Inside Generative AI's Promise for Travel Booking

Totes are one of the most essential travel items you can own—the best tote bags are endlessly versatile and tend to have room for everything you could need while in transit. For some travelers, a sturdy leather tote is a no-brainer personal item for flights: It's bigger than most purses, so you can more easily fit a laptop, water bottle, and all other plane accessories inside. For others, an easy-to-fold cotton option might be the item you break out mid-trip for a visit to the beach or farmers market.

Collette is now offering an exclusive Fall Flash presale for travel advisors.

Packing your bathroom essentials can be a hassle. It's tempting to take all those tiny toiletries, throw them into a plastic bag, and call it a day. But with the right toiletry bag, you can avoid spills, simplify your packing routine, and stay organized—no more digging around to find what you need. Even better, Dopp kits make it less likely that you'll forget any of the essentials at home.

Travels and Textiles in Central Asia Textiles expert Chris Aslan explores a crossroads of history where ‘fortunes were made and lost through shimmering silks, life-giving felts and gossamer cottons’. Most travellers know of the Silk Road, but older still are the Wool Road and Cotton Road, whose tightly woven stories Aslan seeks to untangle. 

In its annual outlook for the travel industry, Skift Research has created 2023 global revenue forecasts for airlines, hotels, short-term rentals, cruise lines, and online travel agencies. Skift also built an estimate for international cross-border travel from 2023–2025. This outlook is meant as a companion piece to our recent State of Travel report that offers in-depth coverage of all travel segments.

>>Ukio, a Barcelona-based short-term rental platform focused on remote workers, has raised $28 million (€27 million) in a Series A round of funding.

At at time when the travel industry is still grappling with a labor shortage, you have to think some companies in the sector are “labor hoarding,” hanging on to workers that might have otherwise been downsized for costs savings or seasonality reasons, simply because of the fear of not being able to fill roles later.

Sustainability in travel will no longer simply be judged on stated goals. Rhetoric turns to accountability as companies and destinations are forced to put goals into operations in 2023. Travel climate ambitions have reached a moment of maturity.

Plusgrade, a Montreal-based company that helps travel businesses persuade travelers to spend more, has acquired UpStay, a growing provider of upgrade and ancillary revenue solutions for hotels, Plusgrade said Tuesday. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.

The Microsoft-owned also-ran search engine Bing has relaunched around conversational chatbot technology powered by ChatGPT, the new sensation owned by OpenAI. In an event today, the CEOs of Microsoft and OpenAI gave a demo of the new Bing, and it will be open to all in coming days. The refreshed Bing provides a chatbox with annotated AI answers — powered by ChatGPT– to the right side of traditional search results. 

Ever since the launch of ChatGPT in late November, Skift has been on top of what this new generation of generative AI could bring to various parts of travel.

Hotel booking startup, Safara, is hoping to use curated lists and invite-only memberships to meet the high expectations of millennials and Gen Z travelers.