Digital. Season 2, Episode 25. The Top 10 Travel News Stories of the Week: Day In, Day Out

Digital. The Top 10 Travel News Stories of the Week: Day In, Day Out

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🦠 According to a report by STR and AirDNA, short-term rentals have maintained higher performance levels than hotels since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

🦠 According to Ralph Hollister, Travel & Tourism Analyst at GlobalData, MICE tourism may never fully recover from COVID-19: “MICE events are now taking place online, without the need for companies operating in the tourism sector. This is a worrying trend for all industries involved in travel and tourism — the longer restrictions and guidelines last around MICE tourism, while other national economies start to pick up, the more companies, attendees and event organizers may start to become accustomed to hosting and attending MICE events online, whilst appreciating the unseen benefits they bring.”

🦠 Etihad Airways is requiring all customers traveling to/from Abu Dhabi to present negative COVID-19 tests before flying.

🦠 Britain did put Spain back on its unsafe travel list as the virus rebounds.

📈 RMS company, Atomize, released version 2.0. You can watch its CEO, Alexander Edström, talking about it in this video.

📱 Facebook is about to launch “Instagram Reels” in August. The feature mimics TikTok and lets users create and share 15-second video clips with a vast music catalog. Meanwhile, discussions about banning TikTok in the US still go on…

📱130 Twitter accounts, including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates were hacked. FBI is investigating the incident.

🦉 Tripadvisor has sold eight brands to Boston-based digital marketing company, Hopjump. Amongst brands involved, there are smartertravel.com, oyster.com, airfarewatchdog.com, and bookingbuddy.com.

🅰️ Amazon is being investigated for improperly using the data collected on third-party sellers in order to create its own competing products and for the huge (and possibly illegal) competitive advantage of AWS. CEO, Jeff Bezos, agreed to testify in front of the Congress.

🤖 Sabre partnered with French AI-based chat platform, Mindsay, to automate customer service interactions. According to Sabre, this integration will allow travel companies to resolve up to 70% of customers’ requests automatically.