Hotel101 Madrid, one of Spain’s five largest hotels, runs 680 rooms with about 30 staff. Its operator, Hotel101 Global, is a Philippine-born, Singapore-headquartered hotel company listed on Nasdaq as HBNB. CEO Hannah Yulo-Luccini gave the staff figure at WiT Singapore, as Hospitality Net reported.

That works out to about 23 rooms for every member of staff. The hotel in Valdebebas opened in March 2026 and still keeps a 24/7 reception. Five moves explain the numbers.

1. It sold the rooms before the hotel existed

Hotel101 sells individual hotel units in advance, while the building is still under construction. In FY2025 that produced US$75,210,378 of the company’s US$75,866,090 in total revenue, Simply Wall St reported. Hotel rental income was US$374,573.

The gross margin on those ‘Happy Room’ sales was 43.14%. For owners and operators, the lesson is timing: unit buyers pay in advance, so revenue arrives before the hotel does, and the operating company is not waiting for guests to start earning.

2. It earns from the same room twice

The company’s stated model has two layers. The first is revenue from selling units during construction. The second is recurring revenue from running the hotel once it opens. Operating income turned positive at US$1,430,118 in FY2025, from a loss of US$4,885,359 in 2024.

Today the second layer is the smaller one, which makes it the number to watch. Guest revenue has to carry the operation as unit sales slow, and Madrid is the first large test of that. Hotel groups weighing similar structures should read the rental line as closely as the headline total.

3. It built one room and one template

The signature unit is the ‘HappyRoom’, which comes with a kitchenette. The company develops a standardised 500-room hotel at scale, and its stated vision is one million standardised rooms in 100 countries. The parent company is DoubleDragon Corporation (PSE: DD).

A standard room means standard staffing, standard training and standard purchasing. A chain that repeats one product removes many of the design and operating decisions that slow a new opening. Buyers of hotel inventory, from OTAs to airline package desks, know what they are selling before they see the building.

4. It put the app in front of the desk

Hotel101’s proprietary app handles reservations, guest services, loyalty, dynamic pricing and self check-in. That is how about 30 people cover 680 rooms and still keep reception open around the clock.

Owning the booking, pricing and loyalty layer also keeps guest data in one system. For OTAs, a hotel that prices and checks in guests through its own app is a harder partner to replace. For airlines selling hotel packages, it is a source of uniform inventory.

5. It filled the rooms fast, from far away

After opening, Hotel101 Madrid booked 45,000+ hotel nights and €5,443,000 in hotel revenue, under €121 a night on average. On 19 May 2026 it made more than €100,000 in room revenue in a single day at 100% occupancy, a company record. Over 80% of guests came from Europe, North America and Latin America.

A Philippine company filling a Spanish hotel with Western guests shows that demand was not tied to its home market. A further 2,229 Hotel101 rooms are slated for 2026: Davao 519, Cebu 548 and Niseko (Hokkaido) 482, expected December 2026. Hotel101 began trading on Nasdaq as HBNB on 1 July 2025 at a US$2.3 billion equity value.

Who to watch

Yulo-Luccini spoke at WiT Singapore and also speaks at ULI and Milken Asia. Organisers building investor and hospitality-technology programmes in Asia will find a CEO with a live case and current numbers.

Key takeaway

The part worth copying is the order of operations: fund the building with advance sales, standardise the product, and let an app carry routine work so staff handle the exceptions. We would test the staffing ratio first, because it is the number other hotel teams will check against their own.

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Skift announced this week a new event for travel commerce leaders. Skift Commerce Summit takes place on 11 November 2026 at Apella by Alexandria in New York, as a single session running from afternoon into evening. The programme sits in the afternoon and evening, so it fits around a working day rather than replacing one.

The date falls the day before Skift Aviation Forum. An airline executive in New York for the Forum can add the Summit without a second trip, and hotel or OTA executives can treat it as a standalone half day.

Skift has built the agenda around four themes: who owns the customer when AI mediates booking, building direct capability now, payments infrastructure, and innovation beyond NDC. Those four topics cover most of what a commercial head at a hotel group, airline or OTA is weighing right now. Here is why you should not miss this chance.

