Amex GBT and Delta Integrate Loyalty Programs into the Booking Experience


Amex GBT et Delta intègrent les programmes de fidélité dans le parcours de réservation - Depositphotos.com  Auteur Piter2121

Attitude Hotels


Amex GBT and Delta Air Lines are pursuing their strategic partnership with new features aimed at business travelers. These developments are designed to integrate loyalty programs directly into booking journeys, without forcing travelers to switch platforms.

Two initiatives are currently being developed and tested with participating companies.

The first concerns the Delta SkyMiles® program. Business travelers who are not yet members will be able to enroll directly from Egencia’s booking interface. They will thus gain access to the program’s benefits and begin earning miles from their first trip.

The second initiative concerns Delta’s Fast Track to Medallion® Status. Enrollment will be offered from the Complete by SAP Concur and Amex GBT booking tools. Eligible travelers will gain quicker access to Medallion® status, which includes benefits related to miles, waivers of certain baggage fees, and eligibility for complimentary upgrades.


The two companies note that these features are at different stages of testing. They also plan to extend them to other Amex GBT solutions.

“This pilot project integrates SkyMiles and Fast Track to Medallion Status where business travelers already make their reservations,” explains Rajiv Ahluwalia, Amex GBT’s Chief Revenue Officer.

On the Delta side, Bob Somers, Senior Vice President of Global Sales, emphasizes the aim of simplification: “Together, we are exploring new ways to make it easier for travelers to access the benefits they value.”

Booking, Micro-Trips in India: This Week’s Key Takeaways [SUBS]


La revue de presse internationale de la semaine - Depositphotos.com Auteur serezniy

CroisiEurope


Au sommaire de la revue de presse de la semaine du 28 septembre 2026 :

Shorter and more frequent stays in 2027

Booking.com will not be able to acquire Etraveli

Tourist destinations: AI becomes a new lever of influence

IHG accelerates its development in Japan amid tourist demand

India struggles to regain its international tourists

The travel sector pushes the EU to regulate biometrics

Gaming travel turns the hotel into a playground

Germany: bookings remain subdued in winter 2026-2027

Odd! Aluminum-wrapped passport: the quirky anti-piracy trick travelers are talking about



Shorter and more frequent stays in 2027


Hilton observe un essor des micro-voyages, nouvelle tendance de 2027. @depositphotos/EdZbarzhyvetsky

According to Hilton’s annual report, travelers will favor in 2027 shorter and more frequent stays, with the rise of micro-trips.

The group also notes a growing interest in personal development-focused trips, outdoor activities, and well-being.

Another takeaway: despite the rise of AI in travel planning, human recommendations remain largely preferred.

More to discover on euronews.com


Booking.com will not be able to acquire Etraveli


Booking perd son recours sur l'acquisition de Etraveli. @depositphotos/erix2005

The European Union Court confirmed the ban on Booking’s acquisition of the Swedish group Etraveli for €1.63 billion.

Etraveli, owner of Gotogate and Mytrip among others, would have allowed the American group to strengthen its flight-booking offering and develop a broad “travel ecosystem”, risking marginalizing competitors.

Booking can still bring the case before the Court of Justice of the European Union.

A Reuters report


Tourist destinations: AI becomes a new lever of influence


Les destinations touristiques doivent apprendre à exister dans les réponses des IA. @depositphotos/AndrewLozovyi

With 69 % of 18-28-year-olds and 64 % of Millennials using AI to prepare their trips, destinations must now learn to exist in AI assistant responses.

According to Andrés Martínez, CEO of iUrban, they should better structure their official information to be picked up by AI, but also use these tools to steer visitors toward less-visited sites and highlight local identity. The challenge: not letting algorithms funnel tourists to the same places.

More to read on hosteltur.com


India struggles to regain its international tourists


The travel industry pushes the EU to regulate biometrics


Cinq acteurs du voyage et des technologies veulent encourager le déploiement volontaire de la biométrie dans les aéroports européens. @depositphotos/irko6969

Five players in travel and technology, including ACI Europe, Amadeus, IATA and SITA, have formed a coalition to advocate the voluntary deployment of biometrics at European airports.

