Sean O'Neill

American Airlines has moved away from its earlier belligerence to navigate a cooperative path with distribution middlemen. The airline appears to be making a lot more gains this time around.

Hopper's survival is a testament to the perseverance of its founders, though it's an understatement to say it takes them a long time to scale their products up. The startup is also now overpriced, based on its funding, for most potential acquirers — except maybe for Airbnb.

Despite everyone's happy talk, this deal smells like Hyatt was disenchanted by Oasis' performance and eager to unload its investment stake. That aside, the deal boosts Vacasa in an area where it has been underserved to date.

Rather than push Expedia Group to expand horizontally, CEO Mark Okerstrom has been focused in the past year on improving the company's execution in several key markets with its existing brands and loyal customers. The effort to consolidate gains makes intuitive sense.

It can't happen soon enough.

Accor's backing of Travelsify is eye-opening. It suggests that the hotel giant will take advantage of the startup's artificial intelligence-powered engine, which collects data about hotels, restaurants, and vacation rentals to boost online marketing and discovery.

Luxury travel advisors can thrive with the help of tech, rather than fear it, according to Matthew Upchurch, CEO of Virtuoso, and Jack Ezon, founder of Embark. Their claim makes intuitive sense.

One ripple effect of startups like Airbnb raising enormous sums of funding is that it has become harder for smaller rivals to clone their models elsewhere in the world. While clones get a bad name, they do provide benefits to consumers in added competition.

TripAdvisor is notable for having a large audience of consumers looking for ideas about where to go and stay and what to do once they're there. It's sensible that the company is adding features to bolster that edge over its transaction-focused rivals — as long as the company doesn't neglect transactions.

Setoo is helping to pioneer a wave of customized protection products, such as letting travelers buy coverage to get money back if there's not enough snow during a ski trip. The new products could provide more upselling opportunities for travel suppliers and online agencies.