Earnings tips

Nick Jones said on Wednesday that he would step down from being CEO of Membership Collective Group nearly three decades since he founded the original Soho House that eventually led to the creation of the public company and owner of the Soho House chain.

Yanolja said this week it expected that a post-pandemic rebound in international travel will continue to boost its twin businesses of online travel sales via a superapp and software sales to hotels and other travel companies. The South Korea-based startup has made progress on both ambitions since 2011, when it received a $1.7 billion investment from the Softbank Vision Fund in a transaction that valued Yanolja at the time at approximately US$9 billion.

Expedia will continue to invest in gaining long-term value customers despite the risk of losing bookings to its competitors, as it focuses on brand awareness, paid app downloads and its loyalty program.

The non-air products that Amadeus offers are the closest to recovering to 2019 revenue levels.

Choice Hotels‘ recent acquisition of Radisson’s Americas business looks like a post-pandemic statement of intent. The $675 million deal will help shift the company’s portfolio mix upmarket.

Property manager Sonder is positioning itself long-term to take advantage of higher-spending business travelers, and added 200 corporate travel accounts — and a former CWT CEO to its board — during the third quarter.

Airbnb executives have talked a lot about how they have reduced their spending on performance marketing (think: buying ads in Google search results) to focus on brand marketing (think: subway posters advertising the company’s new “OMG” category of properties). So how much do they spend on brand and how much on performance?

Just a little more than two months into his new role as CEO of U.S.-based property manager Vacasa, Rob Greyber detailed his priorities: Downplay acquisitions of vacation rental portfolios in favor of a more productive sales team and organic growth, and tackle longstanding customer support issues at the local level.

Two months. That’s how long Southwest Airlines expects there to be an impact on bookings from its massive holiday meltdown that disrupted millions of travelers over Christmas and New Years.

Although some advertisers reined in their budgets for some Google products, the company’s travel and retail verticals led Google’s search and other revenues in the third quarter.

Saudi Arabia’s increasing focus in the tourism sector and the shift to leisure travel has brought Seera Group from the red to report the company’s first post-pandemic operating profit of $8 million in the third quarter.

Norwegian Cruise Line grew its occupancy level despite increasing its pricing in the third quarter. The cruise company expects it will fill its ships in 2023 even with higher pricing and uncertain macroeconomic conditions, executives said during an earnings call Tuesday.

HomeToGo, the Germany-based short-term rental comparison-shopping engine, has been making strides in a booking model that peers like Kayak, Google, and Tripadvisor downplayed or abandoned.

On the Beach Group CEO Simon Cooper, who founded the UK-based beach holidays online travel agency in 2004, will resign his post within the next 12 months, and Chief Financial Officer Shaun Morton will take over the CEO duties, the company announced.

Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian made a call to action for more funding and investment in the U.S. air traffic control system after an outage Wednesday disrupted more than 11,000 flights across the country.

In Skift Research’s latest report check in on the current state of Expedia Group and Booking Holdings, the big two online travel agencies in the U.S. and Europe, as they recover from the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Carnival CEO Josh Weinstein said, during Wednesday’s earnings call for its fiscal fourth quarter that ended on November 30, some consumers are a bit weary about booking cruises with Covid and flu cases on the rise. But that didn’t dampen his optimism about 2023 with Carnival seeing a surge in bookings for the new year, after years of seeing its business being dogged by the pandemic with onboard outbreaks, deaths, and plenty of bad publicity.

Faced with lower-than expected occupancy and sluggish subscription sales, luxury travel brand Inspirato lowered its 2022 financial guidance, and transferred one-third of its salesforce and marketing personnel to new or expanded segments it is targeting, namely business travel and philanthropy.

Hilton Worldwide’s earnings report on Thursday was a good news-bad news story.

To hear Expedia Group officials tell it, 2023 is shaping up as a year when lots — but not all — of the tough, behind-the-scenes tech work will have been completed, and the company will start to reap the benefits.

Royal Caribbean Group heads into 2023 with booking demand stronger than it was in 2019, a fully operational fleet, and a passenger market ready to splurge on onboard experiences.