They are calling for a clear regulatory framework ensuring data protection and the maintenance of non-biometric alternatives.



According to IATA, 74 % of travelers surveyed prefer sharing their biometric data rather than their passport or boarding pass.

A Travel Daily News report


Gaming travel turns the hotel into a playground


Minecraft ouvrira en 2027 près de Londres un hôtel qui offrira une immersion complète dans le monde des jeux vidéo. @depositphotos/rafapress

The travel surrounding video game universes is stepping up a level, with hotels now offering full immersion rather than mere entertainment. A 69-room Minecraft-themed hotel will open in 2027 near London, inside Chessington World of Adventures.

The phenomenon is also developing in Japan with Pokémon-themed rooms and in Spain with hotels that integrate consoles, virtual reality and themed spaces.

Read more on euronews.com


Germany: bookings remain subdued in winter 2026-2027


Les vacanciers boudent les vacances en Allemagne à l’hiver 2026-2027.  @depositphotos/Gorilla

After a dynamic summer 2026, with revenues up 4%, winter bookings lag behind.

According to Travel Data + Analytics, revenues for the winter season 2026/27 are currently 2% below last year, with the number of travelers down 6%. Long-haul trips are especially affected, notably to the United States (-28%) and the United Arab Emirates (-52%).

More to read on reisevor9.de


Insolite ! Aluminum-wrapped passport: the quirky anti-piracy trick travelers are talking about

On TikTok and Reddit, a travel tip is making waves: wrapping your passport in aluminum foil to block the radio reading of its chip.

While metal can indeed block radio waves, the risk of fraudulent passport reading is already limited by several security features.

Result: between the passport and the foil, travelers might mainly gain… a few extra touches at checkpoints.

Source: lefigaro.fr

FCM Booking: AI-Powered Conversational Booking for Business Travel


FCM Travel lance une réservation de voyages d’affaires basée sur l’IA conversationnelle - Depositphotos.com @yokhanomwan@gmail.com

Climats du Monde


FCM Travel présente le lancement d’une nouvelle fonction de réservation conversationnelle intégrée à sa plateforme FCM Booking.

Basée sur l’intelligence artificielle, elle vise à permettre aux voyageurs d’affaires de formuler leurs besoins en langage naturel et de recevoir des propositions adaptées aux règles de leur entreprise.

Les recommandations prennent notamment en compte la politique voyage, le profil et les habitudes du collaborateur, ses déplacements précédents, son programme de fidélité ainsi que les fournisseurs privilégiés par l’entreprise.

L’outil explique aussi les raisons de ses suggestions, afin de faciliter les choix tout en favorisant le respect du programme voyage.


Une technologie destinée aussi aux travel managers

La fonctionnalité est intégrée à SAM, l’assistant IA de FCM Travel.

Pour les travel managers, l’enjeu est également de limiter les réservations effectuées en dehors du programme de l’entreprise et d’améliorer la qualité des données disponibles.

Ces informations peuvent ensuite alimenter les outils de reporting et d’analyse consacrés aux dépenses, à la conformité et aux risques liés aux déplacements.

FCM indique avoir engagé sa stratégie autour de l’intelligence artificielle dès 2023, avec la création d’un AI Center of Excellence. La réservation conversationnelle constitue l’un des nouveaux cas d’usage développés par le groupe.


Disponible sur Teams et Slack

La fonctionnalité sera dans un premier temps accessible via Microsoft Teams et Slack. FCM prévoit ensuite de l’étendre à d’autres environnements numériques grâce au protocole MCP (Model Context Protocol), notamment aux outils d’IA tels que ChatGPT, Claude ou Gemini.

L’objectif est de permettre aux voyageurs de réaliser leurs réservations depuis les outils qu’ils utilisent quotidiennement, sans avoir à ouvrir une application distincte.

