Full Video: Expedia CEO Peter Kern at Skift Global Forum 2021
Skift Take
Expedia Group Vice Chairman and CEO Peter Kern spoke with Skift Executive Editor Dennis Schaal at Skift Global Forum 2021. The two discussed the theme “Powering Travel Beyond the Booking to Boost Recovery.”
You can watch a full video of their discussion as well as read a transcript of it, below.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/rxrrkdnHQ4gDennis Schaal: Hey everybody. Don't forget if you have questions for Peter ask them through the Skift live app and I will try to get to them. As Sean said earlier, they'll probably be better than my questions, that was a great line. So Peter, your first Skift Global Forum as CEO.
Peter Kern: So exciting. Everything I dreamed of.
Schaal: Well, it hasn't started yet, so we'll see.
Kern: Okay. Sorry.
Schaal: I'm used to seeing you on Zoom calls with a moose in the background in the backyard and this is definitely a change. So over the last year and a half, basically you've been busy remaking the company trying to simplify the operations. And the news this week was that you're taking three Expedia loyalty programs: Expedia.com, Hotels.com and Orbitz, and consolidating them into one. So why are you do doing that?
Kern: Let me first say this is a great week for travel, right? We just heard that we're going to be able to get travelers from Europe to America, the theater is open on Broadway. I went to a college football game last weekend, people are moving again.
Schaal: With 100,000 people in Texas.
Kern: With 100,000 people in Texas. (It) did not feel very Covid compliant but I went, and yeah. So the loyalty program for us, it's really, yes, we are taking three and making one. But we are really making one global overarching loyalty program for all our brands, for all our products, for everything. And the goal was really make it simple for the customer, help them understand the way to get the most value out of our brands and our products and make it one simple thing that cut across the company so that people could move around, earn and burn their loyalty rewards —however they wanted and really make it a bigger opportunity for the customer. And of course, it creates a simplifying universe of our brands because we're moving from competitive brands to a house of brands where they all work together for a common goal for the customer as opposed to working against one another.
Schaal: So if people don't know what
