Deanna Ting

Red Lion has been making some bold moves as of late, including its arguably controversial partnership with Expedia. As the company scales up with this acquisition, it'll be interesting to see how Red Lion expands or deepens its partnership with other online travel agencies.

User-generated content is low on cost, and high on returns on engagement, but it's not always being utilized by hotel brands to its greatest advantage says a new report from consultancy firm L2. But is having a lot of UGC necessarily a good thing, or are there better ways for hotels to use them to their advantage?

Given the timing of this announcement, there's no doubt the AccorHotels acquisition may have had something to do with Marsh's decision to depart the company he founded. It'll be interesting to see, however, what Marsh pursues next, and if the company will expand rapidly under AccorHotels and Frank's direction.

It’s encouraging to see Airbnb tackle this issue head on and try to effect some real changes but we wonder if the company is taking enough steps to make a major difference.

All travelers can already access more than 2,200 TED Talks online. Marriott and TED will need to differentiate the content enough to make it compelling for guests and loyalty members to want to tap into, as well as market it effectively.

Lawsuits like this make us wonder if the laws we have now are appropriately equipped to address the complicated, tangled intricacies of disruptive online platforms like Airbnb, HomeAway, and their peers. They also make us long for the days when cities and platforms might better work together to apply commonsense regulations for short-term rentals.

Minority Report meets hotels. It was inevitable. It’ll be interesting to see how this tech evolves, and how hotels walk the fine line between being serviceable and just pushing ads into guests’ phones.

More hotels are realizing that charging people for Wi-Fi access isn't going to win them any brownie points. But beyond consumer ire, including angry TripAdvisor reviews, hoteliers should probably be more concerned about the Federal Trade Commission stepping in and clamping down on perceived "deceptive hotel fees."

Hotels are finally beginning to implement messaging strategies that make it easier for their guests to get in touch with them via SMS, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, and the like. But how are they doing that, and what's next in messaging?

This is a clear sign that the sharing economy isn’t in its infancy anymore.