Articles tagged “online travel agencies”

With these new features, it's clear Airbnb wants to reduce discrimination on its platform, sign on more vacation rental managers, and generate more bookings. But is this enough to keep hosts happy?

There ain't no such thing as a free booking.

TripAdvisor may be making progress on personalization and the balance between searching and booking, but we're not sure whether it has found a message that will resonate with consumers -- one that's different from Kayak's and Trivago's.

TripAdvisor hasn't abandoned letting customers book on TripAdvisor but it has dramatically downplayed the feature in favor of the more lucrative metasearch option. With Trivago and Google making gains in a hyper-competitive sector, TripAdvisor couldn't stick with a strategy that wasn't working.

HNA Group tried to enter the U.S. online travel agency market through Travana/Janbala and abruptly had a change of heart either because the startup didn't know what it was doing or because of some other dynamic in the opaque world of Chinese investors. Consider this a slight bump in the road.

Overbooking has gotten a lot of attention in the past three weeks, but, most of the time, it's not a big deal. Airlines know passengers won't show up, so they sell a few more tickets than they have seats. What's the harm in that? Airlines might want to reduce the number of extra seats they sell, but they don't need to retire the practice.

This has been a rough two and a half weeks for United, which was clearly caught off guard by the fallout from this now-famous April 9 incident. It will be some time before the airline regains its footing, but perhaps this report is a step in the right direction.

TripAdvisor is getting more sophisticated about prodding customers to book hotels on TripAdvisor or to more effectively refer them to partner sites. In an apparently modified strategy, TripAdvisor is finding religion in being agnostic about where its users book hotels.

Airlines are using new channels, such as Facebook chat and other airlines' websites, to sell their seats and other products. Some are turning to startups for help, rather than rely only on establishment vendors.

The experiential side of hostel travel is one of the main reasons people use them, so Hostelworld’s new strategy makes sense.