Skift’s First E-Book: The ‘Future of Travel Booking’

Today, Skift is launching its first e-book, a 109-page collection of interviews with top online travel CEOs from across the spectrum and geographies, called the Future of Travel Booking.

The world of online travel booking has undergone more radical changes in the past 18 months than at any time since it changed the world of travel booking in the late 1990s.

With metasearch evolving, veterans like Travelocity slipping away, and emerging powers in Latin America, China, and Russia, it’s more important that ever to hear what the leaders of these companies think.

Skift sat down with 17 online travel CEOs over three months to better understand what matters to them. Their frank assessments about issues from mobile booking to competition and acquisitions are illuminating to those in the world of travel and any business competing in the digital space.

We have put it all inside our first e-book and added some bonuses — including an exclusive interview with Priceline Group CEO Darren Huston — to make it even better.

What’s Inside:

• Exclusive Conversations: A book-only interview with Priceline Group CEO Darren Huston (excerpt below).
• Unrivaled Access: Interviews from the CEOs of virtually every leading online travel agency in the world.
• Fresh Takes: Every interview took place between August and November of 2014.
• Unique Conversations: Exclusive one-on-ones with Skift News Editor Dennis Schaal and the CEOs.

Get the “Future of Travel Booking” E-Book Now

Preview of the Priceline CEO Interview

Darren Huston, the CEO of the Priceline Group, admits that he and his team are data junkies and in parsing the data, he says Google is the Group’s most efficient marketing partner, more effective than Bing, Yandex, Baidu and, by implication, even Kayak.

Still, Huston says the Priceline Group’s Booking.com, Priceline.com, and Kayak have supplemented digital marketing with television advertising, where data metrics are less transparent, and one of the reasons is because Google isn’t growing fast enough for the brands’ needs.

In a sit-down with Skift in Los Angeles about the future of travel booking and related topics, Huston says he’s as gung-ho about the Priceline Group’s acquisition of Kayak as his predecessor, Jeffery Boyd was, and he mentions that “Kayak has actually, if anything, proven to be a more important part of the Group than I would have ever thought.”