The Skift Travel Podcast

Google is one of the undisputed heavyweights in online travel. So when one of the key masterminds behind all of its travel platforms and products talks about where the search giant is heading, it's worth paying attention to.The search giant has been busy these past few months, updating its options for rail travel but also making the news for its controversial move to remove contrail emissions data. But speaking at Skift Global Forum, Richard Holden, vice president of product management at Google Travel, also shared some future developments, including the return of its own fintech product whose life was cut short by the pandemic.Listen to Holden’s full on-stage appearance with Skift founding editor and executive editor, Dennis Schaal.More interviews from Skift Global Forum are available here.Subscribe to our Online Travel Newsletter here.

Waze has 151 million monthly active users, and is more than an app to beat traffic jams, Waze CEO Neha Parikh told Skift senior research analyst Seth Borko, as they dissected the intersections between maps and community.“Why should anybody feel emotional about a navigation app? Yet people do, including me,” said Parikh. “It’s not just a one-way app that uses technology. It is a two-way ecosystem where people actually contribute to help each other.”The duo also looked at future mobility possibilities, and how Waze can change the way cities move, while the CEO shared her own personal and professional journey from Expedia that led her to the driving seat of Waze.Watch videos and read more interviews from Skift Global Forum.Follow all Skift coverage of online travel and technology.

In one year, the Walt Disney Company will be an astounding 100 years old. At Skift Global Forum, Disney Parks, Experiences and Products Chairman Josh D’Amaro excitedly talked to Skift Senior Research Analyst Seth Borko about the company’s upcoming birthday and its dreams for the next 100 years. In the on-stage conversation, D’Amaro spoke about how Walt Disney’s original business plans were far ahead of his time. Now, the company can further their founder’s vision with immersive storytelling that mixes virtual and physical experiences, he said. Borko and D’Amaro also discussed how Disney’s has recovered revenue and staff since the pandemic, ongoing projects, what it’s like to work there and D’Amaro’s leadership style.Listen to the full interview now, and read the transcript at Skift.com.

Skift founder and CEO Rafat Ali interviewed Chesky on stage at the Skift Global Forum in September 2022 in Manhattan, where the Airbnb CEO detailed his vision of the new era.Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky said travel experts and analysts underestimate travel’s potential, and that the industry would soon witness a new “golden age of travel.”Fueling part of the trend, he argued, is that an estimated 50 percent of U.S. workers could potentially labor on their laptops from home, and they would travel to get out of the house, and seek human connections.Chesky termed it a “dystopian” risk to people to remain glued to their screens all their day, and they will leave their homes to travel and combat loneliness. And they won’t merely be traveling to places such as Las Vegas, Rome and Paris, but would venture out to some of the 100,000 cities and markets where Airbnb would try to inspire them to travel to.Listen to the podcast for the full discussion, and visit Skift Live for details about discussions like this.

The world’s largest travel company Booking Holdings is using people’s anxieties about their trips as a lens through which it prioritizes the products and services it is refining and introducing, such as flight search and insurance or other paid guarantees to cover when things go wrong.The company wants to make booking all of the components of a trip as low-stress and seamless as Uber has made booking a rideshare, said Glenn Fogel, president and CEO, on Tuesday at Skift Global Forum in New York.“When I’m in an unfamiliar city, I want to get a notification from the Booking.com app letting me know about a museum or other experience nearby that I can press a button to book right there,” Fogel said, in conversation with Skift Executive Editor Dennis Schaal.Fogel joined Schaal at Skift Global Forum on September 20, 2022 in New York City.For full coverage of the event, visit https://skift.com/tag/sgf2022/

Today on the Skift Travel Podcast we feature a session entitled "The Business Advantage of Sustainability" that was recorded live during this year's Skift Sustainable Tourism Summit. In this session, Skift Senior Hospitality Editor Sean O'Neill spoke with Inge Huijbrechts of Radisson Hotel Group and Michel Gelobter of Cooler about a couple of issues that are very hot right now. A number of decision makers in travel worry about climate change, but it often seems like a tomorrow problem. Today, many hoteliers have their hands full dealing with the chaotic recovery from the pandemic and some are also worried about recission and other things later this year. But talking with these leaders reveals real business advantages to travel companies if they get ahead of the crowd on lowering carbon emissions. This isn't just happy talk. There is a lot of pragmatic thinking and practical examples for travel decision makers. 

The chairman and co-founder of Intrepid Travel has said there was too much “rhetorical flourish” from travel companies when it comes to discussing sustainability.Speaking at the Skift Sustainable Tourism Summit, Darrell Wade bemoaned how organizations were touting a “build back better” ethos, while failing to take action.“It’s disappointing, embedded into marketing, or even worse the boardroom,” he said during the online event.“Half of the companies, probably more, will have done nothing. At the World Travel & Tourism Council, a good number of companies are talking the right way, and committing, but not enough are putting the rubber on the road.”While some companies had managed to go beyond what he described rhetorical flourish, he said travel companies needed to ensure there was”company engagement” from the top, and they needed to commit measurable action, including science based targets. “You need to sign up to have that line in the sand,” Wade told moderator Rafat Ali, Skift CEO and co-founder.“Sustainability is not easy, it’s heavy lifting. Even one aspect like climate change, to work out a pathway to zero emissions, is a lot of work,” he added.For more insight into tourism, destinations, and sustainability, please visit https://skift.com/tourism.

Marriott’s Homes & Villas unit is taking a different approach to the home-sharing business than many of its competitors, focusing its growth on the company’s vast pool of loyalty members.This resource — Marriott Bonvoy — members is not a cap to Homes & Villas growth as some have claimed, Vice President Jennifer Hsieh said at the Skift Future of Lodging Forum on Thursday. Instead, she said this is a differentiator that a source of strength. “The industry has not anchored itself around a loyalty program,” Hsieh said of the short-term rental sector. “We lean into it.”Listen now for her full conversation with Skift Senior Hospitality Editor Sean O'Neill.

As damaging as Covid was for tour operators, the inability to conduct trips provided companies in the sector a valuable opportunity to reevaluate their all aspects of their businesses.Ulla Heffer Böhler, chief operating officer for the Travel Corporation, and Travis Pittman, the CEO & co-founder of TourRadar, told Skift Senior Travel Tech Editor Sean O’Neill at Skift Forum Europe 2022 on March 24 what changes they realized they had to make. Böhler said Covid forced her company to take another look at, among other things, group sizes and domestic offerings while Pittman stated TourRadar was forced to look at what markets it was targeting. Listen to the conversation, or read a transcript of it here, to learn how Böhler and Pittman used the pandemic-induced pause to develop new tours.

While hospitality company Sonder has a complex digital strategy in place to fill its properties, what it really wants is for its mostly Gen Z and millennial guests to brag about their cool stays on social media.Sonder describes itself as a next-generation hospitality company, and its R&D budget is wide-ranging, with marketing a key focus, according to its senior vice president of revenue.“We have a very omnichannel approach to distribution, whether its sales or third-party distribution, things like Airbnb and booking.com,” said Sonder's Shruti Challa, speaking at the Skift Future of Lodging Forum in May 2022.Challa speaks with Skift's Seth Borko at the Skift Future of Lodging Forum in New York City in May 2022. You can listen to their entire conversation in today's episode.For more insight into the business of hotels and short-term rentals, visit https://skift.com/news.