I Travel With This Inflatable Rubber-Duckie Tub - New York Magazine

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.