How Should Airbnb and Booking Spend Their Billions?

Affirm, the buy now, pay later vendor, now has both sides of what used to be called the online travel “duopoly” with its latest partner, Booking.com. The former duopoly, at least according to hotel industry critics, was Expedia Group and Booking Holdings. With the Thursday announcement that Booking.com customers would see Affirm’s buy now, pay later options at checkout when they are purchasing trips, Affirm now counts several Booking Holdings brands as partners, also including Agoda, Priceline and Kayak.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Thursday, August 31. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

In our weekend roundup, we delve into the pros and cons of Google’s latest foray into the tours and activities industry, providing insights into how online travel agencies might stand to benefit. We also catch up with IHG’s new CEO Elie Maalouf and his ambitious plans for the brand’s future. From AI’s influence on the travel sector to the latest controversies in short-term rentals, keep reading for a comprehensive look at the most pressing issues in today’s travel landscape.

If you follow the short-term rental industry, you would have read or heard Sonder touting itself as “a leading next-generation hospitality company that is redefining the guest experience through technology and design” countless times.

Airbnb was the top-spending travel brand on U.S. national TV during the first 11 months of 2022 at an estimated $86.5 million, but it was merely the ninth most-seen among travel websites, hotels and motels, resorts and theme parks, cruise lines and airlines.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Tuesday, November 8. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

Bowing to criticism about surprise fees that potential guests encounter late in the booking process, Airbnb announced Monday that starting next month it will begin displaying the total price of a stay before taxes, but including its own fees and hosts’ cleaning charges, at the very beginning of the search process.

In an effort to placate guests upset with sticker shock over surprise fees at checkout, Airbnb rolled out the ability for guests to view the total price of a stay before taxes in initial search results in many parts of the world.

For this bonus episode of The Skift Travel Podcast, we turn to Dallas where we held our first in-person Skift Aviation Forum earlier this week. To begin the event, we invited American Airlines CEO Robert Isom to have a conversation conversation with Airline Weekly’s Ned Russell about post-pandemic pattern changes and how his airline is preparing for the holiday season ahead.

People perceived to be African American or Black still see their prospective Airbnb reservations rejected by hosts at higher rates than any other racial group, but the company made changes to Instant Book last month to attempt to ease the injustice.

Skift Megatrends is arguably our largest companywide exercise every year, and we’ve been making our research-driven and editorially informed prognostications for a decade now.

As other sectors deal with post-epidemic corrections, travel brands continue to grow as they make up for lost ground over the last three years. Earnings season continued this week and both Meta’s and Google’s results showed the strength of travel brands during the last quarter. Read on.