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Online Travel News

These articles delve into the latest trends, technologies, and strategies that are shaping the online booking landscape, ensuring that industry insiders stay informed and prepared for change. These stories cover essential topics such as the development of innovative booking platforms, the role of artificial intelligence and machine learning in personalizing travel options, and the impact of mobile technology on customer behavior. Additionally, the news stories highlight the growing importance of user-generated content and reviews in shaping consumer decisions, and the role of social media in the online travel booking ecosystem. Skift’s stories examine the competitive landscape and offer insights into the successes and challenges faced by major online travel agencies (OTAs), startups, and traditional travel companies transitioning to the digital space.

Media and PR

Guidebook advice for Japanese in Scotland: Umbrellas, football and “the English”

Guidebooks often signal what's ahead with travel patterns, which is good news here for the Scotland that lies beyond fairways and putting greens.

Media and PR

Summer reading: The UK’s Travel Book of the Year long list is announced

Anyone who doesn't have their summer reading planned now has a dozen books to choose from. We recommend Peter Robb and Colin Thubron.

Airlines

Virgin America takes hit from its transition to Sabre

Welcome to the big time, Virgin America. All this growth "don't come easy." Meanwhile, it looks like it is straightening things out with its Sabre reservations system and things should be on track before long.

Airlines

Brand measurement service Heardable looks at airlines, should probably measure again

Heardable's $999 report on airlines points to Delta and United as having the best "digital experience," a ranking sure to raise eyebrows among consumers and rivals such as Virgin America.

Hotels

Room 77 to remain in the cloud after Amazon outage

Travel companies should fine-tune their cloud strategies after an Amazon Web Services outage took down Room 77, Pinterest, Instagram and Netflix. Given the cost-savings and efficiencies of cloud computing, travel companies won't be abandoning such services -- nor should they -- any time soon.

Online Travel

Maps are getting seriously sexy: Amazon enters the game with an acquisition

The battle for local intelligence has broken into open warfare with the three biggest digital consumer brands stockpiling massive mapping weapons to. Use against one another.

Media and PR

Why social travel sites don’t really work

The short answer is, "no," it doesn't work. Both for the reasons clearly laid out in Patokallio's article and because there's also already a massively successful social site that helps users get travel recommendations from friends. It's called Facebook.

Media and PR

One-time local recommendation leader CitySearch gets a facelift for its 16th birthday

Despite a big head start, CitySearch got whacked by Yelp. Now it can't decide if it wants to be Yelp, Foursquare, Groupon, or something else that's more popular.

Online Travel

Hotels and travel providers weigh the benefits of daily deal sites

U.S. hotels can look to Australia for examples of properties that have worked with flash sites and still maintained a certain integrity of their rates.

Online Travel

Loyalty-card startups give merchants a reason to ignore Groupon

The startups make the difference between flash sale sites and loyalty programs clear: One's just about the deal, the other's about building a loyal clientele.