Online travel tips

It’s another setback for short-term rental firm Sonder: The company delayed the release of its fourth-quarter earnings report and said it will have to restate earnings for 2022 and 2023 because of accounting errors.

Hotelbeds, which had planned on an IPO in Spain this summer, has reportedly delayed those ambitions until the tail end of 2024 or early next year.

Ben Drew, president of Tripadvisor’s travel experiences brand Viator for the past four years, announced on Tuesday that he would leave the company on April 12 for “a new opportunity in a new industry.”

German vacation rental platform HomeToGo has partnered with Komoot, a route planning and navigation app for outdoor activities such as hiking, cycling, mountain biking, and running.

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. 

Tripadvisor said Monday it was reviewing a potential sale of the company to Liberty Tripadvisor, which has long held a controlling stake in the travel reviews site.

Skift Research produces a wide range of reports, surveys, and data tools – we published more than 50 reports in 2023, a record for us.

How much will hotel companies pay OTAs (online travel agencies) and similar third-party distributors this year? That was the thought-provoking question raised on Thursday by Max Starkov in a LinkedIn post.

Property manager Vacasa announced its intent to conduct a one-for-20 reverse stock split that’s geared to get its share price higher than $1 per share and therefore to be continued to trade on Nasdaq.

Ankit Gupta, the India CEO of hospitality technology platform Oyo, and Mandar Vaidya, the head of Oyo’s European operations, will both be moving on from the company.

Improved customer experience was the driving hypothesis behind Originals, GetYourGuide’s private label offering. Reports that it is ending raise the question of why.

Secret Food Tours, a global food tours company located in over 60 cities, is hedging its expansion and growth through niche acquisitions and partnerships.

Online travel platforms that pay close attention to the unique curation of their tours and activities will own the longtail game of discovery.

Travelzoo, a hotel and package deal publisher, said in a financial filing on Tuesday that it would ask its stockholders to approve making a metaverse experiences scouting business a wholly owned subsidiary of Travelzoo. The business, Metaverse Travel Experiences (MTE), is currently wholly owned by Azzurro Capital.

Chinese people, cut off from the rest of the world for three years by stringent COVID-19 curbs, flocked to travel sites on Tuesday ahead of borders reopening next month, even as rising infections strained the health system and roiled the economy.

The potential of generative artificial intelligence (AI) to produce personalized travel recommendations and itineraries, as well as on-point content for travel companies, is setting the travel sector abuzz. 

Travel website KAYAK, owned by Booking Holdings Inc, said domestic searches for hotels within China surged last week, after the country loosened its COVID-19-related restrictions.

Big banks are making a bold statement in travel and will increasingly become the first place — at the top of the proverbial trip-planning funnel — where customers look to book their trips.

Tour operators need to catch up in digitizing their systems to improve booking efficiency, brand reach and the overall quality of their experience. In a nutshell, the traditional way consumers find and book an attraction or activity needs to be more convenient. 

G Adventures, the small group tour operator, is restructuring as G Travel Community (GTC). The holding company sets the scene to bring its existing brands into one stable but with expanded space for new brand acquisitions.

Oyo, which advertises itself online as “India’s Best Online Hotel Booking Site for Sanitized Stays,” said it is performing well in the U.S. — after de-emphasizing its U.S. presence during the height of the pandemic.