Post-Collapse, Travelocity's Founder Opens Up About What Might Have Been
Skift Take
Terry Jones and Rich Barton, the founders of Travelocity and Expedia, respectively, offer verdicts on what were once hot-button issues, as well as lessons for travel startups and more mature companies, as well.
Terry Jones, who founded Travelocity within Sabre in 1996, says it's "sad" that Sabre recently gave up on Travelocity, although he understands that Sabre wanted to clean up its balance sheet in preparation for an IPO.
Too bad Travelocity couldn't have executed even a modest turnaround of sorts, such as Orbitz Worldwide did over the last few years, Jones says.
But, first Jones wants to talk about the Skift story, "These Are the 5 Things That Killed Travelocity," which included comments by his chief rival of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Rich Barton, who founded Expedia.
Barton had pointed to Travelocity's merger with Preview Travel in 2000 and Travelocity's focus on distribution deals with AOL and Yahoo as contributing factors t
