Wed February 18, 2026 (Run 5)

Rental Car Industry

Avis Budget Group partnered with PARAVAN to introduce fully wheelchair accessible VW Caddy 5 Maxi vehicles at AVIS locations across Germany, featuring rear entrance wheelchair lifts operated by people with disabilities Avis Budget Group LinkedIn
Avis Budget Group partnered with hlpy in Italy to provide Maggiore Rent, AmicoBlu and Morini Rent customers with a digital assistance platform for faster, easier help requests during rentals Avis Budget Group LinkedIn
Hertz's Gold Plus Rewards program was named top car rental loyalty program in Newsweek's America's Best Loyalty Programs for 2025 Hertz LinkedIn
Hertz Car Sales gifted a Toyota RAV4 to Brittany Killian, an Asheville, NC middle school secretary who used her 1998 Subaru to deliver supplies after Hurricane Helene, in partnership with Good Morning America Hertz LinkedIn
Hertz launched a dedicated Jeep Wrangler 4xe collection with exclusive Hertz-Jeep rubber duck promotions offering discounts and free upgrades for future rentals Hertz LinkedIn
Hertz Italy launched complimentary activity kits for children to decorate rental car seat covers, creating take-home artwork during family trips Hertz LinkedIn

Hertz EVP Chief Information Officer Tim Langley-Hawthorne discussed in Forbes how the company is leveraging technology, AI, and strategic partnerships to improve operations and customer experience through a customer-centric product development approach Hertz LinkedIn

Uber implemented a GenAI-powered invoice automation system to improve invoice processing workflows Uber Engineering LinkedIn
Uber developed the FixrLeak framework leveraging GenAI and AST-level analysis to automatically detect and fix resource leaks in large-scale Java applications Uber Engineering LinkedIn
Expedia Group appointed Xavier Amatriain, former VP of AI and compute enablement at Google, as its first chief AI and data officer Phocuswire
Business travel AI assistant Otto The Agent launched to function as an executive assistant for business travelers Phocuswire
Expedia will integrate with Amazon's Alexa+ in 2026, allowing users to find and book vacation rentals and hotels through voice commands Phocuswire
Hotels are pushing live ChatGPT integrations as AI search platforms move toward displaying real-time availability and rates following OpenAI's ChatGPT apps launch Phocuswire
Google's James Byers stated the company's agentic booking commercial model will be "similar" to its current model, discussing LLM differentiation and evolving advertising models Phocuswire

Amazon grew its Rivian electric delivery van fleet by more than 50% in 2025, progressing toward its goal of 100,000 vans by 2030 Electrek

Uber for Business research shows teams are craving meal programs that feel intentional, flexible, and worth looking forward to Uber for Business LinkedIn

Uber crafted a cutting-edge architecture for orchestrating machine learning pipelines with Ray on Kubernetes Uber Engineering LinkedIn
Uber made novel enhancements to Kubernetes to run Ray-based jobs with optimal resource management Uber Engineering LinkedIn
Uber migrated its stateless container orchestration platform to Kubernetes, operating at a scale of 3 million cores with 1.5 million pod launches daily Uber Engineering LinkedIn

Hot 25 Travel Startups for 2026 include: Becoming rentABLE (accessible short-term rental platform), Meili (ancillaries integration technology), Landng (interactive consumer journeys with maps), DirectBooker (AI hotel inventory connections), and Walkway (AI-powered growth platform for experiences) Phocuswire
AnotherTrip aims to convert travel content into bookable experience maps, bridging inspiration to destination Phocuswire
WildyNess raised pre-seed funding to connect MENA travelers with local experiences Phocuswire

Nearly half of Airbnb experiences bookings are unrelated to accommodations; CEO Brian Chesky said the company didn't partner with OpenAI's ChatGPT apps launch because it wasn't "ready" Phocuswire
Trip.com Group reported 100% increase in inbound travel bookings in Q3 2025 compared to 2024, with international OTA bookings growth Phocuswire
Revolut entered a payments partnership with Booking.com for accommodations, with plans to expand to flights and cars Phocuswire
Barry Diller stated at The Phocuswright Conference that Google's search monopoly is coming to an end Phocuswire

Amex GBT CEO Paul Abbott explained why he believes TMCs can thrive in an AI environment, saying AI will "strengthen and strengthen" TMCs Phocuswire
Navan announced CFO transition following its October IPO, reporting revenue bump and higher net loss year over year for Q3 Phocuswire

Air France-KLM is addressing look-to-book volume challenges from NDC with Amadeus technology solutions Phocuswire

Exclusive Investments agreed to acquire Inspirato for $59 million, taking the company private and delisting from Nasdaq Phocuswire

Copenhagen launched DestinationPay, a global tourism reward model extending its CopenPay program initially launched in summer 2024 Phocuswire
Hertz VP Chief Compliance and Sustainability Officer Page Motes was recognized in Sustainability Magazine's Top 250 Women list for driving sustainability strategy and workforce development initiatives Hertz LinkedIn