Traveling Blog: Airbnb Touts Trips + Cruise Lines Rethink Retail + Biz Class Follows the Money

November 21, 2017

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Note From the Editor

Today we offer three stories that show the conclusions travel companies reached when they considered a fundamental question: What do customers want — and what will they pay for?

Delta thinks flyers will pony up for business class seats on key domestic routes. Carnival Cruise Line believes passengers want an elevated retail experience. And Airbnb says an increasing number of customers want Experiences with a capital E. It's up to the traveling public now to truly answer the question with their wallets.

— Hannah Sampson, News Editor

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Airbnb Touts Growth of Trips for Foodies, Millennials and Solo Travelers

Let's do some math, first: How do you calculate 20x growth when you're not given a baseline for comparison? Our guess is whatever that adds up to, it may not be very much.

Cruise Lines Rethink Retail Shopping for Age of Experiences

As travelers crave more meaningful experiences during their vacations, where does that leave cruise ship shopping? Cruise operators are trying to figure that out and deliver the kind of retail that passengers will respond to.

Delta Puts a Better Business Class on Routes Where Travelers Will Buy It

This is a simple business. If you're an airline, you should send your planes to places where they make money. Delta is doing it right.

Barceló Looks to Create Spanish Hotel Giant With Bid for Rival NH

Combining NH Hotels with another company makes plenty of sense. It would give it added scale and might also help put an end to its shareholder infighting. Of course this is only the opening move in what is likely to be a time-consuming process and given NH's recent history we're sure that it will be anything but straightforward.

Chase Introduces New Travel Perks for Credit Card Holders — Business of Loyalty

New perks coming for Chase cardholders should make it more attractive to many travelers. How will American Express respond?

What do a debate over landing pages, the acquisition of Momondo, a shift into hotel software services, and regulators forcing changes in online travel agency contracts have in common? Each of those seemingly unrelated things may have pushed Priceline to toggle back its spending on Trivago.

Ctrip Relaunches Trip.com as Its English Language Travel Agency Brand

We had speculated before that Ctrip might use its newly acquired Trip.com domain for its own agency listings, displacing the travel recommendation service it recently bought. By de-emphasizing its Chinese origin, it may hope to ingratiate itself with more Western travelers.

Overtourism Discussion Elicits Denials, Spin and Occasionally an Insightful Idea

Travel leaders are at least starting to admit there might be a problem with unmanaged mass tourism, but many are still in denial about the real reasons it has become such a big issue.

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