Pranavi Agarwal travel tips

As we have written about in our deep dive on “Hopper’s Rise in Travel,” much of the company’s growth can be attributed to its expansion into fintech products, which has not only helped boost take rates and revenue gains, but has also allowed Hopper to be differentiated from the legacy players. Another way Hopper is distinct is its unique strategy around marketing and user acquisition – namely, how it avoids spending marketing dollars on Search Engine Marketing and instead focuses on product-led growth.

Marriott and Hilton are the two largest and most well known hotel chains in the U.S. Both companies’ stock prices and valuations soared from their Covid-lows through 2021. After a pullback last year, hotel stocks have rallied again, lifted by strong demand and the continued travel recovery.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Tuesday, July 11. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

Marriott is the largest branded hotel in the world with more than 1.5 million rooms, making it 35% bigger than its closest U.S. competitor, Hilton. It has, however, grown its rooms and pipelines more slowly than Hilton for many years, with 3.2% Net Unit Growth (NUG) in 2022 vs Hilton’s 4.5%, as shown in the chart below.

On Wednesday of last week, Skift broke the bombshell news that Expedia Group—the world’s leading Online Travel Agent—had decided to end its longstanding partnership with Hopper, a rival OTA that Expedia had nonetheless been providing hotel and vacation rental inventory for many years. What’s more, Expedia used their announcement to voice concerns about several practices employed by Hopper that they perceived to be detrimental to consumers.

The market for tours, activities, and experiences represents one of the most opportunistic and untapped prospects within the travel industry. It is highly fragmented, with a long tail of small suppliers, and it is rapidly shifting online. That makes it an attractive space for online intermediaries to consolidate market share from small offline players. 

The travel industry faced unprecedented challenges during the pandemic, but its recovery is proving to be remarkable. Travel stands tall as an absolute megatrend, with immense potential for growth despite short-term economic concerns. This was one of the main takeaways of a LinkedIn Live session with the authors of Skift Research’s State of Travel report.

In September 2021, Google launched an advertising product called Google Things To Do, which lists not only the top attractions in a city but also options to book tickets via direct sites or online travel agencies. As we show in the screenshot below, though Google displays paid sponsored listings near the top of the site, its main organic booking list prioritizes the direct website over the sites of aggregators such as Viator, GetYourGuide and Musement, to name a few. 

U.S. hotel companies saw China’s economic rise as an engine to drive hotel development. But China’s economic turmoil may upset their plans.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Tuesday, August 15. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

Wyndham and Choice Hotels are two of the largest asset-light franchisors of hotel rooms in the U.S., with nearly 100% of their portfolios under franchise agreements. Both Wyndham and Choice skew to the midscale and economy chain scales, unlike their more upscale peers Hilton, Marriott and IHG.