Skift Travel News Blog

American Airlines and Delta Air Lines will both add more flights to China this fall and winter as geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China begin easing.

Fort Worth, Texas-based American will add three weekly nonstops for a single daily flight on the Dallas-Fort Worth-Shanghai route in January, an airline spokesperson said Wednesday. And Atlanta-based Delta will add six weekly flights for a total of 10 — once daily Seattle-Shanghai and thrice-weekly Detroit-Shanghai — on October 29, the carrier also said Wednesday.

The additions come less than a week after U.S. and Chinese officials agreed to double the number of nonstop flights between the two countries to 48 a week — 24 for airlines of each country — from October 29. A sticking point in negotiations has been U.S. demands that flights on Chinese airlines to the U.S. avoid Russian airspace, which U.S. carriers are barred from crossing. Flights were capped at 24 a week since China eased Covid-19 travel restrictions in January.

Air China, China Eastern, China Southern, and United Airlines have also outlined plans to add more flights since the new frequency limit was unveiled. The three Chinese carriers each plan to operate five weekly flights through October 28, while United plans to offer at least eight weekly flights between San Francisco and both Beijing and Shanghai from November.

The flight limits have been blamed for stymieing the recovery of Chinese visitor flows to the U.S. The segment generated some $35 billion in annual spending in American cities before the pandemic.

“There won’t be a post-Covid recovery without China because it’s our number one spend market,” Brand USA President and CEO Chris Thompson said earlier in August.

Foreign airlines, like All Nippon Airways, Japan Airlines, and Korean Air, that lack the frequency restrictions their U.S. and Chinese competitors face have picked up connecting traffic on their China flights. ANA President and CEO Shinichi Inoue said in June that the U.S.-China restrictions had created “new demand” for the airline.

In 2019, there were more than 50 daily nonstop flights — or more than 360 weekly frequencies — between the U.S. and China, according to Cirium Diio schedules.

TUI, one of Europe’s leading tour operator groups, has extended its tours and activities distribution through Juniper Travel Technology.

Juniper, a travel tech company offering travel booking and management solutions, will integrate TUI’s portfolio of 88,000 excursions, activities, and attraction tickets in 100 countries, making it available for its clients of 270 travel and tourism companies.

The integration with Juniper Travel will “reach new customers based on their needs through seamless integration”, said Nishank Gopalkrishnan, chief business officer of TUI Musement. It expands TUI’s business to business strategy, both with companies in TUI’s established source markets such as the United Kingdom and Germany, and also with Juniper partners in southern Europe and LATAM as new markets for TUI.

TUI Musement reported a 33% increase in sales in the group’s third-quarter financial results. In 2022, TUI sold over seven million experiences.

Juan Mateos, Juniper Travel general manager, said its clients would have “frictionless access” to TUI’s experiences, initially available as a standalone catalog. In the future, it will be part of Juniper’s packaging and call center modules.

Etihad Airways has released a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the filming of its skydiving orchestra.

The original video, which was created as part of the carrier’s partnership with Paramount Pictures to celebrate the premiere of Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, saw an orchestra fall from 13,000 feet at 120mph whilst playing the Mission Impossible theme song.

The campaign was released across Etihad Airways’ social media platforms in July, which you can take a look at below:

To complete the stunt, Etihad Airways and their advertising agency Impact BBDO had to ‘do the impossible’ – find talented musicians who are also skilled skydivers.

But following weeks of planning and preparation, custom rigging was created for each instrument to ensure the skydiving orchestra could safely play and pull their parachute when the time came, and a professional skydiving cinematographer jumped with them each time to capture it all.

Each member of the orchestra was tasked with learning their piece of music by heart, which they needed to be able to recite perfectly despite the unconventional conditions.

You can take a look at the behind-the-scenes footage from the Etihad Airways YouTube below:

Finnair is repurposing worn-out crew uniforms into composite products, thanks to a new partnership with Finnish workwear manufacturer Image Wear.

Any uniform that remains in good condition is refurbished and reused where appropriate, with Finnair noting that its ‘employees have welcomed the used uniform parts that have been cleaned and maintained, as they are more sustainable than new ones.’

“We have established a process to ensure a constant supply of used clothing pieces that have been carefully cleaned and inspected. Primarily, we allocate these items to fulfill our employees’ uniform orders. We supplement the orders with new uniform parts when necessary,” says Merja Lindberg, who is responsible for Finnair uniforms.

For uniforms that have reached the end of their wearable life, Finnair is working with Image Wear to repurpose the material so it can be used for manufacturing recycled composite products. The material, which is made by combining recycled plastic particles with textiles, can be used to create various outdoor items including tables and benches. 

“Composite products are durable – their estimated lifespan is around 50 years, and at the end of their lifecycle, they can still be recycled into new products. In this way, worn-out work clothes do not end up as waste, but continue their life in a new form,” says Kati Tukiainen, Image Wear’s Responsibility manager.

European-based experience gift platform Smartbox Group has acquired the Scandinavian experiences platform Truestory.

Lasse Kjær, founder of Truestory, announced the acquisition in a LinkedIn post, stating the Nordic-centred experiences platform, with some “1,000 live experiences from more than 600 hosts”, now had a “new owner who wants to invest in Truestory to redeem the long-term potential of the business.”

Skift reached out to Kjær for specific details on the sale, but he stated he was “unable to share the value of the acquisition right now.”

Truestory would continue to operate under the same brand as the site’s users know it, specifically strengthening Smartbox Group’s position in the Nordic countries of Norway and Sweden, René Drewsen, Cluster Director Nordic at Smartbox Group, said in a statement.

