This is a roundup for product news and announcements for travel marketing in tourism and hospitality for December 2016. Wednesday 6 December 2016: Foursquare licenses images to Airbnb Foursquare photos are appearing in Airbnb Guidebooks on its app following a licensing agreement between the two companies. The peer-to-peer accommodation…

Mobile is having an impact on the travel industry around the globe, and while there are some constants across geographies there are also material differences between what the customer demands and how travel businesses can satisfy these demands. NB: This is an article written by Tnooz in conjunction with…

Pan-European rail booking service Loco2 can now accept payment in euros after satisfying some demanding “commercial, regulatory and technical” requirements  in France. Co-founder and CEO Jamie Andrews says “this is the most complicated project we have ever done, which is saying something because we have done some very complicated…

MyTripCar says it is not just another car rental comparison site – with transparency around pricing its main message to potential customers. The Spain-based company has been backed by its own country’s national tourism department and has a trio of car rental analysts with a combined experience in the field…

Volkswagen has launched a standalone business called “MOAI” and is looking at a ride hailing apps and car pooling as a way to capture revenue from what it describes as mobility services. MOAI was launched yesterday and will be based in Germany. A team of 50 will be based…

If you asked me to describe a typical Chinese traveller ten years ago, I could have done it in less than five minutes. Back then, most travellers in China could be placed neatly in just two or three categories. It takes a lot longer to answer the same question…

Many online travel agencies and search engines claim to know when is the best time to book a flight (with the answer often varying wildly). If nothing else (forget about the accuracy of such forecasting), it’s a good marketing exercise to lure people to a site to, well, look…

“Marketing efficiencies” and its “bespoke bid management capability” have helped UK-based online travel agent On The Beach to a pretax profit for the year to end-Sept16 of £16.9 million, turning round a loss of £2.5 million for the same period last year. In a digital marketing context, the UK…

Car-sharing giant Uber is attempting to beef up its data science credentials with the acquisition of a US-based artificial intelligence company. Geometric Intelligence‘s team of brainiacs will join Uber for an undisclosed fee in what is being touted as a move to improve its data science credentials through the simultaneous…

When execs from Priceline, Booking.com, Expedia and Google take turns to speak at a travel conference, the audience can become blinded (if not terrified) by the numbers bandied about. At last week’s Buy Tourism Online (BTO) conference in Italy, the audience of independent hoteliers, tech providers and destinations were…