Booking Holdings

Hacking incidents and phishing scams inside and outside of the travel industry are taking their toll, putting a huge strain on customer confidence.

Greed may or may not be good, but in travel metasearch complexity is good. New rules in Europe may make searching for a hotel room online all the more difficult.

Booking.com likely faced penalties and findings that it infringed on competition laws if it hadn't come to terms with regulatory authorities in France, Italy and Sweden. This agreement appears to disadvantage Booking.com versus its competitors -- unless authorities compel them to sign similar pacts.

One of Google's largest customers, the Priceline Group, loves Google but what's love got to do with it? Google isn't growing fast enough to meet Booking.com's needs so the company turned to data-challenged TV advertising to cope with the demand-generation gap.

Many vacation rental owners are not going to be happy about HomeAway's online booking push -- but it is in the best interest of travelers and HomeAway's shareholders are going to back the move, as well.

Skift sat down with 17 online travel CEOs over three months to better understand what matters to them as they look at the future of travel booking. Understand the trends, buy the e-book.

Airbnb's business model (3% commissions) is more host-friendly than HomeAway's (10% commissions). It's good news, except that it runs contrary to all the company's marketing messaging.

Booking.com knows a few things about website creation and it plans on sharing these skills with hotels and becoming a key tech provider to them in the near future. The distribution business would still be primary, but Booking.com officials are bullish about its prospects in the B2B sector.

Well this is bound to be interesting. Amazon appears to be going it alone to launch its own travel service for independent hotels in drive markets. Amazon has huge marketing power, but don't expect Amazon Travel to turn the hotel industry on its head any time soon.

These are cliches, but true: It's mostly about the team and their ability to execute. Business models help, too: As Priceline's Glenn Fogel says, "Good execution of an OK idea is a lot better than lousy execution of a brilliant idea."