Online travel newsletter tips

Vacation rental property manager Vacasa saw an increase of homeowner “churn,” namely properties abandoning its platform, in the fourth quarter and into 2023, and forecast that its average gross booking value per home would dip this year.

Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel cited the “explosion of interest” in generative AI (artificial intelligence), but counseled that it would be prudent to be patient about delivering on its promises.

T.J. Clark, property manager Vacasa’s new chief commercial officer, is in the proverbial hot seat, charged with reversing unacceptably high rates of homeowners leaving the platform, and increasing sales after the company laid off up to 300 sales and marketing staff and 1,000 field personnel in January.

Having missed its deadline of launching an Indian initial public offering (IPO) by this month, India-based online travel company Yatra.com has now said that it is “hopeful and confident of getting the IPO done in the near term.”

Online travel agency Musafir is on the lookout for acquisitions to fuel growth across the Middle East and India.

I have known Brian Harniman, the head of strategy at digital transformation agency From since the early days of Skift — he was amongst the first online travel veterans to latch onto the potential of what we were building. Harniman is a serial entrepreneur with over 25 years experience leading innovation in travel companies. He was on the founding team of Priceline.com and held executive positions at Kayak, Hickory Global Partners, Open List, Where I’ve Been, and more. He and I have talked about travel startups informally on and off for years.

Indian low-cost carrier GoFirst’s recent filing of voluntary insolvency resolution proceedings is unlikely to have a large impact on the market, said Rajesh Magow, co-founder, group CEO and director of online travel agency MakeMyTrip.

Hugo Burge, a British entrepreneur, startup investor, and arts supporter perhaps best known as the former CEO of both Cheapflights and then the Momondo Group, died at his home on Wednesday.

Spain’s eDreams ODIGEO on Thursday reported an annual loss slimmed by more than a third as the Spanish travel booking company posted a 29% jump in bookings.

We’re halfway into the year, and the short-term rental industry has been buoyed by summer travel picking up, despite prevailing economic uncertainty.  

Airbnb touted early progress Wednesday for its new listing service, where owners of multi-family properties allow tenants to occasionally rent out their units — in exchange for a share of the revenue.

Overseas travel bookings from mainland China are currently at just over half of pre-pandemic levels but are on course to return to the 2019 numbers by the end of this year or early 2024, the head of online travel agency Agoda said on Thursday.

Trip.com Group, the largest online travel company in the world, looks to address China’s population decline and aging demographic by offering cash incentives to employees to have kids.

Tripadvisor and its Viator tours and activities brand compete against amply funded and privately held GetYourGuide as the largest players in this sector. So it was intriguing when the Tripadvisor’s CEO said at a recent investor conference that his experiences business “is larger and faster growing.”

Richard Holden, who was general manager of Google Travel for the past three years, and led its product management team for almost seven years before that, has been replaced, Skift has learned.

This is a story about how questionable data about plunging Airbnb host revenue took on a life of its own, leading to a slew of news articles and social media posts, investor concerns, and one CNBC interview.

Expedia Group executed a limited number of layoffs that affected two teams, one in product and tech, and another in human resources, according to a source familiar with what took place.

Nestled between the Adriatic and Ionian Sea inside the Mediterranean is a country smaller than the state of Maryland but rich with wetlands, national parks, mountains and home to 30% of Europe’s flora. 

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.

As we look ahead to the landmark 10th Skift Global Forum happening this September in New York City, today we take a look back at a panel session from Skift Global Forum 2016 correctly billed as “Legends of Online Travel”.

Indian online travel platform EaseMyTrip.com is reinforcing its non-air business by planning to acquire a 51% stake in three travel companies in India.