The airline industry's latest study says flying during the coronavirus pandemic is less risky than eating out or grocery shopping, but a COVID-19 outbreak linked to a seven-hour flight to Ireland is raising renewed concerns about in-flight transmission.
More consumers in Asia are gravitating towards OTAs as contactless transactions and information transparency race to the fore of the Covid-19 world, edging businesses towards the ever-increasing need for digitisation.
More people flew in the U.S. over the weekend of Oct. 16-18 than at any other point in the COVID-19 pandemic, the Transportation Security Administration said Monday.
Fitness membership? Check. Streaming account? Of course. Meal kit service? Sure.
As our industry starts to welcome early signs of recovery, at least domestically while bubble plans accelerate across the Tasman, now is a critical time for us to analyse the long-term impact on traveller booking behaviours in the wake of the pandemic.
The meeting and wedding planning industries have been rocked during the Covid-19 pandemic, and they may continue to feel the effects for years to come. While online alternatives like Zoom will put a dent into the events business, many hotels are staying laser-focused on recovery even if the path forward presents unusual challenges.
Since the pandemic started, I understand bookings on your travel platforms have plunged more than 80 percent. You've already suspended share buybacks and you've already raised some $4 billion in debts from investors, give us an idea of the cash position you're in right now, and how long a runway does it give you? GF: Yes, in the second quarter, we did our earnings announcement and we are absolutely fine. Financially, absolutely there's no liquidity problem at all, at all. But that being said, it's not just good enough to not run out of cash. That's not the game, that's not what we're trying to achieve. We're trying to achieve profits in the long run. We're trying to develop a company that in the long run is producing a great service. I do feel that one of the advantages of our companies is that we are so much better capitalised and our liquidity is so much better than some of our competitors. It really is a competitive advantage.
The adversarial relationship between hoteliers and the OTAs has changed to an "all hands on deck mentality" during COVID with operators no longer insisting on rate parity and last room availability - once major sticking points - as they scramble to put heads on beds, according to Expedia and Agoda.
Even during the coronavirus pandemic, many flight attendants are still on the go, flying around the country and staying in hotels. Salt Lake City-based flight attendant Kat Kamalani has gone viral for her series of TikTok videos with highly informative hotel and airplane hacks.
These COVID-era days, fewer people want to sit on a plane literally rubbing elbows with strangers, so they're looking for alternative ways to travel that minimize close contact.
Before the Coronavirus, the hotel industry, similar to retail, had countless technology innovations at their fingertips. Yet, for many of us who stay in hotels frequently, stepping into a lobby often felt like stepping back into the 1990s or even earlier. Check-in was antiquated and done at the front desk where a guest physically signed documents. Check-out wasn't much different. And entering your room was a decades-old experience. For example, despite the launch of virtual key technology in 2014, room entry was still performed almost exclusively using a key card - technology which, by the way, was introduced to the market in the 1970s.
Singapore is gradually reopening its borders again after months of coronavirus travel restrictions.
In an interaction with ET's Samidha Sharma, Booking Holdings, president & chief executive Glenn D Fogel talks about his business, the pandemic driving growth for alternative accommodation, why it will take a long time for the travel industry to recover, and his own experience as a Covid-19 patient. Edited excerpts:We are hosting the ET Global Business Summit virtually for the first time, which means no airline travel and no hotel bookings and no dining out. This severely hits all of your businesses whether it's Priceline, Agoda, OpenTable or Booking.com. How have you navigated through this unprecedented situation even as you tested positive for Covid-19 early on in the pandemic?It's a very difficult time for everybody. Nobody has been able to escape the problems of this pandemic and my family and I, we all came down with the virus.
After months of isolation while living in quarantine, travel is the leisure activity that I miss the most. And I'm not alone. Our research, conducted with the Boston Consulting Group, shows that 31 percent of people hope to plan leisure travel once they feel safe enough to do so.
Thomas Cook's owner Fosun has ambitious expansion plans for the brands it owns, once the global economy recovers.
The future of travel used to be flying cars and faster-than-sound jets but Covid-19 has changed all that. Today the travel industry would simply settle for a resumption of some normality.
Jurgen Ortelee, principal director of sales at Asia Pacific in IDeaS talks about the importance of loyalty in the hotel sector in the changing times and how it can act as a key differentiator in a fiercely competitive, digitally focused booking environment.
In its latest move to offer more flexibility to fliers during COVID-19, most major U.S. airlines have put an end to ticket change fees for good. United Airlines kicked off the trend, announcing on August 30 that going forward, it would no longer be charging change fees for all standard economy and premium cabin tickets for travel within the U.S., effective immediately. Delta nixed its fees for domestic flights shortly after—and American Airlines joined the fray, too, eliminating change fees for domestic and some short-haul flights to the Caribbean, Mexico, and Canada. Shortly thereafter, Hawaiian and Alaska announced similar domestic policies—leaving JetBlue as the only major airline to keep change fees in place.
Online travel agency Booking.com is closing at least five of its offices around the world, in Bellevue, Washington [US], London and Cambridge [England], Toronto [Canada], and Split [Croatia].
On average, Google directly contributes, in the form of organic referrals (SEO, AMPs, Schema, content marketing, etc.) and paid/performance marketing referrals (SEM, GDN, GHA, etc.) to over 50% of direct online room nights for most hoteliers.This does not include OTA room nights, the bulk of which come as a result of the OTA performance marketing on Google to the tune of $11 billion a year.During the pandemic, Google has not only maintained but increased its search market share and in August 2020 Google controlled 87.3% market share in the U.S., 93.24% in Europe and 91.5% in Asia.
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