Good morning from Skift. It’s Tuesday, September 17, and here’s what you need to know about the business of travel today. Listen Now Subscribe Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | RSS Episode Notes Thayer Ventures and Derive Ventures are teaming up to create Thayer Investment Partners, an investment platform the two VC firms believe will boost innovation in travel technology, writes Senior...
Wyndham’s tech investment is paying off, the hotelier’s CEO said Wednesday. Wyndham Connect is allowing hotel owners to communicate by SMS with hotel guests prior to arrival, for example, and offer them early check-in or the opportunity to order food and beverage upon arrival. That is driving “thousands and thousands of dollars of extra room revenue” for the typical hotel owner, said...
Airlines have asked planemakers for the same thing for decades: give them aircraft that can fly long-haul at the lowest price per passenger. Over the years, Airbus and Boeing have taken different approaches to this problem. The twin-aisle products on offer have varied from the double-decker A380 to connect slot-constrained hub airports, through to the smaller Boeing 787. Despite the options...
Marriott says its loyalty program Bonvoy crossed 210 million members this August but for group CEO and president Anthony Capuano, the platform is just getting started. Capuano sees Bonvoy as moving away from a “transactional system” towards more of an “emotional” one, where members use Bonvoy for room upgrades, free cups of coffee, and even walks down the red carpet at the...
Travel News: Latest News, Breaking Stories, and Analysis of Travel
South Korea is embracing the “workcation” trend to launch a digital nomad visa: It starts January 1 and lets digital nomads stay for up to two years. The details: This is for foreign nationals who work remotely – they are not permitted to apply for jobs within South Korea. Remote workers must have an annual income exceeding 84.96 million won ($66,000), which is double the...
Megatrends at Skift over the last decade of our existence have become the biggest annual franchise we put out. It is where we connect the dots across thousands of hours of reporting from our editorial team, and research and data insights from our Skift Research team. These megatrends are how we see the travel industry unfold that coming year, backed by our research and an early identification of...
Hyatt said Tuesday that it is planning to upgrade more than 1,000 hotels to Oracle’s Opera Cloud property management system, which handles day-to-day operations, including check-in and check-out, room assignment, and housekeeping. That means a significant portion of the brand’s operations will be cloud-based in the coming years, a goal that hotel companies have been slow to achieve. This is the...
Tripadvisor’s new CEO Matt Goldberg said he wants to make the company more data-driven and improve execution, and the chief financial officer cryptically floated the possibility that the company would consider making acquisitions to complement its Viator and TheFork brands, or other parts of the business. “I was also energized by the potential of our data assets to create a better...
CHANGE MAKERS Category: Leadership Adrian Gardiner: Founder & Chairman, Mantis Collection (Accor) In 1989, Adrian Gardiner purchased a 1000-hectare farm as a weekend retreat for his family. However, this farm soon became one of the most ambitious rewilding projects in the world. Within a matter of years, the land expanded to 25,000 hectares, and Adrian began reintroducing the wildlife that...