This is filled with so many people from the same team that it appears there's a very specific problem Marriott has that it wasn't able to solve in-house.
Doing what GoEuro is attempting to do, collecting and structuring all the data necessary to bring all of these varied transportation modes together, is harder to do than squeezing into a rush-hour subway in Times Square. But, someone's got to do it.
There is more technical innovation occurring in the hospitality sector than in any other part of the travel industry, and that oftens gives hotels the tools to turn guest data into revenue.
A metasearch-like advertisement on an online travel agency site isn't going to get anywhere near the the sort of clout that sites such as TripAdvisor, Google and Kayak can wield, but it enables OTA sites to get into metasearch in a modest way to appease consumers' inclination to comparison-shop without taking a lot of the risk.
Busbud sets itself apart from other bus travel startups in both the breadth of its inventory and the markets it is going after, especially South America where bus travel is more common than the U.S.
For hotels that don't have the resources to develop their own apps, the Alice hotel app and concierge service, and others like it, could be a useful solution for making concierge services more mobile-oriented.
As vacation home rentals and apartment rentals go more mainstream, you can expect more vacation rental management companies, broadly similar to Turnkey Vacation Rentals, to emerge as owners seek to make the hosting process more efficient and less of a hassle.