Articles tagged “online travel agencies”

The World Cup is a perfect example of how sports fans are less likely to wait to book travel to games for fear flights, hotels and game tickets will sell out. They're likely more impulsive with making travel decisions and will often make them on the go, where mobile devices are at the ready.

Expedia Inc. is following the TripAdvisor playbook on Trivago, which could go the spinoff/IPO route one day. The Priceline Group, meanwhile, is focusing on Booking.com and new-prize OpenTable as priorities while being measured about Kayak's international expansion.

The survey brings home the point that travelers' smartphone behaviors vary widely from country to country. India's MakeMyTrip tries to keep users on smartphones, and Expedia makes it easier for users to transition from device to device. The differences are dramatic.

There is definitely something to be said for hand-picked, curated airfare deals, and The Flight Deal is finding a niche. How much the site expands beyond the FlyerTalk crowd is another question.

The travel and hospitality industry is being flooded with data. The key to harnessing it? Smart strategies to deliver a more efficient and tailored travel experience, and cultivate and keep…

The use of Big Data is imperative if travel businesses want to improve conversion, grow purchases, and retain customers.

This is good-ish news for travel agents, especially since the demographic they were most likely to lose because of their tech-savvy booking skills indicate they still see value in travel agents.

Hotels are losing the battle for last-minute mobile bookings to the online travel agencies. It's not a huge surprise given their respective marketing resources, but this could hurt hotels even more in the future as the shift to mobile bookings accelerates.

Despite the mobile revolution, it is tough to believe that Google would make a game-changing bet on hotels and other suppliers over OTAs and metas when the latter two categories generally have much larger marketing budgets.

Will the immediacy of Orbitz Worldwide's loyalty program redemption be a difference-maker in helping to build its global hotel business? CEO Barney Harford is counting on it.