The Future of Travel: How Emerging Players Are Driving Innovation

The Future of Travel: How Emerging Players Are Driving Innovation

The travel industry is undergoing a digital-first renaissance. While incumbents play catch up, nimble startups are leading the charge in reimagining the end-to-end travel experience. These disruptors succeed through cutting-edge design, strong technical foundations, and obsession with the customer. At Manning + Company, we help the innovators of tomorrow build skilled teams across key roles in technology, product, and customer engagement.

Digital Innovators Set the Pace

Established online booking platforms and OTAs have grown complacent. Their sites and apps fail to inspire or fully address evolving traveler needs. This has opened the door for disruptive startups placing big bets on where travel is headed next:

Hopper - One of the world's fastest growing travel apps, Hopper pioneered innovations like price prediction algorithms and flexible booking options.

SimpleNight - A direct booking platform offering individualized hotels curated for design, amenities and location.

Selina - A co-living hospitality startup focused on building a global community of digital nomads.

Pruvo - An AI-powered booking platform that analyzes traveler preferences to make personalized recommendations.

These companies understand that today's travelers expect seamless digital experiences, unique offerings beyond big brands, and mobile-first engagement. Incumbents playing catch up simply can't recreate the DNA needed to lead in Digital Travel 2.0.

Building The Modern Travel Stack

Startups reimagining the travel experience succeed through strengths in key capability areas:

Customer Obsession - Deep insights into evolving traveler expectations, especially for younger demographics.

Design Excellence - Intuitive and engaging interfaces across web and mobile.

Data Architecture - Flexible stacks that enable personalization and optimization.

Engineering Strength - Modern codebases that can scale and support innovation.

At Manning + Company, our deep networks allow us to staff our travel clients with in-demand talent including:

- UX Designers fluent in best practices for travel apps and sites.

- Data Scientists to build recommendation and forecasting engines.

- Full Stack Developers to construct reusable services and APIs.

- Product Managers with both technical and design instincts.

We take an holistic approach, ensuring complementary skills that allow teams to execute at speed.

Fostering Traveler Connections

Beyond great technology, next-gen travel brands thrive through authentic customer engagement:

Customer Success - Developing personal relationships with travelers during and after trips.

Community - Facilitating meaningful connections between travelers via forums and events.

Social Impact - Showcasing sustainability credentials that resonate.

Partnerships - Aligning with brands that share target traveler values and aesthetics.

Our recruiting team identifies candidates across functions who live and breathe travel's experiential ethos. We tap growth strategists, community builders, sustainability experts and other roles to round out the modern travel stack.

The Journey Ahead

Personalization, convenience, and meaning - that's what today's travelers want. Incumbents are slow to reinvent decades-old business models. But the pace of change also represents a huge opportunity for those bold enough to dream bigger.

At Manning + Company, we're passionate about travel's future and the innovators shaping it. Let's connect to discuss how we can help assemble talent to bring that vision to life - and transform travel for the better.

Building Dream Teams: How We Help Resorts Recruit across All Roles

Building Dream Teams: How We Help Resorts Recruit across All Roles

Resorts are magic factories - choreographing countless details into memorable guest escapes. But delivering exceptional experiences takes skilled talent across the entire resort ecosystem. At Manning + Company, our deep networks and recruiting capabilities allow us to staff every role for hospitality clients pursuing excellence.

Core Hospitality Roles

At the heart of every great resort is passionate talent focused solely on guest service:

Front Office – Welcoming and registering guests, managing check-ins/outs, resolving issues.

Concierge – Advising guests on amenities, offering personalized recommendations, arranging services.

Housekeeping – Maintaining pristine, comfortable rooms with meticulous attention to detail.

F&B Service – Orchestrating seamless dining experiences from reservations to table service.

Spa/Fitness – Providing personalized wellness experiences and building guest relationships.

Our recruiting team maintains connections with top hotel schools and training programs to source candidates for these critical roles. We evaluate for both hospitality skills and genuine service mentality.

Revenue Driving Roles

Resorts have enormous potential to maximize ancillary revenues through retail, activities, events and more. Key roles where we identify talent include:

Golf Operations – Pro shop staff, starters, player assistants ensuring an exceptional course experience.

