Innovation

🚢 Cruise Plus, a Dnata specialist brand, has expanded its offerings with five new cruise lines: Aqua Expeditions, American Cruise Lines, Hapag-Lloyd Cruises, Pandaw Cruises, and Amadeus River Cruises, reaching 40 partners. These additions encompass river, small-ship, luxury, and expedition cruises in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. American Cruise Lines features paddle-wheelers on the Mississippi, while Aqua Expeditions offers Amazon and Mekong river cruises. Hapag-Lloyd specializes in luxury and expedition trips, and Amadeus sails major European rivers.

🗺 Female solo travel has seen an 800% increase in searches, with 60% of WeRoad travelers now being women. As of Mar 25, 2025, the travel industry has evolved, offering women-only accommodations, guided tours, and online safety resources. Influencers like Kyra-Mae Turner boost the movement through social media. Despite the rise in solo travel, common sense and safety practices are still crucial for female travelers.

📊 At the 30th anniversary MURTEC 2025, Hospitality Technology interviewed Niko Papademetriou, Co-Founder and SVP of Qu. They discussed AI, data, and restaurant industry challenges. Qu, with its slogan "beyond POS," focuses on unified commerce for mid-market and enterprise restaurant brands, enhancing fast casual and quick-service chains. Key discussions included restaurant challenges (50s), benefits of a unified data platform (2:20), system integration (2:30), implementation (4:00), and a case study on Golden Corral (4:55).

💻 TrustYou's Customer Experience platform is a product of their restructured Product & Engineering organization, aligning with innovative, fast-paced approaches. The "Temporary Team" (TTeam) concept, a major change in recent years, involves limited-lifetime, cross-functional teams with a clear purpose, capable of disbanding after a few weeks once their goal is met. TTeams differ from long-lived teams, which focus on local changes, long-term technology strategy, and operations. A practical example is the "Mark a Survey review as inappropriate" feature, which was built by a TTeam of four engineers in three weeks, resulting in a successful, timely release. While the TTeam approach has improved focus and flow, challenges like managing too many TTeams and poor initial planning were also faced. The concept continues to evolve within TrustYou as part of their "Test & Learn" core value.

📦 At ITB Berlin 2025, Cloudbeds' Amit Popat and Nikhil Shah introduced Revenue Marketing to increase hotel revenue by 15% without additional marketing spend or staff. Cloudbeds Intelligence processes four billion data points hourly using causal AI. Mercure London Paddington's case study demonstrated a rise in occupancy to 93% and RevPAR to £120 with Revenue Marketing, outperforming competitors' 64% occupancy and £79 RevPAR. Cloudbeds Intelligence predicts demand with 95% accuracy, automating rate and marketing in real time.

📱 At ITB, Kevin King, CEO of Shiji International, discussed hospitality technology evolution, Shiji's new branding, and hotel operations' future. Shiji transformed from product-centric to service-oriented, offering flexible, modular solutions to meet hotels' needs. King began his career as a bellman, providing him with an understanding of the industry's requirements.

📋 Google's global search engine market share dropped below 90% in Q4 2024, for the first time since 2015, with a U.S. share of ~87% in December 2024. Bing holds 4% globally, while ChatGPT's AI search is projected to reach ~1% by 2025, with referral traffic growing 44% month-over-month in late 2024. A Capgemini survey found 3 in 5 consumers prefer generative AI tools over traditional search for shopping, with Gen Z and Millennials leading this trend. Consequently, 1/3 of shoppers used social media for product discovery in 2024, a jump from 1/4 in 2023. Advertisers now face a splintered path to consumers, requiring diversified strategies beyond traditional search. AI-driven ad platforms, such as Google's Performance Max and Meta's Advantage+, offer efficient campaign management but reduce transparency and control. The rise of AI agents presents challenges by fetching data without direct website visits, prompting concerns over web traffic classification and necessitating a nuanced approach to traffic management. Brands may need to ensure visibility within AI platforms as the industry adjusts to a "zero-click" world.