UK and Australia Lift Gulf Travel Warnings, But European Airlines Await Clearance
Gulf travel advisories are moving. War-risk insurance authorization isn’t — and that’s the constraint that controls when European airlines come back.
All Categories
Airlines
JetBlue Pushes Deeper Into Fort Lauderdale, Shrinks in Newark and LaGuardia
JetBlue is shrinking in the New York area as it focuses more on Fort Lauderdale, where executives see greater opportunity following Spirit’s collapse.
Air India Goes Budget With ‘Basic’ Fare Option
Air India's full-service offering has set it apart in a market dominated by low-cost airlines. The new fares blur that line.
Business Travel
Navan Says Rivals’ Mergers Are Sending It More Clients
Navan is winning large enterprise clients, picking them up when customers reevaluate their vendors in the face of protracted mergers.
How Ken Chenault Became Travel’s Most Consequential Non-Operator
One person connects the Amex GBT take-private, Airbnb’s board, a $10.75 billion travel loyalty startup, and Berkshire Hathaway’s governance committee.
How AI Became the Reason Not to Buy the World’s Largest Corporate Travel Company
With most potential buyers citing AI disruption risk and walking away, Long Lake's $6.3 billion acquisition of AmexGBT is the most contrarian bet in travel right now.
Coronavirus
The Travel Industry’s Immense Potential for Growth
Despite the pandemic’s unprecedented challenges, the travel industry’s recovery is proving to be remarkable.
The Travel Industry Surpasses 2019
Today's edition of Skift's daily podcast looks closer at the recovery of the travel industry that have allowed it to surpass spring 2019 benchmarks.
Travel Makes a Complete Recovery
Today's edition of Skift's daily podcast looks closer at travel's coronavirus recovery, Airbnb's optimism, and Hilton's extended-stay moves.
Cruises
Royal Caribbean’s Giant Beach Resort Blocked by Mexico after Environmental Backlash
At what point in the investment cycle does environmental risk now need to be priced in? The answer, increasingly, is before the land is bought.
The Alaska Experiment That Could Reshape How Cruise Lines Navigate Wildlife
Alaska’s reputation as a bucket list cruise destination rests largely on its wildlife encounters, especially whale sightings. MSC Cruises is treating its first season in the region as a research opportunity, exploring how marine science can guide operations in high-density wildlife corridors.
$11.4 Billion and Zero Churn: What SpaceX Said About Starlink’s Travel Industry Grip
The competitors to Musk's Starlink will eventually up their game. It's never healthy for customers and end-users to be dependent on a single vendor, regardless of the Starlink's competitive advantage at this moment.
Experiences
Tripadvisor To Sell TheFork for $700 Million to Fuel Its Bet on Experiences
The sale gives Tripadvisor the cash to chase the $1 trillion experiences market through Viator.
Klook Co-Founder Bets AI Can Finally Fix Travel Experiences Discovery
Klook has no grand OTA ambitions, at least for now. Its bigger bet is that AI can smooth out the messiness of experiences booking and help it deepen its lead in the category while pulling travelers into adjacent trip spend.
Abu Dhabi’s Sphere Has a Home: Yas Island
The location was the easy part. Whether Abu Dhabi can fill a $1.7 billion venue with its own original content is the harder question.
Food and Drink
Omakase, Fine Casual… and Burgers: Marriott’s Top Food Trends in Asia
Asia’s food culture, from hawker stalls to omakase counters, has always been vibrant. But it’s now also setting the pace for how food tourism might look globally in the years ahead.
How Tourism Homogenizes Cuisines and What Are Possible Solutions
There is a lot that can be done, both from an awareness and, even more importantly, from a policy perspective. Most of it requires changes that the travelers of today, seeking more authentic experiences, would welcome.
Magic Mushrooms in the Minibar
Some will always love a luxury spa. But psychedelics (think psilocybin soundbaths and mushrooms) are the phase in high-end wellness.
Ground Transport
Grab Takes Taxis Across the Singapore-Malaysia Border
“Travel companion” Grab clearly isn’t ready to say goodbye at the border. With its cross-border taxi pilot, Grab is stretching the definition of “last mile” into an international one, keeping travelers in-app the entire way.
Uber CEO Says Travel Rivals Like Expedia Can’t Match Its On-the-Ground Edge
Khosrowshahi said there's the usual tension with partners about Uber's travel ambitions, and he obliquely cited Expedia's shortcomings post-booking. If Uber gains traction in travel, you can expect Khosrowshahi to one day step away from the Expedia board, and all of those conflicts to get exacerbated.
