Traveling Blog: Hospitality Year in Review + Room Key Has a Pulse + Luxury Bucket List

January 2, 2018

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Note From the Editor

For big chains, acquiring your competitor can be a drawn-out and gut-wrenching experience, but it can also be the easy part when compared with blending loyalty programs, technologies, and brands. Hotel companies ranging from Marriott to AccorHotels and Kimpton spent 2017 laboring behind the scenes to patch their new holdings together, as Hospitality Editor Deanna Ting points out in a wide-ranging review of 2017's major hotel industry developments.

Tech Editor Sean O'Neill takes a look today at a slower-developing saga — Room Key's 5-year-long quest for relevancy as a hotel industry joint venture geared to steal bookings from online travel agencies. Finally, the advent of hotel-chain loyalty rates has injected some new life into the endeavor.

— Dennis Schaal, Executive Editor

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In 2017, the hotel industry took stock of the prior year's major mergers, focused on putting them all together, and worked on figuring out a path into the future.

Hotel Loyalty Rates Finally Gave Room Key Site an Advantage

Room Key is a bit like the train in the children's story, "The Little Engine That Could," which kept saying "I think I can, I think I can." While Room Key may never become the next Kayak, it may help hotel chains gain more direct bookings.

TripAdvisor CEO Sees Mobile Leading to More In-Destination Engagement

TripAdvisor will continue fighting to get a bigger piece of the online travel booking pie in 2018. It's a familiar refrain at this point.

A Luxury Hotel Hit LIst for 2018 Tied Together by a Creative Vision

Here is a list of inspiring hospitality experiences and properties to consider for 2018 travels. The selections are tied together by each property's vision, uniqueness, and focus on guest experience.

In Case You Missed It

Google Hotels Ads Could Make Gains With Chain Loyalty Rates

The big chains now offer special book-direct deals through Google Hotel Ads. This helps with click-through and conversions, but also with new loyalty member acquisition — everything a growing hotel chain needs in an ad partner.

The Detroit Travel Story Is Starting to Get Rewritten by the Black Travel Movement

The mainstream media currently has control of the Detroit travel story, but the Black Travel Movement is about to redefine what it means to visit the blackest city in America.

Google Travel Feeling Intensified Antitrust Pressure

Might 2018 be the year U.S. regulators take a hard look anew at Google's travel-business practices after declining to take action in 2012? We hope so, in the interests of fair play, although the Trump Administration has been keen to reduce government regulation of businesses, not increase it.

The Inside Story of an Online Travel Reunion at the New Uber

There were a ton of people who wanted the COO position at Uber, and it went to Expedia alum and former Orbtiz Worldwide CEO Barney Harford. The pressure will be on both Khosrowshahi and Harford to turn around the ridesharing company. As if there weren't abundant pressure already.

25 Travel Moments That Mattered in 2017

In 2017, politics dominated the headlines, which were built out of travel bans in the United States and the UK confiding to the European Union that the divorce would indeed proceed. Kick back for the upcoming holidays. We'll all need plenty of energy for 2018.

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