Travel Industry CEO Interviews

Given the consumer base of sister companies Booking.com, Agoda and Kayak, OpenTable now has the chance to expand beyond its traditional local orientation into a dining app for travelers, as well. Some of its learnings and technologies can also apply to hotels and tours and activities.

In the current M&A environment, HomeAway is both the pursued and the pursuer. And all of this takes place as HomeAway becomes an even more attractive acquisition target because it is getting aggressive and ahead of schedule, expecting a majority of its listings to be bookable online within two years.

Millennials? Not an overriding concern for Russia's Travel.ru, which is taking advantage of a boom in domestic travel, gives customers a variety of payment options, including pre-paying for hotels in cash at kiosks, and is navigating the shift from offline to online and mobile.

A legion of brand advocates and a focus on product and mobile alone won't be enough to take Hipmunk over the top. It is a dilemma it shares with many startups. How do you compete against the likes of Priceline/Kayak with that $61 billion market cap?

Qunar CEO Chenchao "CC" Zhuang isn't like some travel bosses who claim their companies can differentiate themselves based on the experiences they provide. Zhuang wants to compete on comprehensiveness and price, and he claims Qunar's platform is driving such efficiencies that he can win on price and by showing loyalty to consumers' wallets.

Skyscanner launched in the Americas about a year ago, and it seems as though things are going slowly for now. But, the search site has plenty of patience, believing these are just the early days of online travel.

Starwood Hotels is channeling the spirit of start up culture in an effort to stay nimble and adapt quickly to emerging trends in a rapidly changing global marketplace.

Rather than working on making it easier for Indian travelers to transition easily between various devices, MakeMyTrip is focusing on keeping consumers on smartphones, and solving the clunkiness of the payment process on mobile. It's a bet that is India-specific, but might be instructive for some other parts of the developing world.

Booking.com is a big-time leader in travel marketing through Google, and Expedia spends a ton of money on search engine marketing, too. While both companies are committed to this type of "pull" marketing, Expedia is making a big bet on multi-device search and "push" notifications as the future of travel booking.

Anytime you can talk to TripAdvisor CEO Stephen Kaufer and the discussion ranges from "Mr. Sharples" at HomeAway to William Shatner, the Trivago Guy and the co-existence of the mobile Web and mobile apps, it is a very interesting conversation.