Sean O'Neill

Setting up a site for selling plane tickets is fairly easy. Building a startup into a globally recognized travel agency is much harder. Kiwi.com's CEO Oliver Dlouhý believes his company can defy the odds. But what comes next may be the toughest part of the journey.

HotelTonight's acquisition by Airbnb last March represented a happy outcome, but it wasn't inevitable. Back in 2015, HotelTonight faced layoffs and fundraising hiccups. Here, co-founder and CEO Sam Shank shares some of the ways he got his company back on track.

Airline tech vendor Datalex had a spectacular accounting meltdown in 2018. Lufthansa, its largest customer, wants to kill its contract. Meanwhile, Datalex's auditor threw up its hands and quit. What a mess.

Look beyond monthly jobs reports to see a bigger picture. The U.S. leisure and hospitality sector will cut its employment growth by roughly half over the next decade, according to a government forecast. Hoteliers will cope by boosting the productivity of their existing workforce through training.

The funding of business travel management startup Hotel Engine underscores how there's a lot of money and energy pouring into the sector.

Amateurs cut rates to fill hotel rooms. Pros take more sophisticated approaches, such as coordinating to stimulate demand from the most profitable customers.

This week travel startups announced more than $46 million in funding. Of note, two of the companies, Smartair and Tastemakers, are making bets on Africa's online travel growth. Meanwhile, online travel company Hostelworld has invested in Tipi, a software provider for hostel managers.

New data from China's travel tech giant TravelSky shows that the country's pace of air travel growth slowed in the first half of the year. But the country remained the fastest-growing region in the world in terms of aviation and traveling.

Game on, Oracle. But like everything in the hotel sector, the battle between next-generation hotel tech players and established titans will take years to play out.

Zhiketong stands out for receiving investment from top-tier investors and travel companies. The company helps hotels and other firms market their services to travelers via WeChat, a messaging service and payment platform. Hotels like WeChat because it charges lower commissions than online travel agencies like Ctrip.