Vacation Ownership: Outlook for the Second Half of 2024

Ski season is just around the corner, and the Ikon Pass is making it even easier to ski across the country by adding a new California mountain to the mix.

Clarksville, a historic district of Austin, Texas, has lately emerged as a stylish dining and shopping enclave. Among the area’s most compelling new businesses is La Embajada, a design shop housed in a 1923 Craftsman bungalow. Combining the hospitality and interiors expertise of its founder, Raul Cabra — who has designed tableware for some of Mexico City’s most celebrated restaurants, including Rosetta and Pujol — La Embajada presents a refined, regionally diverse selection of Mexico’s artisanal offerings. A series of small rooms display vintage and contemporary furniture, from stately midcentury armchairs and 1970s glass sconces to a minimalist agave fiber rug by the Oaxaca-based textile artist Trine Ellitsgaard. The house is also an actual residence. Cabra often stays in the bedroom up the creaky stairs, and he’s recently made it available for short-term stays (bookings include a daily basket of baked goods from Austin’s Swedish Hill). Guests can purchase the room’s handmade décor, such as a pair of sleek bedside lamps in milky white onyx, a 1960s La Malinche dresser and a bedspread from a Michoacan manufacturer that once supplied Herman Miller. Downstairs, glassware, candles and gifts fill a section modeled after a typical general store in a small Mexican town. But La Embajada’s heart is its inviting kitchen, where visiting chefs cook elaborate meals and staff prepare ice cream and coffee. In another twist, every bespoke detail — including a hammered copper sink, caramel-colored tiles and waxed pine cabinets — can be custom-ordered for one’s own home.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Liza Jean Miezejeski, a content creator and founder of Skola, a startup to help students navigate moving to Europe to attend university. It has been edited for length and clarity.

A cycle of interest rate cuts could start as soon as September, according to comments Friday by Jay Powell, the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve: “The time has come for policy to adjust,” Powell said.

The Skift Research team recently unveiled its State of Travel 2024 report, a 400-page that documents the consumer and business trends in various sectors of the travel industry — including hotels and online travel agencies.

Hotel chains are quietly developing plans to bypass traditional booking intermediaries, aiming to increase direct bookings from corporations and businesses.

Hyatt Hotels said Tuesday it planned to buy the brands of Standard International, owner of 21 open hotels across five hospitality brands, including the luxury lifestyle brand The Standard.

Hyatt Hotels said Tuesday it planned to buy the brands of Standard International, owner of 21 open hotels across five hospitality brands, including the luxury lifestyle brand The Standard.

Marriott and Sonder are teaming up in a 20-year licensing deal that lets members of Marriott’s loyalty program earn points at Sonder’s roughly 200 properties—about half of which are apartments. The deal is the latest in a string of similar licensing tie-ups led by Marriott, Hilton, IHG, and Hyatt.

Gloria Gonzalez, a travel agency account manager in Fort Worth, used to fly back-to-back business trips as a travel manager before the pandemic.

Good morning from Skift. It’s Thursday, August 15, 2024, and now here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today.

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission announced a rule Wednesday aiming to punish businesses for buying or selling fake reviews and endorsements – and there are plenty of implications for the travel industry.