1. Skift Commerce Summit puts AI-mediated booking at the centre

The lead theme is customer ownership when AI mediates booking. If an AI assistant picks the hotel or the fare and completes the purchase, the brand holding the guest relationship may not be the one the traveller ever sees. Hotel groups that have spent years lowering their dependence on OTAs now have to ask whether an AI layer rebuilds it. Hotels, airlines and OTAs each have a different answer, and the programme is designed to put those answers side by side in one room. For a commercial head, that is the question that decides how distribution budgets get split.

2. The direct versus OTA cost gap is on the table

According to Skift, Accor and H World count a direct booking as costing roughly 4% to 5% of revenue, while an OTA commission takes 10% to 15%. The gap is at least five percentage points of revenue on each booking that shifts channel, and it is the figure behind most channel strategy debates at large hotel groups and airlines. The second theme, building direct capability now, is that argument turned into a plan. For an airline, the same arithmetic applies to every fare sold through an intermediary rather than its own site.

3. The audience is buyers, owners and investors

The audience is executives from airlines, hotels, hotel owners, OTAs, cruise lines, mobility providers and tour operators, along with their investors. Owners and investors sitting beside operators means the people who fund a direct-booking build share the room with the people who run it. The vendor tier, covering GDS and payments companies, is capped separately, which keeps suppliers from outnumbering travel companies.

4. Speakers come from hotels, mobility and consumer travel

The confirmed speakers so far are Tyler Morse, Chairman and CEO of MCR Hotels; Doria Holbrook, President of Oro Mobility at Hertz; and Adam Schwab, Co-founder and CEO of Luxury Escapes. A hotel owner-operator, a mobility business and a travel company all face the same question about who holds the customer. Three sectors on one afternoon gives a broader read than a single-sector conference would.

5. The agenda reaches payments and NDC

Two of the four themes concern infrastructure. Payments infrastructure shapes how a direct sale is taken, and innovation beyond NDC points to what airlines do once that distribution standard is in place. A direct strategy that ignores either is incomplete, and the same day also covers the AI question sitting above both.

Key takeaway

Skift Commerce Summit suits commercial heads at hotels, airlines and OTAs, and the owners and investors behind them. Block the afternoon and evening of 11 November, and if Skift Aviation Forum is already in the diary, arrive a day early. Bring your own direct cost and your own OTA cost, and test both against the 4% to 5% and 10% to 15% Skift cites.

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Qantas Loyalty announced a partnership with Expedia Group on 30 September 2026, under which Expedia Group B2B will run the booking platforms behind Qantas Hotels & Holidays and Jetstar Holidays. Expedia B2B will power the end-to-end booking experience, built on its Composable Agentic Template.

Customers will book hotels and holiday packages, earn and redeem Qantas Points and manage the whole trip in one place. The airline’s loyalty arm keeps the customer relationship and the points currency. Expedia supplies the technology underneath.

What Expedia adds to Qantas Hotels & Holidays

Four features are planned: deeper integration with the Qantas App, better digital self-service, machine-learning recommendations for properties and holidays, and bundles that pair a holiday with premium cabin seats and codeshare partner flights.

The upgraded platform is due in the first half of 2027. KarryOn reported that build and integration work is already under way, which puts the launch roughly six to nine months out.

What each side said

“Partnering with Expedia Group gives us access to world-class travel technology that will transform how our customers search, book, and manage their trips,” said Jayne Davey, Qantas Loyalty Executive Manager, Business to Consumer, as Travel Weekly reported.

Carolina Cabero, SVP Sales at Expedia Group B2B, put the pitch in terms of plumbing. “By connecting supply, pricing, payments, loyalty and smarter digital experiences through one integrated platform, we’re giving Qantas the flexibility to innovate faster,” she said.

Alfonso Paredes, Expedia’s President of B2B, gave Travel Distribution News the shorter version: “AI is the interface. Expedia B2B is the infrastructure.”

Second Australian white-label travel booking in a fortnight

The Qantas deal follows a similar move by two weeks. On 17 September 2026, Expedia Group B2B launched NAB Travel inside National Australia Bank’s app, its first arrangement of this kind with an Australian bank.

Expedia’s 2025 Traveller Value Index found that 72% of Australians would book travel through a non-travel loyalty programme if they could earn points. A bank and a flag carrier are now both acting on that number, and both are using the same supplier to do it.

