Duff on Hospitality Law

This week’s Update features a number of stories on short-term rentals, as one established vacation rental platform continues to gain relevance in traditional hotel room distribution while an established travel application looks to diversify into short term rentals. Enjoy.

New Platform Seeks to Capitalize on Travelers’ Growing Environmental Concerns
(“New online travel agency, Copolo, awarded the 2021 Travel & Hospitality Corporate Innovation Award by Plug and Play,” January 27, 2022 via PRWeb)
H.I.S. Group has been awarded Plug and Play’s 2021 Travel & Hospitality Corporate Innovation Award for its recently launched sustainability focused online booking platform, Copolo.com. Through its partnership with CHOOSE, Copolo allows travelers booking on its site to offset the carbon emissions produced by their travels. Given travelers’ growing concerns regarding the environmental impact of travel (as documented by nearly all recent traveler surveys and annual travel industry predictions), it cannot be long before platforms like Copolo (or at least the benefits that Copolo offers) become more mainstream. 

This week’s Update begins with an interesting story detailing how evolving consumer trends of the past few years (e.g., sustainability) are making their way into travel and online travel in particular. Enjoy.

Travelport Continues Improvements to Travelport Plus
(“Travelport Launches Update to Unified Travelport Plus Platform,” January 19, 2022 via Business Travel News)
Launched last year by Travelport as the ultimate successor to its other global distributions system (GDS) platforms (Apollo, Galileo and Worldspan), Travelport Plus continues to improve. Last week, Travelport launched its latest iteration of the platform, an iteration that leverages the platform’s growing access to NDC (New Distribution Capability) content from many of the major airlines and improved connectivity with Hilton as well as adding its new traveler facing portal, Trip Manager.

Our first Update of 2022 includes a number of stories on the evolving marketing tactics of both hotels and their distribution partners. Enjoy.

Better Days Ahead? Expedia Certainly Thinks So
(“Online travel giants' marketing spend continues to head north,” January 10, 2022 via Phocus Wire)
(“VIDEO: How hotel marketing tactics are shifting,” January 12, 2022 via Phocus Wire)
Last week, two stories detail the major OTAs’ apparent spending spree on sales and marketing. What’s driving this growth? General optimism over the anticipated return of the travel industry? Renewed efforts to defend or capture critical market share in an increasingly competitive online market? Dogged determination to quash hoteliers’ seemingly successful direct booking efforts – particularly over the past 18 months? Maybe a little of all three? According to a report issued last week by PhocusWire, most of the major online booking channels reported huge year-over-year increases in their third quarter sales and marketing spend. Airbnb increased its third quarter year-over-year spend by 156 percent to a measly $291 million. Expedia Group increased its third quarter spend year-over-year by 150 percent to a whopping $1.3 billion and confirmed plans late last week to run Superbowl ads for both Expedia.com and Vrbo (the first such ads by Expedia in years). Booking Holdings increased its year-over-year spend by nearly 100 percent to a total of $1.38 billion. Bucking this trend was China’s Trip.com, whose year-over-year increase of 12 percent was reported to be in response to continued uncertainty over the pandemic.

Happy New Year...Enjoy. (insert intro)

Apple Seeks to Move Forward with Controversial Privacy Requirements | January 2021 
(“Apple to start policing privacy update for app developers' ad tracking,” January 18, 2021 via MLEX Insight) (subscription may be required)
Last fall, we featured a story detailing Apple’s plans to update many of its privacy requirements as part of its release of its newest operating system (iOS 14). Among other things, the new requirements would require applications to obtain users’ express consent (via pop-up messaging) to applications tracking their online activities. Responding to industry concerns over the new requirements and their likely effect on personalized online advertising, Apple agreed to delay rollout of the new privacy requirements until early 2021. Early 2021 is here, and Apple has announced plans to proceed with the rollout this spring. The approaching requirement has now prompted online advertiser industry groups in France to file claims with the French antitrust authority to enjoin the rollout alleging that Apple’s changes are not motivated by a desire to better protect its users’ privacy (as claimed by Apple), but instead a desire to assert even more control over access and use of its platform. More information is sure to come.     

Happy holidays from snowy Seattle... As you can see from the stories we’ve included below, it was a very quiet week in online travel. Enjoy.

