What Travel's Top CEOs Have to Say About Consumers' Mobile Habits
Skift Take
In the near future, travelers won't be all thumbs when trying to get things done on their mobile devices. Help is on the way.
Like an artist surveying a blank canvas, Kayak CEO Steve Hafner and his technophile minions just love the fact that smartphone screens are getting bigger, and these out-sized homescreens are likely to play a pumped-up role for travelers as they switch from phone to laptop and tablet, and back again.
From dining reservations platform OpenTable to hotel-booker and review site TripAdvisor and La Quinta Inns & Suites, the CEOs of these companies and others are investing lots of dough and people-power into changing the way travelers use their smartphones and tablets to make trips more sleek and elegant.
Or -- more accurately -- they are responding to the game-changing new ways consumers are using their mobile devices in order to provide new features and services to ease and speed various aspects of your planning and actual travel experiences.
We caught up with 10 online travel agency and hotel CEOs, as well as an executive chairman to see what their companies are up to in terms of rolling out the next phase in mobile innovations.
1. Paying the Check
OpenTable CEO Matthew Roberts on a nouveau dining experience: "Very few people like the dance of flagging the waiter down. The waiter comes, you give him the credit card, he walks back. My wife and I are sitting there saying, OK, we are going to be late for getting back and relieving the sitter.
"That’s not a fun part of the evening. What we’ve created is a very seamless experience that when you are ready to go you just take out your OpenTable app, you can review what you’ve ordered, you can leave a tip, and get up and walk out."
2. Tracking What You Searched
Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi on tracking your searches: "We see our users now shop across more sites than ever before. A user who's doing a flight search will be doing over 40 flight searches before booking a flight. And we are seeing users shop across multiple devices they book. Where we see today around 40% of our users using multiple devices to book."
"So you are really moving from a single
