Expedia Group CEO Interview: Our Tech Was an Anchor Thwarting Innovation

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Editor’s Note: Every Wednesday, Executive Editor and online travel rockstar Dennis Schaal will bring readers exclusive reporting and insight into the business of online travel and digital booking, and how this sector has an impact across the travel industry.

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Expedia Group CEO Peter Kern thinks Google's vacation rental metasearch offering won't work because the big partners, such as Expedia/Vrbo and Airbnb have opted out, and he believes that Expedia's legacy technology held back innovation over the years.

These were among the points that Kern made during a Skift interview at Expedia's partner conference in Las Vegas last week.

When it comes to innovation, Kern argued that competitors have likewise not been innovative, and all have done much to program travelers to look for low prices instead of more value.

The interview, which has been edited for length and grammar, follows:

Dennis Schaal: I have a friend, who's pretty smart. She said to me, "Expedia is your grandmother's or grandfather's online travel agency. What have they really done in recent years that's innovative?" And to that, you would say?Peter Kern: It's hard to be super innovative when everything takes six times the work. I mean, to be fair. On which brand? Was Expedia innovative? Hotels.com innovative? Vrbo innovative? Which thing are you asking to be innovative? So, it [Expedia Group's lack of tech integration] was an anchor a little bit on our ability to innovate because there was no one innovation that you could deploy across everybody and everything. 

Today, you're going to see we're launching Smart Shopping, which is a new capability where it's easy to compare hotel products because every hotel defines their universe differently. Like, "Oh, this is a queen superior, and this is a junior suite." Most customers are looking at a Marriott and thinking I don't know what it comes with. Now we've taken all the zillions of bits of data and worked it down into an easy way to compare what you get with each room.