Seth Borko

Head of Research @skift @skiftresearch

[Seth Borko @SethBorko]

Ok, @ExpediaGroup calls it "Phenomena Tourism" but 4/10 involve watching birds. Welcome to the dark side, Expedia -- birding is cool! 😀🦉

https://t.co/TAcuXPTFHB

[Seth Borko @SethBorko]

@Jamie_Lane Congrats, Jamie!

[Rafat Ali, Media Operator & Dad @rafat]

This @skift team, now closing on 100, just pulled off what I would bet is amongst the best business conferences anywhere, three days of absolute magic at Skift Global Forum in NYC. So proud of our team and what we enable in the world of travel.

[Seth Borko @SethBorko]

Roll Tide!

[Nick Perkins @NickyPerkss]

Nick Saban has a new commercial with VRBO. it’s as hilarious as you would expect it to be

[Seth Borko @SethBorko]

I've long been a fan of Selina. Glad to see they have found a new home with Collective Hospitality. An exclusive scoop by @sean_oneill!

https://t.co/xZuVaCQzDs

[Seth Borko @SethBorko]

So proud of the enormous effort that the @skift Research team put into our State of Travel 2024. Not only in this is our largest report of the year -- it's also FREE.

The goal I had in mind while we were building this was to have a chart for every topic in the travel industry. That might be impossible but with 350+ charts we came damn close!

Download your copy of the report here: https://t.co/TKnKZTaAVW

Let me know what you think, I'd love your feedback.

[Dennis Schaal @denschaal]

Fascinating. Travel's shifting center of gravity over the years. @Skift's State of Travel 2024 https://t.co/aAGtGU01Nl

[Joumanna Nasr Bercetche @JoumannaTV]

Markets today
(I had to...!)

[𝚂𝚎𝚊𝚗 𝙾'𝙽𝚎𝚒𝚕𝚕 @sean_oneill]

Refundable hotel reservations are always a good idea.

[Seth Borko @SethBorko]

@Hyatt is on a roll! It has inked a partnership with @undercanvas and is reported to be in talks with @StandardHotels. What's going on here? Loyalty!

Hyatt has the smallest loyalty program relative to its peers. To grow its loyalty, Hyatt needs to grow its hotel network. That's exactly what it's been doing with these M&A deals and guess what - it's worked. World of Hyatt has seen the fastest growth of any major hotel loyalty plan since 2019.

Loyalty is a great way to boost hotel direct bookings, but keep that M&A price tag in mind the next time someone tells you it's a free channel.

[Rafat Ali, Media Operator & Dad @rafat]

Tomorrow is @skift’s 12th anniversary, the biggest reason for our survival & success is the unsung part of it: We were all in, we showed up every day, with every ounce of energy we had and kept producing quality, over and over again. Consistency of effort, above all else.

[Jack Yeo @jackryeo]

A picture of contrasting attitudes to the monarchy. #Paris2024 #OpeningCeremony

[Seth Borko @SethBorko]

This was a wow story for me! I've found digging into travel distribution to be one of the most interesting areas of travel to research. Yet, I often see eyes glaze over when the conversation turns to the nuance of third-party sales plumbing and the dreaded new distribution capability (NDC).

My newest retort -- to point to this great story from @denschaal about how @AmericanAir might take a $1.5B revenue hit from sales channel backlash. Now we can put a dollar value on why it pays to be passionately nerdy about the details of your industry :)

One more quick thought on the substance of this article. Despite the hit AA has taken and the misteps it made along the way, this was a bold decision that was probably broadly in the right direction. But the devil is in the details and even if NDC is the future, you can't piss off your corporate customers and resellers in the present.

[Dennis Schaal @denschaal]

American Airlines Seeks to Repair Travel Agency Ties After Direct Bookings Strategy https://t.co/yFVyVd081h via @Skift

[Seth Borko @SethBorko]

@DannyMMorris Had no idea about this connection until I read this really interesting article from Tablet. Good long read: https://t.co/6mEQqDZZsF

[Seth Borko @SethBorko]

I used to joke about how everyone has a podcast nowadays... and then it happened to me!

If you haven't had a chance to check out the revamped @skift Travel Podcast with Sarah and Seth, may I humbly suggest now would be a great time to check it out. We are in the middle of a three part series on what the Paris Olympics mean for travel.

