Travel news

• A rare stay with Mongolia's reindeer herders

  07-10-2026 14:00 via bbc.com
  
  This once-in-a-lifetime stay can only be booked via WhatsApp
  
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• Connecticut's forgotten witch trial past

  09-10-2026 14:13 via bbc.com
  
  A new haunted history trail is highlighting the state's spooky history
  
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• Duetto acquires FLYR Hospitality to expand its platform and accelerate innovation for hoteliers

  09-10-2026 10:34 via breakingtravelnews.com
  Duetto, a leading provider of revenue and profit software for hotels, today announced it has acquired FLYR Hospitality, a provider of automated revenue management and business intelligence for hotels. This expands Duetto’s Revenue & Profit Operating System to now include FLYR Hospitality’s AI-first revenue strategy platform, inclusive of its best-in-class business intelligence tool, and advanced AI capabilities. This bolsters Duetto’s already strong product suite that inclu
  
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• Pegasus Airlines invests in Zingly.ai to bring agentic voice AI to guest service

  09-10-2026 10:31 via breakingtravelnews.com
  Pegasus Innovation Lab, which leads Pegasus Airlines’ innovation-driven transformation, has entered into a strategic partnership with Zingly.ai as both an investor and design partner to bring agentic voice AI to its guest service operations. The first use case is now live, marking the start of a phased roadmap that will run through mid-2027 and is planned to cover the top 10 guest service use cases, which account for the majority of relevant contact centre volume. Pegasus served approximat
  
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• 89% of guests want AI working behind the scenes, not running the front desk, Mews finds

  09-10-2026 09:53 via breakingtravelnews.com
  New survey data released today by Mews, the operating system for hospitality, shows that as AI adoption in hotels accelerates, guest expectations are moving the opposite way - 89% of guests want either a hybrid stay blending AI and human service or AI operating quietly in the background on repetitive tasks. Almost none want an AI-led stay.59% of guests believe AI should take over repetitive tasks so hoteliers can instead focus on building trust with their guests. At a time when AI adoption in ho
  
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• 168% rise in AI travel traffic shows brands must prepare before peak booking season

  09-10-2026 09:46 via breakingtravelnews.com
  New data shows AI engaged sessions across travel websites are up 168% over the year, meaning travel business need to be AI-ready before the peak booking season takes hold.AI visibility preparation is now key as travellers are increasingly turning to AI to research, compare and plan holidays, according to IDHL’s State of AI Search report analysing 1.5 million AI engaged sessions across 175 websites.
  
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• No Bounce. No Dip. Just a Booking You Never Knew You Lost

  08-10-2026 17:31 via breakingtravelnews.com
  As AI agents move into travel search and booking, airlines face a new commercial blind spot: losing customers before they ever enter the funnel.
  
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• EL AL MOVE INTO HOTELS SAW 35,000+ NIGHTS BOOKED IN FIRST MONTH

  08-10-2026 07:34 via breakingtravelnews.com
  Arbitrip, a leading travel technology platform transforming hotel booking through advanced AI, exclusive pricing, and elevated customer service, today announced strong early results from its landmark partnership with EL AL Airlines, following the launch of a fully white-labeled hotel booking platform embedded within EL AL’s digital ecosystem back in June.In its first month, the platform generated more than 35,000 hotel nights booked, while EL AL customers redeemed more than 130 million fre
  
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• Vervotech Recognized as an Elite Technology Partner by Expedia Group

  07-10-2026 10:38 via breakingtravelnews.com
  Vervotech has been declared as an Elite Partner by Expedia Group, which is a major milestone in the partnership between the two companies. The recognition places Vervotech among Expedia Group’s top-tier technology partners, a category that supports complex, high-volume integrations and is assessed across areas including evaluated for different aspects of integration such as integration competencies, mapping quality, connected partners, and overall service delivery.
  
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• Mirai launches the first plugins on ChatGPT that allow bookings on the hotel’s direct channel

  07-10-2026 09:55 via breakingtravelnews.com
  Mirai, a technology company specializing in direct hotel sales, has begun rolling out the first plugins for its hotel clients on ChatGPT. Guests and users of the Emperador and Moderno hotels in Madrid, along with the Porcel Hoteles chain in Granada and Gloria Thalasso & Hotels in the Canary Islands, can now interact with them directly from ChatGPT using natural language.
  
