Skift Take
A half dozen travel companies, including Southwest, Delta, United Continental, Wynn Resorts, Marriott and the Priceline Group have seen fairly massive -- more than 50% gains -- in their market caps compared with this time last year, as the big keep getting bigger. Hotels dominate the world's 15 largest publicly traded travel companies.
Editor's note: Skift is two years old as of today, and we're rolling out a week of special travel industry coverage. This is one of a series you can find in full here, as we roll out these stories.
The Priceline Group, which completed its $2.6 billion acquisition of dining reservations platform OpenTable last week, is now the largest publicly traded travel company by market cap ($64.91 billion) and the only online travel agency among the top 15 as it edged out Las Vegas Sands, which held the number one spot about a year ago.
Skift took the pulse of the world's 15 Largest Travel Companies of 2014 by Market Cap [see chart below] on July 28, and compared them with our mid-year compilation in 2013.
It's been a banner year for the hotel industry and that's reflected in the 2014 ranking as there are seven hotel-related companies on the list, including three casino hotels, and they supplanted airlines, which dominated the 2013 ranking.
The hotel-related companies included in the 2014 ranking are Las Vegas Sands (2), Galaxy Entertainment (4), Hilton Worldwide (8), Wynn Resorts (9), Marriott (11), Host Hotels & Resorts (14), and Starwood (15).
With the exit of Ryanair, Singapore Airlines, and Lufthansa from the 15 Largest Trav