Make sure you tune in to what should be an amazing opening ceremony down the Seine river. And then follow that up with what Ben Smith, the CEO of @AirFranceKLM, has to say about the Olympics and the future of one of Europe's largest airlines.

https://t.co/n86HXEcQ3a

[Seth Borko @SethBorko]

@denschaal Basic economy has taken a toll. More competition from legacy carriers on leisure routes across all fare classes

But even so there is a need to look inward. Cost control and operrational performance at LCCs has slipped vs 2019

[Seth Borko @SethBorko]

This chart shows one of the biggest mysteries in aviation today: where have the budget airlines' profits gone? Activist investor Elliott Management has just made a multi-billion dollar bet on this very question.

Low-cost and ultra low-cost airlines had industry leading profit margins before the pandemic. But today, even with flight demand at all-time highs, these carriers are struggling to turn a profit. Is bad consumer karma coming back to bite the budget airlines? Are legacy airlines competing better for leisure consumers? Just a spot of bad luck because of Boeing and supplier issues? Or plain old-fashioned executive hubris and mis-management?

What do you think the problem is, and most importantly, is this a temporary hiccup or a new paradigm for U.S. airlines?

[Seth Borko @SethBorko]

This is not the full picture of Portugal's tourism story. Outside of digital nomads PT is seeing record visitation and search interest; is on track for ~1.5M more tourists arrivals than in 2019.

In both charts you can clearly see the inflection point in 2016 where 🇵🇹 becomes the next "hot" destination and takes off.

Maybe traveler growth is slowing but not a collapse

[@levelsio @levelsio]

The rise and fall of 🇵🇹 Lisbon (2020-2024)

Lisbon arrivals have now returned to the levels of 4 years ago, just before it started to explode and suddenly get popular with foreigners and tourists alike

Why? The government stopped the NHR program (to attract foreigners to Portugal) in January 2024, many foreigners dispersed over other cities than Lisbon, and even more foreigners just left the country

It might be a good thing because Lisbon simply never had the capacity or infrastructure or desire to deal with it

But it's also a massive wasted opportunity: if Lisbon did have the capacity (or made it easy to build more homes and start businesses), it could have EASILY been the European Silicon Valley, with billions of dollars flowing into it and foreigners + locals starting companies that would have benefited the Portuguese with tax income and millions of jobs created

It has a high quality of life, amazing climate, near the beach, very similar to California. Lisbon even has a cloen of the 🌁 Golden Gate bridge, and a 🚡 tram like SF!

Portugal has over 700,000 vacant houses, of which 150,000 in Lisbon, which could have been used to house all the people. Instead the government ignored the problem and Portuguese locals started complaining about rising rents and made foreigners the scapegoat! This forced the government to stop attracting foreigners in January 2024.

I'm in 🇺🇸 Austin, TX now and it's VERY similar to Lisbon in how it suddenly got popular during 2020 COVID and got massive migration to it, but if I ask locals about it, they generally love it:

They say there's much more stuff to do here, more job opportunities, they're richer now, and it's more fun to live here than when they grew up here

And this is because almost overnight Austin became a tech hub with companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, Dell, Oracle, IBM, Nvidia, AMD, Wise, and of course Tesla and SpaceX opening up offices here, most of them after 2020!

It might still happen in Lisbon though, but for now the foreigners seem to be leaving elsewhere, and they're taking their billions of dollars/euros with them

Many Portuguese will be glad that it's over, but long term it's questionable what it does to the economy and what an opportunity has been wasted here

https://t.co/Ptz3OxXfQH

[Sheel Mohnot @pitdesi]

Wowwwww
Everyone in fintech has been saying that the Bilt credit card ($3.1B valuation) is too good to be true; How can you get cash back on rent payments?

Turns out they have an unsustainable deal with Wells that is losing the bank hundreds of $millions. Wells made a number of incorrect assumptions in their underwriting.

They assumed that it would be a top of wallet card for renters who carry balances. Instead, a lot of savvy consumers (myself included) use the bank for the minimum required to collect the rental points.

Wells assumed that 65% of card-purchase volume would be non-rent, generating interchange-fee revenue.
The reality is inverted... most of the volume is rent payments on which they don't earn much.

Wells also assumed that 50-75% of the balances would be revolving, earning them interest. The reality is they mostly have cardholders like me who don't carry a balance - only 15-25% are revolving.

Wells is paying 0.8% to Bilt on rent payments, even though the bank doesn't get interchange on them. Wells has a massive mortgage business and thought that they'd be able to cross-sell mortgages when the renters become homeowners but that hasn't panned out.

Kudos to Bilt for negotiating a killer contract that doesn't expire until 2029... but I wonder what the future looks like after that. Wells says they won't renew it as-is.

In the meantime - it's a great card... pay your rent via the card and make 5 other transactions a month to get 1% back on your rent.