Hotel Re-Brandings Are Risky – Here’s How Strawberry’s CEO Makes the Case

A Swiss International Air Lines plane arrived at its destination without a single checked bag onboard.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jeff Farschman, a 74-year-old retiree who lives in Dover, Delaware. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

This summer has seen a surge in the highest end of luxury across the world. Some of it is about revenge travel and increased global mobility: A lot of the Middle Eastern market parked closer to home in Covid and are now shipping their Bugattis to the streets of London and other haunts in Europe. The palaces of Paris, the best hotels in Europe, and five-stars in the U.S. did brisk business at eye-watering rates.

Record temperatures. Fires in Canada that covered New York in a dystopian haze. Floods that left one-third of Pakistan underwater. Sea ice levels at an all-time low. You don’t have to look far to find evidence that the climate emergency is getting rapidly worse.

The Italian government plans to cap domestic flight prices to protect consumers from soaring inflation.

Can hotels exert more influence in policy-making? Where will future development growth come from? Is generative AI relevant to the hotel sector? These and other subjects will be top of mind for us as we interview top bosses at Hilton, Hyatt, Accor, and other hotel leaders on-stage at the Skift Global Forum in New York on September 26-28.

Being ranked among the top 10 of the largest U.S. airports is no small feat, but it’s something that Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport has done repeatedly.  

The vice chairman and CEO of Expedia Group, Peter Kern, covered a lot of ground during his session at Skift Global Forum in New York City in September. Kern gave his perspective on mergers and acquisitions, technology, and micro-services.

Many hotel companies pledge to do better on ESG, or environmental, social, and governance goals. We found a few brands whose work on the “E” in ESG deserves an A grade in the eyes of many social media users.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Monday, January 16. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

FareHarbor, the Booking Holdings’ tours and activities reservations tech platform, has a new CEO, Skift has learned.

Skift Research’s latest report looks at hotel performance by chain scale in times of crisis and recession in the U.S., as well as the comparison of unit growth strategies of major hotel brands post the 2008/9 Great Financial Crisis versus their current pipelines.