Travel 360°

Two online travel rivals are now selling side by side on American Express Travel. Airbnb on Thursday became the exclusive vacation rental partner for Amex Travel, putting more than 1 million listings in a new Homes tab on AmexTravel.com and the Amex Travel app.

Skift tracked 57 travel funding rounds in Q3 2026, down from 75 in Q2 and 110 in Q1. AI-native rounds fell to 12 from 25, and their share of all rounds dropped to 21% from 33%. Q3 investment totaled $1.38 billion, but a single $1 billion round for Adani Airports carried it. Excluding that deal, funding fell 25% from Q2 and 72% from Q1.

Sign into the PS private terminal in Los Angeles and someone on the team will quickly ask if you'd like the same thing you had last time — they always remember. Surprisingly few hotels manage that level of recall, and even fewer members' clubs of late. The brand is super-serving a difficult clientele in an exceptionally complicated business, so I wanted to hear from Amina Belouizdad Porter, PS's CEO, how the company thinks about what it has built. She came to PS from private equity, and before that hotel development, and she talks about the business with an investor's discipline and an operator's affection.

Hotel operators in the UAE are relying on travelers from short-haul markets such as India, China and Russia to support their recovery from the worst impacts of the U. S.-Iran war, as higher airfares continue to keep away some long-haul guests. “We’re targeting short-haul markets like India, China, and Russia, that are a five- to six-hour flight away,” said Saurabh Tiwari, vice president for the Middle East, Maldives and Sri Lanka at IHCL, which operates the Taj brand. “Since jet fuel prices are more expensive than before, it is hard to expect people to come from long-haul markets like the Americas or Australia. Attracting visitors from long-haul [markets] is going to be wishful thinking.”

This sponsored content was created in collaboration with a Skift partner. A traveler lands in a new country and reaches for a phone. The boarding pass, hotel address, ride-hailing app, maps, payment tools, and messages all live there, and every one of them assumes a working connection.

The confirmation email used to mark the end of the sale. For many travelers, it now marks the start of a second round of shopping, and most hotels are not set up to compete in it. New research from Skift and McKinsey & Company finds that 41% of U. S. travelers keep checking prices on their trip after they’ve booked, and 29% keep looking at other options in case something more desirable becomes available.

Photo Credit: The Kuala Lumpur skyline featuring the Petronas Twin Towers, a popular tourist attraction. Freepik / lifeforstock Malaysia’s inbound tour operators are reporting November cancellations, Indonesia has logged more than 2,600 disrupted domestic flights, and sightseeing itineraries in Singapore are being cut short as haze from Indonesian forest and peatland fires settles over the region ahead of year-end travel.

Extreme heat is estimated to have caused more than 50,000 excess heat deaths in European towns and cities during summer 2026, according to two new peer-reviewed studies due to be published in Nature Health — and climate change is largely to blame. Popular tourist cities faced criticism this summer for their lack of shaded spaces and air conditioning (AC), with the latter emerging as a sort of culture war between climate action and comfort. But new analysis by Imperial College London and by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine shows heat is an increasingly important safety issue.

Photo Credit: In Mont Ventoux in Provence, southern France, Château de Mazan is a hotel that belongs to Accor's network. Accor Accor is bracing for a bumpy end to the year because of uncertainty in two of its key markets.

After more than 165 years, New York City’s horse-drawn carriage industry is coming to an end. A bill passed by the New York City Council Thursday will phase out the horse-drawn cab industry by mid-2028. The rides have long been promoted to tourists, with a longtime carriage driver and stable manager calling it “one of the most iconic things to do” in the city.

American Airlines CEO Robert Isom said Thursday he believed the carrier could be profitable in 2027 even as it is battered by soaring jet fuel costs. “We think we can be profitable next year,” he said during a call with analysts. “And that's driven by what we've seen this year. We've had fuel expenses now grow $7 billion over the course of the year. But for that, we'd be solidly profitable.”

Wyndham has spent years telling Wall Street that its guests are construction crews, truck drivers, and families driving to the beach. On Thursday, CEO Geoff Ballotti added a new category: AI agents that book on a traveler’s behalf. "We now have a new type of guest, and these are our new autonomous agents, who we are built to service," Ballotti told analysts on the company's third-quarter earnings call.

UK-headquartered hotel group IHG said Thursday it is taking market share from rivals, with conversions now accounting for around half of its U. S. openings and 60% of signings, and most of these coming from other branded hotels rather than independents. “Most of them are coming from other brands in the U. S. and around the world,” said CEO Elie Maalouf on the third-quarter trading update. “You can call it a flight to quality in these times, but we think we’re benefiting from it.”

