Pranavi Agarwal travel tips

After Hopper’s noisy breakups last year with Expedia Group and Booking.com, Hopper has a major hotel chain problem.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Tuesday, September 24, and here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

In a move to expand its international reach, India-based hospitality company Oyo announced the acquisition of Motel 6 and Studio 6, two economy lodging brands, from Blackstone for $525 million. This all-cash deal positions Oyo to significantly boost its presence in the U.S., adding nearly 1,500 properties to its portfolio.

Last month, we wrote about how a potential recession in the U.S. could impact the travel industry. The concern has been that a recession would hit travel spending and you can see it in the stock market: The Skift Travel 200 Stock Index is up only 3% since the start of the year while the global market is up 20%.

A growing number of travelers have shown a preference for spending more money on experiences than possessions, and the travel industry has paid close attention to that shift. Skift Research’s Venture Investment Trends in Travel 2024 report revealed the experiences sector was one of the few in travel to see an increase in venture capital investment.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Thursday, September 5, and here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

The Skift Research team recently unveiled its State of Travel 2024 report, a 400-page that documents the consumer and business trends in various sectors of the travel industry — including hotels and online travel agencies.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Friday, August 16, 2024, and here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

Booking and Expedia spend a ton on marketing: Nearly $13 billion combined in 2023, up from $10 billion in 2019. And it’s the largest expense for both companies, accounting for roughly half of their total operating expenses. 

The travel industry only registered $2.9 billion of venture capital investment last year, the lowest level in a decade. Head of Research Seth Borko discussed that and other travel funding trends with Travel Technology Reporter Justin Dawes and Senior Research Analyst Pranavi Agarwal in this episode of the Skift Travel Podcast.

Online travel conglomerate Trip.com Group is expanding its global reach in a deal with the booking system Prioticket.

Skift Research’s latest report explores the state of venture capital investment in the travel industry. Below we present 5 key insights and takeaways.

Skift Research reported earlier this year that Booking and Expedia — two giants of online travel — are experiencing slower growth and greater pressure on profit margins as they face more competition from Google.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Thursday, April 25. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

The period after the Great Financial Crisis in 2008-2009 until 2019 was a golden decade for online travel agencies. Booking and Expedia benefitted from the shift to online bookings, a consolidation of the online distribution landscape, and share gains from hotels. They become the most powerful duopoly in online travel. 

CoStar Group, the real-estate data giant, was hit last week with a consumer class action lawsuit alleging it enabled several hotel operators, such as Marriott and Hilton, to artificially boost their hotel rates.

Last week, Skift Research published our Global Travel Outlook. The main takeaway was that 2024 will be a year of . 

In Part I of our series on Google Travel, we analyzed the hotel distribution landscape in the U.S. by web-scraping over 5,000 hotels and their respective distribution offerings across Google’s sponsored and organic auctions.

Choice Hotels dropped a bombshell earlier this week when it went public with a hostile takeover bid for Wyndham Hotels & Resorts. Clearly Choice likes the deal while Wyndham thinks it can do better on its own (or with someone else).

Good morning from Skift. It’s Thursday, October 19. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

This week Choice Hotels publicly offered to acquire Wyndham Hotels & Resorts following months of private discussions between the two companies. This was pretty exciting in itself, with the last major M&A deal in the hotel industry being the Starwood-Marriott merger in 2015. However, a few days later, more news broke that Wyndham rejected Choice’s offer and saw its stock being halted on the NYSE.