Tech tips

For many wealthy boat owners, a private spa is a must-have on board. A sauna is a nice touch. A Jet Ski or two makes days at sea way more fun. And if you don't have someone on board who can whip up a Michelin-star-worthy meal, you might as well stay on land.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation and emails with Nadia Said, a 25-year-old IT project manager at a major tech company where she started working full-time in 2020.

Linda Jojo, chief customer officer for United Airlines, described a slew of ways the major airline is changing the customer experience during the Skift Aviation Forum in Dallas. 

Vacation rental property manager Vacasa is eliminating 1,300 positions, which was 17 percent of its workforce, as the company determined it had to make deeper improvements to operations. The firings took place Tuesday, just three months after the company axed 280 staffers.

Five years ago, Airbnb toyed with the idea of launching a a “superguest” loyalty program, but CEO Brian Chesky seemed to shoot down the notion of a rewards program a couple of weeks ago.

What percentage of tech employees at Booking Holdings are women? How has the company’s total return compared over the last five years to its internet peers? Booking detailed information about these issues and others in a half dozen charts in its recent annual financial disclosure.

Artificial intelligence is one of the dominant topics about the future in travel, and we’re all over it at Skift.

Southwest Airlines Co’s flights resumed operation Tuesday after a one-hour nationwide stoppage, which the U.S. airline said was caused by a firewall failure.

Wyndham Hotels & Resorts is adopting the Opera Cloud property management system for another 2,000 of its hotels, part of a long-term effort to move all of its properties to the cloud. 

South Korean company Yanolja Cloud, which offers AI-based SaaS solutions for the hospitality and leisure industries, has acquired Israeli B2B travel tech provider Go Global Travel.

Choice Hotels sees a potential in generative AI (artificial intelligence) to reshape the hotel sector, according to an interview chief information officer Brian Kirkland did on Bloomberg TV right before the U.S. Memorial Day holiday weekend.

Expedia Group and Vacasa are both moving forward with tech investments to compete with other big players in the short-term rental industry. Executives from both public companies shared details about current projects during Skift’s Short-Term Rental Summit in New York on Wednesday. 

Skift has covered quite a few travel companies as they have released products powered by generative AI. Most have been about consumer travel planning and booking, primarily because those were the first products announced and released. 

Hotel executives are the first to admit they’ve been behind the curve with new technology. The problem now is that travelers expect the tech in a hotel to be as good or better than what they have at home.

There are nearly 350 exhibitors showcasing hospitality tech products this week at the HITEC conference in Toronto. Property management systems and new door locks are critical for business.

It was a hotel-heavy week at Skift, with stories of Accor’s big investor day as well as reporting from the annual HITEC conference in Toronto. Travel tech reporter Justin Dawes was there to explain the current state of hotel technology, as well as question some of the future ideas.

Accor held a day of presentations for investors on June 27, and I wrote a piece covering 7 top slides from it. Today I want to highlight the most notable 20 minutes of the six hours of talks.

Airlines have long sold tickets on each other’s flights using interline agreements and strategic marketing deals called codeshares. But dozens have recently been adopting alternative and more flexible arrangements with the help of software from startups such as DoHop.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Monday, July 10. Here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

Sojern, the business-to-business marketing platform for travel companies, is moving into a new sector of hotel services through an acquisition. 

Emburse, a software provider of expense technology for corporate travel and meetings, said on Wednesday it’s acquiring Tripbam, a Dallas startup whose tools are used by corporate travel managers.