Announcements

Data only gets you so far — the intelligence and decision layer is becoming more important than ever. 

Boutiq’s Rena Pacheco-Theard has managed short-term rentals operations on all levels and has lived the margin pressures. As a Skift IDEA Awards judge, she explores ideas that take in the whole picture.

Travel leaders don't need more staid panels. They need to leave an event knowing what to do next. Every session at Skift Global Forum 2026 ends with a call you can take back to your team.

Every senior woman in travel is carrying the same open questions into a volatile year. Women Leading Travel Forum is where those questions get pressure-tested by peers deciding the same things. Few seats left.

For Skift IDEA Awards Judge Nikita Miller, the real measure of success in travel and technology isn't the sophistication of the AI — it's the human time and judgment it gives back.

Sierra's Pol Peiffer argues the interface layer of travel is shifting from forms to conversation. The companies still optimizing dropdowns are building on top of an architecture customers are about to leave behind.

The competitive variable in travel AI isn't model sophistication. It's whether customers trust the product enough to let it act on their behalf — and most companies are still investing in the wrong layer.

Hotel CEOs are signing AI contracts this quarter that will define their technology stack through 2030, and most procurement teams are evaluating these deals the wrong way — tool by tool, use case by use case, without asking whether the underlying data architecture allows those tools to compound or whether each one starts from zero.

Skift’s coverage informs travel audiences how to make decisions in travel through AI, news, research, brand advisory, recruiting, and more. But where does it prove who is standing out? The Skift IDEA Awards.

Adam Harris is drawing a line between the AI that wins demos and the AI that runs a hotel at 2 a.m. without triggering a chargeback. For operators staring down agent-on-agent commerce, that distinction is the whole game — and most of what's being committed to this year is on the wrong side of it.