The week’s other deals

• Marriott and IOI Properties Group: signed four new-build hotels in Malaysia with 888 rooms in total: W Langkawi, The Ritz-Carlton Putrajaya, Aloft Sepang and Aloft Johor Bahru Plentong, according to TTG Asia.
• Harilela Group and IHG: The Hari Hong Kong, with 210 rooms, joined IHG’s Vignette Collection. The agreement also covers The Hari London and a forthcoming The Hari Singapore, TTG Asia reported.

What it means for hotels, airlines and OTAs

For airlines, the Qantas structure is a clear answer to the build-or-rent question on non-air content. The carrier does not run its own hotel and holiday engine. It rents one, and holds on to the two things that carry value in a loyalty business: who the customer is and what the points are worth.

For banks and other points issuers, NAB Travel and Qantas Hotels & Holidays show the same supplier serving different front doors. A white-label stack lets a brand with a large member base add travel without building supply, pricing and payments from scratch.

For hotels, more demand will arrive through branded loyalty storefronts rather than through the OTA’s own app. Rate parity, content quality and points-redemption terms will matter in more places, and the supply sits behind one supplier’s connection.

For OTAs, the competitive set now includes the OTA’s own B2B arm selling to their customers’ loyalty programmes. Expedia is positioning itself as infrastructure as well as a consumer brand.

Who to watch

Travel Tech Asia and ITB Asia run from 21 to 23 October in Singapore. Airline and loyalty heads in the region are likely to ask the same questions Qantas has just answered. Cabero and Paredes are the Expedia B2B executives to follow on how the Qantas and NAB builds progress, and what a white-label arrangement looks like for APAC carriers and banks.

Key takeaway

Qantas has shown that a top carrier can rent the booking technology and still own the customer and the points. We read that as the model other loyalty owners in APAC will be asked to copy. Any airline, bank or hotel group with a points programme should, this quarter, list which parts of its non-air booking stack it must own and which it could rent, and price both options.

Are you a travel startup founder? Pitch your story to TravHQ right now. Pitch it to TravHQ.

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MakeMyTrip’s Myra assistant now handles over 50,000 conversations a day, and more than 45% of the queries come from Tier-2 and smaller cities, according to MakeMyTrip said in February. The company announced on 18 February 2026 that OpenAI’s APIs had been integrated into the assistant.

On 30 September, Group CTO Sanjay Mohan took the stage at Inc42’s CTO Summit 2026 for a session titled ‘What Lakhs Of AI Conversations Are Teaching MakeMyTrip About How India Travels’. Inc42 reported his remarks. Five moves stand out, and each one carries a lesson for any travel business that sells in India.

1. One conversation replaces a sequence of steps

Mohan said users now combine flight preferences, visa requirements and payment offers in a single conversation. Those used to be separate steps, each on its own screen and in a fixed order.

Each hop between screens is a point where a traveller can drop out. For airlines, fare rules, visa documents and card offers belong in one answer. For hotels, the same logic covers room type, cancellation terms and the payment offer that applies. An OTA that keeps those answers apart is asking customers to do the stitching themselves.

2. Voice booking for users who find typing a barrier

Mohan said voice use is significant in Tier III and IV regions, where typing is a barrier. Myra 2.0, launched in May 2026, added voice booking in eight languages.

Most booking funnels assume a keyboard and comfortable written English. Voice reaches the customers those funnels quietly lose. Any airline, hotel chain or OTA selling to smaller cities faces the same gap, and speaking is a lower hurdle than typing a search.

3. Eight languages from the start

Myra works in Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu and English. The list fits the audience: more than 45% of queries arrive from Tier-2 and smaller cities.

Language coverage is a demand decision rather than a courtesy. A hotel group in Kerala or an airline flying out of Chennai receives questions in Malayalam and Tamil, and an assistant that replies in those languages keeps the booking inside the chat. MakeMyTrip cites over 87 million lifetime transacted users, so the audience it is serving is wide.

4. Complete bookings inside the chat

Myra 2.0 handles a complete booking in one chat, with integrated payments and passport OCR upload. The traveller does not need to leave the conversation to pay or to submit travel documents.

An assistant that only recommends sends the customer elsewhere to finish. One that takes payment and reads a passport upload closes the sale itself. On international routes, where document checks slow the process, that is where the time is saved, and where an airline or OTA stands to lose the fewest customers.

5. MakeMyTrip and OpenAI: meeting travellers where discovery starts

Rajesh Magow, Co-founder and Group CEO, said the OpenAI collaboration means that when a traveller begins a journey through conversation, MakeMyTrip carries on naturally from that discovery.

