Skift Forum Europe: Kayak CEO on Rivals, Leadership and Strategy
Photo Credit: Kayak CEO Steve Hafner (background, right) will speak at Skift Forum Europe in London on April 4. He's pictured in the company's Fuselage conference room at headquarters in Stamford, Connecticut. Kayak / Jesse Neider
Skift Take
Hafner once called metasearch a lousy business with slim margins. What's clear is some of the same dynamics making life difficult for TripAdvisor, including Google Hotel Ads and Trivago's substantial marketing spend, are also proving challenging for Kayak.
On April 4 in London, hundreds of the travel industry’s brightest and best will gather for Skift Forum Europe 2017, our first conference in Europe. In only a few short years Skift's Forums — the largest creative business gatherings in the global travel industry — have become what media, speakers, and attendees have called the “TED Talks of travel.”
This year’s event at Tobacco Dock in London will feature speakers including CEOs and top executives from InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), Norwegian Air, Google, Lonely Planet, Momondo Group, and many more.
The following is part of a series of posts highlighting some of the speakers and touching on issues of concern in Europe and beyond.
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Kayak CEO Steve Hafner has seen the evolution of travel metasearch first-hand since his experience at the beginning of the 2000's partnering with SideStep at Orbitz and a few years later co-founding Kayak.
At Skift Forum Europe in London, Hafner will di
