The Skift Travel Podcast

Skift founder Rafat Ali interviewed Hilton CEO Christopher Nassetta via hologram Wednesday at Skift Global Forum East in Dubai. Nassetta said Hilton expects to organically develop its own new brands rather than chase costly acquisitions in part because “we don’t want to have to fix other people’s problems.”He said Hilton’s brand portfolio more than doubled to 19 in the 15 years Nassetta has been at Hilton and they are all successful, although some are “a little bit early in gestation.”“We have designed these in a modern context around exactly what customers want and we built it out of the dust,” Nassetta said. “We built it with our own blood, sweat and tears rather than paying a big price. It’s been great for our shareholders, infinite yields effectively by creating these, and creating brands that really resonate with our customer base.”Learn more about hotels at Skift.com/hotels.Read more about Hilton at Skift.com/tag/hilton.

Something shifted in the last two weeks on the zeitgeist about the use of artificial intelligence in our daily personal and professional lives. The launch of the first large-scale, general purpose chatbot using OpenAI‘s GPT3 AI engine on November 30 has reenergized the whole tech industry all at once. Skift CEO Rafat Ali wrote a story about it, which will give you a good sense why.To get an understanding of why there is so much buzz about Generative AI — the sub-sector with larger AI world which includes creation of text, images, audio and video — and what this means for our daily lives, for the travel industry and even travelers, Ali talked to the best expert analyst and writer on it I know: David Mattin. He writes an excellent newsletter called New World Same Humans on trends, technology, and our shared future and has been doing a deep dive into Generative AI all this year with his writings.This is a fascinating conversation you would want to listen to from start to finish, to understand the implications of it for our industry and indeed our daily lived reality.

A lot of ground was covered during Peter Kern’s appearance at Skift Global Forum in New York City on September 21. The vice chairman and CEO of Expedia Group gave his take on technology, micro-services, mergers and acquisitions, and outlined why the online travel agencies still only control around 20 percent of a “multi-trillion dollar” travel market."There’s huge opportunity," Kern says. "You just have to innovate the products and innovate the business model over time."And of course he (delicately) responded to comments made earlier at the forum by Barry Diller, the chairman and senior executive of both Expedia Group and IAC, that working from home was “kind of stupid” and “a crock,”while in discussion with Skift founder and CEO Rafat Ali.Listen now for the full conversation of the “Democratizing the Travel Ecosystem” session.Read more about Expedia on Skift. Get weekly updates about online travel by subscribing to our online travel newsletter.

"I’m really excited about the quality of the brand portfolio," IHG CEO Keith Barr said at Skift Global Forum. Barr goes on to describe the current realities of the hotel business: it's a real estate business at the end of the day, after all. But IHG has been hyper-focused on its brands and its franchise partners. "It’s been great because there’re such clearly defined brands that enable us to work with a number of opportunities," he told Skift's Sean O'Neill.Two weeks after this conversation, IHG announced its deal to market all-inclusive resort giant Iberostar. You can listen to the full conversation in this podcast.Read full coverage of IHG at https://skift.com/tag/ihgRead full coverage of the hotel industry at https://skift.com/hotelsGet deeper insight into the business of hotels at https://dailylodgingreport.com

For this bonus episode of The Skift Travel Podcast, we turn to Dallas where we held our first in-person Skift Aviation Forum earlier this week. To begin the event, we invited American Airlines CEO Robert Isom to have a conversation conversation with Airline Weekly's Ned Russell about post-pandemic pattern changes and how his airline is preparing for the holiday season ahead."One of the things that we’re seeing though, is that demand is more spread out," Isom told the audience. "It’s just really high, and at least from an airline perspective, we don’t have the ability to actually peak and valley as much as we’ve had in the past."You can listen to the full conversation, below. You can also watch the interview on our YouTube channel.For more airline news, visit https://skift.com/airlinesFor deeper understanding of the aviation industry, subscribe to Airline Weekly.

“I’m going to bring you behind the tent, tell you what we’re doing,” JetBlue Airways COO Joanna Geraghty said at Skift Global Forum earlier this fall. In a conversation with Airline Weekly Editor Ned Russell, Geraghty laid out JetBlue’s current challenges with labor, sustainable aviation fuel, integrating Spirit Airlines, and competing in major U.S. markets. She also discussed the airline’s potential expansion in Europe, beyond it’s current London flights. “We just have a very challenging environment that we operate in, so we must make sure that we’re providing a better level of resilience, whether that’s more pilots in reserve, whether that’s flying a little bit less, whether that’s staffing up in some of our airports.” Listen to Geraghty’s full on-stage appearance, below. Follow news about JetBlue on Skift. https://skift.com/tag/jetblue/Follow all airline news at Skift. https://skift.com/airlines/

At at time when the travel industry is still grappling with a labor shortage, you have to think some companies in the sector are "labor hoarding," hanging on to workers that might have otherwise been downsized for costs savings or seasonality reasons, simply because of the fear of not being able to fill roles later.The continuing issue of delays and bottlenecks for the H1B visa program, which was a major feeder for tech talent in the U.S., must be giving some tech executives pause when contemplating layoffs, knowing that that supply of talent is not as easy to come by should demand for workers return. On today's bonus podcast, we're joined by Skift editors and a Skift Research analyst to better understand what's happening in the tech sector and what it means for the travel industry. Some of the topics they discuss include: Tech headcount has grown during pandemic while travel has shrunk Lesson for travel is don't assume the 'boom' times of today will last forever Harder to reach sales contacts at tech firms Less business travel and meetings and conferences from tech companies VC slowdown could be possible as valuations of other firms dip Listen to the entire conversation here.For more insight into the business of travel, visit Skift Research.

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.