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• eDreams ODIGEO and Amazon Alexa collaborate to bring AI travel search to Alexa+

  07-10-2026 09:50 via breakingtravelnews.com
  eDreams ODIGEO, the world’s leading travel subscription platform, today announced a strategic collaboration with Alexa+, Amazon’s next-generation AI assistant, to power travel discovery and booking for the AI assistant.The global travel subscription leader is bringing its pioneering artificial intelligence capabilities to the Alexa-enabled and connected devices, opening a new channel for customers to plan their trips.
  
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• Tourist puts a free tourist discount card on travelers’ phones

  07-10-2026 09:01 via breakingtravelnews.com
  Tourist is a free app for iOS and Android that works as a digital tourist card. Travelers show the card at local restaurants, cafés, tours, hotels and shops and get a discount on the spot, with no codes and no booking. A map in the app shows the deals nearby.
  
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• Blastness accelerates international expansion with launch of BlastnessPay

  07-10-2026 08:26 via breakingtravelnews.com
  Blastness, a leading Italian provider of technology and digital services for the hospitality sector, has launched BlastnessPay, an integrated payment solution designed to automate the entire payment cycle, from booking to reconciliation, across both direct and indirect channels.Founded in Italy, where it works with more than 2,000 hotels, Blastness provides technology spanning direct booking and distribution, revenue intelligence, digital marketing and business intelligence. As the company grows
  
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• Spalba Expands Event-Tech Portfolio with AI-Powered Praloop

  07-10-2026 08:12 via breakingtravelnews.com
  Asia’s first immersive event sourcing marketplace, Spalba, has expanded its event-tech offering with Praloop, an AI-powered event planning and design platform built to help planners, agencies and corporate teams manage the planning lifecycle from brief creation to execution.
  
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• Global Payments expands its Asia travel payments infrastructure to Thailand

  07-10-2026 08:10 via breakingtravelnews.com
  Global Payments Inc. has expanded its cross-border payment capabilities in Thailand through a landmark partnership with Centara Hotels & Resorts.
  As Thailand’s leading hotel operator and one of Asia’s most recognised hospitality brands, Centara Hotel & Resorts offers more than 93 properties across 12 countries. The partnership will see Global Payments® power cross-border payment capabilities to support national and international visitation across Centara’s Thailand
  
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• Four aviation start-ups named finalists in World Aviation Festival competition

  06-10-2026 13:12 via breakingtravelnews.com
  Four start-ups addressing AI-driven flight shopping, AI search optimisation, airline ancillaries, and airport boarding processes have been selected to compete in the World Aviation Festival’s annual Start-up Competition next week.The live final takes place on Tuesday 13 October at FIL Lisbon, where each company will pitch its solution to a panel of industry leaders and investors. Hosted by Irra Ariella Khi, Co-Founder and CEO of Zamna, the competition gives early-stage disruptors a platfor
  
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• Travel Operators Can’t Just Watch as AI Reroutes the Customer Journey

  06-10-2026 13:07 via breakingtravelnews.com
  Operators of hotels, resorts, theme parks, and cruises succeed by making their customers feel welcome, looked-after, and alive. It’s therefore understandable that they are often cautious about adopting technology that might make their customer experience less human.When it comes to AI adoption, however, there’s a real danger that operators will suffer strategic damage if they don’t move fast enough.
  
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• Black and White Photo Editing Online with Luminar

  06-10-2026 09:45 via breakingtravelnews.com
  Black-and-white photography allows you to discover the ordinary picture anew. Color falls away, and the details that might have been easy to overlook become the leading characters in an image. You’ve got the contrast, the line of a shadow, the roughness of a wall, or the face of a person standing out.  The monochrome conversion simplifies cluttered compositions and provides a stronger visual mood.
  
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• Canada's bizarre mummified toe cocktail

  05-10-2026 15:00 via bbc.com
  
  It might just be the world's most unusual drink
  
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• The American Vacation Is Proving Surprisingly Resilient

  03-10-2026 08:22 via breakingtravelnews.com
  Americans may be watching their wallets, but they aren’t giving up their vacations. New findings from MMGY’s 2026 Portrait of American Travelers™ “Fall Edition” reveal that travel demand is rebounding this fall, with Americans expecting to spend $5,655 on leisure travel over the next 12 months and take nearly four vacations, both up from the “Summer Edition” of the survey.
  
