Marriott International plans by May 15 to disclose resort fees in the total prices it displays in its initial search results on its website and mobile app. It’s the long-awaited outcome of a 2021 settlement with Pennsylvania — that required the Bethesda, Maryland-based hotel operator to include in fees in upfront total prices.
It’s the travel trend that never quite took off. Ever since American trader Ben Hockett made millions during the 2008 global financial crisis by trading online from an Exmouth pub, travel marketers have tried to sell the concept of mixing holidays with work.
What do you call someone who creates one-off hotels at the far bespoke end of the luxury spectrum, while simultaneously steering a global hospitality conglomerate to the fastest growth in the industry? Someone who can launch one of London’s most desirable private members’ clubs, and scale a value-proposition hostelry that looks great and only costs you €120 a night? Is that person a wunderkind? A prodigy? Forty-two-year-old Sharan Pasricha, the founder and co-CEO of Ennismore, the lifestyle hospitality company recently valued at more than €2bn, is more like a sport of nature: someone with the DNA of hotelier, real-estate developer, branding geek and club impresario, spliced together in a weird new species of hospitality purveyor.
Forget how much of a gratuity to leave the hotel housekeeper, the bigger question is becoming how do you tip hotel staff when you don't have any cash?
U.S. hotel operators are expected to post a rise in first-quarter profit even as they pour in money to lure travelers to make bookings directly through their websites, instead of turning to travel agencies.
ChatGPT hasn’t even been with us five months, yet you’d be excused for thinking it’s everywhere.
Marriott International has long relied on its array of 30 brands to appeal to diverse mix of travelers. But the hotel giant increasingly would like consumers to believe its loyalty program gives them access to a surprising mix of lodging. Its marketers appear to hope that travelers will make Marriott’s mobile app their default place to book hotels.
With a theme of “Sea. Sun. Sand.,” the Caribbean island nation of Barbados relied on its tourism industry as a source of foreign exchange. Its official language was English, with laws and a cultural background based on that of the United Kingdom. Not surprisingly, most visitors came from the U.K., Canada, and the United States. However, the recent Covid pandemic interrupted Barbados’s tourism market, and the industry continued to struggle.
Move over, millennials. Gen Zers — the generation born between 1997 and 2012 — are coming into their own when it comes to spending power, and many are choosing to spend on travel. While their initial entry into the category was hindered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the youngest generation of adults is making up for lost time by traveling enthusiastically and often. Travel brands must understand Gen Zers’ unique behaviors and expectations and lay the groundwork with them now to ensure future success.
Expedia Group executives such as CEO Peter Kern and Chairman Barry Diller have long railed against Google’s inordinate dominance in travel advertising, but now Kern is hoping that the emergence of generative AI companies and other emerging technologies may lead to diminished dependence.
Online travel agencies are taking back some of the distribution market share they lost to hotel chains during the years leading up to the pandemic, as companies such as Expedia Group and Priceline parent Booking Holdings have ramped up marketing investment and product improvements to sell more room nights to prospective U.S. lodging guests.
Amid high inflation and surging energy costs, United Kingdom government officials have asked business owners to not pass on higher costs to consumers. But members of the U.K. hospitality industry say that's asking too much of hotel owners and operators trying to run profitable businesses.
Technology for the hospitality industry should be all about “hardwiring happiness,” according to a senior industry figure.
U.S. airport passenger data recorded by the Transportation Security Administration shows spring break travel demand is setting the industry up for momentum into the summer months.
Elon Musk and a group of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives are calling for a six-month pause in developing systems more powerful than OpenAI's newly launched GPT-4, in an open letter citing potential risks to society and humanity.
Uber Eats is delisting some of the delivery-only restaurants on its app to help weed out low-quality listings, as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. The company has confirmed to The Verge that it’s introducing a new set of standards for virtual restaurants that should help cut down on listings that sometimes contain the same menu.
This deep dive will investigate the factors likely to remain part of Gen Z long-term. We expect next-generation travelers to shed some youthful traits as they become parents or otherwise expand their lives. So we’re only interested in their traits that will last over time.
The announcement of the multimodal GPT-4 by OpenAI and Microsoft this week has sent every tech industry scrambling to unlock all its capabilities, and the travel space is no exception. In the four months since its release, ChatGPT had been adopted at breakneck speed by travel and hospitality players – using its groundbreaking language processing abilities to develop new tools to engage with clients, consumers, and travellers.
The fall of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, the largest U.S. banking collapse since the Great Recession, will ultimately lead to a shift in funding sources, difficulty obtaining hotel construction loans and a slowdown in recovery of the already challenging lending environment, say hotel analysts and owners.
Chinese tourists are raring to travel again. But this time, the usual suspects — Venice, Paris and Madrid, for example — aren’t their top picks. As China’s reopening gains momentum after three years of Covid-19 restrictions, the country’s travel-hungry citizens are emerging much changed, according to the Chinese Outbound Tourism Research Institute, an independent consulting company based in Germany.