2016 was quite an eventful year for all of us. There were many ups and downs, some really surprising developments and then there were the global events like Brexit that widely impacted businesses. Looking back, we have created a round-up of all the major developments from travel industry that created headlines this year.

Ctrip’s international expedition

Ctrip stirred up the start of 2016 with a sizeable investment in MakeMyTrip. The Chinese company grabbed a piece of the fast growing Indian travel market with MakeMyTrip as its partner and the activity outside China wasn’t limited to India alone. To fuel its global ambitions, Ctrip also acquired flight metasearch Skyscanner near the end of this year. Other major Chinese internet companies have also been exploring avenues in international market.

Dying promise of budget

While 2015 was the year of budget hotel startups, 2016 started with a shade of blue. The growth of OYO Rooms, the poster boy of this segment slowed down while Tiger Global backed rival ZO Rooms faded and reportedly got acquired. Some other startups in this space did suffer as well. WudStay, another Indian startup in the same space pivoted to offer long term accommodation. News wasn’t particularly cheerful from other OYO replicas in South-East Asian market either.

Carmakers start sharing

Access economy further picked momentum this year and the automakers joined the action. As sharing platforms will hit the growth of their sales in the long run, they started placing their bets on sharing. Almost every major international manufacturer either invested in some promising car sharing platform or created and spun off their own companies. Ford, Mercedes Benz, BMW, Jaguar Land Rover, PSA, Hyundai, Nissan, Honda, Volvo are each working in sharing space now. While these brands invested or developed solutions, the Indian carmakers like Tata Motors partnered with sharing platforms like Ola and Uber to drive sales.

The year of live

This was the year of live videos. While live videos started picking up last year, they gained fierce momentum this year. Facebook earlier introduced API to allow high end cameras to be used for live. YouTube added the option of broadcasting live 360 videos and Facebook followed soon after. Instagram also introduced the option of broadcasting Live while Twitter smartly integrated Periscope into the Twitter app for live broadcasting.

Race without driver

Suddenly Google wasn’t making headlines with its driverless car anymore. GM acquired Cruise Automation to speed up towards the future, NuTonomy started testing driverless cars in Singapore, Uber acquired Otto and also deployed its vehicles in Pittsburgh. More names joined the race including an interesting entrant in the form of Comma.ai. An unfortunate incident involving Tesla Model S pushed the regulators on defensive against driverless cars but the progress continued nevertheless.

Claimed death of apps

Bots made lot of headlines this year and were touted as the death of apps. Along with many other messaging platforms, Facebook opened up its Messenger to allow chat bots into the app. Google on the other hand came up with a smart assistant and announced ‘Actions on Google’ to allow developers to add utilities.

Back to the future?

One major announcement that got everyone to sit up and take notice was Boom. Boom promised to bring back the Concorde days of high speed air travel without all the problems associated with Concorde. It also claimed that the travel costs won’t be sky high and would match current day business class fares.

Hyperloop’s sprint

High speed travel won’t be limited to the sky anymore. Hyperloop, the brainchild of SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk promised to make 800 mph travel on ground a reality. Various companies are working on their versions of Hyperloop and this year we saw many of them register good progress.

Didi’s big blow

While Didi Chuxing has been growing fast in its home market and has been supporting Uber rivals all over the world, the big announcement came with the news of the acquisition of Uber’s China operations. Uber was investing heavily in the market but the progress wasn’t proportional. Though with the two cab hailing companies becoming allies, clouds started to appear over the global ambitions of Didi.

OTAs reshuffling top order

Many experts predicted that we will see more consolidation in the travel industry in the year 2016. In India, leading OTA MakeMyTrip acquired the travel business of ibibo to create one large entity and reduce the cut-throat competition. Another major Indian OTA Yatra was acquired by Terrapin 3, a special purpose acquisition company, and headed towards a reverse IPO.

