This week, travel startups announced more than $101 million in funding.>>Gett, which helps corporate travelers book taxis and ridehailing services, has raised $100 million in a funding round led by unnamed investors.

Gett lets corporate clients book and manage all their ground travel providers, such as local on-demand taxi operators, chauffeured car services, and ride-hailing services, in one booking tool.

Companies can use Gett to manage bookings, users, and expenses and make sure their employers have safe options while on the road. Gett said a third of Fortune 500 companies use its services.

As few as 1% of airline passengers participated in voluntary carbon offsetting before virus-induced travel restrictions took hold, according to The International Air Transport Association (IATA), indicating that purchasing carbon “credits” from your airline or a certified carbon offsetting organisation to compensate for your travel emissions likely wasn’t high on your priority list to begin with.

The difficulty in accurately quantifying most carbon-offsetting programmes (it’s difficult to gauge, for example, the volume of emissions you’ll offset by contributing to a clean cookstove project, an energy efficiency initiative typically funded by offsetting organisations) hasn’t helped.

Could this be the new carbon offsetting?As permanent carbon removal becomes more accessible to travellers through these two schemes, environmental sociologist and University of Southampton research fellow Dr Roger Tyers, who explored carbon offsetting in his PhD, says it may help to bolster the offset industry.“More measurable offsets like direct air capture (either for permanent removal or for creating alternatives to fossil fuels) could lift standards across the whole offset market,” he said. “They might also help shine a light on cheaper and less effective offset schemes that have dominated the market so far, which are often too good or cheap to be true.”Until carbon removal with permanent storage becomes more financially viable for travellers to adopt, other offset providers perhaps shouldn’t be too worried about losing customers. But the founders of Climeworks and Tomorrow’s Air hope that the need for urgent action on climate action will encourage travellers to incorporate permanent carbon removal into their carbon offsetting strategies sooner rather than later.

Las Vegas - Bartech, the leader in automatic minibar solutions for the global hospitality industry, is fulfilling a growing need in the post-COVID 19 hotel environment through its proprietary NeoTray solution, which allows non-refrigerated items to be securely offered to hotel guests through an automated point-of-sale within the safety of the guestroom. As hotels worldwide seek out ways to continue to provide for guests' needs in the new socially distanced travel experience, Bartech's NeoTray provides a solution for presenting non-traditional items for purchase, such as PPE (Personal Protection Equipment) like masks and hand sanitizer to help ensure guest health and safety.

Bartech's NeoTray is an ideal solution to this new guestroom-centric travel experience, allowing the property to generate much-needed in-room revenue, while offering a convenient and valuable guest service. With a clear, protective sealed lid, the NeoTray allows products to be attractively and conveniently displayed to encourage purchase, optimizing the potential for in-room revenue. The unit can also be sanitized and visibly sealed with a sticker to provide added guest assurance and confidence in the property's commitment to their wellbeing.

The NeoTray utilizes Bartech's industry-leading automatic minibar technology, enabling wireless communication via Wi-Fi or the built in ZigBee antenna. This wireless operation allows usage data to be sent directly from the unit to the hotel's Property Management System (PMS), providing a digital record of any openings of the sealed unit. In this way, only the units that have been opened need to be serviced and cleaned between guest stays, minimizing staff visits to the guestroom. This promotes less physical contact between guests and staff, while minimizing labor costs and further ensuring guest safety. All charges are posted in real time to the guest folio within the PMS, ensuring accurate charges at checkout.

Is your hotel "Covid Clean?" It can be, thanks to a new app that gives housekeepers step-by-step cleaning instructions that follow Center for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines to stop the spread of the virus. Beekeeper, a mobile-first communication platform for frontline workers, is now offering the "Cleaning Task Lists" by Whispr app FREE to its customers. The smart checklist will work on any Android or iOS device and can be activated by Whispr immediately if the hotel is an existing Beekeeper user.

"We are extremely proud of our innovation partner, Whispr, for designing an app that will enable hotels to be truly responsive to the virus and lessen its impact on the property, staff and guests," said Andrada Paraschiv, Beekeeper Head of Hospitality. "Because our core products are integrated, any hotel using the Beekeeper operational communication platform can upload the 'Cleaning Task Lists' by Whispr app in minutes. The app includes a real-time dashboard showing each room's availability as it is made Covid Clean."

"We are encouraging our customers to display the Covid Clean badge throughout the hotel and on their websites and social media profiles to let travelers know their doors are open and the assets are virus free," Paraschiv added. "This is a critical first step towards economic and social recovery for hotels."

Luthje: Because of our digital communication strategy, we don't have employees who want to cut corners on the new procedures; instead, they are more engaged and prouder to do their part in keeping everyone safe. Many offer ideas on how to improve processes. We attribute this success to Beekeeper; the platform really makes a difference in empowering our colleagues to deliver a delightful and genuine guest experience. We can explain in the app how colleagues can find the tools they need, and in return, they tell us what we can do to make processes better. Being agile is key.

Paraschiv: How is technology helping employees to do their jobs right the first time? Luthje: Beekeeper offers failsafe communication in how tasks need to be performed. If a colleague forgets how to do something, they can open the Beekeeper app and see what needs done. To go a step further, Beekeeper integrates to other technologies like LUA (formerly Whispr). LUA provides digital checklists in the user's own language to personalize the room cleaning experience. Housekeepers see step-by-step instructions on how to perform each task on the list. It also forces accountability by requiring housekeepers to confirm when tasks are complete. This tool is also a big help in public area cleaning. Management can use it to provide checklists for cleaning public restrooms. A rule can be set that every 20 minutes an attendant must refresh the space. If 25 minutes have passed and the bathroom attendant has not confirmed cleaning, management will get an alert.

Shortly after the initial wave of tweets from Gates and Musk’s accounts, the accounts of Apple, Uber, former President Barack Obama, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, hip-hop mogul Kanye West, and former New York City mayor and billionaire Mike Bloomberg, among others, were also compromised and began promoting the scam.

It’s unclear how widespread the operation is, but it appears to be affecting numerous major companies and extremely high-profile individuals. That suggests someone, or a group, has either found a severe security loophole in Twitter’s login process or third-party app or that the perpetrator has somehow gained access to a Twitter employee’s admin privileges.