Future of Travel Booking By Dennis Schaal Interviews with CEOs Skift Books of the world’s top online booking companies 2014 THE FUTURE OF ONLINE TRAVEL BOOKING By DENNIS SCHAAL AND SKIFT Published in 2014 by SKIFT 115 W. 30th St. Suite 1213 New York, NY 10001 USA On the web: skift.com Please send feedback to
[email protected] Publisher: Skift Editor: Jason Clampet Production Manager: Matt Heidkamp Copyright © 2014 Skift All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Table of Contents 04 Introduction 05 About Skift 06 Interviews 07 Darren Huston, Priceline 17 Steve Hafner, Kayak 23 João Ricardo Mendes, Hotel Urbano 29 Greg Marsh, One Fine Stay 35 Roberto Souviron, Despegar 41 Javier Pérez-Tenessa, eDreams Odigeo 47 Brian Sharples, HomeAway 53 Marina Kolesnik, Travel.ru 61 Adam Goldstein, Hipmunk 67 Chenchao “CC” Zhuang, Qunar 71 Gareth Williams, Skyscanner 75 Deep Kalra, MakeMyTrip 81 Dara Khosrowshahi, Expedia 87 Stephen Kaufer, TripAdvisor 93 Sam Jain, CheapOAir 99 Steve Singh, Concur 105 Barney Harford, Orbitz 109 Thank You Introduction The forces shaping travel booking are swirling intends to preference displays on its sites to force as much as they ever have since the first online sometimes-reluctant vacation-rental owners to booking engines arrived on the scene in the mid- make their properties online bookable. 1990s. Advances in mobile apps, the mobile Web, metasearch, digital marketing, user-generated Read closely as Expedia Inc.