Travel Industry Earnings Coverage

SeaWorld has not been able to turn its attendance slide around, and back-to-back hurricanes didn't help. But executives hope to address deeper perception issues — the buzz phrase that's been around for years now — with a new ad campaign.

TripAdvisor CEO Stephen Kaufer was extremely political today in his response to questions about decreased advertising spend from metasearch partners. How the company will rejuvenate its hotel booking product remains an unanswered question as well.

Choice Hotels executives talk a big game about the company's new reservations system, debuting early next year. They even use buzz phrases like, "transformative platform" and "innovative tools." But will the new system be a panacea for the hotel chain? We'll soon find out.

Did we just see an elephant fly? The Priceline Group, which is the largest spender on digital advertising in travel, just said TV commercials may be a better way to attract loyal customers. That's even more surprising than TV-happy Trivago's recent announcement that it would start devoting more resources to digital advertising. Don't you love this industry?

Try as it might, TripAdvisor is still struggling to gain traction with its hotel booking product. Non-hotel growth has been picking up the slack, and one has to wonder whether an even stronger focus outside of hotels is on the horizon soon.

From "asset recycler" to "asset light," Hyatt is beginning to embrace a favorite industry strategy for making more money.

Travelzoo is a curious case. A newsletter-focused daily deals site that has given up on becoming a global metasearch site, it has clearly had trouble adapting to a marketplace where deals abound. Has a new focus on what its customers actually want come too late?

The online travel market in India is ripe with opportunity. But competition is brutal. In response, MakeMyTrip has recently debuted loyalty programs and technological upgrades to entice well-heeled customers to choose it over the discounters.

Investors liked Sabre's third quarter revenue and profit report. But the verdict is still out on whether the company is relying on cheap fixes like layoffs to hit its targets or if it is laying the groundwork for sustainable growth.

It should be no surprise that the new Expedia CEO, who Barry Diller claims to have selected without conducting a wider candidate search, would have his own ideas about where to take the $22 billion company. Okerstrom is even talking about a path for Expedia becoming number one in online travel. That's definitely something we haven't heard publicly articulated in awhile.