Uber + Expedia, Japan's Record and Cathay's New Suite

Welcome to the first installment of a year-long series where Tarah Chieffi, TPG's family travel reporter, shares her experience using various points, benefits, credits and access from her first-ever premium rewards credit card, The Platinum Card® from American Express.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Tuesday, October 22, 2024, and here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today. 

Good morning from Skift. It’s Wednesday, October 23, 2024, and here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today. 

Last week was an important one for Cathay Pacific. The Hong Kong carrier unveiled its new business class cabin, known as the ‘Aria Suite’. The product represents a significant leap forward in passenger comfort and design for some of the airline’s most lucrative customers – but the launch presented questions about future of first class.

Last week, the travel industry was abuzz after a Financial Times report reported that Uber may be exploring an acquisition of Expedia. While nothing has been confirmed, the speculation alone is enough to stir up significant debate. If this deal materializes, it could mark one of the biggest transformations in travel services in years.

Travel metasearch engine Skyscanner is preparing to launch a new marketplace within its app that offers a range of additional services.

If you're looking for a true breath of fresh air in the most literal sense, the pros at QR Code Generator have a new study you're going to want to see. In September, the team unveiled the findings of its newest study, which showed which U.S. and European destinations have the lowest pollution rates, offering the cleanest air possible for travelers and locals alike. 

Business class cabins on airlines around the world are evolving, becoming less of a seat in the sky and more of a design-centered small hotel room.

A report in the Financial Times Wednesday that Uber was exploring a purchase of Expedia has everyone in the travel industry talking. If Uber were to acquire Expedia Group, it would be the biggest shakeup the travel industry has seen in years. 

“I’ve been pregnant for a very long time, but my baby is finally born,” said Vivian Lo, Cathay Pacific’s head of customer experience and design.

Whether your cinematic tastes tend more toward spine-tingling suspense, bloody gore, cheesy horror, or light-hearted fantasy, watching spooky movies is one of the best ways to get into the Halloween spirit. Since we can’t quite hop aboard flying broomsticks of our own and travel directly into the worlds of such films, visiting halloween movie filming locations in real-life is the next best thing. Although these destinations can be visited any time of the year, planning your “location vacation” during October often comes with special seasonal perks, like film screenings and even whole town transformations into their on-screen counterparts.

In 2014, when the artist Dan McCarthy moved from Brooklyn into a converted schoolhouse in upstate New York, he decided the grand hall would be a future gathering spot for his many Facepots: large, wonky vessels decorated with a spectrum of grins and grimaces. The earliest ones, about a decade old, recall a time of emotional swings. “I hadn’t even found the clay that worked,” McCarthy says of that experimental phase, “so a lot of the pots were breaking in the kiln.” He learned to relinquish control, repairing the salvageable works using the Japanese technique known as kintsugi, in which mended seams are accented in silver or gold. The Facepots brought a new openness to McCarthy’s practice, as did the Hudson Valley. Absent the city’s pressures, he explains, “I was like a kid — on my hands and knees, lost in making a thing.” “Freedom,”a new monograph of McCarthy’s work, charts that arc, with nods to his Southern California upbringing, seen in rainbow-colored paintings of surfers and songbirds perched on guitars. Birds also animate new ceramic works in his solo exhibition at the Tokyo gallery Kosaku Kanechika, on view through Nov. 16. For McCarthy, these first faceless pots offer a shift in narrative. “Instead of a vessel, maybe it’s a nest,” he says, describing a fascination with his neighborhood birds. Kintsugi-like detailing appears on these pieces, too: Silver-leafed slabs camouflage the occasional split, while shiny rectangles evoke the little mirrors tucked inside birdcages. For the artist, fresh off his first flight to Japan, it’s a time of possibility. “I’m 62, which is old and not,” McCarthy says. “I think I’ve got another act in me. It should be an adventure.”