Hunting on PokemonGO

One small location based game got people all over the world to step out of their living rooms. It turned into a global phenomenon over a very short period after its launch. Some local business were quick to capitalise on the popularity and coupled it with their social media reach to drive business. Soon after that, the developers introduced sponsored locations in Japan with a restaurant chain to put the popularity to some use.

Airbnb’s second act

Airbnb, the hero of sharing space moved beyond accommodation this year and introduced Trips at the Airbnb Open. With trips, the platform will be offering curated content and local tours for travellers. It also announced its plans to add flight booking in future so that it can be the one hub for almost everything a traveller might need.

Google’s new toys

Google had a busy year like always and this year, the internet search giant moved deeper into travel. It started off with Destinations which was certainly a fresh addition but not something that would make people ditch their favourite discovery and planning apps. Google also introduced new ad options for travel marketers and the most interesting one was the addition of sponsored pins on Google Maps to help small local businesses. Later in the year came in Trips. An app that showcased how powerful data can be when used the right way. It is still not a complete planning app but it certainly has the potential to become one in near future.
What other major developments from the year would you add to the list? Do share with us.

The post Here are all the headlines from travel that defined 2016 appeared first on TravHQ.

Another interesting month and many more stories to share. We turned one this month, you can read a brief note about the journey here. We also put together a list of some of the most interesting startups we learned about in the past one year which you can find here. This month we also travelled to Kolkata and Hyderabad to host Startup Knockdown+ which turned out to be huge success. Here are some major stories from the month of July:

Airlines Technology team collecting the award from Shivam Shah

1- PSA Group invests in TravelerCar

Automobile industry as we know it now is going to be disrupted and that is why the car companies are expanding their footprint into other domains. In one such move, PSA Group has invested into car sharing company TravelerCar. It offers low cost parking to travellers at airports and stations or for free if they choose to rent out their cars to incoming travellers.

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2- Guide on alternate marketing platforms for travel brands

Facebook is a great marketing platform but as the competition rises, it is getting increasingly tough to promote your brand on Facebook. While it still continues to hold relevance for the brands, there are some other platforms that brands should explore to boost their visibility.

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3- Airlines Technology and Izifiso emerge as the winners of Startup Knockdown Kolkata

Earlier this month, we hosted the Kolkata edition of Startup Knockdown in association with TTF. After filtering through the pitches, all the judges picked Izifiso to be the winner. Izifiso is a platform that connects various domain experts that host educational tours with students and schools. Airlines Technology, an NDC aggregator was selected by Amadeus to be a part of Amadeus Next.

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4- Pokemon Go is doing what Google Maps planned to do

Pokemon Go, a location based game, is making headlines all over the world. It has surpassed all descriptions of ‘viral’ and people are jumping on it even before official launch in many parts of the world. However, there is another aspect to it. The game holds the potential to drive real world footfall and various local businesses are leveraging that. We take a closer look.

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5- Yatra to merge with Terrapin 3 Acquisition Corporation

Yatra Online announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement with Terrapin 3 to combine. The deal values Yatra at USD 218 million. The combined entity will continue to be led by Yatra co-founder Dhruv Shringi. This not only fuels Yatra with capital but also helps them move towards IPO without the uncertainty of list pricing.

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6- Travelibro plans to make scattered vacation photos a thing of past

Our vacation photos are usually dumped into a single folder to be filtered sometime in future. Some of them make it to social media platforms while other continue to sit there for playing the guessing game sometime in future. Travelibro addresses that by recording your trips while on the go without requiring any inputs. This allows for logging the trips in a better way while enabling other travellers to draw inspiration from the trips.

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7- Routern, Guidezie and India Outtabox emerged on top in Startup Knockdown Hyderabad

Followed by the Kolkata edition of the event, the Hyderabad edition of the event saw more startups in travel space. India Outtabox was the common choice of judges. It focusses on offering highly customised tours to inbound travellers. Routern was selected by Amadeus to be a part of Amadeus Next. Guidezie has been invited by Hyderabad Angels for elevated round of pitching.

