Sector Deep Dives

Technology

A Deep Dive Into Priceline’s Competitive Position in Travel 2017

Priceline dominates the online travel industry. It quietly goes about its business and continuously puts up strong results year after year, turning a once-beleaguered near-dot-com-bust into one of the most successful technology companies in the world.

September 2017

Business Travel

The State of Conferences and Events 2017

The meetings and events sector is evolving at a rapid pace. Pioneering events like South by Southwest and C2 are raising event attendees' expectations, putting pressure on organizers to design more engaging experiences at events of all shapes and sizes. Meanwhile, new types of event technology like artificial intelligence and personalization tools offer new opportunities (and challenges) for meeting planners. This report investigates the state of today's conference and event sector, and examines how organizers should look to evolve their own event strategies in response in the years ahead.

August 2017

Online Travel

A Deep Dive Into Ctrip and the China Online Travel Market 2017

As the Chinese economy has grown and opened up to the West, both domestic leisure and outbound travel have ramped significantly. At the same time, the country is still in the early stages of moving bookings from offline to online. A growing travel market and increased adoption of online bookings is a potent recipe for growth at Ctrip and the industry as a whole.

July 2017

Online Travel

A Deep Dive Into TripAdvisor’s Competitive Position In Travel 2017

TripAdvisor's bold platform-driven approach to online travel tells us a lot about where the market is headed.

June 2017

The State of Loyalty in Hospitality 2017

For today's hospitality brands, loyalty programs are as much about repeat customers as they are about controlling distribution costs. Often times that means strategy at the property level, rather then at the brand level.

May 2017

Distribution

2017 Outlook on Hotel Direct Booking

This report analyzes the state of hotel distribution with a focus on direct booking. Rather than taking the view that it’s a booking war, we believe the landscape is far more nuanced where hotels need to take a holistic approach with their distribution channels. Readers will gain insight from our interviews with over 20 executives across the hotel and online travel ecosystem along with the results from our survey of 370 hotels around the world, which was powered by Skift and Trivago.

May 2017

Marketing and Media

The State of Destination Marketing 2017

This report looks deep into the current state of destination marketing, with a particular focus on current and developing content marketing, digital advertising and data analytics strategies. Skift Research Annual Subscribers also gain access to our 2017 Digital Destinations Survey full results. We collected over 300 responses from destination marketing organizations worldwide to assess budget, spend on marketing, reported return on investment on advertising platforms, and other metrics. The data sheet is a downloadable Excel file a full breakout of results from this 35 question survey (Annual Subscribers only).

April 2017

Online Travel

European Venture Investment Trends in the Travel Industry 2017

Europe has traditionally been a very active player in travel. Yet lack of funding, market fragmentation and other factors have held it back from producing global corporations. Nevertheless, Europe is finally warming up to the American-style, risk big and risk early venture investment culture that has given birth to so many tech megabrands out of Silicon Valley.

March 2017

A Deep Dive Into Facebook’s Impact on Travel

Facebook has transformed itself from a social media site into a powerful digital media platform that is now spreading its footprint across the travel industry. Facebook’s ability to dynamically retarget consumers combined with the ads being visual, aspirational, cost-effective, and largely in-app for Facebook’s massive and highly-engaged user base will make the platform an increasingly important tool for the travel industry.

February 2017

The State of the Global Vacation Rental Market 2017

Airbnb popularized a new type of rental product - i.e. the primary-residence urban rental, but now professionally managed properties are coming online with fury. Looking forward ten years, the landscape will likely look quite different. Consolidation is in the air; vacation rentals have gone mainstream with the consumer but inventory remains fragmented. Property managers, marketplaces, SaaS platforms and a host of other add-on services are evolving their strategies to capture greater scale and efficiencies.

February 2017

State of Tours and Activities Tech 2017

The tours and activities segment is a two-sided race, with the big online aggregators clamoring to bring both suppliers and travelers into the digital age. The category has a relatively short booking window compared to accommodations and flights, leaving little room to use the latest in digital marketing and retargeting tech. Average booking values are also significantly lower than other categories. Yet, despite the challenges, the opportunities remain significant; the category is very much the next (if not final) frontier in online travel.

January 2017

A Deep Dive Into Disney’s Competitive Position In Travel

Disney’s success with its theme parks, hotels and cruise products is directly attributable to a highly-sophisticated marketing program that leverages cross-monetization of its different media businesses. It’s a case study for travel and hospitality companies on how to think and look outside of travel, when building globally successful businesses and brands.

January 2017