Uber is planning to add travel booking via flights, trains and more in the UK this year to expand its ride-hailing business, The Financial Times has reported. The new service is designed to provide a "seamless door-to-door experience," so that you can book your flight, train and Uber all on the same app. To do so, the company will integrate its software with airlines, inter-city bus and rail operators (include Eurostar Channel Tunnel tips) and car rental companies, according to CNBC.

The UK is one of the company's largest markets outside the US, so the expansion is a big step. "You have been able to book rides, bikes, boat services and scooters on the Uber app for a number of years, so adding trains and coaches is a natural progression," said Uber UK general manager Jamie Heywood. "Later this year we plan to incorporate flights, and in the future hotels, by integrating leading partners into the Uber app to create a seamless door-to-door travel experience."

This "super app" strategy isn't new, as CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said he wanted Uber to be the "Amazon of transportation," when he first joined the company. Prior to the pandemic, around 15 percent of Uber trips were higher-margin rides to or from airports. "With COVID behind us, with this big push into new modes of transport, we want to signal that this is a very important growth lever for us over the coming years," Heywood said. 

It's not yet clear to what extent Uber will compete directly with other travel booking services, but Khosrowshahi was CEO at Expedia before coming to Uber. The company might have a leg up on rivals in that it could also offer a ride from airport to hotel, essentially owning the whole process.

Uber recently announced that it would let New York City users book Yellow Cab taxis directly through its app, with passengers paying around the same as they would for an Uber X ride. The company also plans to offer a similar service in San Francisco. It's not clear yet, though, when or if Uber will offer its expanded travel booking service in the US. 

For many people, the first thing they do when they start planning a new trip is to seek inspiration in travel guides, blogs and documentaries. It’s safe to say a podcast probably isn’t top of mind when you start daydreaming about your next escape. But iHeartRadio wants to change that. It’s launching PodGuides, a platform that curates podcasts designed to inspire your next trip.

When you visit the PodGuides website, you’ll find a map with more than 70 destinations pinned to it. Click on one, and you’ll get a curated list of podcasts that highlight what you can see, eat and experience in the place you want to visit. Most destinations include about five to 10 episodes, with productions like Lost and Found and Where to Go featured frequently. You can also find podcasts organized by interests like photography, food and nature hikes. You can listen to all the episodes directly on the website.

PodGuides probably won’t replace a proper travel guide if you’re looking for something exhaustive, but it’s clear that’s not the platform's goal. Instead, think of it as a complement to the resources you already turn to when wanderlust hits. And if nothing, it may help you discover a new podcast to listen to daily.

Airbnb is halting operations in Russia and Belarus, CEO Brian Chesky announced in a tweet. That includes around 90,000 active short-term rentals across different platforms in Russia and just over 1,800 in Belarus, according to Reuters. 

Chesky brought the situation up yesterday saying "all things are on the table" due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. On Monday this week, Airbnb offered free housing for up to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees fleeing to European nations including Poland, Germany, Hungary and Romania. 

Airbnb users have been taking things into their own hands, too. Members of the public purchased Airbnb rentals in Ukraine to help get money to residents facing severe economic hardship, as The Guardian reported. "My wife and I have just booked your apartment for one week, but of course we will not be visiting. This is just so you can receive some money," wrote one user to an Airbnb renter in Ukraine. Airbnb has also agreed to waive guest and host fees on all bookings in the nation.

Over a million refugees have fled the country since Russia's invasion started, according to the UN, and it estimates that up to four million people could eventually leave.

Uber is rolling out a feature designed to help people discover new things in the areas around them. Through the Explore tab in the Uber app, you can make dinner reservations, check out concert listings and learn about cultural highlights. You'll be able to see Yelp reviews, photos and directions for a variety of experiences.

Uber

For the first time, users can book experiences and buy tickets through the app with their Uber wallet and payment profile. With one-click rides, you can instantly book a trip to the restaurant or concert venue.

Based on your Uber and Uber Eats history, you'll see recommendations for things like food and drink, art and culture, music and nightlife. There will be offers available, including discounted rides to certain restaurants. Uber says the deals will change depending on what's popular in a given area.

Uber isn't charging restaurants a booking fee for reservations made through Explore. However, it may add a service or booking fee for some experiences. The company will reveal more about ticketing partners at a later date. It's not yet clear what kinds of benefits Uber One members will receive through the Explore tab, though Uber promised to share more details in the coming months.

The feature goes live today in 15 areas: Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Memphis, Minneapolis - St. Paul, New Orleans, New Jersey, Upstate New York, Orlando, San Antonio, San Francisco, Seattle and Mexico City. Uber plans to bring Explore to more locations and to add other types of events and experiences.

Uber

Uber Explore could be useful for spontaneous trips to a new city if you don't have much time to plan beforehand. It could also come in handy for downtime on business trips or to just learn about new things in a place where you've lived for a while.

