Marketing

🏖️ Veratour, with commercial director Massimo Broccoli, plans new investments in Egypt and Tunisia to regain its mid-range client base. The company relies on 1500 travel agencies for 89% of its revenue, while online sales via Verastore account for about 5%. Early bookings represent 73% of sales, 20% of which include children under 12 years old. Last-minute bookings (30 days prior) make up 17.91%. Additional services can be purchased separately and in advance to optimize mid-spending customers' expenses.

🛫 Civitatis experienced a 39% increase in travel agency transfer bookings in 2024 compared to the previous year. The Spanish platform offers complete travel experiences, emphasizing safety and reliability in transfers. In 2025, demand for Civitatis transfers continued to grow, with services ranging from airport to hotel transfers in Paris to shuttle services between ocean locations. Civitatis boasts a 9.2/10 score from over 370,000 reviews, with more than 37,000 agencies incorporating their services, highlighting customer satisfaction and repeat business.

✈ Ryanair partners with Expedia, expanding travel options on Expedia and its group brands by adding over 230 destinations. Customers can access their myRyanair account and get flight updates via Expedia without Ryanair's customer verification process, as confirmed by Ryanair's marketing director, Dara Brady. This integration allows European and American travelers to book Ryanair flights with transparent pricing and direct access to reservations.

🍸 Christoph Scholz, a 32-year-old economist with international flair, founded Yurt, a premium vodka with a Central Asian heart and cosmopolitan spirit, bringing it to Italy's best locales and mixology festivals. Yurt's uniqueness lies in its softness, achieved using pristine water and Kazakhstani northern grain and a meticulous seven-level filtration process, including birch charcoal and quartz sand. Launched in late 2023 in Italy and Europe, Yurt positions itself in quality venues targeting consumers seeking premium products with a story. The brand emphasizes social media presence and content creation over advertising and plans to expand into music, DJ, and design scenes. Yurt participated in the Florence Cocktail Week for direct engagement with bartenders and patrons, collecting feedback and creating high-quality promotional material.

📈 To be chosen by Google as an authoritative source, hotels must enrich their sites with clear service information, optimize for SEO, update content frequently, maintain an impeccable Google Business Profile with consistent data, and have a presence on local sites and thematic portals.

✈ Giuseppe Ciminnisi, president of Fiavet Confcommercio, announced a historic agreement with Ryanair allowing travel agencies to sell the airline's tickets. After nine months of negotiations involving Fiavet, Adiconsum, and Aiav, the "Travel Agent Direct" section will launch on Ryanair's website by July 30, 2025, where agencies can create free accounts to sell products excluding promotions. Agencies must display Ryanair fares transparently, with refunds processed within 7 days and customers informed of changes or cancellations directly by Ryanair.

🚀 Italian travelers' bookings to Asia surged by 58% between 2022 and 2024, and searches for Asian flights grew 38% in early 2025 compared to the previous year. Japan is expected to welcome 49.3 million visitors by 2026, a 155% increase from 2019, while the Maldives anticipates 2.5 million visitors, marking a 148% recovery from pre-pandemic levels. Airlines, like Air France and KLM, are adding new flights to Asian destinations in response.

🏨 Sojern, a multinational digital marketing firm for the hospitality industry, serves over 10,000 active clients worldwide and boasts 300+ integrations with leading Booking Engines. The company analyzes 350 million traveler profiles monthly and has 100+ partnerships within the travel sector. Sojern's Travel Ecosystem helps hotels target likely bookers, optimizing campaigns in real-time across various channels, including Display advertising, Social media, SEM, and Metasearch. Its Pay on the Stay model requires no initial investment from hotels, as Sojern fronts the marketing costs and hotels pay a commission post-stay, ensuring a guaranteed and transparent ROI.

📱 Alidays Travel Experiences and Allianz Partners launch a six-month communication campaign with impactful visuals and a full-funnel approach, starting April 2021. The campaign, including Digital Out-of-Home in Milan and a mix of online and social media, promotes four destinations: West USA (April-May), Japan (June-July), East USA and NY (September-October), and Maldives (October-November). Davide Catania, CEO of Alidays, and Marco Gioieni, CEO of Allianz Partners Italia, emphasize personalized, worry-free travel experiences and client-focused excellence.

✈ Iberia, a major airline, implements significant policy changes for travel agencies, focusing on accelerating the transition to NDC (New Distribution Capability). As of today, base fares will exclusively be sold through NDC channels, affecting all European countries (except the UK) plus the US, Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Additionally, short and medium-haul tourist products will now have different offerings between NDC and traditional GDS (Global Distribution Systems), with NDC providing exclusive benefits such as discounts, a commitment to customer quality, and a 21-day ticket issuance deadline, compared to the 49 days in GDS. Tour operator rates will still be available under the Iberia Óptima and Comfort fare families with more options in NDC.