The OpenAI integration places MakeMyTrip inside the chats where trips now begin, rather than waiting for a customer to open its app. For hotels and airlines, the point is plain: if a traveller starts planning in a conversation, the brand that is present in that conversation gets the first look.

Key takeaway

The one thing to copy is the scope, not the technology: one assistant that carries a traveller from question to payment, in the language and the mode they use. Start with the step where customers drop out today, whether that is visa questions, offers or document upload, and put that step inside the conversation first.

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HICAP 2026 Singapore, the Hotel Investment Conference Asia Pacific, opens on Tuesday 20 October 2026 and runs to Thursday 22 October. The three-day programme is built for the people who decide where hotel capital goes in the region, and it is 19 days away.

The venue is the Fairmont Singapore and Swissotel The Stamford, both at 2 Stamford Road, Singapore 178882, according to Greenberg Traurig’s event listing. Hospitality Net’s event listing says the audience covers investors, owners, developers, hotel chains, investment bankers, lenders, advisors, architects and government tourism officials.

For a travel-tech vendor, that is a room full of buyers and the people who fund them. Here is why you should not miss it.

1. Day one sets the numbers for the year

The opening day, 20 October, is plenary only. According to HICAP’s programme page, the four sessions are Economic Outlook; The Numbers, covering hotel performance, markets and outlook; Travel & Tourism Outlook; and Views from the Boardroom, Round One. Operators and owners who plan 2027 budgets will hear the market read in a single morning.

2. Three regional sessions at HICAP 2026 cover the markets investors ask about

The programme includes Spotlight on India, Japan Investment Insights and Greater China Investment Insights. Greenberg Traurig’s Joel Rothstein moderates the China session. Elias Hayek sits on the panel Acquisitions: Hospitality vs. Real Estate, which asks whether the yield premium is still there. Those two panel titles frame the question every owner is asking about buying hotels against buying property.

3. A technology session written for owners

The technology slot is Tech Edit LIVE: 10 Trends in 10 Minutes, The Owners & Investors Brief. The format is ten trends, ten minutes, aimed at the people who sign off technology spend rather than the people who run the systems. Vendors selling property management, revenue or guest-experience tools to owners get a clear view of what that audience is being told to look at.

4. The awards show which deals set the pace

HICAP presents six awards: Lifetime Achievement, the Reggie Shiu Development of the Year, the Sustainable Hotel Awards, Single Asset Transaction of the Year, Merger & Acquisition of the Year and the Rising Star Award Asia Pacific. The two transaction awards name the deals the industry itself rates highest in the year. The development and sustainability awards show what kind of property wins recognition.

5. A stage for the next generation of dealmakers

The Rising Star Award Asia Pacific is run by ISHC and HICAP. As Hotel Online reported, it is for people aged 35 or under with at least five years in hotel development or investment. Nominations closed on 14 August 2026, and the 2025 winner was Karan Mahesh. The award shows who is moving up in Asia-Pacific hotel investment, and who a vendor or adviser should meet early.

For organisers

HICAP gives technology ten minutes per trend in a programme otherwise built around capital, markets and law. Events that serve owners and investors can add a travel-tech and AI view from India, where hotel groups and platforms are building at speed, and the Spotlight on India session already shows the audience is looking there.

Key takeaway

Hotel owners and investors should be in Singapore for all three days, and day one on 20 October is the one not to miss for the market outlook. Travel-tech founders selling to hotel owners should arrive for the Tech Edit LIVE session and stay for the regional panels. We would plan meetings around the India, Japan and China sessions, because that is where the buyers will be gathered.

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Eight travel startups take the stage at WiT Singapore 2026 this week in the Global Startup Pitch, picked from 17 finalists who pitched at Phocuswright Europe in Barcelona in June 2026. The competition is jointly produced by WiT, Phocuswright and PhocusWire, and it is in its fifth year.

For a reader deciding whether to make the trip, the pitch is the part of the event that shows where young travel companies are pointing their products. Eight companies survived a cut from 17, so the audience sees a filtered list rather than an open call.

Two categories, two stages of company

The pitch splits entrants by age and funding. Seedup is for startups under three years old that have raised US$5M or less. Scaleup is for companies three to eight years old that have raised US$10M or less.

