How One Tech Glitch Hit Travel: 4 Facts Show AWS’ Impact on Airlines, Hotels, and OTAs

Amazon Web Services said a glitch in its network monitoring system caused Monday’s outage that disrupted operations at several travel companies, and the incident highlighted just how much of the industry now runs on AWS’ cloud.

The bigger question is how a seemingly simple bug managed to kneecap numerous companies. The answer lies in the vast presence Amazon has in this sector.

An AWS outage up-ended travel plans and disrupted companies like United and others.

Cloud providers like AWS do more than simply store data. They also crunch that data, and offer numerous tools, like AI, to leverage it. That’s especially true for market leaders like AWS, a huge operation that should produce roughly $125 billion in revenue this year for Amazon.

The travel vertical is an important priority for AWS.

In a conversation with Skift last week, before the outage, Massimo Morinda, global head of travel f