PhocusWire's travel tech news briefs: Expedia Group, Apaleo, Klook and more... 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. Expedia, Allegiant. Expedia Group and Allegiant Travel Company have signed a 12-month exclusive partnership making Expedia the first authorized online travel agency (OTA) to distribute Allegiant flights. It brings Allegiant's 566 nonstop routes across 124 U.S. cities to all Expedia Group brands, giving the airline access to Expedia's demand, technology and marketplace reach. With Allegiant added, Expedia now offers 100% coverage of U.S. commercial passenger airlines. BCD Travel launches Tripsource Insights. BCD Travel has launched Tripsource Insights, an artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing powered analytics platform giving corporate travel and finance managers a unified view of program data. Built on BCD's direct source-level data, the platform replaces manual reports with real-time visualizations and natural language queries. A BCD buyer survey found data collaboration with travel management companies and suppliers and improved data quality ranked as top priorities, with limited time cited as the main barrier to engagement. Visiting media names SVP of sales. Visiting Media has appointed Sarah Johnston as SVP of sales. She will lead the global sales organization, driving adoption of the company's immersive content platform among hotel brands, ownership groups and management companies. Johnston joins from Cendyn, where she was VP of sales, bringing experience scaling high-growth sales teams. Her hire follows Visiting Media's recent acquisitions of Spazious and FirstView. Thai Aviation Industries, Edgewater Solutions, Amadeus. Thai Aviation Industries, Edgewater Solutions and Amadeus have signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to collaborate on modernizing the passenger journey and airport operations across Thailand's international and regional airports. The partnership will explore integrating seamless travel, biometrics, operations and data capabilities to improve coordination and passenger flow. Key focus areas include faster passenger processing through self-service and automated bag drop, seamless identity and border flows via e-Gates and biometrics, smarter operations through centralized databases and resource management and real-time data integration to support faster, more dynamic decision-making. Grapevine, Jyrney. Grapevine and Jyrney have partnered to let business travelers book taxis, ride-hails or chauffeurs by text or voice message. Sophie, Grapevine's AI assistant, handles conversation on WhatsApp, Slack and Microsoft Teams while deterministic booking flows manage the transaction. Jyrney's network of providers, including Bolt and Blacklane, fulfills rides, with all bookings billed on account. Grapevine can also trigger transfers tied to existing hotel and flight data. Corporations using aggregated ground transport typically see savings of around 20%, according to Jyrney. Eviivo, Beyond. Eviivo, a property and booking management platform for vacation rentals and independent accommodations, has integrated with Beyond, a revenue management platform for short-term rentals. The integration connects Beyond's demand data and market insights to Eviivo, letting optimized pricing flow automatically to connected OTA channels and direct-booking sites. Operators can manage rate plans, channel-specific pricing rules and combined inventory settings while reacting faster to seasonal and market shifts, all within Eviivo's existing platform. Apaleo names UK, Ireland lead. Apaleo appointed Connor Neeson as country lead for the U.K. and Ireland, reinforcing the API-first property management platform's regional expansion plans. Neeson brings more than 15 years in hospitality technology, including a stint as market director for the U.K. and Ireland at Triptease, plus roles at Cloudbeds and CheKin. He'll strengthen customer and partner relationships as operators move away from legacy systems. JetBlue, ClarityPay. JetBlue and ClarityPay launched a pay-later financing program that ties installment payments to TrueBlue points. Customers get an introductory 0% APR on terms up to 12 months and can preview financing options from six weeks to 48 months while shopping. TrueBlue points earning is live at launch, with additional points opportunities on ClarityPay bookings planned later this year. The platform also covers flights, insurance and ancillary services under JetBlue's own branding. Klook, Korea Tourism Organization sign MOU. Klook signed a renewed MOU with the Korea Tourism Organization covering digital transformation, regional destination promotion, FIT marketing campaigns and AI-based smart tourism tools. Bookings for Busan and Jeju grew more than 50% year on year in the first half of 2026, outpacing the national average. Klook's Travel Pulse found 73% of Asia-Pacific travelers would visit a lesser-known city for a specific local event. The partnership builds on a 2023 transport MOU and an April 2026 Korail rail-booking integration. DerbySoft, Travelodge. DerbySoft partnered with Travelodge to expand direct distribution and improve connectivity across corporate travel channels. The deal gives Travelodge, which operates more than 630 hotels across the U.K., Ireland and Spain, broader access to travel management companies through DerbySoft's platform. DerbySoft's payments and reconciliation tools will also simplify booking and settlement processes for travel management companies and corporate buyers accessing Travelodge inventory. Loews adds Oracle Opera solutions. Loews Hotels & Co is adding Oracle Opera Cloud Distribution and Opera Cloud Loyalty to its existing Opera Cloud property management system setup, unifying property management, distribution, service, loyalty and sales data across its U.S. properties. The distribution tools let Loews adjust rates and ancillary pricing across direct and indirect channels, while the loyalty module targets guests with personalized incentives to drive direct bookings. Loews already runs Oracle's guest engagement, Simphony point-of-sale and enterprise resource planning systems.

Visiting Media has partnered with Bonafide.AI to create hospitality's first end-to-end AI distribution platform, enabling hotels to appear accurately in AI-powered travel searches. The collaboration addresses a critical gap: 33.1% of AI responses about hotels contain factual errors, whilst travellers increasingly use large language models like ChatGPT and Google Gemini for booking decisions. Visiting Media structures hotel content through smart tagging and semantic search, making it AI-ready. Bonafide.AI then distributes this verified content across LLM ecosystems through its three-module alignment platform. The partnership aims to reduce hotels' dependence on online travel agencies, which currently dominate AI context by default. The integration will be available to joint customers mid-July. Visiting Media specialises in immersive sales enablement, whilst Bonafide.AI ensures accurate hotel representation in AI models.