Photo Credit: GetYourGuide's speedboat tour operating from Dubai's marina. GetYourGuide Houthi strikes on Saudi Arabia are making inbound travelers more hesitant about the rest of the Gulf. Hotels and tour operators in the UAE and Oman report softer forward bookings and more safety questions, though the hard data so far shows a much smaller hit than in Saudi Arabia.

Oyo parent Prism has cut its planned IPO nearly in half, to INR 33.5 billion ($353 million) from INR 66.5 billion ($702 million). That means the offering will now retire about half as much debt as originally planned. Prism disclosed the change Thursday in an addendum to its updated draft red herring prospectus. A person familiar with the matter told Skift that Prism does not need to raise as much as it once expected. “With cash generation remaining strong and the balance sheet improving, the funding requirement has come down,” the person said. “The objective is to raise what the business needs while keeping the capital structure efficient.”

Photo Credit: IHCL opened Bangaram Island Lakshadweep - IHCL SeleQtions during the first quarter of 2026 financial year. IHCL SeleQtions Taj-owner Indian Hotels Company (IHCL) expects to pass its 700-hotel target for 2030 by March next year. The company said it will announce a higher goal next month.

This sponsored content was created in collaboration with a Skift partner. AI is forcing travel companies to make difficult choices about technology and customer relationships. Meanwhile, the industry’s commercial priorities are becoming harder to reconcile. Hospitality brands are pursuing premium demand while facing questions about affordability, travel companies are experimenting with new revenue models, and growing uncertainty is exposing weaknesses in the industry’s response to disruption.

American Express and Airbnb on Thursday launched an exclusive partnership that lets U. S. card members search more than one million Airbnb listings from a new Homes tab on AmexTravel.com and in the Amex Travel App, and earn up to 5X membership rewards points on prepaid stays. This is Airbnb’s most integrated loyalty partnership to date, and largest step toward becoming a lodging supplier. The tie-up goes further than the airline loyalty deals Airbnb has run for a decade with Qantas, Delta and British Airways, which mostly amount to a tracked link that sends members to Airbnb.com.

American Airlines once again changed its profit outlook for 2026, forecasting a loss for the year, as fuel costs soar. The carrier is anticipating earnings per share in 2026 to range between a loss of $1.60 and a loss of $1. In July, American had also cut its profit outlook, but was expecting earnings per share at that time to be between a loss of 65 cents and a profit of 65 cents. Earlier in the year, American was forecasting it would roughly break even.

Photo Credit: Meta is working out the business model for its Muse AI agent — and travel is one of its priorities.  Courtesy of Meta On Meta's third-quarter earnings call Wednesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg spotlighted travel's significance for the Muse AI agent, and he made it clear that he's weighing business models to tap into that value — potentially across the Meta ecosystem.

Photo Credit: A room at the Yotel Kuala Lumpur City Centre that's expected to open early next year. Yotel Yotel is developing new hotel formats as it aims to grow from about 24 properties to 100 by 2031, with a more upscale take on its compact rooms and a smaller city-center hotel modeled on its airport-focused YotelAir brand. Asia is a growing priority.

Southwest Airlines is cutting its profit outlook for 2026 as it anticipates paying as much as $4.55 a gallon for jet fuel in the fourth quarter. The carrier now expects adjusted earnings per share this year to range between $2.60 and $2.85. Previously, Southwest forecasted adjusted earnings of $4 and had held off on changing guidance for much of the year due to the volatility of fuel prices.

United Airlines has pushed back its target for recovering 100% of higher fuel costs through ticket prices, after another sharp increase in jet fuel left the carrier unable to keep pace with its escalating expenses. The airline recovered 72% of its additional fuel costs in the third quarter, up from roughly 50% in the second but short of the 80% to 90% it guided over the summer. It now expects a similar rate in the current fourth quarter, abandoning its earlier target of recovering 100% of the increase by the end of 2026.

Hilton and Scandic Hotels Group announced Monday a multi-year development agreement covering Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland, with the first confirmed project a 284-room Hilton Hotels & Resorts property at Scanport Copenhagen Airport, scheduled to open in 2029. For now, it is a framework rather than a pipeline. Beyond Copenhagen, no hotels have been named. The companies said further projects will be confirmed as opportunities arise.

Airbnb is limiting what hosts can ask of guests at checkout. In a Tuesday email titled “Important Changes to House Rules,” the company told hosts that starting November 20, they can choose from seven standard house rules and are “generally not allowed” to ask guests to wash dishes, strip beds, or take out the garbage. It is the first time Airbnb has published a house rules policy that spells out which host requests are reasonable and which aren’t.