One of the genuine pioneers of the online travel world actually started his business, alongside business partner David Litman, as a call center operation.The Hotels Reservation Network, as it was then known, was born in 1991 and used a game-changing process that became the merchant model now favored by countless online travel agencies.Lawyer Bob Diener and Litman spent time persuading the hotel community that their idea of taking the reservation funds from travelers and then paying the hotel after the customer had stayed was both revolutionary at the time and allowed the company to grow on its own cash flow.Before switching to a web business and renaming to Hotels.com, completing a successful IPO and navigating an eventual sale to Expedia, HRN also developed the affiliate model and illustrated how PR (rather than advertising) could drive the profile of a brand.Diener joins us for the latest episode of How I Got Here.HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.Other episodes: on PhocusWire and Mozio.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are not many industry figures who left the relative comfort of a job in the media sector to eventually launch a travel startup.Fritz Demopoulos is one such entrepreneur, having quit Rupert Murdoch's News Corp in the late-1990s to create two web companies in China in quick succession before settling on Qunar.The metasearch brand arrived on the Chinese scene in 2005, amid a massive upsurge in the country's economy and a huge desire by a growing middle class to travel.There are many elements that Demopoulos brought to the startup from his time in the media, as well as by then having an extremely useful level of experience with getting a new business off the ground in China.The company eventually went public (two years after Chinese search engine Baidu took a majority stake), only to de-list in 2017 after a sale to Trip.com Group (then Ctrip).Demopoulos, who now runs the Queen's Road Capital finance house, is the latest guest on the How I Got Here podcast.HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.Other episodes: on PhocusWire and Mozio.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

TravelBank is one of a number of brands that are riding the crest of a wave in corporate travel.The newer companies in the sector are experiencing a significant amount of attention from both investors and those that have controlled the status quo for years.Why? Companies such as TravelBank (alongside TripActions, TravelPerk et al) are nimble, have big ideas and aren't afraid to do things differently.Duke Chung, co-founder and CEO at TravelBank, has taken the brand in just three years from a simple idea to be one of the serious new entrants in the market.The strategy to get this far so quickly (TravelBank was recently named one of PhocusWire's Hot 25 Startups to watch in 2020) and what problems have emerged along the way are included in the latest episode of How I Got Here, featuring Chung.HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.Other episodes: on PhocusWire and Mozio.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

