The Skift Travel Podcast

On Wednesday of last week, Skift broke the bombshell news that Expedia Group—the world’s leading Online Travel Agent—had decided to end its longstanding partnership with Hopper, a rival OTA that Expedia had nonetheless been providing hotel and vacation rental inventory for many years. What’s more, Expedia used their announcement to voice concerns about several practices employed by Hopper that the...

Skift Asia Editor Peden Doma Bhutia interviews Global Tourism Reporter Dawit Habtemariam about the series of articles he's written recently for Skift.com that detail the plight of U.S. cities, how they are coping, and what they are doing to encourage both domestic and international tourists to return in the wake of the pandemic. You can find all of the articles referenced in this episode, as well...

Senior hospitality editor Sean O'Neill interviews travel tech reporter Justin Dawes about his experience on the floor of the Hospitality Industry Technology Expo and Conference, better known as HITEC. The conference bills itself as "the world's largest hospitality technology show," and Justin was there in Toronto last week covering it for Skift. In this interview, Justin talks about what he saw an...

In late May, the Skift team returned from our annual retreat, which was held this year in Iceland. Still buzzing with the energy and lessons from that experience, we decided to share our insights in a special edition of the Skift podcast. CFO Michael Cunniff, Senior Director of Events Regina Yuen, and Human Resources head Mariana Ruiz joined CEO Rafat Ali to discuss their learnings about company r...

The short-term rental industry has experienced a major boom coming out of the pandemic, driven in large part by the surge in remote work. But what does the future hold, especially since the sector’s enormous recent growth may not be sustainable? Executives speaking at Skift’s Short-Term Rental Summit offered their thoughts about what comes next. To go deeper into short-term rentals, you can watch...

In this special episode of the Skift Travel Podcast we introduce listeners to our newest show, the Skift Ideas podcast. Join travel industry thought leaders Rafat Ali and Colin Nagy on the new Skift Ideas podcast. On the Skift Ideas podcast we will immerse listeners in discussions regarding the latest innovations within the industry, focussing on the key topics of design, marketing, sustainability...

In this episode of the Skift Travel Podcast, Ankur Randev, Chief Commercial Officer of Highgate, discusses the current hospitality investment climate with Skift senior research analyst Pranavi Agarwal.  The conversation covers topics such as the uncertain lending and investing activity, the luxury segment, advanced revenue management capabilities, and Highgate’s European expansion and investment i...

I have known Brian Harniman, the Head of Strategy at digital transformation agency From since the early days of Skift — he was amongst the first online travel veterans to latch on to the potential of what we were building. Harniman is a serial entrepreneur with over 25 years experience leading innovation in travel companies. He was on the founding team of Priceline.com and held executive positions...

Episode Summary It started with a Linkedin post.  When Michael J. O’ Regan, a Lecturer of Tourism at Glasgow Caledonian University posted an academic article he wrote about why we should stop using the word “Overtourism” and the issues he sees with its usage since the time we at Skift coined the term in 2016 (the backstory on that here), it came across my feeds. And in a surprise twist, considerin...

Adam Harris, the CEO of hotel management software company Cloudbeds, has a great no-nonsense grasp of the macro – and micro – environment in the startup fundraising world. On this edition of the Skift Travel Podcast, Harris sits down with Skift CEO Rafat Ali to get a perspective on what it means for travel tech startups across the spectrum of maturity to be raising funding in this environment. Thi...

Parag Khanna is an author, geopolitical scientist and founder of Climate Alpha, an AI-powered analytics platform forecasting asset values and future-proof global real estate, as well as FutureMap, a data and scenario-based strategic advisory firm. Khanna, who has also spoken at Skift events, shares in this recent interview with Skift founder and CEO Rafat Ali his perspectives on travel, globalizat...

Hotel earnings season has just ended, with public hotel companies reporting their end of 2022 performances. In the latest Skift Podcast, our team covers the highlights, reviews the 2023 outlook, and pinpoints one of the most critical metrics to watch. The conversation will also bring up  topics and themes we'll focus on more in-depth at our all-day Skift Future of Lodging event, happening in Londo...