The split tells a buyer what kind of conversation to expect. A Seedup company has a short history and a small funding total, so its pitch is about promise. A Scaleup company has three to eight years behind it, so its pitch can point to customers already signed. A hotel, airline or OTA leader can decide before the first slide which of the two it came to meet.

Sponsor and prizes

American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) sponsors the competition. The prizes include travel to the event itself: SPUN received the AirAsia MOVE award, which includes a return flight from anywhere in Asia to WiT Singapore. A prize that pays for a founder’s seat at the show fits a contest whose purpose is to put startups in front of buyers.

Where the winners go next: Phocuswright in Fort Lauderdale

Singapore is not the end of the road. People’s Choice winners go on to The Phocuswright Conference, 17 to 19 November, in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The route runs from Barcelona in June to Singapore this week to Florida in November, across three continents. For a founder, that means three different audiences testing the same product. For a buyer, it is a way to watch the same companies get questioned in more than one room.

A Wildcard route into Singapore

One entrant arrived by an unusual door. Hotel-Online reported that OneJourney advances to WiT Singapore following a Wildcard win at the Global Startup Pitch competition. The same report says OneJourney has been in commercial use since early 2026, is live with operators in Europe, and is available to more than 1,100 luxury independent hotels through the DayBlink GPO partnership.

Brian Dass said in the Hotel-Online report: “The next frontier for hospitality innovation is in financial operations.” The frontier he names is the back office, not the guest-facing side of the hotel. The distribution figure gives the claim weight: more than 1,100 hotels can reach the product through a single partnership.

What WiT Singapore 2026 is about

The event is focused on generative AI, startups and travel technology, according to TravelDailyNews Asia. The startup pitch sits inside that frame, so buyers who come for the AI sessions can also see the young companies building for the same problems at the same event.

For organisers

The Global Startup Pitch is a format other organisers can study. It uses two tiers with hard limits on age and money, so entrants compete against their peers. It has a headline sponsor in Amex GBT. Its prizes carry travel, as the AirAsia MOVE award does. It feeds winners into a larger event, and a Wildcard route lets a company that missed out in one city come back in another. A tiered pitch also needs people who can judge the entries and moderate the stage, and regional events that run startup programmes of their own will find the same need.

Key takeaway

We would make the trip if your job is to find a supplier before your competitors do. Eight companies from 17 finalists is a short list worth reading, and the Seedup and Scaleup labels tell you which pitches to sit through. If you can attend only one session, make it the pitch itself, and watch the People’s Choice result, since those winners head to Fort Lauderdale on 17 to 19 November.

Are you a travel startup founder? Pitch your story to TravHQ right now. Pitch it to TravHQ.

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IATA said this week that its joint World Financial Symposium and World Passenger Symposium will be held on 28 and 29 October 2026 in Macao (SAR), China, at the Galaxy International Convention Center, an event already being called IATA Macao 2026. The two symposiums run as one event, across two days and one venue.

The theme for the 2026 edition is “From Vision to Value: The Next Era of Air Travel – Connecting Retail, Experience, and Financial Performance”. IATA’s event page records 1,250 delegates at the 2025 edition in Istanbul, and puts the usual attendee mix at more than 75 airlines, more than 200 IATA Strategic Partners and more than 40 sponsors and exhibitors.

The published programme splits the two days into three parallel tracks: Retail and Distribution (Offers and Orders), Financial Services and Processing, and Passenger Experience and Accessibility. An airline commercial, distribution, payments or digital identity lead can read that structure and know which room to sit in.

Here is why you should not miss this one.

1. More than 75 airlines sit on the delegate list

IATA puts the usual mix at more than 75 airlines. For a vendor, that is a quarter of prospecting compressed into two days, and the airline people in the room are the commercial, financial and passenger experience teams rather than procurement alone. For an airline, it is the shortest way to compare notes with 75 peers on the same two questions: what is selling, and what is it costing to process.

2. More than 200 IATA Strategic Partners are in the same building

The attendee mix also runs to more than 200 IATA Strategic Partners and more than 40 sponsors and exhibitors. That is the supply side of airline retailing, payments and passenger processing standing in one hall for two days. For an airline team carrying a 2027 build list, it is a way to see the whole field before the procurement cycle starts.

3. Three parallel tracks, each with an owner in the business

Track 1 is Retail and Distribution (Offers and Orders). Track 2 is Financial Services and Processing. Track 3 is Passenger Experience and Accessibility. Sending one person means picking one track and missing two, so the airlines that get the most out of the two days send three and compare at the end of each day.