FCM précise enfin que l’IA est conçue comme un complément à l’expertise de ses consultants voyages. La technologie doit prendre en charge les demandes courantes afin de permettre aux équipes de se concentrer sur les situations nécessitant davantage d’accompagnement et d’expertise.


Amelia Brille Publié par Amelia Brille Rédactrice TourMaG.com
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Tourist Activities: New York, Rome, Marrakech — What the French Are Booking

Les Entreprises du Voyage (EDV) et Civitatis dévoilent la troisième édition de leur Index des activités touristiques - Depositphotos.com, IgorVetushko

Costa Rica


The market for activities, guided tours, and excursions continues to rise within the travel experience.

According to data from the third Index of Activities published by the Entreprises du Voyage (EDV) and Civitatis, French travelers are giving an increasing place to on-site experiences, to the point that they now influence their destination choice.

The study, based on reservations made between January 1 and June 15, 2026, mainly highlights a marked difference between purchases made directly by travelers (B2C) and those made through travel agencies (B2B).

In direct bookings, consumers favor immediacy: bookings are made with a median of only six days before the activity and more than half of purchases (53%) are made less than a week before the service.

Conversely, travel agencies anticipate their clients’ needs well in advance. Reservations are made with a median of 66 days before the activity, while 60% of purchases occur between one and six months before departure.

For Valérie Boned, president of Entreprises du Voyage, this analysis provides a real decision-support tool for professionals. “This third edition demonstrates how data is an indispensable growth lever for our members,” she notes.


The activities strengthen the role of agencies

For Georges Sans, head of France development at Civitatis, this evolution also reflects the positioning of travel agencies.

He believes that activities and transfers no longer represent merely add-on sales, but become differentiating elements enabling agencies to accompany clients throughout their journey and to reinforce their loyalty.

The Index also shows that guided tours remain the flagship product for travel agencies. They account for nearly 39% of sales realized via the B2B channel.

On destinations, Paris remains the top French destination.

Internationally, trends vary by distribution channel. Individual travelers favor New York, while travel agencies sell more Rome.

Airport transfers are also among the most sought-after services. In direct bookings, New York tops the requests, while agencies primarily market them in Marrakech, ahead of Seville and Rome, in a strategy of building complete stays.


Tunisia records the strongest growth

The Index also identifies international destinations with the largest increases in reservations compared to the first half of 2025.

Tunisia shows the most spectacular progression with a growth of 289%. It edges out Canada (+145%), Egypt (+106%), and the Dominican Republic (+37%).

Finally, the study confirms France’s attractiveness to international visitors. Paris remains the most visited French city, followed by Lyon and Nice.

According to a study published in May 2026 by Arival in partnership with Civitatis, more than one European traveler in two now considers that the experiences offered on-site play a very important, even decisive, role in choosing their destination.

This trend reinforces the growing weight of tourist activities in shaping travel-agency offers.


Amelia Brille Published by Amelia Brille TourMaG.com Editor
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Travel Compositor Integrates AskIA with AI Trips to Streamline Travel Booking


Travel Compositor poursuit le développement de son offre basée sur l'intelligence artificielle - Depositphotos.com, toppercussion

CroisiEurope


Travel Compositor, the Spanish publisher of booking engine solutions for online leisure travel distributors and a subsidiary of the Travelsoft group, announces a new evolution of its AI Trips platform.

Named AskIA, this feature introduces a conversational interface enabling users to design, quote, and book a complete itinerary from a simple description of their travel project.

The company explains that this evolution aims to limit the steps of the booking journey, by reducing the number of clicks and simplifying the choice among the different offers available.


A booking guided by conversation

Unlike a traditional search engine, AskIA relies on a conversational approach.

Users describe the desired trip, for example a multi-week circuit or a stay tailored to specific preferences, and the artificial intelligence automatically generates a customized proposal.

The solution selects the various services needed for the trip and then allows finalizing the booking in a few steps. According to Travel Compositor, the entire process can be completed in three clicks.

The tool is capable of assembling different tourism products within a single booking, including flights, accommodations, transfers, activities, insurance, car rental, rail journeys or tickets for various services.


