Booking Holdings

All of the online players, from Google and Facebook to Expedia and Tripadvisor, want greater chunks of hotels' advertising budgets. This is Booking.com's latest entry, and it's a bid to play catch-up.

Booking CEO Glenn Fogel's "connected trip" strategy has drawn critics, but he did make a compelling case for the need for it, and just how broken the travel experience still really is.

Meeting booking platforms purport to streamline the Request for Proposal and venue sourcing processes, saving hours in the search for venues and back-and-forth with sales staff. While the process isn’t fully automated yet, some say it never can be. How far will the trend go?

Staying in professionally managed short-term rentals is no guarantee of an optimum guest experience. When your host's profile picture turns out to be a free stock photo, you can guess how this ended up.

Shifting consumer tastes in travel booking apps recently gave Hopper a boost over Booking.com and other rivals. But can the challenger brand sustain its lead?

CEO Glenn Fogel has said before Booking Holdings must knit together "the connected trip" for customers, but not everyone has grasped the vision. Fogel seems right in saying that selling bundles of travel products is no longer enough in an era of Uber- and Amazon-style customer service.

Old school travel companies still largely dominate in terms of stock market valuation, but there is no denying the disruption sparked by Airbnb’s debut on the stock market.

Critics blasted Airbnb for relying too heavily on Google advertising to obtain customers in 2019. But in the beginning of 2021, Expedia outspent all of its rivals on paid marketing and made some gains. Expedia and its Vrbo brand are making no apologies for it.

Traveloka knows how to go local in Indonesia and some other countries in the region, and that's one element of its traction in these markets. But can local ever be too local when online travel agencies mull international expansion?

Peter Kern is correct that Expedia Group currently offers broader travel services than do Airbnb and Booking Holdings, but whether Expedia can gain ground on its rivals and can execute on its strategy are entirely different questions.