Skift Take

2017 will be a big year for Skift Research. We are on a mission to transform our knowledge services from a nice-to-have, to a must-have resource for smart decision-makers and savvy executives in travel.

You have known us as Skift Trends Reports for the last three years, and over those three years we have mastered the art of trends analysis. Now we’re going a lot further, and we are thrilled to re-introduce ourselves as a newly separate unit called Skift Research. Our team of five people includes ace analysts and sales and client servicing teammates.

We’ve upped our game with considerable investments in talent and data in order to prepare our subscribers for another turbulent year for the travel industry. Analysts often look back in order to look forward, so if 2016 is any indication of things to come, then get ready for another wild ride in 2017.

Here’s a rundown of what happened in 2016, and how Skift Research will prepare our subscribers for things to come:

From bombings in Brussels and Syria, to the Brexit vote in Britain and Trump in the White House, the heated geopolitical climate has left many questioning border policies and the free movement of people. With this backdrop, acquisitions including onefinestay and Skyscanner exposed the true ambitions of emerging travel giants. Major mega-mergers including Marriott-Starwood and Alaska Air-Virgin America also uncovered room for consolidation – even in the most established of travel categories.

The launch of Trips by Airbnb and Google’s releases, too, left many wondering about the future of TripAdvisor, Priceline, and Expedia. The launch of Facebook’s Dynamic Ads for Travel signaled a pivot away from traditional search engine marketing to personalized social media placements. Trivago’s flotation rubber-stamped metasearch as the right kind of platform for hotel search. Lastly, big concepts like artificial intelligence, virtual reality and blockchain instilled anxiety for some, and optimism for others.

It’s a volatile environment; keeping up with the latest developments is only part of the challenge for travel executives. Understanding how these daily events impact the fabric of the broader travel ecosystem is another. Our objective at Skift Research is to decode and interpret those connections through deep analysis, constant conversations with the industry, and, increasingly, primary data collection on consumer and industry trends.

This is where our head is at when we think about the global travel ecosystem and our research publication schedule for 2017. Our primary objective for the year is to transform our knowledge services from a nice-to-have to a must-have for savvy travel executives and marketers.

Topic-By-Topic: Skift’s 2017 Research Canvas

Our subscription service is now in its it fourth year of publication. Subscribers have access to over 75 reports in our vault, ranging in topics from digital marketing strategy to competitive deep dives into travel’s largest publicly traded companies. Every two weeks we publish a new Research Report on a hot-button topic impacting travel industry decision makers.

This year we’re upping our game to bring you even more insights and nothing but the best when it comes to premium travel industry intelligence. Our investments in staff and primary data means that we can now confidently call ourselves a full-functioning market research company.

Here is what you can expect from us in 2017:

More Reports for Subscribers

Our reports help subscribers make good business decisions. Skift Research subscribers now have access to 75+ existing reports in addition to about 24 new reports that we publish on an annual basis. For each report we spend a minimum of 100+ hours of research and analysis.

More Consumer and Industry Data

2017 will be the first year that we can confidently call Skift a fully-fledged “research” organization. We’ve mastered the practice of trends reporting. Now we’re conducting our own original surveys and collecting data from our clickstream data partnerships. These efforts give us the power of foresight and a keen understanding of consumer and industry trends. Check out some of our most recent and pending surveys:

The 2017 Digital Transformation Survey
The 2017 Future of Work in Travel Survey
The 2016 Experiential Traveler Survey

Our proprietary surveys fuel our premium Research Reports. Our team also works with our in-house creative studio SkiftX to deliver vibrant and impactful content to help travel organizations build consensus within their audiences. Visit our Custom Insights page to learn more about the custom work that we do.

More Company Deep Dives

We launched our Google, Tripadvisor, and Expedia deep dives in 2015 and 2016 with very positive feedback from our subscribers, so we’ve decided to add even more research dedicated to analyzing travel’s biggest and most relevant companies. In these reports we analyze their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats – but also assess the big picture and how these players’ longer-term positioning impacts the broader travel ecosystem. In 2017, expect to see deep-dive reports on Expedia, Disney, Priceline, TripAdvisor, and a host of other publicly traded players in hospitality and aviation.

Stronger Focus on Europe

We are expanding our European market coverage in anticipation of our Skift Global Forum Europe in April. We will be digging into the European travel tech ecosystem and taking deep dives into the region’s biggest players. Expect to see much more hard-hitting analysis on trends impacting the region’s big players in 2017.
Tighter Focus on Technology

It seems like every year brings a new technological hurdle into the travel mix. The rise of mobile took most travel companies for a wild ride in recent years. Some of the key 2017 coverage areas will include marketing automation, artificial intelligence, digital payments, advancements in distribution, applications in big data, and social media.

Skift Analyst Sessions

In addition to our regular report publication schedule, our research team will also be conducting exclusive, subscriber-only strategy sessions that bring together experts from the industry to discuss a range of timely topics. These hour-long moderated discussions will bring out opinions from our seasoned bench of analysts and editors as well as guest speakers.

Throughout 2017 we will continue to hire more data analysts, financial analysts, designers, project managers and custom project specialists to fulfill our core research objective: To make the Skift Research subscription a must-have intelligence platform for travel industry decision-makers.

Discover our research vault

How Can Skift Help Us?

Daily Analysis
Premium Intelligence
Custom Research
Branded Content

Contact us at
[email protected]
to talk to us about our latest research initiatives. We would love to hear about your latest challenges and projects.