Ukrainian International Airlines is to impose a $9 surcharge on every booking made through the world’s Global Distribution Systems. The fee on each segment made on tickets bought via Amadeus, Travelport and Sabre will come into force by the end of April 2017. But anyone thinking this is a carbon copy…
Almost 40% of business trippers believe that staying in an Airbnb or similar property is allowed under corporate travel policy. But – and here’s the rub – just one in six business travellers are actually given permission to do so under the rules governing trips within their companies. A study…
Like many people, I have watched with somewhat sad feelings the giant mess that has been United Airlines and Dr Dao’s removal in Chicago recently. Rather than just throw more rocks at the poor folks at United I would like to comment on the issue in a dispassionate way,…
Expense management software adoption continues to grow, but a recent GBTA survey showed that 46% of business travelers are still required to submit their expenses manually, using receipts stapled to a printed spreadsheet, then sending them to the finance team. NB: This is a viewpoint by Ted Stavropoulos, director…
Freebird, a startup to help travellers rebook flights following disruption, has received a fresh cash injection of $5 million. The funding comes from General Catalyst and Accomplice which also led the startup’s initial round of $3.5 million back in November 2015. A number of travel industry angel investors, including…
Hotels currently have a variety of ways to sell rooms. The halcyon days of basing distribution strategy around the simplistic “direct” and “third-party” options are long gone. Merchant model or net rates. Facilitated booking with metasearch partners. Exclusive rates for loyalty members. Embedded pricing in Facebook ads. Data science…
TripAdvisor is celebrating after reaching a half a billion travel reviews milestone on the site – with nearly 300 hitting the site every minute. The company, now 17 years old, says it has “revolutionised the travel industry” with its mix of ratings and opinions about hotels and, more recently,…
Yatra has surveyed 5,000 Indian travellers about their summer holiday plans and found that more of them prefer booking on desktop than mobile. The established wisdom is that India is an increasingly mobile-first travel market. While standalone hotel bookings and point-to-point air are common mobile purchases, for the higher ticket…
Research has shown a marked increase in the number of travellers that use both online and offline channels to search and book travel products. A Phocuswright report, following a survey of 2,500 consumers, says the number of US travellers that booked using both methods increased by 5% to 30% between 2014…
The hotel industry is going through a complete metamorphosis and industry stalwarts say it will look very different in just three years from now. NB: This is an analysis by Aditya Sanghi, co-founder and CEO of Hotelogix. Hotels need to find answers to these top five “brand questions” to…