Sean O'Neill

Sean O’Neill is Skift’s Senior Hospitality Editor. Sean’s forte is reporting, and he’s broken multiple hotel industry scoops. He has also conducted 1:1 interviews on stage with the CEOs of Marriott, Hilton, IHG, Hyatt, and Wyndham.

a user of hopper's booking app source hopper

Online Travel

Online Travel Hopper’s Metamorphosis From Flight Selling to Fintech

Travel startup Hopper has raised $175 million in additional investment, underscoring the potential of its financial services products and offering an interesting case study in new appetites in travel for fintech. It seems very much in the cards that the company will go public by, say, 2022.

Sean O'Neill | 5 years ago

vresorts Ca' di Dio room source vresorts

Hotels

Why This New Luxury Hotel in Venice Is Hopping on the NFT Frenzy

Ca' di Dio is the first Venetian luxury hotel to offer a reservation via the trendy asset class NFT, or non-fungible token. Smart hotels everywhere are trying fresh ways to appeal to niche audiences, instead of just rely on Booking.com & company.

Sean O'Neill | 5 years ago

Udaipur India City Palace by Ninara flickr creative commons

Online Travel

Indian Travel Startup Ixigo Files to Go Public to Raise $200 Million

Who knew that 2021 would be the year of travel IPOs?

Sean O'Neill | 5 years ago

Hotels

Private Equity Looks to Challenge Vacasa by Backing VTrips Vacation Rental Firm

The vacation rental market is big enough to accommodate multiple players with digital and operational savvy, including both Vacasa and VTrips.

Sean O'Neill | 5 years ago

TravelLocal tour Adventurous Costa Rica Arenal Volcano Hike through Arenal National Park. Visit the natural hotsprings of Arenal source travellocal

Online Travel

TravelLocal Raises $3 Million in Play on Tailored Trips: Travel Startup Funding This Week

This week TravelLocal and Trip.me raised funding for using digital tools to make travel agents more efficient, XOKind raised for its travel booking app Una, and MyBeezBox raised to help hospitality companies with online cross-sells.

Sean O'Neill | 5 years ago

Business Travel

SAP Concur to Help Businesses Sync Meeting Planning With Travel Expense Management

We anticipate a convergence between travel expense management and meeting planning. Companies will see a boom in internal meetings for team bonding and training as the pandemic subsides. So they'll need software to rein in costs.

Sean O'Neill | 5 years ago

Online Travel

British Airways Parent IAG Grew Its Travel Startup Accelerator Despite Crisis

You might have expected that the pandemic would prompt International Airlines Group (IAG) to pause its startup accelerator. But IAG's head of innovation, Dupsy Abiola, says the program gained momentum instead.

Sean O'Neill | 5 years ago

casai brazil properties q apartments source casai

Online Travel

Startup Casai Buys Its Way Into Serviced Apartments in a Play for Brazilian Business Travel

The conventional wisdom in the U.S. and Europe has been that business travel will be slow to recover easing out of the pandemic and that emerging markets in Latin America, such as Brazil, will have a snail-like rebound, too. Travel startup Casai is gambling that both ideas are wrong.

Sean O'Neill | 5 years ago

waikiki beach 2018 honolulu hawaii alan light source flickr creative commons

Experiences

Tripadvisor Finetunes Its Subscription Travel Bet

Perhaps you spent the pandemic moving house, baking bread, or home-schooling your kids. Tripadvisor spent the crisis tweaking its product mix to sell more subscriptions while also refreshing its mobile app. Mad props to everyone for making the most of things.

Sean O'Neill | 5 years ago

Business Travel

Activist Shareholder in Tussle With India’s Largest Corp Travel Manager Yatra

The activist investor Maguire has raised fair points that Yatra has taken too long to hire a chief financial officer and to hold board elections. But otherwise, CEO Dhruv Shringi and the management team have led the company well.

Sean O'Neill | 5 years ago