On April 1, 2020, Booking Holdings Inc. announced to its employees that Glenn Fogel, the Company’s Chief Executive Officer, tested positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus.
“What if your computer could help scientists fight COVID-19?” You can download an app runs in the background whenever your device is unused or in light use. The app does not slow your computer down, personal data are never shared, and the software cannot access your personal files, yet, it distributes your processing power to IBM, to help scientists “study the world’s biggest problems in health and sustainability.” OpenPandemics will be launching soon.
Starting from next week, residents in Wuhan will be allowed to travel again within the city. According to Forbes, “cautious optimism remains that normality will be resumed in the near future”.
Airbnb co-founder and CEO, Brian Chesky, sent an email to his hosts, explaining why he had to refund guests fully. H
Eventually, Expedia Group is applying its force majeure cancellation policy to all bookings worldwide with stay dates prior to April 30, 2020.
Just Stay Home, says the latest Hotels.com commercial. Never in my career, I would have thought to see the Expedia Group usine such a tagline…
According to an anonymous source, Airbnb would have paused a good part of its marketing spending, saving around $800 million.
Mattel is making face masks from Barbie and Fisher-Price fabric. Ynon Kreiz, Chairman and CEO, stated: “Our design and development teams in El Segundo, Calif., and East Aurora, New York, are producing face masks from Barbie and Fisher-Price fabric to help meet the significant demand for these supplies.”
Booking.com, Expedia, and Trip.com are removing parity clauses in Hong Kong. “The existing clauses require accommodation providers in Hong Kong to always give the online travel agents the same or better terms as those they offer in all other sales channels […] As a consequence, buyers of accommodation services, such as hotel guests, possibly may not benefit from lower and more varied room rates,” the antitrust commission said in a statement.
Still another data breach for Marriott International: the breach may have impacted over 5M customers, and, again, it may be originated from “a property system.” The breach was discovered at the end of February, but it is thought to have been going on since the beginning of 2020. “We are still investigating the incident,” Marriott stated, “We identified that an unexpected amount of guest information may have been accessed using the login credentials of two employees at a franchise property.” Stolen data might include: name, company, gender, birthday, physical address, email addresses, phone number, loyalty account information, room, and language preferences. No credit card or Bonvoy accounts have been, so far, affected.