Agoda's new CEO appointment highlights the need for online travel agencies to be continually reinventing experiences from a technology point of view. If only the company would now balance it out by bringing in someone who understands the hoteliers’ perspective.
With the search engine also publishing the methodology and framework for other travel sellers to adopt, there's a greater chance that carbon emissions data will eventually become standardized, and less confusing. But there's still a long way to go.
Western companies such as Hopper and Amadeus are lining up to sell enterprise tech solutions to Trip.com Group. That's because the Chinese travel powerhouse is in a shopping mood. It sees back-end technology as critical for making further market share gains in Europe.
Six months or a year seem like way longer than that in the Covid era, and anything can happen in the interim. But it is significant that the executive chairman of China's largest online travel agency is postulating that inbound and outbound travel curbs could be softened next year.
The Trivago-Huawei deal is one of several Trivago is piloting where it provides backend services to business partners. These could develop one day into a material revenue stream for the German company.
Although the U.S. travel industry anxiously awaits the return of Chinese visitors, the timing will largely depend on when Beijing decides to ease outbound travel restrictions.
Staying in professionally managed short-term rentals is no guarantee of an optimum guest experience. When your host's profile picture turns out to be a free stock photo, you can guess how this ended up.
It's eye-catching that Jane Sun of Trip.com believes that China's remote and hybrid working arrangements are helping domestic leisure travel to recover. That echoes predictions from Airbnb's CEO Brian Chesky and others about how hybrid working may boost travel for some time to come.
Google's attractions ticket beta has been among its least elegant in travel to date. This has angered many tour operators because it couldn't have come at a more inopportune time.