Travel Technology

Hotels: Are you listening?

MasterCard and its credit card rivals can maintain their edge over insurgent payment systems only if they keep their focus on the consumer rather than what they can get out of the consumer.

It's smart for HomeAway to give its users more reasons to use its mobile app to improve their local experience with rides, food, and local attractions.

Hotels -- yes they do -- have to live with the fact that they move a lot of rooms through powerful online travel agencies. Platforms like CheckMate's can enable hotels to better communicate with their guests despite the involvement of the third parties.

This is a bold projection that has a good shot at coming true, since more attention is being paid towards creating user-friendlier mobile versions of booking sites and ad dollars getting pumped into mobile makes this very believable.

Airline, hotel and car rental apps are rated by users as being well below the quality of travel booking apps. That they trail the travel booking apps isn't a huge surprise, but the the size of the ground they would have to gain to catch up is fairly daunting.

As digital devices augment all levels of the trip for travelers, the business traveler is navigating a landscape both fueled and complicated by the increasing autonomy that mobile technology provides to the individual. Here's how to understand it a little better.

The keyless entry system has been long-awaited for the industry. With a successful beta test, let's hope Starwood's system continues impressing guests. It will also be interesting to see how many guests bypass reception completely upon arriving at hotels and how many still stop to notify the hotel that they've arrived.

HotelTonight puts simplicity and curation in the palm of users' hands.

Connecting the physical to the digital is a key challenge for destinations and attractions.