Articles tagged “tours”

Booking.com, with its vast audience, is becoming a significant player in attractions, tours and activities. However, it will have to share the revenue with its growing roster of distribution partners, which now include Tripadvisor and TUI.

In its top travel stories this week, Skift covered the airline pilot shortage, ghost kitchens, diversity and inclusion initiatives, and the emergence of TUI Musement in tours and activities.

Klook is winning investor confidence during the pandemic. The online agency is tapping into domestic leisure spending in several Asian markets while aspiring to copy some moves from Chinese superapp Meituan by providing more business-to-business services, too.

Despite an ongoing longing for foreign tourists, Wuhan has come most of the way back tourism-wise from the bleakest days of the provincial capital's history earlier this year. Lessons for the rest of the world? Once tourists feel safe, they will return in big numbers.

Tripadvisor CEO Steve Kaufer may be underestimating the threat competitors pose to its tours and activities business, a segment the company may see as its largest opportunity. But it's true that Airbnb is only going after a small slice of that market for now, and Amazon's intentions are unclear.

For the fragmented tours and activities sector, delivering a diverse, globally distributed set of product offerings at scale requires technology solutions that can benefit travel advisors, procurement teams, and individual travelers alike.

With competitors like GetYourGuide, Klook, Airbnb and Booking.com strengthening their asrsenals, market leader Viator will enforce new quality standards that would make it more user-friendly and efficient. If these and other moves don't work, then look out for a new No. 1.

In travel-related coronavirus stories this week, Skift covered potential recovery timelines, layoffs at Tripadvisor and Kayak, Aribnb's vision of an era of travel redistribution, lessons for hoteliers from 9/11 and SARS, and Hilton's partnership to enhance its cleaning protocols, among many other topics.

Google has a huge travel advertising business. If Google's advertising partners had to hand out tons of refunds to consumers for coronavirus-tinged trips that never happened, shouldn't Google, with its deep pockets, share in the pain?

Wuhan may be a household name now — but not for the greatest of reasons. With its "Spotlight Series" of online tours, tour company Walks wants to try and change that.