Retail Management – Curating shops, optimizing merchandising, and elevating service.

Recreation/Kids – Designing engaging supervised activities tailored to guest demographics.

F&B Marketing – Promoting dining experiences through partnerships and local influencers.

Events/Catering – Managing weddings, corporate events, and group bookings.

With our pulse on hospitality trends, we help resorts build teams to create unique offerings that delight guests while driving revenues.

Backstage Roles

While the front stage delights guests, backstage roles work behind the scenes to enable the magic:

Culinary – Chefs, cooks, and culinary staff crafting exceptional menus and dishes.

Engineering – Keeping all resort systems and amenities fully operational.

IT – Managing infrastructure, guest Wi-Fi, POS systems, and cybersecurity.

Finance – Forecasting, budgeting, reporting, AP/AR, managing profitability.

Security – Protecting guests while maintaining subtle presence and service mentality.

Our recruiting experts tap into overlooked talent pipelines to source specialized support roles in areas like water sports management, horticulture, and sustainability management.

The Complete Resort Team

At Manning + Company, we appreciate that crafting incredible resort experiences takes complete team orchestration. Our passion for hospitality is matched only by our capability to recruit amazing talent across the ecosystem. Let us know if we can help build your dream team!

Working 9 to 5...On the Road: How "Work Tourism" Is Making a Comeback

Remote work changed the game for business travel. No longer chained to offices, today's workforce can mix work with leisure more fluidly than ever. This has fueled a revival of "work tourism" - blending travel escapades with getting the job done. For destinations and hospitality brands, this represents an enormous opportunity to capture business travel demand in new ways. But doing so requires building specialized teams focused on the work tourist segment. At Manning + Company, we leverage our deep travel industry expertise to help clients source the talent they need to cater to this fast-growing audience.

The Rise of Work Tourism

Prior to 2020, "workations" were a niche pursuit, relegated to digital nomads and the rare employee with flexible arrangements. But remote work hit the mainstream during the pandemic, opening new possibilities for combining work and travel.

No longer bound to physical offices, millions of professionals can now work from anywhere. This has blurred the lines between business and leisure trips. Travelers are scheduling longer stays, timing getaways to remote destinations around work blocks, and planning "bleisure" (business + leisure) trips.

In a recent study, 70% of travelers reported wanting to include remote working in their next trip. The work tourism segment is projected to grow to $275 billion annually by 2025.

For many destinations, remote workers represent an attractive target audience:

• They stay longer, providing more lodging revenues

• They spend money at local businesses during the week

• They pay travel expenses themselves rather than expensing costs

Hospitality companies also have much to gain by catering to work tourists' unique needs around spaces, amenities, and technology.

Building The Right Teams

While work tourism unlocks major opportunities, it also poses challenges for travel companies. Effectively targeting this audience requires moving beyond marketing to holistically designing experiences.

At Manning + Company, we leverage our deep networks to help assemble dedicated "work tourism" project teams for hospitality clients. Key roles where we provide advisory include:

Remote Work Experience Design - Envisioning end-to-end experiences optimized for productivity.

Analytics & Segmentation - Tracking and analyzing work tourist behavior and needs.

Ancillary Services - Crafting B2B offers like office space rentals, equipment, and supplies.

Partnerships - Building networks with companies catering to remote workers.

Property Management - Ensuring the right on-site spaces, amenities, and tech.

IT & Digital - Delivering reliable connectivity, cybersecurity, remote access.

Operations & Staffing - Training all staff on serving work tourists.

Our team understands the range of capabilities needed to deliver successful work-focused travel experiences. We can quickly source talent from across hospitality, workplace experience, and corporate travel.

Long-Term Potential

Work tourism is more than just a passing trend. Remote work flexibility is here to stay, and younger generations embrace the concept of "work from anywhere."

While economic uncertainties could curb its growth in the short-term, the long-term outlook is highly compelling. Forward-thinking travel companies have a prime opportunity to get ahead.

At Manning + Company, we're passionate about the future of work and future of travel. Let's connect to discuss how we can help you build the optimal team to lead in Work Tourism 2.0.