Online travel agencies based in the United States maintained double-digit year-over-year gains in 2023, passing the $100 billion mark for the first time.
Despite years of work across the hospitality industry, hotels are still struggling to connect guest data across multiple systems, inhibiting their ability to provide an optimal guest experience. That was one of the key messages during a panel last week at the Highgate Tech Ventures and Independent Lodging Conference's Indie Cultivate event in New York City.
Predicting the speed and shape of how search marketing will be changed by artificial intelligence is an impossible task. But marketers should take one thing for granted: Search marketing in Google should stay on top of the priority list for the foreseeable future.
In 2023, the travel market in the United Kingdom experienced significant growth, with gross bookings increasing 19%, driven by robust expansion in online bookings, mobile transactions and key sectors like airlines and car rentals.
While some travel industry players have found Google's tweaks to be inconsequential, others said they have seen a traffic dip that could hurt business.
Steve Singh has been mulling the concept of the Perfect Trip in business travel for more than 10 years. The co-founder and former CEO of Concur, which sold to SAP in 2014 for $8.3 billion, believes a trip where a traveler's data is drawn from a single repository and can be shared across all travel suppliers to ensure a smooth and joined up journey is now more possible than ever.
Generative artificial intelligence has been a constant headline-maker in the travel tech world through the past year. So, it's no surprise many industry experts believe the technology has the power to change processes on the whole, including in how hotels strategize - and maximize - their opportunities to drive revenue.
The prospect of TikTok's 170 million users in the United States being barred from the site could have far-reaching ramifications for travel companies that seek to build brand recognition among travelers through the site's wildly popular short videos.
Financial figures from Expedia Group, Booking Holdings, Airbnb and Trip.com Group - four of the largest online travel agencies in the world - show the companies spent a record amount of money to promote their brands and attract customers in 2023, as pent-up demand from the pandemic is still driving spending.
Social media plays a complicated role in the fame game. It can be used to publicize good information about where to go and how to behave but can also be used to spread information about overrun destinations or undesirable behaviors.