Let's Talk Travel

Albania up 550%. Africa more than doubling. And a core customer who might just be getting younger.

Fresh from this week's ATAS conference, James Clarke and Andy Herrington are joined by Claire Brighton, Managing Director of the Association of Touring & Adventure Suppliers, to unpack the data everyone was photographing.

Some believe that total spend on travel has peaked (and we covered this in our episode 'Have we reached peak travel'. If this is the case, just how do travel companies grow? Diversification is potentially the travel word of 2027 with many leading travel brands looking to broaden not only their customer base and destinations, but their whole business models. Today, we're looking at some of the moves made and why they're happening and what other factors outside of the control of most companies, might affect how growth happens.

After looking at how hotels manage distribution, on this episode we put the OTA in the chair. James Spalding runs flight distribution across Northern Europe for Trip.com Group — the world’s largest OTA by market share, owner of Skyscanner, and the platform growing faster than any of its Western rivals. His job is to convince hotels and airlines that OTAs are worth what they charge. So we’re going to let him make that case — and then we’re going to test it.

Has geopolitical risk become something the travel industry now has to build permanently into its strategy?

The UK hospitality industry is under pressure like never before.
Restaurants are closing. Pubs are disappearing from high streets. Operators are facing rising wages, employer National Insurance contributions, food costs, energy bills, business rates and VAT.
And now the industry is asking Government for help.
The current campaign, #VATsTheProblem, is calling for hospitality VAT to be reduced from 20% to 10%, bringing the UK closer to rates applied in countries including France, Italy and Spain.
But is VAT really the problem?
Or is it simply one part of a much bigger problem?
Because hospitality is one of the UK's biggest employers, one of its biggest contributors to high streets and communities, and one of the things Britain does exceptionally well.
So what happens if the economics simply stop working?
And what does it take to run a successful restaurant in Britain today?
To help us answer those questions, we're joined by someone who knows the industry from almost every angle.
Atul Kochhar.
A pioneering twice Michelin-starred chef, restaurateur, television personality and author, Atul has spent more than 25 years at the forefront of the UK's culinary industry.

2026 has been one of the most unpredictable years of bookings in travel. Peaks generally underperformed and we still don’t know how good the lates market was. Despite booking patterns changing, total travel revenue figures look to comparable with previous years. And when the economy shows few signs of growth, we have to ask, where will the next level of bookings come from? Are we at peak travel? And if so, what are the consequences for the sector overall, and the various sectors within travel.

For every hundred pounds a traveller spends on a hotel room through Booking.com, the hotel sees somewhere between 70% to 85% of it. The rest goes to an OTA whose entire business model rests on knowing your customer better than you do. Independent hotels ceded 63% of their bookings to OTAs in 2025. 
And this year, for the first time, OTAs overtook search engines as the primary place travellers start looking for hotels. So the question isn’t whether hotels are losing the distribution war. The question is whether they even know they’re fighting one. 
Our guest this episode is Lisa Murphy who has spent her career at the intersection of hotels and the technology that distributes them. She’s now running HEDNA — the body that sits at the centre of this fight. We’re going to ask her exactly what she sees; who is winning the battle, and who wins the war.”

How a fully remote, global travel company built an enterprise-wide AI strategy — and whether it's a repeatable blueprint for other businesses. Special guest interview with Frank Marini, President & CEO, Railbookers Group.

Two of the biggest names in UK travel are rewriting their own rulebooks right now. TUI's just launched a stripped-back OTA brand that quietly bypasses the very agents that built its business — and easyJet is on the brink of leaving the stock market entirely in a five-point-seven-billion-pound private equity deal that's got more strings attached than the headlines suggest. Is this the future of travel retail — or a gamble neither company can fully control?

Big brands have been using loyalty schemes for decades to try and keep customers coming back and locking out competitors. Others see them are expensive gimmicks which lose revenue and don't change behaviour at all. And what happens in a world of AI choosing travel for us?