4. The theme puts retailing and financial performance in the same sentence

“From Vision to Value: The Next Era of Air Travel – Connecting Retail, Experience, and Financial Performance” is the 2026 framing, and the track list follows it: what is sold, how the money moves, what the passenger gets. Offers and Orders programmes usually stall at the point where commercial and finance stop talking to each other. This agenda is built as though that is the problem.

5. IATA Macao 2026: two days, one venue, an October slot in Asia

The event runs on Wednesday 28 and Thursday 29 October at the Galaxy International Convention Center. Two days at one address means a two-night trip for most teams, and Macao is a direct hop for people travelling from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taipei and Southeast Asia.

For organisers

The delegate mix is the pitch: more than 75 airlines, more than 200 IATA Strategic Partners and more than 40 sponsors and exhibitors, with 1,250 people through the doors at the 2025 Istanbul edition. An event team building an aviation programme in Asia has both its speaker shortlist and its sponsor list sitting in that one room.

Key takeaway

Airline commercial, payments and passenger experience leads should treat this as a three-person trip rather than a one-person one, with a body in each track on both days. We read the 1,250 delegates in Istanbul and the 200 plus strategic partners as the reason to arrive with a meeting list rather than a session list. Vendors should work the Financial Services and Processing track, where the buyers already know what payments cost them.

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MakeMyTrip has launched Price Drop Protection on flight bookings, an add-on that pays travellers back if the fare falls after they book, BW Travel reported on 28 September 2026. It costs Rs 229 per person on domestic flights and Rs 349 per person on international flights, on one-way and round-trip bookings.

The launch shows India’s largest OTA changing what it sells. The ticket is now only part of the purchase. Around it sits a growing set of paid add-ons, each one covering a risk the traveller once carried alone after payment went through: a trip called off, a flight moved and, from this week, a fare that drops.

Price Drop Protection: from selling seats to selling certainty

MakeMyTrip’s protection add-ons already covered cancellation and schedule changes. Price Drop Protection extends them to fare moves after booking. Each risk now carries its own price at checkout, and each price is ancillary revenue for the platform rather than for the airline.

Before this, a cheaper fare after payment was simply money lost. A buyer who expected prices to fall had one option: hold off and hope the fare did not climb instead. That gamble now has a fixed cost, starting at Rs 229 a head, and the reason to wait goes away.

“Travellers should not have to choose between booking early and worrying that fares may fall later. Price Drop Protection lets them book when it works for them, with the reassurance that if the fare drops, they are protected,” said Raj Rishi Singh, COO of Flights, Corporate, GCC and Marketing at MakeMyTrip.

How the cover pays out

The refund has a ceiling, set out in MakeMyTrip’s terms and conditions. A domestic one-way passenger gets the fare difference or Rs 2,500, whichever is lower. The limit is Rs 5,000 on a domestic round trip, Rs 3,000 on an international one-way and Rs 6,000 on an international round trip.

Cover runs from booking until 6 hours before the scheduled departure. Fare changes in those final 6 hours do not count. MakeMyTrip alerts the traveller when a drop occurs. A claim can be lodged on the platform only after the trip is flown, and within 30 days of the scheduled departure date. The refund goes back to the original payment method.

MakeMyTrip (India) Private Limited provides the protection. Across Assist Private Limited provides assistance services but not the protection itself.

What does not count as a drop

The terms rule out several kinds of cheaper fare. Flash sales and promotional offers do not count. Neither do coupon codes, cashback, loyalty or reward fares, non-public fares or system errors. A lower fare caused by a cut in government taxes, airport charges or regulatory fees is excluded too.

Any change to the trip voids the cover: a rescheduled or cancelled flight, or an amended booking, including a new date. Charter and non-scheduled flights cannot be protected.

BW Travel says the feature is “currently, in a testing phase” and that “among those who opted for it, a large number of people saw a price drop on both domestic and international flights”. It gives no figure. Moneycontrol also reported the launch on 28 September.

Who it hits

Airline revenue managers feel it first. A buyer holding the cover has less reason to sit on the fence, so demand that once waited for a cheaper seat can book earlier. Airline flash sales and promotional fares fall outside the cover, so they still pull buyers on the airline’s own terms.

