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Each Gulf hub airport converts sovereign wealth into a different theory of national relevance. Saudi Arabia is about to test whether aviation can convert something heavier — national ambition itself — into a destination economy. hubs.li/Q04k_Xgy0

MakeMyTrip is still weighing next steps for a domestic Indian IPO and thinks it has already won the AI debate. The structural hurdles to the IPO are real for the company, which has traded on the Nasdaq since 2010. India’s restrictions on dual listings and the company’s Mauritius incorporation make this anything but straightforward.  “It is a bit complex, but certainly possible and doable,” said co-founder and group CEO Rajesh Magow. “There is no compulsion for us. Whenever it’s the right opportunity, we will see.” hubs.li/Q04kLGSx0

Airlines across the world have been cutting capacity and raising airfares to keep up with higher fuel costs. But even as travel is becoming more expensive, consumers still want to spend. “I expected a bigger elasticity effect than we've seen so far. I still do expect it,” United CEO Scott Kirby told reporters at the IATA AGM in Rio de Janeiro. “But I've been a little surprised that we haven't seen more of that so far.” hubs.li/Q04k_wyV0

“Customers are not avoiding AI. They understand its capabilities, and they know they can use it to get things done efficiently..” — Nirmal Mukhi, Chief Architect, @asapp Watch on-demand here: hubs.li/Q04kzfRm0

The 2026 World Cup, spread across 16 cities in three countries, could generate between 7.8 and 9 million metric tons of CO₂, according to two independent analyses — making it the most carbon-intensive tournament in the event’s history. The higher estimate, from researchers at Scientists for Global Responsibility and the Environmental Defense Fund, was reached by modelling stadium capacity, match numbers and flight patterns. Carbon accounting firm Greenly put the figure at 7.8 million tons and agreed on the cause: the vast distances fans and teams must travel across the United States, Mexico and Canada. hubs.li/Q04k_hjV0

AI has the potential to be an accelerant, especially for internal development and operational teams, but how do we put guardrails around it? Skift Research's Seth Borko addresses this in his newsletter today: "At last week’s Skift Data and AI Summit I presented 5 AI tensions that travel companies face as they work to close the gap between the AI strategy that’s written in a slide deck and the AI reality as it exists in the world today. For each tension, the 400+ travel leaders gathered in New York City got to vote live on their reaction to this framework and which tensions resonated the most with them." Here's what they said: hubs.li/Q04kWNFl0

The best AI goes unnoticed. That's the philosophy driving Perk CPO, Nikita Miller, and it's exactly the kind of thinking she'll bring to the 2026 Skift IDEA Awards judging panel. "The traveler doesn't need to think, 'AI helped me.' It just works." For Nikita, real innovation isn't about flashy tech. It's about eliminating the hidden "shadow work" that costs employees seven hours a week. She wants to see ideas that actually solve a problem, not just talk a good game. Is your work doing that? Submit your entry to the 2026 Skift IDEA Awards before entries close July 1. Get your innovation in front of Nikita and the rest of our world-class judging panel. 🔗 hubs.li/Q04kgl5l0

IHG Hotels & Resorts has recorded a short-term softening in Middle East demand tied to the Iran war but says its forward booking pace for the final quarter of 2026 is recovering, driven by domestic gulf coast country travelers and Indian visitors.  “We’re seeing short-term softness in demand,” said Haitham Mattar, managing director for India, Middle East and Africa at IHG Hotels & Resorts. “The future looks good in terms of booking pace. The Dubai government announced that they will see a recovery in September based on airline capacity and their marketing efforts, and we’re seeing that reflected in our booking pace, which is ramping up nicely for the last quarter of the year.” hubs.li/Q04kNzff0

Most of European hospitality has spent the past decade trying to own less real estate. a&o Hostels has spent the past two years buying it on the cheap. “Good years for buyers, bad years for sellers,” is how CEO Oliver Winter described the environment to Skift. a&o is the largest operator in one of the most fragmented corners of European hospitality, with 44 properties and roughly 30,000 beds. The top five branded hostel chains control roughly 8% of inventory, according to JLL, leaving most of it to independents and small regional operators. hubs.li/Q04kQKkx0

OMO is Hoshino Resorts’ innovative budget hotel brand that prioritizes local immersion and community engagement over traditional luxury. The brand’s unique numbering system organizes properties by facility breadth, not luxury level, and offers travelers a tailored experience based on their needs. OMO Rangers, staff with deep neighborhood knowledge, guide guests to authentic local experiences, making the brand’s approach difficult for competitors to replicate. hubs.li/Q04kQws40

