B2B tips

India’s TBO Tek will start lining up buyers for its IPO this week and shares should start trading on May 15. In all, it hopes to raise INR 15.5 billion ($180 million).

Fearing another Expedia-like breakup, Hopper abruptly ended its hotel partnership with Booking Holdings a week ago, Skift has exclusively learned.

Hopper, the fast-growing online travel and fintech company, cut 30% of its full-time staff — around 250 employees — in a bid to get profitable, according to a published report.

Travelers booking flights and hotels from Expedia in a co-branded feature in the Afterpay app can now choose to pay in four interest-free payments over six weeks, Expedia announced.

Uber is steadily building its travel offering — solely for UK users for now — and has entered into a partnership with online travel agency Hopper to provide it with flights and fintech products.

Expedia Group officials hope that its Hotels.com brand, which migrated its technology to the Expedia platform last year and saw 20 percent growth in gross bookings in the first quarter of 2023, is a model for good things to come for its Vrbo vacation rental brand this year and beyond.

Skift Research has gained unprecedented access to one of the fastest growing online travel agencies (OTAs) in North America – Hopper. We interviewed senior executives across each of Hopper’s verticals, in addition to their co-founder and their CFO, to produce a deep dive analysis of Hopper’s rise in travel. Since being founded in 2007, Hopper has become a formidable disruptor of the OTA market, which for so long has been dominated by the duopoly of the legacy players. It has leveraged big data, machine learning algorithms and predictive analysis to launch an array of unique fintech products that have been fundamental in helping it become the third largest OTA in North America.

Skift Research has launched the Skift Short-Term Rental 250, a free-to-download map of 250 of the most prominent short-term rental companies operating today.

Tourism Cares, a non-profit dedicated to advancing sustainable tourism has unveiled its new Meaningful Travel Map.

When it comes to online travel agencies’ business to business deals, you may need a scorecard to keep up. In the latest deal, Expedia Group became the power behind Walmart’s travel offering.

Despegar, which describes itself as “the leading online travel company in Latin America,” is busy opening offline physical stores, with the latest rollouts in Argentina and Brazil.