Offering recommendations about local experiences, events and places to check out is hardly new. Foursquare, Airbnb, Google Maps and Eventbrite (to name a few) have been offering people recommendations for things to do for years. Still, by baking Explore into its ridehailing app, Uber not only wants to help you find cool spots and events, but to help you get there and back home.

You no longer have to be a GM employee to try Cruise's self-driving taxi service. TechCrunchnotes Cruise has opened fully driverless ride-hailing to the public in San Francisco. The company is initially accepting sign-ups for only"small number" of riders, but those early trips will be free. More slots will open as more cars become available, Cruise said.

Be prepared for an unusual pickup. A spokesperson told TechCrunch this first service operates between 11PM and 5AM, and you'll have to be content with rides in certain parts of the Chinatown, Haight-Ashbury, Pacific Heights and Richmond District neighborhoods. The nighttime runs will help Cruise have the most impact, the spokesperson said, and should expand over time.

The free rides aren't entirely voluntary. While Cruise has most of the licenses needed to offer driverless service, it doesn't yet have the California Public Utilities Commission permit needed to charge for those rides.

The launch comes at a good time for Cruise. While it abruptly lost CEO Dan Ammann in December, the SoftBank Vision Fund is investing another $1.35 billion in the company now that it's running truly driverless cars. Cruise can better afford those free rides and otherwise take the time to build out autonomous driving technology that includes the Origin shuttle van. The firm wasn't necessarily facing a crisis given GM's healthy financials, but this clearly reduces some of the pressure to make money.

Despite an already crowded market featuring big names like Airbnb and Vrbo, travel app Hopper is now expanding its services to include short-term home rentals.

Featuring more than two million properties spread across the world, Hopper Homes (which is available inside the Hopper app) should make it a bit easier to book airfare, car rentals and lodging (hotel or short-term) in a single place.

Hopper says users will be able to apply filters to help narrow down their options based on criteria like location, number of bedrooms, amenities and price. And over the next few months, the company says it will add support for some of its other booking features like Price Prediction and Cancel for Any Reason to the new service to help give its customers more flexibility over their travel plans.

That last part might end up being one of the biggest differentiators between Hopper Homes and its competitors. Other services such as Airbnb allow hosts to select from a range of cancellation policies including “flexible” plans that allow guests to cancel as late as 24 hours before check-in without penalty to “firm” plans that require guests to cancel at least 30 days before check-in.

By adding home rentals to its list of services, the company is hoping to attract a growing number of travelers who prefer staying in rental homes instead of hotels. Hopper claims Zoomers and millennials are especially keen, with more than four in 10 rental travelers being younger than 35.

Similar to its airfare and hotel bookings, Hopper also plans to integrate its Carrot Cash system in order to help customers save money, with credit earned from booking rentals homes able to be applied to other forms of travel.

Airbnb knows you might be reluctant to book a stay while the COVID-19 pandemic makes trips risky, so it's planning to offer some protection of its own. The rental service has revealed it will introduce custom travel insurance for guests sometime this spring. While the terms aren't available, Airbnb will team with a "reputable" insurer to offer coverage.

The company has also launched a Guest COVID Support Program that partly compensates travellers if border closures, quarantine periods or other government policies make existing reservations impractical. If a host won't provide a full refund, Airbnb will offer a travel coupon worth 50 percent of whatever hasn't been refunded so far. The program applies to all stays with a check-in date of December 1st, 2021 or later, so you might want to talk to Airbnb if your holiday plans fell apart.

There's no mystery behind the strategy. Airbnb's business has been hit hard by the pandemic as a whole, and COVID-19's Omicron variant is only increasing the worry for hosts and guests who were hoping the worst was behind them. First-party insurance and coupons might persuade some would-be adventurers to book stays when they would have otherwise stayed home.

Back at WWDC 2021, Apple said that iOS 15 and watchOS 8 would allow iPhone and Apple Watch owners to store digital hotel keys on their devices. While that feature didn’t quite make the release of those two updates, it’s now available at six Hyatt locations across the US. As you might expect, it allows you to store a digital version of your hotel keycard in Apple Wallet.

You can add the keycard at any point after you reserve a room. However, you’ll still need to check in at the front desk before you can use your iPhone or Apple Watch to enter your guestroom or any other restricted area within the hotel. The digital keycards support Apple Wallet’s Express Mode feature, which means you don’t need to authenticate your identity with Face ID or Touch ID every time you want to use the feature.

If at any point you decide to extend your stay or change rooms, the hotel can update your keycard without the need for you to visit the front desk. What’s more, if your device starts running low on battery life and enters Power Reserve mode, you can still use your iPhone or Apple Watch as a keycard for up to five hours.

The six locations where you can use your iPhone or Apple Watch to store a keycard are as follows: Andaz Maui at Wailea Resort, Hyatt Centric Key West Resort and Spa, Hyatt House Chicago/West Loop-Fulton Market, Hyatt House Dallas/Richardson, Hyatt Place Fremont/Silicon Valley and Hyatt Regency Long Beach.