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• The US coast that wouldn't let African culture die

  02-10-2026 14:13 via bbc.com
  
  "Our people are an important part of America's story"
  
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• Agoda Partners with Marina Bay Sands on Bespoke Flagship Store for Experience-Led Travel

  02-10-2026 08:20 via breakingtravelnews.com
  Digital travel platform Agoda has partnered with Singapore’s landmark integrated resort, Marina Bay Sands to unveil a bespoke Marina Bay Sands Flagship Store on the Agoda platform. The customized luxury digital storefront brings together Marina Bay Sands’ rooms, suites, and select resort experiences, allowing travelers to explore and book them seamlessly in one place.
  
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• Discover Puerto Rico Announces New AI Agents to Connect Travelers and Meeting Planners

  02-10-2026 08:14 via breakingtravelnews.com
  Discover Puerto Rico, the Island’s official destination marketing organization (DMO), today announced it has engaged Satisfi Labs to develop a new AI-powered experience and intent-matching platform for DiscoverPuertoRico.com. Designed for both leisure travelers and meeting and event planners, the platform will turn natural-language conversations into personalized recommendations and qualified referrals to relevant, vetted tourism businesses across the Island.
  
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• Pinwheel named in Sifted’s Europe 250 fastest growing scale-ups

  02-10-2026 06:23 via breakingtravelnews.com
  Pinwheel has been named in the Sifted 250, the annual ranking of Europe’s fastest-growing startups and scale-ups. We placed 77th, making us the fastest-growing carbon and nature company in Europe in the list.That growth reflects a shift in how companies approach climate and nature. Over the last year, we’ve worked with some of the world’s most progressive and iconic businesses, supporting them at every stage of a beyond value chain strategy. Our focus is on strategies that supp
  
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• Propellic publishes the first behavioral study on AI visibility in travel

  02-10-2026 06:21 via breakingtravelnews.com
  Propellic, the leading travel marketing and advertising agency, has published The state of AI visibility for travel, a behavioral study of how travelers research, trust and book trips with AI. It’s the agency’s second study of AI in travel. Its 2025 research, From Search to Purchase, examined how AI was changing every stage of travel booking inside Google AI Mode. This year’s study widens the lens to more AI tools, with each traveler free to use whichever they AI tool already h
  
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• What the rise in museum heists means for visitors

  01-10-2026 14:11 via bbc.com
  
  "Every museum in the world is stressing right now"
  
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• Coalition formed to advocate for biometric technology in Europe

  01-10-2026 09:37 via breakingtravelnews.com
  The coalition is seeking a balanced regulatory approach that enables a more efficient and convenient experience for air travelers and maintains strong safeguards around the responsible use of biometric technologies
  
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• Flae Robotics reports 3,400+ autonomous hotel bookings by BE-A over summer

  01-10-2026 08:05 via breakingtravelnews.com
  Flae Robotics has reported that BE-A, its AI receptionist for hotels, completed more than 3,400 hotel bookings without human intervention during July and August, according to updated company figures.The announcement comes as hotels increasingly adopt AI-powered guest communication tools to manage routine enquiries across email, WhatsApp and phone, while hotel teams focus on guests on site and more complex requests.
  
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• Hotels Don’t Have an AI Problem. They Have an Adoption Problem.

  01-10-2026 08:02 via breakingtravelnews.com
  HiJiffy, the AI-powered Guest Communications Platform for hotels, launched today From Imposed to Owned: The Guide to Hotel AI That Sticks, a white paper arguing that the industry’s growing scepticism around AI isn’t a rejection of the technology itself, but of how it is being sold, implemented and managed.
  When HiJiffy surveyed hoteliers for its 2025 white paper, 86% said AI automation had already helped them save time on routine, repetitive work. What has changed, HiJiffy argues, is
  
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• FHS World 2026 opens its doors to the world with immersive digital twin

  30-09-2026 19:56 via breakingtravelnews.com
  The latest virtual edition of FHS World has gone live, allowing hospitality leaders, investors and professionals anywhere in the world to explore the Dubai event online, at any time and from any device.
  
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