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More tourists on the move from vacation hubs

🏖️ Oct 24, 2024 - Travelers are shifting towards "detour destinations" like Reims, Brescia, and Waikato, as they embrace JOMO over FOMO. Expedia and Booking.com spot trends towards places like Trieste, Houston, and Sanya, anticipated to rise in 2025. Over 50% of those polled by Booking.com seek to avoid crowded tourist spots, yet prefer accessible locations, like Reims nearly 150km from Paris and Brescia an hour and a half from Milan.
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US travel industry ad spending 2024

🏖️ Oct 24, 2024, eMarketer reports that the travel industry's digital ad spending growth is projected to slow to 8.9% after a three-year surge post-2020. The industry, while the smallest among nine advertising verticals, plays a significant role in search advertising. A cyclical upturn in spending is anticipated in 2026.
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Hotel direct booking rates are stabilizing, with mobile gaining market share

📱 Direct bookings hit above pre-pandemic levels by 2024, with a shift towards mobile, now comprising 42% of online revenue. H2c's report set for October 30 release details this trend. Surveying 88 hotel chains with 3,885 hotels and 578,653 rooms, the study finds a sustainable growth trajectory from 19% in 2019 to 21% in 2023, and highlights AI's growing importance in personalization and yield management.
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Priceline’s travel trends for 2025

🌍 On Oct 24, 2024, Priceline released its 2025 Trend Report, predicting travel trends such as Awayborhoods for local living by young travelers, digital detox Flocking by Gen Z, Star Trekking to stargazing sites post-2024 eclipse, popularity in racket sports, Gap days for life experiences, Running the world through local clubs, Townsizing to small towns, and GetHerAway for mothers' self-care. Details at Priceline.
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Hilton forecasts growth in corporate transient demand through 2025

🏦 Hilton's business transient RevPAR grew 2% year-over-year in Q3, with total RevPAR up 1.4%, missing the 2-3% goal due to various issues. On Oct 24, 2024, CEO Christopher Nassetta highlighted a 5% rise in group RevPAR. He expects business demand in 2025 to surpass 2019 levels, predicting a low single-digit increase, more than 1%, with this year's growth between 2-2.5%. Hilton sees ongoing strength and resilience in the economy.
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Introducing computer use, a new Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Claude 3.5 Haiku

💻 Anthropic introduces upgraded Claude 3.5 Sonnet and new Claude 3.5 Haiku, enhancing coding capabilities and offering computer use in public beta. Claude 3.5 Sonnet improves SWE-bench Verified coding performance from 33.4% to 49.0%, and TAU-bench performance in the retail domain from 62.6% to 69.2%, and in the airline domain from 36.0% to 46.0%. Claude 3.5 Haiku surpasses Claude 3 Opus, scoring 40.6% on SWE-bench Verified. The computer use feature enables Claude to perform complex tasks, with the public API now available on Anthropic API, Amazon Bedrock, and Google Cloud’s Vertex AI. Companies like Asana, Canva, and DoorDash are already utilizing these capabilities. Claude 3.5 Sonnet's API is available for all users, and Claude 3.5 Haiku will be released later this month.
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Breaking free from OTAs with paid search

💸 On Oct 23, 2024, hotels face the challenge of competing with OTAs which often claim up to 18-23% of hotel revenue in booking commissions. To counter this, hotels can engage potential guests 4-10 weeks prior to booking, during their online research phase. Advertisement delays increase OTA bookings, as they run year-round campaigns and have strong cross-selling abilities. Tracking overall brand.com traffic, rather than short-term revenue, is advised for measuring ads' success due to typical 30-day tracking tool limitations.
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Business travelers don’t prioritize sustainability

🌱 On Oct 23, 2024, BCD Travel reported that only 4% of business travelers consider sustainability when booking flights, with 71% prioritizing arrival/departure times or flight duration, and 51% prioritizing cost. Though companies prioritize sustainability, 66% of respondents prefer direct flights and 47% travel light to lessen their carbon footprint. Despite sustainability being a low priority for travelers, travel managers can nudge towards greener practices.
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