Airbnb’s Latest Service Expansion: Rides From the Airport
Pre-booking rides to your Airbnb or hotel may ease the journey when arriving in an unfamiliar destinations, but there doesn't seem to be anything Airbnb-ish about the new service partnership. Maybe Airbnb gets less unique as it grows?
Hotels
The Best Luxury Experiences Leave Some Slack in the System
The marketing from luxury's top brands has blurred into one seamless, forgettable product. The operators pulling away are the ones who figured out that friction is the point.
Whitbread CEO’s Answer to Activist Investor: Plan Is Working, We Don’t Need to Sell
There's progress to point to, but even the CEO says it will get worse before it gets better.
How Marriott’s Design Hotels Landed an Independent That Once Said No
This is the trade independent hotels keep making: a major hotel group’s reach in exchange for a fee and a fight to stay distinctive. Palisociety thinks the math works.
Luxury
Five Types of Travelers Driving Premium Demand
Premium is evolving beyond a product category to become an entire ecosystem. Instead of chasing each other’s offers and upgrades, travel brands should leverage the premium economy through the lens of customers they already interact with.
Highgate Takes Over Lotte’s New York Palace — How it Feeds the Next Deal
Buying and flipping broken hotels is lumpy and cyclical. Highgate's fees for third-party hotel management are a steady drip that keeps the lights on between the big, risky trades.
One Year Into Private Equity Ownership, Soneva Is Rebranding — New CEO on What’s Changing
Where KSL is taking Soneva is firmly in the zeitgeist of what one segment of ultra-luxury travelers wants right now: less glitz, more optionality.
Media and PR
EternityX CEO Charlene Ree at Skift Asia Forum 2026
Demographic segmentation of Chinese outbound travelers is the wrong unit of analysis.
How TV and AI Are Reshaping Travel Demand
If travel demand is being shaped by entertainment and filtered through AI, what role do travel brands actually play in influencing decisions?
Authorities Around the World Are Banning Flight Ads Due To Climate. But Will It Change Anything?
The bans may not ground a single flight, but they are opening the door to harder policy conversations.
Meetings
5 Ways Meeting in Ireland Balances the Best of Both Worlds
All too often, choosing a destination for incentive travel forces meeting planners to prioritize either a busy city or rural country, business or wellness, modern developments or rich cultural experiences. Here’s how planners get to have it all on the island of Ireland.
3 Ways Corporate Meetings in New Orleans Can Fuel Creativity
Beyond the everyday challenges of organizing memorable events that move the needle for companies, today's planners are under mounting pressure to inspire a burned-out workforce. New Orleans combines its rich history, deep culture, and modern innovation to host corporate experiences that spark creativity and foster connection.
Inside India’s Events and Meetings Aspirations
India upped its convention center game for the G20 Summit last year. Now, it is trying to drum up the marketing for these spaces across the country. But is India really MICE ready?
Online Travel
Grab Says Its Travel Strategy Isn’t About Hotels or Flights, It’s About Knowing What You’ll Need Next
Grab says it isn't competing with the region’s travel platforms. But what it is building may be more disruptive than direct competition.
Why Amex Spent $700 Million on TheFork and What’s Next for Tripadvisor
Tripadvisor now has almost all its focus on experiences and may not see the need to sell Viator — a disappointment for some investors.
MakeMyTrip Co-Founder on India IPO and the AI Question Investors Stopped Asking
MakeMyTrip is trying to answer three questions at once: can it stay relevant as AI reshapes travel discovery, can a string of small acquisitions build real value rather than just organizational sprawl, and does a domestic listing finally make sense after 16 years on Nasdaq?
Podcasts
Hotels Spent $100 Million Fighting OTAs. Did It Actually Work?
If AI agents become the next distribution layer, does the decade-long battle between hotels and OTAs even matter anymore?
GMH Hotels: Hotel AI Is Cutting Costs. It Should Be Making Money.
On this week's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast: Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk break down why hotel AI is stuck on the wrong side of the ledger…
Your Hotel’s AI Problem Is Actually a Data Problem
Independent hoteliers are under pressure from every direction, and now there's an AI mandate on top of it all.
Short-Term Rentals
Airbnb Moves Into Fintech With a Cancel-for-Any-Reason Feature
Airbnb is selling peace of mind to guests, giving assurances to hosts, and potentially debuting a new fintech revenue stream that’s been so successful for Hopper. The issue is whether this will further alienate hosts, who deal with the logistical hassles of last-minute cancellations.
Vrbo Is Launching Sponsored Listings — with Expedia.com Placements to Come
Vrbo and Expedia are seizing an obvious opportunity in vacation rental sponsored listings. Airbnb will get there eventually too.
