Skift Power Rankings: Ariane Gorin

Power is not just about who holds the top job but who shapes the landscape, drives innovation, and sets the agenda for what comes next. With that in mind, we proudly present Skift’s Power Rankings — our list of the most powerful leaders in travel.

Ariane Gorin, who took the reins as Expedia Group CEO in May, is trying to make the company more global. Gorin, who’s been a member of the Expedia Group senior leadership committee since 2015 and previously headed Expedia for Business, is well-positioned for the international challenge.

Gorin is a dual French-American citizen, and lived in London and Paris for the past 23 years before relocating to Expedia’s home base in Seattle for the top gig.

In a Skift interview in May on her first day as CEO, Gorin said Expedia Group is eyeing expansion in Japan and Scandinavia.

As the first woman CEO of Expedia Group, many of her co-workers were clearly excited about her promotion. Shannon McGehee, Expedia Group senior director, global partnerships, lodging, said she looks to Gorin as a mentor. “Ariane has a superpower to listen, understand, learn and apply those learnings to really, really smart strategic decisions,” McGehee said.

Gorin has plenty of decisions to make on how to take the company forward after three years of reorganization under former CEO Peter Kern, who remains vice chairman.

There’s a new loyalty program, One Key, to steady and the challenge of righting the course for Expedia’s vacation rental unit, Vrbo, which lost momentum after a tech platform migration last year. After launching One Key in the U.S. and UK, Gorin is pausing the rollout elsewhere.

One area where they’ll be no retreat is Expedia Group’s B2B unit.

We asked Gorin in May if she worries that by powering credit card firms and other companies with their own travel programs, Expedia is building rivals that will hurt it in the long run. She countered, asking whether people asked Amazon similar questions when it began to build its cloud business for third-party companies.

“And so the fact that we can use our technology and our inventory to power them allows us to bring more value to our supply partners and others,” Gorin said. “It also, I think, creates this nice flywheel of improving the whole ecosystem. And to the question, does it cannibalize? I’m not worried about that.”

Ariane Gorin at Skift Forum Europe