Skift Global Forum 2015: Priceline.com CEO on Why Conversions Are the Only Online Travel Metric
Skift Take
Conversion has gotten more complicated during the past year and Hennessy's talk will lay out why it really matters and why it should be kept at the heart of what a business seeks to do.
Priceline.com CEO Paul Hennessy will speak about why conversion is the most important metric in travel at Skift’s Global Forum on October 14 and 15 in Brooklyn, New York. He will join a cadre of industry leaders who share insights and their vision of the future of travel exclusively with Skift Global Forum attendees.
Hennessy's been at Priceline.com for the better part of the last 15 years and during that time witnessed the birth of the conversion process at the dawn of the Internet and online travel. In April he became CEO of the brand after his tenure as CMO of Booking.com for the past four years, where he had a lofty view of the Priceline Group's expansion as it sought to keep pace with the lengthening conversion funnel by acquiring a metasearch brand like Kayak in 2013.
Most recently his work in developing Booking.com's Booking Now app for last-minute hotel bookings up to 48 hours in advance sharpened that brand's focus on what some call the on-demand booking market.
Hennessy told us why conversion is the most important measure of success in online travel, from metasearch to search engines to what it means for advertising in an edited interview below:
Skift: When did you first realize conversion is the most important metric in travel?
Paul Hennessy: That's a great question, I guess I'd have to say that when I set up my first lemonade stand out in the front of my house, I really understood the value of conversion. And I don't think that's changed really, whether this becomes an e-commerce business or any other business. There's the simple matter of building great products for customers, putting them in front of the customers, then measuring that, scorekeeping and making sure that you're personalizing that offer for customers. That is what conversion is ultimately all about.
It matters in the OTA world but I think it matters really in all businesses and in all e-commerce businesses certainly because we're casting a wide net for customers. And the success of that conversion is ultimately in transactions. So I don't think that there was a moment or an 'aha moment' when conversion suddenly became important, it's really just at the heart of what we do
