Sarah · Sep 02, 2026 · 3 min read
Airbnb has appointed Pepijn Rijvers, formerly Tripadvisor Group's CBO and a 12-year Booking.com veteran, as chief business officer, making him the third senior Booking.com alumnus to join in recent months.
Expedia Group announced 12 partner-facing products across Vrbo and its Escapia property management software, including a global rollout of pay-per-booked-night Sponsored Listings and a rebuilt Escapia reservation grid.
A Hotels.com survey found 37% of American workers travel more for business than before the pandemic, with an average reported hotel budget of $236 per night and free breakfast the most valued benefit.
Booking.com research finds nine in ten US travelers reject lowest-price logic, while 69% have used installment or buy-now-pay-later products to fund a trip and 24% would skip travel without them.
Travelers in the US can now complete a hotel reservation without leaving Google Search. Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com, Priceline and Trip.com are among the launch partners, alongside five hotel chains.
Airbnb's nonprofit arm has locked in two Florida response partnerships ahead of peak hurricane season, aiming to mobilise free emergency housing in Miami-Dade within 24 hours of a disaster.
Rakuten Travel's B2B arm reports global GTV up 78.5% year-over-year in Q2 2026, with two-thirds of summer volume now booked outside the Tokyo–Kyoto–Osaka "Golden Route" and premium hotel bookings up 88%.
Airbnb is running a free tailgate stunt in Melbourne around Australia's first NFL regular season game, and buried in the announcement is the number that matters to operators: US search interest for 8 to 14 September is up more than 250% year on year.
Expedia Group has removed eight senior product and technology leaders, including an SVP, in a reorganization the company attributes to AI. Partner-facing systems sit inside the teams being reshuffled.
Flight attendants have objected in bankruptcy court to Google's $10 million purchase of Spirit Airlines' internal data, while analysts say the records could teach Google how airline pricing and disruption handling actually work.
Airbnb's fall trends release contains a length-of-stay signal operators can act on: weekend getaways are displacing longer vacations, and demand is concentrating in small, non-metro markets.
Google has won a bankruptcy auction for roughly 100 million emails and 500 million Teams chats from the collapsed carrier. No passenger data is included, but the timing says something about where Google's travel AI is heading.