GMH Hotels: Airbnb Just Got Serious About Hotels
On this week's Good Morning Hospitality, A Skift Podcast: Hotels Edition, Sarah Dandashy and Steve Turk break down a week where three big stories all pointed at the same shift:…
Skift Originals
The Lessons Travel Buried After Covid Are Resurfacing in the Middle East
The travel industry edited Covid into a convenient story about resilient demand while ignoring the system’s fragility. We’re seeing the cost of that rewrite in real time.
Building in Travel Has Never Mattered More
Travel is where history gets physical. We're in it. Right where we should be.
Legacy Is When Your Ideas Outlive Their Attribution: The Skift Journey
Skift is an extended argument for a particular way of being in the world: intellectually rigorous, commercially viable, editorially independent, globally aware, personally authentic.
Startups
Fora Travel Is Focused on Growth and a Small Acquisition Helps Build AI Tools
Fora Travel has the luxury of being private and can build its business — seemingly at a decent pace — without getting second-guessed in quarterly earnings calls.
India’s Travel Space Heats Up as Niche Players Gain Significance
India’s maturing travel market is allowing for more niche players to strengthen their bases, and it seems like investors are backing this movement.
What a Siberian Startup and a Saudi Ticketing App Reveal About Travel’s Future
Two startups from two different worlds are quietly rewriting the rules of who controls the travel transaction, with fascinating implications.
Tour Operators
Norwegian Air To Buy Nordic Leisure Travel Group in $843m Bet on End-to-End Travel
Why settle for just the airfare when you can own the whole holiday?
Egypt Emerges as the Winner in the Middle East’s Travel Shake-Up
The Iran war hasn’t destroyed Middle East travel demand — it has reshuffled it. Egypt is picking up what the Gulf is losing.
Europe Visa Bottlenecks Push UAE Residents to Rethink Travel Plans
The visa queue will clear. The question is whether leisure demand comes back with it.
Tourism
JTB Is Expanding Out of Japan. EXO Travel Is the Latest Deal
JTB no longer seems content being Japan's travel company. With the pieces now assembled, it intends to be Asia's, and is making a case for the world's.
Cruises Carry July Fourth Travel to a Slim Record
Yes, it's another record. But strip out cruises and growth in July Fourth travel nearly evaporates.
If Only America Could Get Out of Its Own Way….
The brands lining up to buy a piece of Freddy are going to fail; it shows how little America's pull depends on marketing, and how much it depends on the country getting out of its own way.
Travel Agents
Dubai Strengthens Passenger Rights Rules to Rebuild Traveler Trust
Dubai’s passenger rights framework means one regulator, one rulebook. The details around enforcement are still to come, though.
American Express Saw Strong Luxury Spending in Q1, Airline Softness in April
A lot of companies are seeing strength among premium customers and hesitancy at lower rungs, but American Express skews toward the upper echelon.
Inside the $2.4 Billion Agency Powering Luxury Travel’s Elite Advisors
For years, Global Travel Collection's $2.4 billion in sales has been spread across legacy brands, masking its true scale. Its brand unification is a signal that scale is becoming the defining competitive advantage in luxury travel.
Travel Technology
AI Isn’t Ignoring Airlines. It Just Can’t Read Their Fares.
Adobe says AI referrals are sending travel sites more engaged visitors. But the next advantage may belong to brands whose pages are easiest for machines to read.
Why Chesky Is Building His AI Lab Outside Airbnb
The smartest read of Chesky’s AI lab is that he learned the exact lesson of Meta’s metaverse: if you’re going to make a bet the market will punish, don’t make it where the market can see it.
Oracle Bakes AI Into Opera Cloud Hotel Operations
Oracle is treating AI as a standard feature of hotel operations software, not a premium product. That raises the stakes for property management rivals trying to sell similar tools as add-ons.
Venture Capital
Airbnb’s Brian Chesky Is Creating an AI Lab
Is Brian Chesky development of a new AI Lab outside of Airbnb an acknowledgement that building AI capabilities within Airbnb hasn't been up to par? Or are some tech developments like AI too large to sit out without having more skin in the game?
Brook Bay Capital, Inovia, and Highgate Technology Ventures at Skift Data + AI Summit 2026
If you are pitching travel AI to investors, lead with cost savings you can put on the income statement, not revenue lift you can only promise — measurability is what closes the deal.
Travel Venture Capital Is Back, But Only for the Biggest, Safest Bets: 3 Charts
Early-stage startups face longer fundraising cycles and less capital.