Articles tagged “restaurants”

The lodging industry in the U.S. is having a banner year, and that it reflected in MasterCard's spending data.

Video is powerful, and now users of Yelp's iPhone app have some additional user-generated ammunition. Nice move by Yelp.

Expedia's strategy is worth a shot: Focus on hotels and other core products while competitors the Priceline Group and TripAdvisor play around with restaurant reservations, and tours and activities. If Expedia sticks to its focus-on-what-we-got strategy, it is a huge gamble.

Let the games begin as the Priceline Group's acquisition of OpenTable, and TripAdvisor's acquisition of LaFourchette officially place restaurants firmly in the "travel" space in terms of mindset. Yelp anyone?

It isn't that McDonald's has the best food around, but business travelers frequent the restaurant and put it on their expense reports because they know what they are getting, and if there is Wi-Fi, then it is all the better.

Both TripAdvisor and the Pricelne Group plan to feast on the mobile and global expansion of their dining reservations capabilities.

The dining discounts that travelers can now make through TripAdvisor because of its LaFourchette acquisition are mobile, compelling and undoubtedly of keen interest to its rival, The Priceline Group, which plans to wed OpenTable within a few months. Restaurants are only part one of TripAdvisor's dream to get very mobile in its in-destination offerings.

Just as we've seen the blending of business and leisure travel over the years, we are now entering a period where "travel" and local, from hotels digging into community culture and travel providers offering restaurant services and tours, will get mashed together in new ways.

TripAdvisor is just getting around to addressing all of the massive restaurant content that it already has. As metasearch players already know, Yelp and OpenTable should pay attention as TripAdvisor tries to eat their lunch.

If everything is about "local" in the hotel business these days, this development project in Bothell, Washington, is the epitome of such efforts.