Skift Take

Relive some of our finest interviews, events, and behind-the-scenes moments with these popular podcasts from Skift.

Over the years, the Skift Podcast has explored issues both timely and eternal for travel, including examining solutions to overtourism, exploring how “places to go” lists get made, diving into the black travel movement.

We’ve also created episodes out of editors’ interviews with industry leaders, live Skift events, and behind-the-scenes conversations at our annual Forums.

To mark Skift’s sixth anniversary, we dove into the numbers and came up with the six most popular podcasts yet. They represent the best of what we do: smart conversations about the industry’s future with some of travel’s top decision makers and our own experts.

1. The Invention of Online Travel and How it Changed the Future of Travel Forever

Skift Executive Editor Dennis Schaal — accompanied by recorded interviews with some of the earliest players in online travel — discusses his Definitive Oral History of Online Travel. The conversation includes back-room drama, untold tales, victory laps, and clips from players including Expedia founder Rich Barton, Priceline founder Jay Walker, former Expedia, Inc. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, and TripAdvisor CEO and co-founder Stephen Kaufer.

2. Megatrends Defining Travel in 2018

With a new regional spotlight and a fresh focus on restaurants, we included 19 editorial  megatrends in the 2018 version of our annual Megatrends magazine. We recorded the first of our events drilling down on those topics in January and turned it into this podcast. Editors discuss the way travel brands are turning into experience platforms, how hotels are trying to be everything to everyone, the return of European travelers to disrupted destinations, and the way restaurants are fighting the delivery boom.

3. What Next-Level Hotels Have in Common

Three hotel experts — all speakers at 2017’s Skift Forum Europe in London — spoke in behind-the-scenes conversations about what sets the best hotels apart. Mr. and Mrs. Smith founders James Lohan and Tamara Heber-Percy and Design Hotels CEO Claus Sendlinger were the guests, and their insights included the evolution of hotel design and consumer demands, the beyond-the-spa experiences that travelers are craving, and the needs that hotels still aren’t quite meeting.

4. What to Expect From the New Expedia

This episode was recorded as a Skift Call after a very busy stretch for Expedia: CEO Dara Khosrowshahi had left to take the top job at Uber, and former CFO Mark Okerstrom was promoted to take over. Executive Editor Dennis Schaal, who started covering Expedia in 2000, led the conversation about Khosrowshahi’s legacy, his replacement, Expedia’s financial performance, and the opportunities and challenges ahead.

5. Travel Search, Bargain Hunting and the Future of Booking

Leaders of several metasearch companies who appeared at last year’s Skift Forum Europe in London continued their conversations backstage. They included Trivago managing director Johannes Thomas, Kayak co-founder and CEO Steve Hafner, Momondo Group CEO Hugo Burge, and Skyscanner co-founder and CEO Gareth Williams. Each spoke about newsy developments at their own companies as well as broader themes such as  advertising strategies, competition in the metasearch space, evolving customer behavior, and the emergence of natural language and voice search.

6. Finding Solutions for the Overtourism Dilemma

Skift’s coverage of overtourism has been extensive since we coined the phrase more than two years ago. We’ve written about the issues associated with massive numbers of tourists, but we have also explored solutions. This episode was a recording of a Skift Call that tackled the topic with Megan Epler Wood, director of the International Sustainable Tourism Initiative at the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the Harvard School of Public Health.

 

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Tags: hotels, megatrends, skift podcast

Photo credit: Skift's top podcasts include interviews with executives, deep dives, and a recording of one of our 2018 Megatrends events. Skift

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