Articles tagged “google”

What a difference a year makes. The airline’s business travel division has, finally, added Sabre, but is also preparing to add a shopping mall-style loyalty program. Will this complete its corporate-friendly transformation?

Airlines have complained about the hidden costs of online travel agency web-scraping for years, but Southwest takes that sensitivity to a much higher strategic level. Kiwi apparently is adept at out-maneuvering Southwest's page-scraping roadblocks so the courts will have to sort it all out.

Eventually, Google's new Tickets feature may turn out to be one of the most important developments in a long time for the tours and activities sector. Google will certainly move to monetize the feature with paid ads, and it will ultimately expand to tours, and other products, too.

Business school students can probably debate this question endlessly and there would be merit in either position: Should smaller companies copy their larger rivals or vice versa? In the Google era, marketing power often wins the day — but differentiation still counts.

In Skift’s top stories this week, the UK opens up more non-essential travel, Reserve with Google is ending, Hawaii's residents say tourism is worth its troubles and American Airlines sues Sabre — again.

Google's retreat in tours and activities booking services doesn't mean Google is becoming less powerful in travel. It's part of Google's strategy to wrangle consistency across its products in offering a combination of advertisements and free listings to gain an even wider audience.

In Skift’s top stories this week, Icelandair's plan to return to normalcy, airlines wants to bring criminal charges against unruly passengers, shortages ripple through the travel industry this summer and investors back Outdoorsy as the new Airbnb.

There is a long lobbyist-filled journey ahead for this House committee-backed bill to cut Google Travel down to size. But it's an important step that was almost unthinkable a few years ago.

Familiar themes such as personalization, loyalty, omni-channel, and end-to-end experiences are still front of mind for travelers as the recovery begins, albeit with a refreshed focus. Access to real-time, accurate, and first-hand data needed to satisfy these demands — and others — is even more foundational for any travel or hospitality company post-Covid-19 than it was before.

In the long term, it's clear that Airbnb will revisit recalibrating its focus beyond stays and experiences, and will dabble in flights, hotels, and smart-home technology. It would be silly not to.