Hyatt says it expects to roll out the technology to all of its locations globally. Sometime next year, Apple also plans to allow iOS 15 and watchOS 8 to store government issued IDs from select states as well.

Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa is set to go on a test run for his future trip around the Moon. He's set to spend 12 days on the International Space Station alongside his assistant, Yozo Hirano, who will document the trip.

Along with cosmonaut Alexander Misurkin, the pair will travel to the ISS on a Soyuz MS-20 spacecraft operated by Russia's space agency, Roscosmos. The launch is scheduled for 2:38AM ET on December 8th.

Maezawa has been training for the trip for 100 days. His stay on the ISS is another indication that civilian trips to the space station are becoming more commonplace. According to Agence France-Presse, he and his assistant will be the first space tourists to visit the ISS in more than a decade, though Roscosmos took a film director and actor there in October to shoot a feature film in space for the first time.

The billionaire announced in March that he was looking for eight other people to join him on his week-long lunar trip, which is tentatively set for 2023. All going well, he and his crewmates will become SpaceX's first lunar tourists. Mazewa, who bought out all of the seats on the flight, has become well-known for giveaways. In early 2019, he promised to give away over $900,000 to people who retweeted him. That led to him shattering Twitter's retweet record via his excellent handle, @yousuck2020.

Next year's Sundance Film Festival will mark a momentous return to Park City, Utah, after in-person festivities were cancelled last year. But Sundance isn't giving up on the digital platforms it used to stream films and bring cinephiles into a VR social hub last January. As part of its New Frontier exhibition, Sundance plans to expand The Spaceship, its virtual venue where attendees can chat together and explore VR and mixed reality art installations.

In an effort to connect Sundance's in-person attendees with its global online audience, the Festival will also launch a "Biodigital Bridge" in Park City. Shari Frilot, Sundance's Senior Programmer and Chief Curator of New Frontier, describes it as a human-scale screen where physical and digital attendees will be able to interact with each other. Developed together with the immersive studio Active Theory, the bridge will offer basic chat support, but it's mostly a way for Sundance-goers to see how other attendees enjoy the event.

Sundance Film Festival

Frilot says New Frontier has been pushing the concept of biodigital experiences for several years now, mostly through an exploration of how technology can intersect with our lives. Think of the way that an app like Uber, or even Google Maps, has reshaped the way we navigate physical spaces. But now that the pandemic has forced us to rely on our tech more than ever — Sundance wouldn't have been possible without it last year, after all — the term seems practically prescient. It's more than just a buzzword: Frilot says she's interested in exploring the technology that best serves humanity, or Team Human, as media theorist Douglas Rushkoff put it.

Last year, I found Sundance's online platform last year to be a fascinating way to explore the festival and interact with fans. The core of the experience is the aforementioned Spaceship, which allows attendees on computers and VR headsets to mull about together. On a laptop or desktop, it resembles a stripped down version of Second Life. You walk around as simplistic avatars, and if you choose, you can also flip on your webcam, which fills your avatar's head with a live video feed. Since Sundance's platform is built on WebXR, a way to deliver virtual reality over the web, you can enter that same space in VR by slipping on any headset and visiting Sundance's website.

Sundance Film Festival

Compared to SXSW's VR platform, which looked beautiful but mostly felt like a virtual wasteland, it was clear that Sundance got something right last year. After isolating for most of 2020, being able to see many of my cinephile friends in VR made last year's Sundance feel special. So for next year, Frilot says, the festival is going even further. The Spaceship will be upgraded with a new Cinema House, where attendees on computers and VR headsets can view events livestreamed from Park City, as well as room-scale discussions.

On the ground, Sundance will also have a new space called The Craft, which will let in-person attendees visit New Frontier exhibits, artist discussions and panels. There will also be VR headsets to use, though the festival is also encouraging people to bring their own gear if they've got it. Sundance hasn't finalized its list of New Frontier exhibits yet, but Frilot tells me many artists are optimizing for the Oculus Quest 2, so fest-goers can experience their work without being connected to a PC. But there will likely still be pieces that demand a serious VR rig. Sundance's famed Egyptian theater will also host some New Frontier performances, which will occur both on the ground and virtually on the Spaceship.

You'll need a $50 Sundance Explorer Pass to access all of these virtual goodies, which is double what it cost last year. It's a shame to see the price jump so quickly, but it's also reflective of the deeper commitment the festival is making in its digital platforms. Notably, the Explorer Pass is also open to people around the world, whereas Sundance's virtual screenings are limited to U.S. attendees.

"[The virtual platform] is not just this thing that we're trying, we're actually doubling down on this," Frilot says. "This points to the vital landscape of how cinema and storytelling is going to manifest [going forward]. We're here to not only contribute to it, but to meet it and support it."