Rival Indian OTAs, among them ixigo, Cleartrip and EaseMyTrip, now face a competitor that earns a fee from fare movement itself. The contest at checkout shifts from who shows the lowest fare to who takes the most risk off the buyer, and how many protection products a traveller will pay for on a single ticket.

For OTAs and airlines elsewhere in APAC, the terms read as a ready template: a flat fee per person, a cap by route type, a cut-off 6 hours before departure and claims only after travel. Hotels and DMCs that package Indian flights should note that the cover applies to the flight alone.

MakeMyTrip Group CEO Rajesh Magow takes the WiT Singapore main stage on 1 October, from 10:10 to 10:30, in a session titled “Building for the Next Billion: The India Story”.

Key takeaway

OTAs with a large flight business should test a fare-protection add-on now, and MakeMyTrip’s terms already show where to draw the lines: no promotions, a cut-off before departure and claims after travel. Airline revenue teams in India should ask OTA partners whether early bookings rise on routes where the cover sells. Hotels and DMCs can wait, because the cover changes when a flight is bought, not what the traveller spends on arrival. We will be watching whether Rajesh Magow takes the add-on story further in Singapore.

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Ellerston Capital, led by Ashok Jacob, is set to buy the Leibovichs’ stake of about 12% in Luxury Escapes. The secondary sale values Adam Schwab’s travel booking platform at $525 million, as the Financial Review reported on 24 September 2026.

Ellerston is targeting a shareholding of at least 12% and gets one board seat. Because this is a secondary sale, the money goes to the selling shareholders and not to Luxury Escapes. Ellerston expects to more than double its money and to earn a 5 per cent dividend yield before it exits in two to three years.

What Luxury Escapes does

Adam Schwab founded Luxury Escapes in 2013 and is its CEO. The company is headquartered in Melbourne, has offices in Melbourne, Sydney and Singapore, and has more than 9 million members. It sells limited-time hotel offers, cruise and tour products to consumers and, increasingly, to travel agents.

The company took its first external equity in late 2021 and early 2022, when Pier 12 Capital raised a $125 million fund to buy a stake in Lux Group. Ellerston’s purchase comes about four years after that first outside investment.

Its traction numbers are specific. One in two Australians travelling to the Maldives books through Luxury Escapes. Its store in Chatswood, Sydney, was tracking toward about $100 million in annual sales. The company also runs a Melbourne to Maldives charter at its own risk. “We’re on risk, so if we don’t sell out, it’s on us,” Schwab said.

The Luxury Escapes Agent Hub

Luxury Escapes launched its Agent Hub in March 2024. The hub now runs in Australia and the UK, and thousands of agents use it for commissionable rates on limited-time offers, cruise and tour products.

Adam Schwab, founder and CEO of Luxury Escapes, told Travel Weekly Australia in February 2026 that the hub “could be a billion-dollar business for us in the next couple of years”. He added: “We now sell to agents and it’s one of our fastest-growing parts of the business.”

On growth, he puts margin first: “It’s easy to grow top line if you spend a lot on marketing. What we focus on is growing contribution margin.”

Other recent deals

• Fever raised US$250 million in primary equity on 17 September. EQT led the round, with Point72 Private Investments and Baillie Gifford. Fever’s own announcement calls it the largest round ever for a live-entertainment tech company. Fever operates in more than 55 countries, has tripled its revenue over three years and reports positive EBITDA.
• Laters.com, based in Singapore, closed a US$1.5 million seed round led by XBO Ventures and rebranded on 8 September.

What operators should read into it

Ellerston’s terms value Luxury Escapes on cash returns and a set exit: a 5 per cent dividend yield, more than double the money, and out in two to three years. That return case rests on distributions and not on growth alone, and it matches Schwab’s stated focus on contribution margin. Fever’s round points the same way. The company led its announcement with positive EBITDA as well as its growth figures.

For hotels, cruise lines and DMCs selling into Australia, Luxury Escapes now reaches buyers three ways: its members online, its physical stores such as Chatswood, and agents through the Agent Hub. It also carries inventory risk on its own Maldives charter. The Maldives figure matters most to suppliers, because one platform handles half of Australian travellers to that destination. With a new investor on the board that expects a dividend, the platform’s margin per booking will face closer scrutiny.

