Travel Technology

There's a reason we love earnings season: lot's of interesting new company data points.

Points.com is still too dependent on its mainstay business of loyalty currency swaps for just a few major travel suppliers that are primarily in the U.S. Hopefully, its new cross-marketing deal with Amadeus will help.

Amadeus has long talked about diversifying its business, branching out from distribution into software services for hotels, airlines, and airports. But 2019 looks like it will finally be the year that the new businesses gain nearly equal importance to the old ones.

Hotels and other brands would welcome a tool that enables them to accurately tally the number of bookings that can be directly attributed to various influencers. But it remains to be seen how effectively Six Travel can deliver on its promises.

Analyzing startups helps us understand what the future of travel holds. The latest generation of startups promises innovation across many facets of travel: hospitality, tours, airlines, business travel, and more.

Travelport's latest earnings report is a chance to judge its performance since it went public in 2014. The answer is mixed: The company invested more than its rivals in its airline distribution business, which let it punch above its weight. But not everything on other matters panned out as well as it might have hoped.

It's well-known that Facebook and its sister brand Instagram have become hugely appealing destinations for marketers to spend money. But a global survey by travel tech firm Sojern suggests that a lot of trial-and-error is still going on as marketers attempt to master new tools.

A bigger chunk of online travel bookings will be made through mobile in Southeast Asia and players need to improve the user experience fast. Learn from Expedia, which has been anointed the guru of mobile in the region by a Google/Accenture study.

A year ago the U.S. changed its corporate tax law. A look at the impact on travel tech giant Sabre may show, by example, the benefits to many U.S. businesses broadly. The reform appeared to give the company added financial flexibility in 2018.

Customer-experience software companies Medallia, which is planning to go public this year, and Qualtrics, which SAP has just acquired for $8 billion, are receiving cash injections that should rev up their services. That's significant news for travel businesses that depend heavily on positive customer sentiment but increasingly face customer survey fatigue.