Travel insiders have long wondered when, or how, Amazon might flex its online muscle to follow other retail giants and non-travel brands into the sector.
Yet such speculation misses the fact of the company’s growing behind-the-scenes role in travel, mostly through Amazon Web Services, a subsidiary that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and applications on a pay-as-you-go basis.
AWS’ importance to the larger company’s operations was clear in an earnings report this month when Amazon said revenue from its cloud unit beat analysts’ expectations by increasing 12% year-over-year in the second quarter to reach $22.1 billion. Of Amazon’s $7.7 billion in operating profit, 70% of it came from AWS.