A rollout reserved for Premium Innovator customers

This novelty will initially be offered at no extra cost to clients participating in the Premium Innovator program. They will benefit from early access to this feature as part of its launch.

For Travel Compositor, this integration marks a new milestone in its AI-driven strategy for travel booking.

Alongside the arrival of AskIA, Travel Compositor also unveils Smart Filter, a feature intended to improve the display of search results for hotels and transport.

This intelligent filter should help travelers identify more quickly the options deemed most relevant, with the aim of streamlining searches and improving the user experience across the company’s various booking engines.


Amelia Brille Publié par Amelia Brille Rédactrice TourMaG.com
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Booking Holdings Reorganizes Its B2B Business


Booking Holdings réorganise son activité B2B - Depositphotos.com  Auteur Primakov

CroisiEurope


According to Skift, Booking Holdings plans to create a new entity devoted to B2B.

The forthcoming structure will bring together the B2B teams of the three brands: Booking.com, Agoda and Priceline, in order to offer a unified proposal for partner businesses. The project is currently supervised by Omri Morgenshtern, Agoda’s chief executive, who had previously led the platform’s partnerships and B2B sales activities.

The American media outlet notes that this new organization will take the form of a genuine legal entity. The Booking Holdings teams are still working on the regulatory and HR aspects of this reorganization. At this stage, neither the head of this future entity nor its launch date has been announced.


Booking aims to ride Expedia’s success in B2B?

Still according to Skift, this reorganization comes a few weeks after the launch of BKNG Ads, a joint advertising platform allowing partners to access the audiences of Booking.com, Agoda and Priceline through a single entry point.

Among Booking Holdings’ B2B partners are notably Apple, Microsoft, Citi Travel, Air France-KLM, Lufthansa, Emirates, American Airlines and Southwest Airlines.

Skift recalls that Expedia Group, considered the worldwide leader in this market, posted in Q1 2026 a 25% increase in its B2B revenue, versus 8% for its consumer-facing activities.

Mirai Integrates Multi-Room Booking into Its AI Assistant Sarai


Mirai fait évoluer Sarai pour gérer les demandes de plusieurs chambres - Depositphotos.com, sdecoret

CroisiEurope


Mirai upgrades its AI assistant and its conversational reservations engine Sarai.

The solution can now handle requests for reservations of multiple rooms within a single conversation, without forms or intermediate steps.

A client can thus directly formulate a request such as: “I need two rooms for a family with children”. Sarai is then able to identify the need, manage the booking, and continue the exchange in natural language.

This feature is available across all channels on which Sarai operates, including the webchat, WhatsApp, email, Instagram and telephone.

It is also accessible via ChatGPT, thanks to Apps, and Claude, via MCP.

Mirai states that it is included at no additional cost for customers of its reservations engine.


Multi-room bookings account for 18% of revenue

For hotels, requests involving multiple rooms represent a significant commercial challenge.

According to Mirai’s data up to July 2026, bookings for two rooms or more account for 9.07% of the total reservations made via the web engine.

They nevertheless generate 18.45% of the nights and 18.44% of the revenue linked to rooms. Their value weight is therefore almost twice their volume weight.

The demand is also present on conversational channels. During the last 30 days, 7.03% of availability requests processed by Sarai involved multiple rooms.


Group requests turned into qualified leads

The new feature also accounts for requests that exceed the number of rooms that can be booked online directly.

In this case, Sarai explains to the client the online booking limits, collects their contact details as well as the details of their stay, and then generates a qualified lead for the hotel.

The request is then visible in real time in Lobby, the AI infrastructure dashboard of Mirai, and triggers an email notification to the establishment.

For Mirai, this approach allows transforming a request that could have been abandoned with a traditional booking engine into a business opportunity at the moment the client expresses their purchase intent.

“Handling multi-room bookings was essential in conversational reservations. Today, customers express their need with all their details and their complexity in natural language, and expect the hotel to know how to respond“, explains Pablo Delgado, CEO America of Mirai, in a press release.