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8- Expedia acquired travel photography platform Trover

Expedia has acquired Trover, a platform where travellers share their photographs to inspire other travellers. It offers beautiful travel content and social experience and could be a good addition to Expedia’s portfolio.

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9- Namah Resorts hosts an exciting blogger engagement campaign

Influencer marketing, if done right, can help travel brands boost their online presence. Namah, a luxury resort operated by DS Group. The campaign was themed around International Yoga Day in sync with the brand’s message of health and wellness and it portrayed it very well.

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10- Tesla and Mobileye parting ways

Tesla and Mobileye have announced that they won’t continue to work together for the driverless car technology on Tesla’s cars. Mobileye is working with many other manufacturers and has recently announced a partnership with BMW and Intel.

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The post July 2016 round-up: Electric cars and Pokemon Go appeared first on TravHQ.

Another month into our journey and we have got lot more stories to share. The highlight of this month has to be the 2^nd Travel Startup Knockdown hosted during the FICCI Travel & Hospitality Tech Conclave and now we are looking forward to attending Phocuswright India in April. In other news, American car maker GM acquired a startup working on driverless technology and the fight between cab hailing companies in India turned uglier. In case you missed, here are the top stories from the month of March:

1- Confirmtkt and Your Local Cousin emerge as winners of 2^nd Travel Startup Knockdown

We hosted the 2^nd Travel Startup Knockdown in association with FICCI and Amadeus where Confirmtkt and Your Local Cousin won the Judges’ Choice and People’s Choice awards respectively. Confirmtkt will now be joining Amadeus Next which will give them support from travel insiders and access to technology that is at the heart of travel industry.

Full story

2- GM announced acquisition of Cruise Automation

General Motors has been actively forging partnerships to speed up the progress on driverless cars and moving forward in the same direction, it has announced that it will be buying Cruise Automation, a Silicon Valley startup developing technologies for driverless cars.

Full story

3- Tripoto launched AI based concierge service

Industry experts have indicated that we will see an increase in use of chat as a medium for providing travel services. Going a step further in the same direction, Tripoto has launched a chat based travel assistant which uses AI to answer travel related queries and offer information.

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4- Snapdeal opens up its app for redBus, Zomato and Cleartrip

Snapdeal has opened up its app to redBus, Zomato and Cleartrip to enable its users to book tickets and order food directly from its app. Building a strong user base and retaining them is a major challenge in travel industry and this move will help the travel brands leverage Snapdeal’s reach to sell their products.

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5- Chetan Kapoor, Research Analyst-Asia Pacific, Phocuswright shares insight on APAC travel market

Ahead of Phocuswright’s first event in Asia, we spoke with Chetan Kapoor to learn more about the changing landscape of travel in Asia Pacific region.

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6- Travel brands might lose visibility on Instagram

Instagram, a popular marketing channel for travel brands, is changing the sort order of posts from chronological to show the best posts first. While Instagram has done this to deal with the increasing volume of content being shared on the platform and boost relevant content, this would also mean that brands and individuals will lose out on the easy visibility they enjoyed and will now have to fight for it.

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7- Concorde days might be coming back without the high costs

A Denver based startup that is a part of Y Combinator plans to build a 40 seater jet which will be capable of flying at Mach 2.2 (1450 mph) while minimising the challenges like sound and high cost. Their team comes with strong experience in the industry and Virgin has also decided to join the project and help in development and testing.

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8- Ola acquires mobile payment startup Qarth

Ola introduced the Ola money feature for cab payments but after realising the potential mobile payment technologies hold, launched it as a separate service that can be used for other payments. Now it announced the acquisition of mobile payment startup Qarth to further boost Ola money and stay competitive in this space.

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9- Uber plans to invest more in India

The fight between cab hailing services in India is fierce and to strengthen its position, Uber might be investing more capital in the Indian market. Recently Uber also filed a lawsuit against its prime rival Ola accusing of adopting unfair practices and creating a large number of fake bookings on Uber.

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The post March 2016 round-up: Driverless cars and humanless chat appeared first on TravHQ.