Every travel company of any real size answers the same question every quarter/half/year: where does the next dollar go? Into a deal, a fleet, a system, a marketing budget, a buyback?
That’s what capital allocation means, stripped of the jargon…and tracking it tells you more about where the industry is headed than any visitor forecast.
Today we’re launching the Skift Capital Allocation Brief, a free quarterly report from Skift Research on where travel’s money is moving, what investors are thinking, and what travel leaders should do about it.
It starts with the decisions: where to put capital to work, where to hold back, and what could change our view. It is written for operators, not bankers.
The first edition covers a first half divided by that one night in February. The war with Iran repriced fuel, killed Spirit, and changed what travel businesses were worth. But the money kept moving: 242 deals worth $39.6 billion, three take-private transactions, nearly $6 billion of credit card-issuer capital buying travel supply, and venture funding at multi-year lows.
What’s Inside the 21-Page Brief:
- Where to deploy capital in the months ahead, where to hold back, and what would change our view
- The 242 travel deals announced globally in the first half, representing $39.6 billion in disclosed value
- Why three companies left the public markets
- What it means that credit card issuers spent nearly $6 billion buying travel supply
- How the market now values travel companies: asset-light lodging businesses and the major OTAs command a premium, while software faces more skepticism
- The changing geography of demand: Asia-Pacific is accelerating, U.S. inbound travel remains structurally weak, and what the World Cup actually proved
- A sector-by-sector scorecard and the signals we are watching before the Q3 edition
The brief is also the first public piece of a larger intelligence system we have been building all year to help the travel industry make better decisions. We will share more at Skift Global Forum in September.
The report will be published quarterly, with the Q3 edition arriving in early October.