The travel industry, worth an estimated $9.5 trillion in 2023, has long been a prime target for tech giants like Google and Meta. With AI, they aim to capture a larger share of the lucrative travel market.
The hotel industry says it’s having trouble finding workers. A new survey by the American Hotel and Lodging Association revealed that more than three quarters of its members were having trouble hiring all the people they need to run their businesses, the industry trade group announced Monday.
Booking.com was founded by a Dutch university student in 1996. It grew slowly for almost a decade. By 2011, the company was generating more than a billion dollars in profits annually — making it the most financially successful digital travel market at the time. The secret to that accelerating growth was the company’s use of large-scale testing and experimentation.
It’s been a busy spring in the travel world, with product rollouts from Expedia Group, Google and OpenAI, among others. So when more than 500 travel insiders gathered in Barcelona Monday for the start of the 2024 Phocuswright Europe conference, there was a lot to chew over even before the start of the networking happy hour.
Following the launch of our cultural study ‘Neuroaesthetics—Design for the Mind’ in partnership with FSB Franz Schneider Brakel, we invited Kinda Studios co-founders Katherine and Robyn to host a webinar to answer these questions, and to bring to life the study’s findings.
If you're in marketing, you've likely heard about the recent Google API documentation leak. On May 27, SEO practitioner Erfan Azimi exposed more than 2,500 pages of Google’s internal API documentation, providing unprecedented insights into how the search giant’s algorithm functions.
On a family trip to Walt Disney Co.’s. Orlando theme parks, Nicole Thibault’s 2.5-year-old son began experiencing meltdowns—and not in the standard toddler sense. Everything he had previously loved became deeply distressing, from his favorite characters to familiar foods setting off tantrums that could stretch for more than 30 minutes. Something felt amiss, Thibault recalls of the weeks before her son was diagnosed with autism. Determined to continue showing her son the world—sans meltdowns—her next step was to solicit travel tips from experienced parents of neurodivergent kids. One after another, the responses poured in, variants on the same idea: “We don’t go anywhere. It’s just too hard.”
As the days grow longer and the temperatures rise, our minds naturally turn to our summer adventures. The prospect of an open summer is tantalizing yet requires more consideration than ever before. Travel has changed, from the pandemic’s challenges and restrictions to our shifting mindset towards more sustainable ways to get away.
Marriott and Hilton appear to be neck-and-neck in the race to expand their footprints and loyalty programs. But if you look at the more important metric of fees earned for services they provided hotel owners, you’ll see Marriott far ahead.
The May/June issue of HOTELS Magazine featured a special report focused on women in hospitality. The idea of a piece devoted to underscoring the achievements of women is in and of itself a cynical pursuit: It’s 2024 and we are still penning stories and posting Q&As that illustrate the inequity that still exists, particularly in the corporate ranks. Here’s the reason we still do: If we stopped, it means the gap has not just closed but been sealed. And that’s not the case: According to gender wage gap statistics, put out recently by Forbes, women earn an average of 16% less than men. For every dollar earned by men, women earned 84 cents.
Travel in 2024 and beyond
The Ritz-Carlton wants to give you a virtual tour of its second cruise liner.
As I sat across a video call interviewing Arian Lewis, one of the founders behind Kiln, a lifestyle-focused coworking brand, I couldn’t help but notice the perfectly curated room in the background behind him. I had recently visited that very Salt Lake City Kiln location and was impressed not only with the beauty of the spaces but also with the small details, including the way all the cushions were gently plumped in the exact same way, reminiscent of a high-end hotel lobby. Refresh rooms, music studios, podcast rooms, and warm meeting spaces that felt like you were walking into your very own living room peppered the high-ceilinged, art-infused environment. Everything about this coworking space, from the distinct lighting in each space, down to the books on the coffee tables, seemed intentionally handpicked to spark conversation and evoke specific human interactions.
Newly retired hospitality icon Eric Danziger, who may be best remembered as the only CEO of Trump Hotels who wasn’t a Trump family member, recently spoke with LODGING about his career climb from Fairmont San Francisco bellman to CEO of Starwood Hotels, Wyndham Hotel Group, and, of course, Trump Hotels. However, as he mentioned while sharing his “success story,” it was his fortunate track record of growing companies that prompted the Trumps, among others, to tap him to undertake many of the challenges he described.
Booking Holdings, the U.S. company that owns Booking.com and a number of other travel websites, has been added to the European Union’s list of companies now under heightened digital scrutiny.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, said Monday that it’s classing Booking Holdings as an online gatekeeper and that the company’s Booking.com hotel reservation site meets the threshold to be classed as a “core platform service” under the 27-nation bloc’s Digital Markets Act. The sweeping set of rules is designed to prevent Big Tech platforms from dominating online markets.
Airbnb's latest round of product rollout includes its Icons category, which showcases experiences such as a living room performance by Grammy-winning artist Doja Cat or an overnight hosted by Bollywood royalty Janhvi Kapoor in India. Hotels editor Christina Jelski got an update on the company's latest chapter from Jay Carney, Airbnb's head of global policy and communications.
Choice is currently piloting a new technology with AWS called Amazon Q where we’re leveraging AI to integrate customer interactions to inform and personalize other touchpoints in their journey. One place this will be used is by giving Choice customer service agents a holistic understanding of who the customer is, helping to drive bookings for hotel owners and provide customers with a personalized and better experience.
In June 2023, it was confirmed that luxury conglomerate LVMH would become a premium sponsor of the Paris Olympic Games of 2024, a status it paid nearly $160 million to obtain. While it may have come to a surprise to see the world’s leading luxury group become the commercial partner of a mainstream sports event, the move was a clear strategic one that has since led to more tactical spending in anticipation of the event in less than 100 days. In the past year, the group has boosted its real estate portfolio by acquiring buildings in prime locations in Paris, New York and other city centers to enhance its presence across retail and hospitality, which it has expanded ahead of the Olympics and will continue to do so afterwards.
CNN — The Netherlands’ Amsterdam will no longer allow new hotel buildings to be built as part of its fight against mass tourism, the local government said on Wednesday, April 17.