According to him, available data show that hotels capable of handling these complex requests are able to attract higher-value clientele.


Amelia Brille Published by Amelia Brille TourMaG.com editor
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Perk Integrates Visa Management Directly into the Booking Process


Perk intègre la gestion des visas directement au processus de réservation - Depositphotos.com, MoleQL

CroisiEurope


Visa management is now integrated into the business travel booking journey on Perk. The platform, formerly known as TravelPerk, announces the launch of Entry Ready, described as the first integrated workflow that enables managing and paying for eVisas and electronic travel authorizations without leaving the reservation tool.

The feature automatically analyzes entry requirements from the traveler’s passport details. It then enables initiating a request and settling the associated fees directly within Perk.

Entry Ready is now available to all Perk customers.

The service offers more than 60 eVisas and AVEs thanks to a partnership with Sherpa, a platform specializing in visa solutions.

Sherpa relies on artificial intelligence and more than 350 government relationships to monitor entry conditions. According to Perk, conditions are updated 92% of the time ahead of those of other providers.

The requests processed through Sherpa are also 20% faster than those submitted directly on government portals.


More than 60 eVisas and AVEs available

The deployment of Entry Ready unfolded in two steps.

Since January 2026, Perk automatically displayed the applicable entry conditions for a trip based on the traveler’s passport profile, even before the booking was finalized. This first phase allowed analyzing more than half a million trips and flagging potential visa obligations.

The launch announced on July 23, 2026 adds integrated payment. Travelers can now request and pay for their eVisa or AVE directly at the time of paying for their booking on Perk.

For companies, travel document costs can thus be consolidated on a single line with other travel-related expenses.


A second project born from the Real Work Incubator

Entry Ready is the second project launched by Perk as part of its Real Work Incubator.

The program had already produced Perk Events, an AI-powered module for planning team events, launched in January 2026.


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Summer 2026: TUI Group Sees Strong Last-Minute Booking Surge


Été 2026 : TUI Group observe une forte poussée des réservations de dernière minute - Depositphotos.com  Auteur T.Schneider

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TUI Group published improving half-year results despite a backdrop marked by conflicts in the Middle East and an unstable economic environment. The group reports an underlying EBIT of -111 million euros for the first half of 2026, representing an improvement of 45 million euros versus the previous year.

In the second quarter, traditionally loss-making for the tourism sector, the underlying EBIT stood at -188 million euros, up 19 million euros from last year, despite exceptional charges of 45 million euros largely tied to the war in Iran and Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica.

For the first half of the fiscal year, closing on March 31, revenue declined by 14%, to 8.6 billion euros. At constant exchange rates, it rose by 1.3%.

Over the first six months of the period, 12.8 million customers traveled with TUI, i.e., 200,000 more than a year earlier. The group also highlights the continued strong trend toward last-minute bookings for summer 2026, notably to Western Mediterranean destinations such as Spain, the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, and Greece.

“TUI has posted growth in its operating profit for the fourteenth consecutive quarter. This demonstrates the Group’s steady development,” stated Sebastian Ebel, the Group CEO. The executive also noted that “geopolitical challenges and the unstable economic environment” require “considerable commitment and flexibility.”


TUI confirms the revised outlook in April for fiscal 2026

The “Holiday Experiences” segment, which encompasses hotels, cruises and leisure activities, remains one of the group’s main performance drivers. Cruises are showing strong demand, with half-year underlying EBIT up 25.9% to €163.5 million. Despite the impact of the Iranian conflict, ship occupancy remains high at 93%.

TUI also highlights the acceleration of its digital transformation and the integration of artificial intelligence into its activities. “We view artificial intelligence as an opportunity for the travel and tourism sector,” explains Sebastian Ebel, referring in particular to collaborations with Google and OpenAI through AI features integrated into the group’s app.

Despite this volatile context, TUI confirms the revised outlook in April for the 2026 fiscal year. The group now expects underlying EBIT to range between €1.1 and €1.4 billion, while temporarily suspending its revenue guidance.