Sean O'Neill

The travel industry urgently needs operational software that normal people find intuitive, flexible, and powerful. Otherwise it will lose efficient early-career workers to other sectors that have superior tools.

Investors are finally backing companies that are tackling relatively remote corners of the travel market, such as Joymode's rentals of gear for camping, beach holidays, and road trips, and Busbud's sales of intercity bus tickets.

Airbnb has sold investors on a growth story based, in part, on adding flights and other products. But selling flights is extremely complicated.

Laughing all the way to the bank is even more fun when you're in the back seat of a chauffeured car. The founders of the Berlin-based professional driver service Blacklane have received significant funding from an investor in the Gulf States, a growing regional source of investment for travel companies.

We keep waiting for conclusive proof that accelerators aren't just kindergartens for entrepreneurs. But the early word from easyJet and Founders Factory is upbeat.

Choice's decision to build its own reservation system in-house is a poke in the eye to the many technology companies that sell systems to hotel chains.

The smartest travel companies are beginning to buy startups that may not be central to their main businesses or help them consolidate market share, but could boost the innovation metabolism of their motherships.

Wego got its start in 2005. But it only found a path to scaling up recently when it shifted its focus from Asia to the Gulf States.

Points, a reseller of airline miles and hotel points, has begun to sign up travel companies to its newer ways of squeezing money out of their programs. But it's still too early to tell for sure how successful these efforts will be.

The attractions booking sector is TripAdvisor's to lose, especially given its recent success. But unless it pushes faster on mobile innovation, rivals like GetYourGuide and Klook might overtake the company.