Former Expedia CEO Knew Copying a Rival Was a 'Recipe for Death'

Online Travel This Week With Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi, who headed Expedia for a dozen years, speaking at Skift Global Forum in the Big Apple in September, I went back to peruse my interview with him five years ago at that event —and I found a lot of wisdom in one particular portion. In the sequence, which begins at 18:58 in the 2016 video [embedded below], there was banter about hardball and softball questions, including my asking Khosrowshahi in the softball-question category whether Booking Holdings people had called him about taking the-then-open CEO position over there. "No they did not call me," he quipped. "I would expect them to never call me." Join Us at Skift Global Forum in NYC September 21-23 To See Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aswCFIXwpAo&t=1143s But then Khosrowshahi surprised me when he took the bait and actually answered my question about what rival Booking should be doing differently than what was in its playbook at the time, including potentially adding flights to Booking.com (now in progress) or going on an acquisition tear. Just imagine the dread among his public relations handlers when he weighed in on that one. "So this is going to seem like a softball answer, but I'd say, nothing," Khosrowshahi sa