Today, we’re going to look at some of the future trends happening across hospitality and the big questions facing the sector as a preview for our Future of Lodging Forum happening in London on March 29th, 2023. Join Skift Head of Research Wouter Geerts and Skift Senior Hospitality Editor Sean O’Neill, in discussion with Skift Head of Programing Brian Quinn, as they preview the topics and themes on...

India is projected to surpass China as the world's most populous country later this year, as China begins to decline and India's population growth shows no sign of slowing until 2064. That shift carries huge implications for travel across the globe, and has the potential to rewire the race for attracting global tourists around the world. Skift addressed this in its Megatrends 2023 package in the s...

For this bonus episode of the Skift Travel Podcast, we turn to our colleagues at Airline Weekly for perspective on Southwest Airlines. As most of the traveling public knows, the airline had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad holiday season. The cancellation of 15,000-plus flights between Christmas and New Years will weigh on its fourth quarter results, but consumers' memories are short and th...

Marriott CEO Anthony Capuano took the stage at Skift Global Forum in September 2022 to discuss what the hotel giant had accomplished in 2022 and where it was headed in the coming year “I’m optimistic because we are a data driven company,” Marriott CEO Anthony Capuano told Skift’s Sean ONeill. “Not withstanding all the very real headwinds in terms of inflationary environment, rising interest rates,...

Skift founder Rafat Ali interviewed Hilton CEO Christopher Nassetta via hologram Wednesday at Skift Global Forum East in Dubai. Nassetta said Hilton expects to organically develop its own new brands rather than chase costly acquisitions in part because “we don’t want to have to fix other people’s problems.” He said Hilton’s brand portfolio more than doubled to 19 in the 15 years Nassetta has been...

Something shifted in the last two weeks on the zeitgeist about the use of artificial intelligence in our daily personal and professional lives.  The launch of the first large-scale, general purpose chatbot using OpenAI‘s GPT3 AI engine on November 30 has reenergized the whole tech industry all at once. Skift CEO Rafat Ali wrote a story about it, which will give you a good sense why. To get an unde...

A lot of ground was covered during Peter Kern’s appearance at Skift Global Forum in New York City on September 21. The vice chairman and CEO of Expedia Group gave his take on technology, micro-services, mergers and acquisitions, and outlined why the online travel agencies still only control around 20 percent of a “multi-trillion dollar” travel market. "There’s huge opportunity," Kern says. "You ju...

"I’m really excited about the quality of the brand portfolio," IHG CEO Keith Barr said at Skift Global Forum. Barr goes on to describe the current realities of the hotel business: it's a real estate business at the end of the day, after all. But IHG has been hyper-focused on its brands and its franchise partners. "It’s been great because there’re such clearly defined brands that enable us to work...

For this bonus episode of The Skift Travel Podcast, we turn to Dallas where we held our first in-person Skift Aviation Forum earlier this week. To begin the event, we invited American Airlines CEO Robert Isom to have a conversation conversation with Airline Weekly's Ned Russell about post-pandemic pattern changes and how his airline is preparing for the holiday season ahead. "One of the things tha...

“I’m going to bring you behind the tent, tell you what we’re doing,” JetBlue Airways COO Joanna Geraghty said at Skift Global Forum earlier this fall.  In a conversation with Airline Weekly Editor Ned Russell, Geraghty laid out JetBlue’s current challenges with labor, sustainable aviation fuel, integrating Spirit Airlines, and competing in major U.S. markets. She also discussed the airline’s poten...

At at time when the travel industry is still grappling with a labor shortage, you have to think some companies in the sector are "labor hoarding," hanging on to workers that might have otherwise been downsized for costs savings or seasonality reasons, simply because of the fear of not being able to fill roles later. The continuing issue of delays and bottlenecks for the H1B visa program, which was...

Google is one of the undisputed heavyweights in online travel. So when one of the key masterminds behind all of its travel platforms and products talks about where the search giant is heading, it's worth paying attention to. The search giant has been busy these past few months, updating its options for rail travel but also making the news for its controversial move to remove contrail emissions dat...

Waze has 151 million monthly active users, and is more than an app to beat traffic jams, Waze CEO Neha Parikh told Skift senior research analyst Seth Borko, as they dissected the intersections between maps and community. “Why should anybody feel emotional about a navigation app? Yet people do, including me,” said Parikh. “It’s not just a one-way app that uses technology. It is a two-way ecosystem...