The spike in jet fuel prices was a dominant talking point at this week’s IATA Annual General Meeting in Rio de Janeiro, forcing airlines to ask how much pain they can absorb before passengers start feeling it. For Cathay Pacific, the answer – at least for now – appears to be quite a lot. Speaking to Skift on the sidelines of the conference, Group CEO Ronald Lam said the carrier is seeing little evidence that demand is weakening despite higher operating costs and continued geopolitical uncertainty. “We had a very strong quarter one into quarter two,” Lam said. “Then, like all airlines in the world, we faced the jet fuel price escalation.” hubs.li/Q04kQHcK0

The head of the world’s largest airline trade body said Monday that aviation may push back its goal to reach net zero by 2050, replacing it with a timeline that reflects the slow pace of the global energy transition. “Maybe the conclusion will be that 2050 is still possible,” said Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), at the organization’s annual meeting in Rio de Janeiro. “The more likely outcome, however, is a new timeline that hits a sweet spot — realistic within the broader context of the global energy transition and sufficiently near-term to meet the urgencies of climate change and energy security.” hubs.li/Q04kQN9Z0

“You can have the best content in the world, but if AI bots and search engines can't access it because your site is slow, difficult to crawl, or lacks proper structure, you're not going to get visibility." — Anil Aggarwal, CEO, @MilestoneMktg Watch on-demand here: hubs.li/Q04kwg1y0

Klook has begun beta-testing an AI-powered shopping agent designed to collapse its fragmented booking interfaces into a single conversational layer, Eric Gnock Fah, co-founder and president of Klook, told Skift in an exclusive interview. Booking those different products and services currently requires different workflows. The goal is to simplify the experience. “The consumer may not need to deal with so many different interfaces,” Gnock Fah said. “And have just one that’s able to understand them and help them book that product on our platform.” hubs.li/Q04kL_zy0

"The $6.3 billion take-private of Amex GBT by Long Lake Management landed a few weeks ago with the usual noise. I spent the day pulling apart SEC filings with my team, calculating who made money and who didn’t. American Express walked away with a $975 million pre-tax gain, Expedia was underwater on the Egencia stake, and Certares’ total return was unknowable from public filings. "But as I kept reading the fine print — the merger agreement, the voting agreements, the proxy disclosures — one name kept appearing in unexpected places. Not on the deal documents themselves, but in the connective tissue between the entities that made the deal possible. "Kenneth Chenault." hubs.li/Q04kLFyj0

Independent hoteliers are under pressure from every direction, and now there's an AI mandate on top of it all. Tune into Good Morning Hospitality as Wil sits down with Adam Harris, Co-Founder and CEO of Cloudbeds, to cut through the noise. Adam's argument: most operators aren't failing because they lack effort or the right tools. Listen here 🎧: hubs.li/Q04kJ8fX0 Sponsored by @Cloudbeds

AI is redrawing the customer interface. Geopolitics is rewriting demand. Loyalty is being renegotiated. The gap between leaders who have a read on it and those who don't is widening fast. That's the gap Skift Global Forum exists to close. The CEOs of Hilton, Booking Holdings, Expedia, Virgin Atlantic and more. Three days in New York. The questions the industry is actually sitting with. Find out more: hubs.li/Q04kw4qj0

More than a year into his role as Skyscanner CEO, Bryan Batista is exploring ways to use agentic booking to ease the handoff to third-party advertisers, and he thinks personal agents will be part of the future of flight metasearch. Meanwhile, UK-based Skyscanner, which is owned by China’s Trip Group, expanded into B2B through an acquisition, and is poised to enter the U.S. in a bigger way. Skift recently interviewed Batista. Here’s what he had to say. hubs.li/Q04kFqmQ0

Visa application bottlenecks for Europe are causing UAE residents to rethink their travel plans, with long waits for Schengen appointments and added processing times making peak summer travel difficult. This has led many travelers to consider alternative destinations, such as Japan and the UK, where visa procedures are more accessible. Despite regional conflicts and a sharp decline in airline passenger traffic, outbound leisure travel demand from the UAE remains robust, particularly among mid- to upper-income families hubs.li/Q04kFpWS0

IndiGo intends to operate a fleet of over 550 aircraft, carry 200 million passengers annually, and run roughly 3,000 flights a day by financial year 2030. At Monday’s investor presentation, the airline positioned itself as a “global scale” carrier while keeping what it called “disciplined growth” at the center of its strategy. For context, IndiGo ended fiscal 2026 with 441 aircraft and 123 million passengers. Reaching 550 aircraft and 200 million passengers by fiscal 2030 would require adding more than 100 aircraft in four years while growing passenger volumes by over 60%. Capacity, which is measured in available seat kilometres (ASK), is projected to nearly double, from 172 billion currently to around 300 billion by fiscal 2030. hubs.li/Q04kzQhz0