Key takeaway

Investors in APAC travel are paying for margin and cash returns, and Luxury Escapes at $525 million is a clear price point for a platform that sells to consumers, in stores and through agents. This quarter, a hotel, cruise line or DMC selling into Australia should check how much of its business moves through Luxury Escapes’ members, stores and Agent Hub, and what that channel costs compared with direct bookings. We expect the conversation about the capital behind these channels to continue at ITB Asia and HICAP in Singapore, 20 to 23 October.

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Klook, the Hong Kong experiences platform, signed Mastercard, Visa and Cloudbeds in the four weeks to 24 September 2026, putting its inventory inside two card schemes and one hotel property management system across seven Asian markets instead of paying for the demand itself.

The numbers explain the choice. Fortune reported in July that Klook booked revenue of US$407.4 million and a net loss of US$141.5 million for the first nine months of 2025, and that its November 2025 filing for a New York Stock Exchange listing sought US$300 million to US$500 million, with no updated plans announced since. Arival put gross bookings for the same nine months at US$2.3 billion, up 31% year on year. Co-founder and chief executive Ethan Lin says Klook holds under 1% of the global experiences market. A company with that much headroom and that size of loss has to stand where the traffic already flows. Here are five things Klook did that others did not.

1. It signed Visa and Mastercard in 28 days

Mastercard came first, on 27 August 2026. Eric Gnock Fah, co-founder and president of Klook, and Peter Robejsek, executive vice president for market development in Asia Pacific at Mastercard, signed a memorandum of understanding built on three stated pillars: cardholder value, new travel and lifestyle opportunities, and payment innovation. Visa followed on 24 September, when Klook joined Visa Destinations as a partner platform across six South-east Asian markets. Two schemes in one quarter, with the cardholder marketing paid for by the schemes, not by Klook.

2. It gave 30,000 creators a shop, not a link

Klook’s Kreator Programme has grown past 30,000 travel content creators in 88 markets, TTG Asia reported. The Visa deal puts affiliate links from Visa’s own creators on Klook’s Kreator Shops, so the card scheme’s creators sell from a Klook storefront. Klook’s Travel Pulse 2026 supplies the reason: more than half of Asia Pacific travellers no longer begin a plan with a fixed destination, and 23% begin with one activity and choose the place around it. When nearly one trip in four starts with the activity, whoever holds the activity inventory holds the top of the funnel.

3. It wired itself into Cloudbeds both ways

On 24 September 2026 Cloudbeds and Klook switched on a two-way integration that keeps rates, availability and bookings in step for hotels in Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines, Hotel News Resource reported. Cloudbeds runs in more than 150 countries. Sebastien Leitner, its vice president of partnerships, described distribution as “being present where travelers are looking”. Emma Lee, VP of hotels at Klook, said Klook’s travellers book the stay together with the experiences and transport that shape the trip. A Cloudbeds hotel now turns Klook on from the system it already uses.

4. It attached demand numbers to every deal

Each memorandum arrived with the same survey. Travel Pulse 2026 found 47% of APAC consumers actively hunt for deals, discounts and bundled offers, 42% book earlier to lock in better prices, and 73% would travel to a lesser-known city for a unique event. Those three figures give a card scheme a reason to fund an offer, to fund it early, and to fund it outside the capitals. Klook is not asking partners to believe in experience-led travel. It is giving them percentages for their own board papers.

5. It kept signing supply while rivals bought demand

Klook’s newsroom lists three supply deals in the same September: a renewed partnership with the Philippine Department of Tourism on 3 September, coastal ferries with the Korea Shipping Association on 14 September, and a free shinkansen campaign with Kagoshima Prefecture on 18 September. About 80% of Klook’s customers live in Asia Pacific, and gross transaction volume from non-Asian users grew 13.4% over three years, so the supply follows the customers. Founded by Ethan Lin, Eric Gnock Fah and Bernie Xiong, with a first app in mid-2015 and unicorn status in 2018, Klook spent a decade building the inventory the schemes and Cloudbeds now distribute.

Who to watch at WiT Singapore, which opens on 30 September: the distribution sessions. Klook leaders have taken WiT stages before, and this year’s question is whether a card scheme, a PMS and an OTA now count as one channel.

Key takeaway

The one move to copy is Cloudbeds: put the inventory inside the system the partner already runs, two ways, so nobody has to leave it to sell you. A hotel group, a ferry line or a tourism board can do that without Klook’s balance sheet. We would fund the integration before the marketing budget, because a channel that costs the partner nothing to switch on is the one they leave on.

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