Is Google a Bigger Threat Than Ever? 
(“Rise of Google Represents Ongoing Threat to OTAs,” December 23, 2021 via Hotel Management Network - Top Stories)
With Google’s 2020 revenues 15 times the combined 2020 revenues of Booking and Expedia and Google’s 2021 launch of free hotel booking links, some think a shift in the balance of power between online travel agencies (OTAs) and the search engine is inevitable.

With the holidays rapidly approaching and the yearend only one week away, it is no surprise that the last week was fairly quiet. The one notable exception, however, was Trip.com, which released its financials on Thursday, December 16.   

Trip.com Grows European Market Share with Superior Technology
(“Trip.com Bolsters Flight Search Engine to Boost European Bookings,” December 17, 2021 via Skift) (subscription may be required)
Leveraging its increasingly superior technology platform (particularly around flight search), Chinese platform Trip.com is making huge strides in growing its European market share. Not only is Trip.com’s internally developed flight search engine better at delivering users appropriate fares and itineraries, but the systems’ ability to offer ancillary products and services is attracting the attention of European airlines. (Trip.com owns Travelfusion, one of a handful of technology vendors that aggregate airline NDC content for onward distribution.) Trip.com also plans to be one of the first online booking platforms to roll out Hopper’s price freeze tool (allowing users to pay to freeze fares up to 14 days) to users in North American and Europe as part of a previously announced deal.

Despite what the calendar might say, winter has definitely arrived in the Pacific Northwest. This week’s Update features a variety of stories, including a story or two on online travel agencies (OTAs), and stories on Vacasa’s public debut and Amex GBT’s planned public debut. Tis’ the SPAC season. I hope you enjoy.

Agoda Debuts Additional New Offerings
(“Agoda launches Beds Network to help hotels distribute wholesale rates,” December 9, 2021 via Phocus Wire)
Last week, we included a story detailing the launch of several new Agoda products. Last week, Agoda launched yet another new product, Beds Network, which represents Agoda’s formal entry into wholesale distribution. The Network will leverage Booking Holdings’ existing affiliate network to allow participating suppliers to distribute rates and inventory on a wholesale or B2B basis. According to the announcement, suppliers who participate in the program will have complete control (fully yieldable) over the rate and inventory offered through the solution (which if true, would be quite a departure from competitors’ similar wholesale distribution offerings). Existing Agoda suppliers won’t need to enter into new, or amend existing, contracts to participate. Agoda’s plans call for the Network to be rolled out initially in Asia, the Middle East and Europe, with other markets added throughout 2022.

This week’s Update features stories about a number of emerging corporate travel startups, all of which expect, in one way or another, to take advantage of expected changes in the post-COVID corporate travel industry. Is it just me or is corporate travel starting to get really crowded?

Life House Raises an Additional $60 Million
(“Kayak-Backed Hotel Startup Life House Raises New Funding at $250 Million Valuation,” December 2, 2021 via Bloomberg – News) (subscription may be required)
Over the past year or two, we’ve featured a number of stories on New York-based Life House Hotels, including its operation of the Kayak Miami Beach in partnership with meta search platform, Kayak. Kayak appears to be interested in expanding that relationship as it joins other investors in this latest Life House financing round. The round values Life House, which as of the end of November, held 51 hotel management contracts, at approximately $250 million.

For those of you celebrating Thanksgiving this week, happy holidays. This week’s Update features a wide variety of stories, including PhocusWire’s annual list of the 25 hot travel startups. Enjoy.

Expedia Partner Solutions Offers Carbon Neutral Hotel Stays
(“Expedia and Key Travel create ‘carbon neutral’ hotel stays,” November 18, 2021 via Travel Weekly (UK) – News)
Expedia Partner Solutions (EPS) and Key Travel are collaborating to offer travelers the opportunity to offset the carbon emissions associated with their stay through the purchase of carbon offsets. With each stay booked through EPS, EPS and Key Travel will pay the amount of the carbon offset to nonprofit, Cool Effects, which will then invest the funds in verified carbon reduction projects around the world.

We begin this week’s Update with the announced acquisition of Getaroom by Booking Holdings. Enjoy.

Booking Holdings to Acquire Getaroom
(“Booking Holdings to Acquire Getaroom for $1.2 Billion,” November 12, 2021 via Phocus Wire)
On Friday (November 12), Booking Holdings announced one of its largest acquisitions in some time – the $1.2 billion purchase of B2B platform, Getaroom. At closing, Getaroom will join Priceline’s strategic partnerships team, Priceline Partner Network, which, Priceline claims, will result in new and improved B2B distribution opportunities for its hotel suppliers.