European tour operating giant TUI Group has taken a 15.4% stake in Peakwork, the Germany-based software provider that was formed in 2009. The financial details behind the investment are not disclosed. The backing of TUI comes as Peakwork looks to attract other strategic investment opportunities. Peakwork creates distribution software that it…
With hundreds of thousands of hotels around the world, it is difficult to get a genuine overview of how advanced (or not) they are on digitising their services. Some 8,000 hotels in the US were surveyed recently by the American Hotel & Lodging Association, to try and understand what…
As of 2015, many properties started renting hotel rooms effectively by-the-hour, instead by the day. New startup Beewake believes it can leverage this opportunity. It lets travelers book daytime space at hotels to use as meeting rooms, office space for single-day us, and a place to nap. Beewake is…
The Hyperloop concept has inevitably got a fair amount of attention because one of its early supporters was Elon Musk, the publicity-shy boss of Tesla Motors. In short, hyperloop is a land-based transportation technology that takes existing mag-lev (magnetic levitation) processes to an extremely powerful (and fast) new level….
Travel companies are putting significant investment into offline promotion but failing to translate it to the digital world. A Facebook marketing exec says there’s little distinction between brands in online marketing for travel. Neasa Costin, travel vertical lead in EMEA for global marketing solutions for Facebook, points to the investment…
TripAdvisor has conceded that it is yet to show how it will turn around the company’s recent downturn in financial performance. The review giant saw revenues increase by a slim 1% year-on-year to $421 million during the third quarter of 2016. Non-hotel revenues increased by 35% to $101 million but…
Australian online travel agency group Webjet has offloaded the Zuji brand to two companies belong to Hong Kong-based Uriel Aviation Holding. The deal for $56 million comes just four years on from Webjet buying the Asia-Pacific focused OTA from Travelocity for AUS$25 million (around $30 million). The two subsidiaries of Uriel…
We’re gearing up for our second travel hackathon in Germany this year. THack Berlin 2016 will be back at the beautiful betahaus co-working space the first weekend of December. We’ll provide APIs and tools from airberlin and Xapix, to help developers prototype mobile app solutions. The goal is to…
Many startups claim to be experts at disrupting the travel industry, but Roomstorm is one of the rare startups focusing on helping the industry handle old-fashioned disruption in flight and hotel operations with the latest software solutions. The problem is large: Millions of passengers in the US alone get…
Messaging is exploding as an engagement channel at hotels. Within the past year, hotel brands and technology suppliers big and small have made headlines for their experiments with various messaging channels, as well as for the development of their own messaging apps. NB: This is a guest viewpoint from…