New players such as Airbnb, Uber, Lyft are actively investing in developing business travel programs with sophisticated tracking and data connectivity tools.
The boundaries get blurred as hotels build up loyalty to compete with distuibution, and OTAs invest in guest experience technology and morph into platform providers for the long tail of hotels.
As vacation rentals grow in popularity, further consolidation is likely.
Value growth for 2017 is expected to be strong at 4.1% in 2017, decelerating to 3.1% in 2018, and a minor economic deceleration is expected in China.
Estimation shows that 750,000 Chinese tourists will have visited Canada by the end of 2017, a 23% increase over the previous year.
Airlines are increasingly aware of the value-added benefits of inflight connectivity options. About half of airlines plan to offer free connectivity and 42% are considering paid-for wifi.
OTAs are 56% more likely to cite data as the greatest barrier to delivering personalised experiences, but transportation, hospitality and restaurant companies think human elements are crucial.
Amazon started with e-commerce and then moved into logistics, but AirAsia plans to work backward by building a duty-free shopping platform and mobile payment platform BigPay.