Here's our roundup of the people, product and partner news from the global travel industry this week.
This roundup was created with the assistance of Claude.
American Airlines' digital developments
American Airlines has added Venmo as a payment option on aa.com, with availability in the American app planned for later, alongside expanded Apple Pay options across additional purchase paths on the booking site.
The airline also expanded its digital disruption tools, giving customers more detailed delay and cancellation information through the app, email, text and aa.com, along with self-service rebooking and access to hotel, meal and transportation resources.
American also enabled through check-in and boarding passes across connecting itineraries between American and select partner airlines via its mobile app.
Eating Europe recruits chief growth officer
Eating Europe, a culinary tour operator running food tours and cooking classes across major European cities, has appointed Oliver Green as chief growth officer.
Green joins as the company continues expanding across Europe and beyond, bringing experience in the travel experiences industry along with a focus on how artificial intelligence (AI) is changing the way travelers discover and book experiences.
Spotnana adds agent architecture
Spotnana has added a multiagent AI architecture to its travel platform along with new AI tools for travel agents, with additional traveler and travel-manager features planned later this year.
The architecture assigns specialized AI agents to specific Spotnana APIs for deterministic, autonomous execution and is open for customers and partners to build their own agents. Initial capabilities automate servicing tasks, import external bookings and assist agents with response suggestions and conversation summaries. Direct Travel is among the companies using the new tools.
Travelport, Air Zimbabwe, Aeroitalia
Travelport has signed multi-year distribution deals with two carriers.
Air Zimbabwe returns to global distribution after more than a decade, with content live through Travelport+ ahead of new Harare-London Gatwick flights starting this week.
Aeroitalia content also becomes available through Travelport+, closing a gap where it was previously accessible only via competitor platforms. Both agreements give Travelport-connected agencies normalized, curated content and consistent servicing, with Aeroitalia's rich content and branding tools activating in year two.
PriceLabs updates Hotel Rate Shopper
PriceLabs has launched an updated Hotel Rate Shopper, adding competitor room type matching and expanding its competitive intelligence tools for independent hotels.
New features include ready-made comp sets based on property type and price band, advanced competitor filters and rate comparisons by length of stay, refundability and breakfast inclusion. The tool matches room types across competing properties and flags when it defaults to a standard rate instead. The platform draws on both hotel and short-term rental data.
Riskline, Tripadvisor
Riskline has partnered with Tripadvisor to integrate travel risk insights into Tripadvisor's platform, covering more than 220 countries and territories and 260 cities.
Riskline combines human expertise, AI and open-source intelligence to categorize destination risks by theme, including conflict, unrest, health and natural hazards. The deal will let Tripadvisor flag potential disruptions at high-risk destinations.
BCD launches Tripsource, redesigned experience
BCD Travel has launched a next-generation Tripsource, a travel and expense platform built on an "Open by Design" architecture linking travel content, data, AI and third-party technology across the traveler journey. It consolidates BCD's technologies into one ecosystem, unifying travel, expense, profile and payment data with an AI analyst and natural language processing.
The company has also launched a redesigned traveler experience, adding a refreshed interface, expanded self-service tools and dynamic hotel rate guidance. The platform is available globally in 11 languages across more than 170 markets.
Engine expands Engine Groups
Engine has expanded Engine Groups into a free group travel planning tool open to anyone, adding self-serve booking, hotel recommendations and a dedicated event page for RSVPs.
Originally built for business travel, the tool has increasingly been used for weddings, reunions and tournaments. It requires no subscription, no credit card and no booking obligation and recommends either self-booked hotel options or a negotiated room block. Engine reported more than 460,000 room nights booked through Engine Groups in the first half of 2026, up more than fivefold year over year.
Hostaway makes executive appointments
Hostaway has named three senior executives as it scales.
Robert Goldenberg will become CFO after a decade as CFO of an enterprise software-as-a-service business and 15 years in investment banking. Janis Rozenblats will become chief product officer, having founded Mailigen and held product roles at Pipedrive and Aerones. Darcy Kurtz joins as chief marketing officer (CMO), previously CMO at WP Engine and BentoBox, with prior roles at Mailchimp, Sage and Dell.
Wego, Valu
Wego partnered with Egyptian fintech Valu to add buy now pay later at checkout. Travelers searching flights and hotels on Wego can select Valu as a payment method and spread costs over installment plans of up to 60 months. The deal targets young professionals, families and digital-first consumers as Egypt's digital payment adoption grows. Valu already operates as a broader financial services provider across the country.
TPConnects, Cumbaya
Cumbaya adopted TPConnects' Iris platform as its air content engine, connecting travel agencies and travel management companies to flight suppliers with real-time availability and dynamic pricing. The setup uses agentic AI to build multidestination corporate itineraries in minutes rather than hours, replacing static PDF proposals with interactive ones. TPConnects framed it as infrastructure built to support real-time AI decision-making across routing, pricing and policy constraints.
TPG Hotels & Resorts appoints EVP
TPG Hotels & Resorts named Prashanth Radhakrishnan to the newly created role of EVP of commercial strategy, overseeing revenue management, sales, digital commerce, distribution and analytics. He joins from Marriott International, where he most recently led global commercial and luxury intelligence, having previously run revenue strategy across more than 900 hotels in Asia Pacific. His background also includes stints at Starwood and Taj Hotels.
RMS appoints chief product & technology officer
RMS named Rich Steers as chief product and technology officer, tasked with leading global product and engineering strategy. He joins from Roller, where he held the same title and built AI-powered enterprise software for venue management. Steers will oversee RMS' shift from a system of record toward automated decision making, working under CEO Adam Seskis.
Repayd, Nezasa
Repayd is integrating into Nezasa's TripBuilder platform as a payment gateway option for tour operators. Nezasa customers can add Repayd alongside existing payment connections for currency conversion and payment protection or adopt Repayd's full merchant account for cross-border acquiring, multicurrency pricing and financial protection. The deal targets operators running multiple source markets, where local acquiring and currency handling affect costs and conversion.
SAS adds Amadeus AI pricing
Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) deployed Amadeus Air Pricing Optimization across its network, using AI and real-time data to adjust fares continuously instead of through fixed booking classes. The airline reports an average revenue increase of more than 3% in initial markets on its website and New Distribution Capability-enabled channels. SAS said the system reduces manual price adjustments while keeping pricing guardrails intact, cutting operational complexity for its revenue teams.