Delta wants your money for a business seat that feels less like a business seat.
They launched a stripped-down fare. Cheaper? Sure. Also? Less product. It is the airline industry doing what the airline industry always does: finding new ways to remove the padding so the rest of us can squeeze in a few more dollars. You want comfort? You pay full price. You just want to sit somewhere above coach? There is a price for that now. And it is lower.
Who is winning at AI? (Nobody yet)
Skift hosted their Data + AI Summit recently. The year is 2026 if we believe the title card, and the air was thick with strategy talks.
“Scaling AI in travel is the hard part.”
Agents, search personalization, the usual suspects. The insights weren’t secret. Nobody showed us the matrix. We know what AI can do. The summit just reminded everyone how much work is left to do before it actually happens. Travel is messy data. AI hates messy data. We are still waiting for them to get along.
A European hotelier plays with fire
Fattal bought its first US hotel.
Think about that for a second. They own nearly 330 properties already. Nearly all of them operate on their own model: they own them, they run them. Usually. Foreign hospitality brands come to the US and stumble. They sign franchise deals, lose control, and watch quality slip. Fattal is betting everything that an asset-heavy approach will save them from that fate. It is risky. It is expensive. And the giants are watching, smiling, waiting to see if they bleed.
Uber, Google, and the fight for your screen
Uber owns the ride.
Google owns the map you look at before you ask for the ride.
In early 2026 they stopped respecting those lanes. Both started shoving AI into the other’s backyard. Uber wants to be where you search. Google wants to be where you book. Travel distribution sits right in the middle, taking shrapnel from both sides. Which is worse? A super-app that tries to do everything? Or two half-apps that slowly mutate until they do too much?
We got the latter.
The loyalty lie
Accor teamed up with China’s H World
