Jason Clampet travel tips

“Can you write me lyrics of a new song about the travel industry buzzwords such as local, REVPAR, experiences, NDC, duty of care, AI, transformative travel, regenerative travel, overtourism, bleisure and revenge travel?”

Like many others who follow innovation in the tech space, we’ve been covering advances in how the companies we cover get creative with AI. In order to bring all our coverage together, this week we launched a new weekly newsletter digest that will deliver all of our AI stories to subscribers’ inboxes every Friday. You can read more about the newsletter and also subscribe here.

Global hotel CEOs, regional hotel brands, and independent operators gathered this week in Bengaluru, India midweek to discuss regional growth and what that meant for the larger travel community at the Hotel Investment Conference – South Asia (HICSA). I was lucky to be there with my colleague, Asia Editor Peden Doma Bhutia, who was interviewing leaders and writing stories.

Earth Day took place this weekend, so to mark the moment Skift Associate Editor and Archivist Rashaad Jorden wrote A Short History of the Travel Industry’s Sustainability Efforts. The story looked at how hotels, airlines, destinations, and cruises have performed around climate change the past ten-plus years. “Travel brands loudly proclaim their commitment to sustainability, but many of them have a long way to go to ensure their words aren’t lip service,” Jorden said in an email to me on Friday. Read the story in full to see what he means.

Fairmont Revamps the Luxury Hotel Brand’s Strategy for New Era

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

If you missed Skift’s big news about its AI chatbot this week, we suggest you go to Ask Skift to pose questions that can’t be easily tackled by traditional search engines. Let us know what. you think of the tool by leaving a comment or using the thumbs up/down button. You can read more about what the tool does and why we built it in this story.

The Skift team spent the week exploring Iceland, but its editors and reporters still found the time to cover the industry whether they were walking paths strewn with lava rock or resting in geothermal baths. Pay special attention, below, to Senior Hospitality Editor Sean O’Neill’s explanation of the current craze happening with extended-stay hotels, as well as Executive Editor Dennis Schaal’s interview with Expedia CEO Peter Kern.

Swiss duty-free retailer Dufry on Wednesday reported a 113.4% jump in first-quarter turnover, supported by its acquisition of Italian motorway caterer Autogrill.

This week was dominated by speculation around Choice Hotel’s interest in acquiring its budget lodging competitor Wyndham. Experts weighed in on the will they or won’t they arguments and Wall Street had some ideas of its own as well. We covered that in depth. We also looked at CEO compensation at online travel companies while trying to make sense of why who was earning what in 2022. Read below for these and more headlines from this week.

This week was packed with so much short-term rental news that we’re worried it may overshadow next week’s sold-out Skift Short-Term Rental Summit (but not  worried, especially since you can still register to watch the livestream). First it was the release of our big list of the most-influential 250 brands in short-term rentals. Then it was a flurry of activity on Friday as Airbnb sought to put an end to New York City rules that will restrict certain types of activity in the city. We have everything covered, below.

Ask Skift is our artificial intelligence chatbot that offers a new way for readers to better engage with our breadth of knowledge and our latest experimentation creating products travel professionals rely on. It digs into news stories, Skift Research reports, Airline Weekly issues, Skift Live events, the Daily Lodging Report, and more to answer many questions about the travel industry.

The sold-out Skift Short-Term Rental Summit brought nearly 300 attendees to New York City this week to discuss the current state and the future of the industry. What was the best part? Hard to choose, honestly. As one attendee wrote on LinkedIn, “There were SO many great presentations and discussions at the Skift Short-Term Rental Summit in NYC yesterday.” You can watch all the sessions at on our event site here, and choose for yourself.

Passenger traffic at Aena’s Spanish airports exceeded pre-pandemic levels in May for the fifth consecutive month, while other European terminals still operate at a lower capacity than in 2019.

Harry Potter fans will soon be able to take up their wands, put on their robes and immerse themselves in the boy wizard’s world at a new theme park set to open in Tokyo on Friday.

Ask Skift is our artificial intelligence chatbot that offers a new way for readers to better engage with our breadth of knowledge and our latest experimentation creating products travel professionals rely on. It digs into news stories, Skift Research reports, Airline Weekly issues, Skift Live events, the Daily Lodging Report, and more to answer many questions about the travel industry.

Ask Skift is our artificial intelligence chatbot that offers a new way for readers to better engage with our breadth of knowledge and our latest experimentation creating products travel professionals rely on. It digs into news stories, Skift Research reports, Airline Weekly issues, Skift Live events, the Daily Lodging Report, and more to answer many questions about the travel industry.

Earlier this week we read how the beginning of Beyonce’s global tour caused inflation in Sweden, and we’re ending the week explaining how Taylor Swift caused a spike of her own in Chicago. In this case, economists weren’t concerned but hotel operators were ecstatic. It was good tourism news for a city that’s been pilloried by dubious news outlets and a sign that the city could be on its way to a stellar summer season.

Accor, Europe’s biggest hotel group, raised its outlook at its capital markets day on Tuesday and forecast its 2023 revenue per room (RevPAR) to grow within a range of 15% to 20% amid reorganisation plans.

Summer officially started this week, but the news takes no vacation. This week Executive Editor Dennis Schaal looked at three giants of online travel – Booking, Google, and Tripadvisor – and how they’re using marketing dollars and collaboration to get ahead. Meanwhile our Research team’s recent report on Hopper continues to reveal insights about the app’s rapid rise and evolving business model.

Norwegian Air and Nordic hotels group Strawberry said on Tuesday they plan to form a joint venture company which will provide benefits to the members of the groups’ respective loyalty programmes.