Travel Tech Essentialist #168: Simple
Finding your locksmith moment, mastering your core strength and embracing functional design; this newsletter explores the power of simplicity. We examine how strategic positioning creates success, why doubling down on a single channel beats complexity, and what a recent SEO collapse teaches us about staying focused. From clever hotel innovations to ironic digital services, sometimes the most effective solutions are also the simplest ones.
Thanks to Equeco for sponsoring this edition of the newsletter:
Equeco, a PPC marketing agency serving leading brands like Marriott and growing start-ups, presents a case study on how we helped Tictactrip, a multi-modal OTA, achieve profitability on Search Ads and grow by +73%!
"Equeco has shaped our marketing strategy, enabling profitable growth. Their expertise is vital for sustainable travel accessibility." - Simon Robain, CEO
1. The locksmith moment in travel
This great post by Matt Lerner explains startup growth through a simple story: a locksmith who placed their sticker on an apartment gate; exactly where someone would be during their moment of need. Soy milk positions itself in the dairy aisle (even though it doesn't need refrigeration) because that's where people look when they want milk alternatives.
This insight explains why OTAs, despite criticism for being too performance marketing-dependent, have been so wildly successful. They own the digital real estate where travelers first signal travel intent. The locksmith theory works just as well in the physical world: HotelTonight targets airport baggage claim areas when flights get canceled, or CLEAR positions signup desks right where security lines are longest. Everyone talks about OTAs' marketing spend, but it’s part of being there in the moment of need.
2. Cold Takes
A media headline in May 2018, predicting the imminent takeover of Alexa as a dominant travel booking platform:
Fast forward to 2025. Here’s a good joke from the Water Coolest
“Alexa, tell me a joke”
Alexa: “My revenue”
3. Headlines vs Numbers
It might be fun to say that "Airbnb is Dead" (and it might generate clicks)…
…but data and growth speak louder than opinions and headlines. Here are Airbnb's Q4 2024 results and year-over-year growth:
Gross Booking Value: $17.6 billion, up 13%
Revenue: $2.5 billion, up 12%
Net Income: $461 million, compared to a net loss of $349 million in Q4 2023
Adjusted EBITDA: $765 million, up 4%
Free Cash Flow: $458 million, with an 18% free cash flow margin
Nights and Experiences Booked: 111 million, up 12%
4. Airbnb's market momentum
Airbnb's stock is up 22% year-to-date in 2025, leading all the other hospitality companies in the graph; Over the past year, though, it had the lowest stock return. This year's market tells a different story about who has momentum.
5. Simple wins, even though we resist it
This piece on complexity bias from Farnam Street explores our tendency to favor complexity over simplicity. We often trust things more when we don't fully understand them, which is probably why terms like "AI-powered recommendations," "dynamic pricing algorithms," and "blockchain-verified loyalty points" have become pretty common marketing language. But travel's biggest successes often came from eliminating complexity; whether in pricing (Ryanair), booking (Booking.com), comparing (Kayak) or route planning (Rome2Rio). We should be aware of this tension: while we instinctively reach for complexity, the evidence suggests that simplicity often wins.
Most geniuses—especially those who lead others—prosper not by deconstructing intricate complexities but by exploiting unrecognized simplicities. — Andy Benoit
6. Hotel bathroom innovation
I came across this simple and clever hotel bathroom door design via Jeremy Freeman, which blew my mind. Maybe some of you have seen it before, but I hadn’t. The door serves two functions depending on how it’s positioned. It’s a perfect example of how the best innovations are often about functional, elegant simplicity.
7. Master one channel. But how do you choose which one?
"Most businesses get zero channels to work: poor sales rather than bad product is the most common cause of failure. If you can get just one distribution channel to work, you have a great business. If you try for several but don't nail one, you're finished.” — Peter Thiel
Matt Lerner recently shared some straightforward advice about marketing channels. It's about being in the top 1% in one channel rather than mediocre in many. SEO is a winner-take-all game where the top three results get 70%+ of traffic. Paid ads go to companies with the best conversion funnels, longest track record and deepest pockets.
The type of questions he raises for each channel:
SEO & inbound: Do people search for what you sell, and can you build enough domain authority to rank?
Paid advertising: Is your product easy to explain at a glance, and do you have the experimentation skills and budget to compete?
Organic social & influencers: Do your prospects follow influencers, and is your product visually remarkable or culturally relevant?
Direct outreach: Is your product expensive enough to justify sales teams, and can you attract sales talent?
Viral/product-led: Is your product naturally multi-player, bringing in more users through use?
Partners or resellers: Does your product help partners build their core business?
8. Stay in your lane
HubSpot, long considered the gold standard of B2B content marketing, just saw their organic traffic drop dramatically from 13.5 million visits in November to 8.6 million in December, likely due to a combination of Google core updates and AI Overviews. The traffic collapse could be tied to their content strategy. HubSpot had been publishing extensively on topics far outside their core expertise, with a strategy designed to capture search traffic rather than demonstrate genuine expertise. Google’s December update appears to target ‘SEO-first content’ that prioritizes traffic over expertise. Read + Search Engine Land
I don’t want a mental health company to rank for ‘why do I feel funny when I’m in love’ or ‘Thanksgiving’ or ‘love quotes’ that’s not a good use of resources and we weren’t the site for that. Our largest competitor focused so hard on traffic that they couldn’t even rank for mental health keywords. And they still don’t. and it’s all because they have a ‘traffic at all costs’ keyword strategy — Taylor Chapa, growth director at Headspace
9. What’s (not) in a name
Ted Gioia recently pointed out a funny pattern: how so many things in the digital world end up being the opposite of what they claim to be. He talks about how social media platforms prevent people from having a social life and how ChatGPT makes you less likely to chat with anybody. Read +.
Here are some others that I thought of in this vein.
All-inclusive resorts work hard to exclude you from the local culture
Frequent flyer programs reward you more for spending on the ground than flying in the air.
Hospitality platforms have automated away actual hospitality
Travel planning apps ensure that you won't know how to plan your trip
Navigation apps ensure you’ll never learn how to get anywhere.
Ride-sharing apps mean fewer people actually share rides.
Instant messaging makes real-time conversations less common
Relationship/dating apps make it easier to meet people but harder to keep them.
10. Share a table, not a post
Here's a brand being true to its name. TimeOut Lisboa encourages people to take time out. "Share a table, not the post" is a good reminder that real connections happen face-to-face. The most powerful travel experiences are the ones that never make it to social media.
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Mauricio Prieto
OTAs did this extremely well with brand-jacking. Making ads on Hotel Meurice Paris and taking the revenue that would have gone to the hotel's website. Efficient but left a lot of bad taste.