There are few people in the industry that can lay claim to being there at the creation of two pioneering brands in online travel.Similar to Expedia's birth as a unit within Microsoft in 1996, fellow online travel agency Travelocity was formed in the same year as a consumer-facing division of Sabre.Leading the six-strong team was Terry Jones, a former-marketing and IT exec from American Airlines who had found himself in the chief information officer role at Sabre.Seven years later, with a corporate spin-off and eventual IPO under his belt, Jones left and became one of the key figures behind a travel search engine born out of General Catalyst, working alongside its founders Steven Hafner and Paul English.He stayed with Kayak as its chairman until 2013, when Booking Holdings came calling with a $1.8 billion deal.Jones joins us for the latest episode of How I Got Here.HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.Other episodes: on PhocusWire and Mozio.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The three founders at Suiteness are six years into solving a problem that has existed in the hotel sector for decades.The idea behind the United States-based business is simple but difficult to do: working with hotels to access their floor plans and find every adjoining room option available to sell as pairs or more to consumers.In some respects, Suiteness is replicating the experience of vacation rental providers for families or groups but within the confines of a hotel and with its associated benefits and services.Beginning in its domestic market, Suiteness has since expanded to more than 2,000 destinations including cities in Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom.Kyle Killion (product), Stephen Caudill (technology) and Robbie Bhathal (business), as the co-founding team, are now working with most of the biggest hotel chains in the world and thousands of other groups and properties.The story behind the business is a good one, covering the dual worlds of being a startup and a new business in the hospitality sector.Bhathal is the latest guest on How I Got Here.HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.Other episodes: on PhocusWire and Mozio.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The three founders at Suiteness are six years into solving a problem that has existed in the hotel sector for decades.The idea behind the United States-based business is simple but difficult to do: working with hotels to access their floor plans and find every adjoining room option available to sell as pairs or more to consumers.In some respects, Suiteness is replicating the experience of vacation rental providers for families or groups but within the confines of a hotel and with its associated benefits and services.Beginning in its domestic market, Suiteness has since expanded to more than 2,000 destinations including cities in Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom.Kyle Killion (product), Stephen Caudill (technology) and Robbie Bhathal (business), as the co-founding team, are now working with most of the biggest hotel chains in the world and thousands of other groups and properties.The story behind the business is a good one, covering the dual worlds of being a startup and a new business in the hospitality sector.Bhathal is the latest guest on How I Got Here.HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.Other episodes: on PhocusWire and Mozio.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The three founders at Suiteness are six years into solving a problem that has existed in the hotel sector for decades.The idea behind the United States-based business is simple but difficult to do: working with hotels to access their floor plans and find every adjoining room option available to sell as pairs or more to consumers.In some respects, Suiteness is replicating the experience of vacation rental providers for families or groups but within the confines of a hotel and with its associated benefits and services.Beginning in its domestic market, Suiteness has since expanded to more than 2,000 destinations including cities in Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom.Kyle Killion (product), Stephen Caudill (technology) and Robbie Bhathal (business), as the co-founding team, are now working with most of the biggest hotel chains in the world and thousands of other groups and properties.The story behind the business is a good one, covering the dual worlds of being a startup and a new business in the hospitality sector.Bhathal is the latest guest on How I Got Here.HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.Other episodes: on PhocusWire and Mozio.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The phrase "humble beginnings" is often used to describe the backstory of famous brands in the world of business before they hit the jackpot.But TripAdvisor, with some of its formative years spent in rooms above a pizza parlor, is one such company in the modern travel business that deserves the phrase to illustrate just how far it's come.It is now a publicly listed company, of course, with offices around the world and user figures in the hundreds of millions each month.Yet few people will know or remember how close the company was to going out of business, or how the roles between co-founders Steve Kaufer and Langley Steinert were divided, amongst many other stories.In a special edition of How I Got Here, Kaufer joined us in the PhocusWire Studio at The Phocuswright Conference in November this year to give us the history and a lot more for one of the industry's most well-known brands.You can also watch a special video version of the podcast here.HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.NOTE: Other episodes: on PhocusWire and Mozio.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

WAYN (Where Are You Now?) was founded by three young entrepreneurs with a simple concept: create a platform for travelers to connect when on the road.The U.K.-based brand was a pioneering travel social network that captured a huge amount of attention in the mid-2000s for its rapid growth, bold ideas and ability to attract investment from some of the biggest names in the online travel industry at the time.Millions of users and a youthful, fairly brash style inspired a string of fellow social travel platforms in subsequent years (whether those later founders will admit it or not).But the company was inevitably going to find the road would be a bumpy one, with the emergence and omnipresence of Facebook in the world of social networks and a tactical error or two along the way.After the buzz turned to the reality of maintaining a business in a digital market that was continually evolving, WAYN was eventually sold to Lastminute.com Group in 2016.Co-CEO Jerome Touze (his fellow boss was Pete Ward) tells the story of WAYN in the latest episode of How I Got Here.HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.Other episodes: on PhocusWire and Mozio.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Once known as Skypicker, Kiwi.com has come a long way since its founder and CEO Oliver Dlouhy discovered how hard it was get across Europe using only low-cost carriers.With a classic personal frustration for inspiration, Dlouhy created the business and has barely had a chance to breathe ever since.Czech Republic-headquartered Kiwi.com now has over 1,000 employees and is a fully-fledged online travel agency that allows consumers to create a single booking on flights that are not officially "interlined" as airline partners.As with most startups, growth has not been an easy ride and some carriers have still not embraced what the company is trying to do.From formation and growth to acquisitions and a share sale, Dlouhy's story is one of optimism and frustration (he calls out one particular European low-cost carrier for its lack of enthusiasm), but it is a business on the rise and an incredibly ambitious one.Dlouhy joins us for the latest episode of How I Got Here.HIGH is a weekly show produced by PhocusWire and Mozio, aimed at getting the inside stories behind startups and innovation in travel and transportation.Other episodes: on PhocusWire and Mozio.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.