Founded in 2003, the Smartbox Group is present in nine European countries and claims it sells 7 million experience gifts worth an estimated $547 million annually. The company works with “40,000 European partners, distributing through 18,000 retail stores, supermarkets, websites, and online retailers.”

SWISS has announced the introduction of free Wi-Fi enabled internet for chat services on all long-haul flights, beginning in August 2023.

The new facility, which will be available across all travel classes, will allow passengers to utilize chat services on smartphones, laptops and tablets for the duration of their flight and will have no upper data limit.

The Wi-Fi facility will provide access to most popular messenger services, including WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and Telegram. 

SWISS passengers will also have the opportunity to upgrade to advanced Wi-Fi packages, which will offer further internet capabilities such as browsing, emailing, and access to social media platforms.

“In offering these new Wi-Fi options we’re taking a big step forward,” says SWISS Chief Commercial Officer Tamur Goudarzi Pour. 

“With our new unlimited free chat facility in all our travel classes, our guests can keep in contact with their families, friends and business partners throughout their flight. Our attractive new packages for surfing, email and social media also offer unlimited data volumes. So our customers now have even more choice in how they wish to stay in unbounded touch with the world while they are aboard our long-haul flights.”

Clarity Business Travel, a corporate travel agency based in the UK, plans to purchase two corporate travel businesses for £36.5 million ($46 million).

Capita, a publicly traded business IT company based in London, said Thursday that it plans to sell subsidiaries Agiito and Evolvi, pending regulatory approvals. 

Agiito is a management agency for corporate travel, meetings, and events. Evovli is a rail booking tool for travel management companies.

Clarity is the business travel and events division of the Portman Travel Group.

Clarity is expected to pay Capita £8 million ($10.2 million) in cash upon completion of the transaction, plus another £8 million 12 months later. Clarity is assuming working capital and debt liabilities, which makes up the difference between the sales value and the cash payments. 

The senior management teams and employees of Agiito and Evovli will remain as the companies transfer to the buyer, according to Capita. 

Revenue in 2022 for the two companies being sold was £31 million ($39.4 million), and profit before tax was £4 million ($5.1 million), according to Capita. Gross assets are valued at £76 million ($96.5 million).

The deadly wildfires on the island of Maui are likely to affect visitor — and airline — demand to the island for the “foreseeable future,” analysts at T.D. Cowen said Friday.

“Resort destinations in Maui are likely to disappear from plans for the foreseeable future, but we believe Hawaii overall will remain an aspirational vacation destination for travelers,” they wrote in a report. The analysts expect the recovery to “take years,” citing as an example the two-year recovery in air travel demand to Puerto Rico after Hurricane Irma hit the island in 2017.

The wildfires, believed to have been fueled by high winds from a hurricane that passed near the Hawaiian islands, leveled the historic town of Lahaina, killing at least 55 people and displacing thousands on Wednesday. The region of West Maui affected is isolated with just one road in and out.

The outlook is tough news for Hawaiian Airlines, which is the largest airline on the island and operates a secondary hub at Maui’s main airport of Kahului. T.D. Cowen expects the impact the be “meaningful” for the carrier. Southwest Airlines, United Airlines, and Alaska Airlines — the second, third, and fourth largest airlines to the island — are also likely to feel the affect of less demand to Maui.

“We expect capacity to shift away from Maui as a destination and to Oahu, [and] the Big Island,” the T.D. Cowen analysts wrote. “Kauai may also benefit.”

Most airlines have stopped carrying non-essential travelers — or all passengers in some cases — to Maui. Instead, they have been transporting supplies to the island from the mainland U.S., and filling departing flights with those eager to leave the island after the fires. Hawaiian and Southwest are offering seats for just $19 between Kahului and Honolulu.

Airlines have all waived change fees for certain previously booked tickets to Maui, and some are offering rebooking flexibility, including allowing travelers to change their destination in Hawaii free of charge. As of Friday morning, American Airlines‘ waiver applied to trips scheduled by August 13; Alaska and Delta Air Lines by August 15; Hawaiian and United by August 31; and Southwest by September 4.

Non-essential travel to Maui is strongly discouraged for the time being.

United Airlines has unveiled Children’s Travel Kits in collaboration with Sesame Workshop.

The kits feature an Oscar the Grouch color and activity book with crayons, Oscar the Grouch slide puzzle, and a sensory calming strip designed to help soothe anxiety and fidgeting. All of these activities aim to keep kids occupied in the air and will be available onboard during select flights for flyers ages 2-12.

United had previously announced Oscar the Grouch as the airline’s Chief Trash Officer, who serves as an expert on how sustainable aviation fuel is created from waste like “banana peels, leftover cooking oil, woody biomass and, yep, trash.”

United has also recently revealed wellness-driven amenity kits, featuring products from Venus Williams’ brand, Asutra.

Project MidX Studios, the lower midscale, extended stay property, is officially called StudioRes. Marriott describes it as a new-build, midscale extended stay development platform for owners and franchisees in the U.S. and Canada. The world’s largest hotelier said 1,800 target markets have already been identified.

The new build extended stay prototype rooms include 124 keys with fully furnished studios — each with queen beds and a kitchen. Interestingly enough, the properties are not expected to offer breakfast, but they will offer weekly housekeeping.

The “affordable midscale” category brand aims to appeal to guests seeking extended stays, typically at least 15 days.

Concord Hospitality, a hotel development and management company, and Whitman Peterson, a real estate private equity company, plan to work with Marriott to break ground on three properties under the new brand this year. They expect openings in late 2024 or early 2025.

The new brand will be Marriott’s 32nd. (Read Skift’s explainer on Marriott’s brand family for context.)