touch" used to come from a concierge or customer service agent. Today, it can stem from technology, so long as it gives the customer "what they want at that moment when they need it."

For Asian travelers, the booking decision increasingly starts on social media — the platform just takes the order.

Morgenshtern makes the case that the AI conversation in travel has moved past the question most of the industry is still asking.