Full Video: Certares Founder Greg O'Hara at Skift Global Forum 2021

Certares Founder and Senior Managing Director Greg O'Hara spoke with Skift CEO Rafat Ali at Skift Global Forum 2021. The two discussed the theme “Investor Predictions on the Future of Travel.” 

You can watch a full video of their discussion as well as read a transcript of it, below.

Rafat Ali: Hey Greg, how are you? Well, thank you for coming virtually. I know you really wanted to come here, but you were not able to make it, but I'm so glad that you're here on video.

Greg O'Hara: I did. You picked UN week traffic to get from Manhattan to JFK. So it was going to be a six or seven-hour ordeal, my guys tell me so.

Ali: I heard there was an airport attached to the hotel, but anyway, I'm kidding.

O'Hara: There's a whole thing going on for me right now. So I appreciate you letting me do this. I did want to show up in person. I've been showing up in person now for almost everything for about the last 18 months. So it definitely wasn't because of any other reason than just sheer logistics of getting there during Midtown traffic during UN week.

Ali: Of course. Thank you. And obviously speaking of the last 18 months, there's a reason why you've been traveling, which is that you're obviously very, very busy. You've been buying companies, investing in companies. Let me ask you this question. Why do you pass on deals? Obviously you see a lot of deals. I'm sure everybody's asked.

O'Hara: It's been interesting. So this might be the easiest time to invest in the travel business that there ever was, if you're an expert. So normally in normal times, we figure out what kinds of industries we want to invest in. You talk to the companies in those industries, we build up relationships, and then hopefully over time, we get an opportunity to partner with those people or buy their companies. That, as of March 2020, that's kind of reversed itself. So instead of us having to make outbound calls, I can't remember the last time we made one. It started as a trickle, people needed capital, and they were calling maybe two or three CEOs a week. Now it's probably five to 10 a week, maybe sometimes in a day. And so it's pretty easy to figure out which companies are good companies and which companies should be allocated the capital.

And right now it's also very easy for us to figure out how to structure those investments, so that they're fair for t