Google’s “have your cake and eat it too” approach to business – selling ads to companies while operating competing products – has been blamed by two leading online travel companies, Trivago and TripAdvisor, for significant revenue drops.

Both companies said current industry dynamics, including increased competition from new player Trip.com and Airbnb, have flowed through to 2020, which has got off to a sluggish start.

TripAdvisor CEO Steve Kaufer said its hotel auction results had been hardest hit as Google diverts high quality hotel traffic to its own sales channels with weakness flowing through to 2020. More …

Australian hotels have been severely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic and related bans on Chinese travellers. More …

Here’s the lift queue at Vail last week after a powder dump.  At US$209 for a day ticket, not exactly value for money. But odds are that many of these punters would have bought the annual Epic Pass, which covers all 37 mountains and urban ski parks owned by parent company Vail Resorts Inc. The Epic Pass has been revolutionary but lines like this beg the question: is it being properly managed?

Kudos to South Australia for its bush fire recovery and clarification campaign #BookThemOut, which kicked off more than two weeks ago. Still waiting for my home state of NSW – which has actually suffered more damage – to do something. What’s happening Destination NSW? Update: on Feb 8 Destination NSW launched a social media campaign, #LoveNSW, asking people to holiday in NSW and “post imagery of the experience on social media framed by hands in the shape of a love heart.”

A lot of people rave about skiing in Japan. I won’t be one of them. More …

Qantas today announced engine reliability was a major factor in  choosing the Airbus 350-1000 over the Boeing 777X  for Project Sunrise – regular, non-stop commercial flights from the east coast of Australia (Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne) to London and New York – should it proceed. More …

Researching this story for The Hotel Network was a real eye opener. I learned of one  Road Warrior who booked an incredible 168 stays last financial year – that’s more than three a week. Meanwhile, there’s generational change with Millennials on the charge and hotels rolling out new accommodation models as a result. See full story.

We punch above our weight. That was the underdog mantra underpinning last week’s Tourism Australia briefing in Sydney. More …

Now that Expedia Group Chairman Barry Diller (pictured) has sacked CEO Mark Okerstrom and CFO Alan Pickerill, taking control of the company, what will be the first thing he does? I think it will be to cut costs. More …

Call it the Airbnb or Uber moment for holiday parks. Disruption has finally arrived in the sector – but with a twist. Established operators are facing increased competition from lightly or unregulated competitors, that are often free and operated by the councils they pay rates to. As you can imagine, there is friction. More …

WTF is going on at Virgin Australia? Lovely staff, erratic product. For mine, VA is the Forrest Gump of airlines – as in, life’s like a box of chocolates “because you never know what you’re gonna get”.

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If all you’ve got is price, what do you do to soften your image? More …

It’s annual results season. Australian business travel giants Corporate Travel Management and Flight Centre have reported strong market share gains in a sector that Qantas, the nation’s dominant airline, today described as flat. Who are they taking share from? Full story.

This week the Australian dollar crashed to a 10-year low against the US dollar and there’s no bounce in sight as Donald Trump and Xi Jinping go head to head in a damaging trade war.  What does this mean for travel and how can you prepare for the turmoil ahead? Full Story.

Business travellers wear smart clothes, travel in planes, stay in hotels with marble lobbies and have important meetings in glass-encased towers. Don’t they? More …

When will it end? That’s the question some are asking about the global boom in serviced apartments, but the sector’s steep growth trajectory shows no sign of slowing with development pipelines in key markets such as Europe expanding, invigorated by the arrival of new brands and concepts. More …

Vail Resorts now owns three out of the five major Australian ski fields following its acquisition of Mount Hotham and Falls Creek for $174 million from Merlin Entertainments last week.

The old saying goes that loyalty must be earned not bought. Lovely sentiment but one that is unfortunately not generally applicable these days.

New Executive Chairman Bob East has cleared the decks at Experience Co Ltd, with the company today downgrading its profit forecast and announcing the departure from executive ranks of its CEO Anthony Ritter and Founder/Managing Director Anthony Boucaut (Bowie).

Geneva – The International Air Transport Association (IATA) announced global passenger traffic results for 2018 showing that demand (revenue passenger kilometers or RPKs) rose by a healthy 6.5% compared to full-year 2017.

When Sue and Roger Humphris arrived in Beechworth a dozen years ago to run their first business together, it was just them, the kids and a sprawling 10 acre caravan park in the Victorian high country.

Leading Australian travel business Concierge Travel Group has been bought by UK based corporate & event travel company Reed & Mackay. The sale includes the following brands: Concierge Business Travel, Concierge Traveller, Alquemie, Elegant Resorts & Villas, Freighter Expeditions.

Queenstown, New Zealand’s leading international holiday destination, had the highest hotel room rates in Oceania through 2018, displacing perennial front-runner Sydney, which is still strong but adjusting to the competitive impact of numerous new properties.

Across the world there’s been crazy weather these past few weeks. But in the Swiss and French Alps it has been business as usual this winter. Snow, sunshine, alpine sport and spectacular scenery. I took these shots while travelling in Verbier and Chamonix, two of the world’s iconic mountain towns, in the second half of January. Get there of you can. And now, unfortunately, it’s back to work…

Hospitality has a multitude of moving parts but is, at its heart, a deceptively simple business, says Peter Bacon, GM of Bannisters Port Stephens.

“If you get the basics of hospitality right then everything flows from there.” More …

Lawyers are supposed to protect the reputations of their clients, not trash them. But it looks like someone forget to tell the highly-paid legal eagles representing Expedia in Australia, who’ve inadvertently done a hatchet job on the credibility of once-iconic Australian subsidiary Wotif.com. More …