Singaporeans booking regional trips further ahead
Supplementary data from Traveloka’s SEA Index Q3 2026 shows Singapore travelers increasingly planning nearby Southeast Asian getaways at least 30 days in advance. In Q3 2026, the combined share of flight and accommodation bookings made through Traveloka’s Singapore market that were booked a month or more ahead rose year-on-year for all four destinations: Vietnam (43%, +11.9 percentage points), Thailand (42%, +4.2 pp), Malaysia (35%, +5.9 pp) and Indonesia (31%, +9.6 pp). Beyond the region, about one in five Japan bookings were already for 2027 travel, a share broadly unchanged from last year. The Singapore-specific data is not detailed in the published Index, and Traveloka has offered a one-pager, the full Index and additional data points or quotes on request.
SITA to acquire Collins Aerospace Airport Solutions
SITA has agreed to acquire Collins Aerospace Airport Solutions, the airport IT unit of RTX-owned Collins Aerospace, for an undisclosed amount. The unit provides self-service check-in and bag drop, biometric identity management and passenger verification, baggage-tracking technology and airport operations solutions. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2027, subject to customer closing conditions including regulatory approvals. SITA said the addition will strengthen its ability to deliver more seamless and resilient operations, with SVP of airports Nathalie Altwegg saying airports want a trusted technology partner and the acquisition will help SITA serve more customers in that way. The move follows SITA’s June acquisition of airline disruption technology firm Big Blue Analytics, whose terms were also undisclosed. Separately, Safran completed its $1.8 billion purchase of Collins Aerospace’s flight control and actuation business from RTX in July 2025.
Hotels like general-purpose AI over vendor tools
A survey of 107 hotel company leaders, conducted in August and September for Destination AI and released alongside its September 29-30 forum in Washington, D.C., found that 72% of brands get their AI capabilities from general-purpose tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Copilot. Another 41% build or customize solutions in-house, while 33% use AI features from existing software vendors and 16% buy from AI-first startups. On the impact on vendor spending over the next 12 months, 27% expect to buy more, 33% about the same and 17% less. Although 63% of respondents use AI regularly in their work, only 13% say their organization has a clear strategy, formal governance and scaled execution, while 30% have defined strategy but fragmented execution and 26% have no formal strategy and run ad hoc experiments. Success is more often attributed to bottom-up innovation (32%) and experimentation culture (34%) than to a dedicated AI lead (24%) or executive mandates (14%). Operational efficiency was cited by 38% as the area of strongest results, followed by commercial performance (28%), but 35% do not measure ROI and only 14% use defined indicators measured before and after deployment.
Operto finds 1.1 million predatory ads in one month
Operto’s State of Predatory OTAs 2026 report, based on an analysis of the Google Ads Transparency Center from May 22 to June 21, 2026, found 1.1 million predatory ads targeting hotel-branded searches, affecting 204,000 hotels worldwide. The average affected hotel faced 3.9 competing ads on its own brand, rising to 6.6 in the U.S., and nearly half of all ads came from GuestReservations.com, with others from Room77.com, HotelsOne.com, Reservations.com and ReservationCounter.com. These sites imitate hotels, so hotels lose direct bookings and guest data, then face complaints: of 232 Better Business Bureau complaints against GuestReservations.com, 46% cited deceptive cancellation policies, 38% involved guests who believed they had booked directly, 34% cited hidden fees and 5% involved reservations the hotel had no record of. San Francisco city attorney David Chiu has sued GuestReservations.com and BookOnline.com, alleging deceptive practices and that Booking Holdings aided the scheme as inventory supplier. Operto CEO Tim Major said AI is amplifying the problem, that the sites sit in an enforcement gray area, and that they quickly reappear through shell companies after being blocked, which he likened to “Whac-A-Mole”. Operto is developing AI “investigator” agents to find and report such sites to Google, while Expedia declined to comment.
(via Phocuswire)
