New CEOs always have big shoes to fill, but when you're the incoming boss of Priceline you have the biggest shoes to fill in the travel world.
Under your predecessor, Jeff Boyd, Priceline went from under $10/share to over $1000/share. Incredible growth, and just one of many reasons why Priceline and its brands (especially Booking.com) has become both feared and respected in the industry.
NB: This is a viewpoint by William Beckler, co-founder of AllTheRooms.
I spent two years fighting Priceline in the US via Site59, Travelocity's now defunct opaque deals product.
For five years I contended with the rise of your subsidiary, Booking.com, from the trenches of the European accommodations marketplace. Meanwhile I also had a few scrapes with your car brand, Rentalcars.
At Lastminute.com they anointed me "The General" after I hired a data science team to compete with Booking.com in online marketing, and I helped refocus towards the last minute booking window, where Lastminute.com wins.
We faced a powerful foe, Booking.com, the most successful travel agency in history, and Lastminute.com has survived as remains one of the strongest travel brands in Europe.
I've lived through enough to know what Priceline did right, so I know where you might go wrong.
1. Don't kill the golden goose
It must have been nice to be put in charge of massively successful Booking.com after Kees Koolen stepped aside to engineer the world dominance of Uber. And now you're in charge of the rest of Priceline's brands.
But instead of moving to the boring Priceline HQ in Connecticut, you're staying in sexy Amsterdam, where Booking.com is based.
So you need to prove to the other execs at Priceline that you care about their brands as much as you care about Booking.com, right?
Wrong!
Don't shortchange your golden goose to soothe those egos. There's lots more growth ahead for Booking.com, especially in the US and China, and you need to mine that vein of gold.
That's more important than the rest of your brands combined. Anyone else who travels for a living would choose Amsterdam over Norwalk anyway.
2. Don't veer from the Booking.com Adwords strategy
Booking.com is pretty boring, as it's been doing the same thing to win new territories for six years: buy market share via Google Adwords, secure great inventory using this clout, and keep inching upwards in conversion through A/B testing on your website and on mobile.
This worked in Europe, but maybe it's time to try something new in order to make a bigger dent in the USA, like TV commercials?
No!
The US is no different from Europe. Do what worked to grow in Europe and you will win in the US. You're not going to nail it in television for Booking.com, and don't let your agency convince you it's working.
William Shatner was a lucky one-off in the world of long-term brand marketing.
3. Don't fall for IT convergence synergy fantasies
Your businesses have wildly different technology stacks: Kayak, old yet still the most usable flights search engine; Booking.com, relying on an anarchistic perl infrastructure that your other CTOs surely sneer at; Rentalcars, a technology mish mash you inherited from TravelJigsaw; and Priceline, probably encrusted with a mountain of tech debt after all these years.
Merge them all into one happy well architected superfast cloud-based nirvana, right?
No!
Every one of these brands is heavily reliant on their unique technology. There is no solution to all their problems, and you should not listen to the ambitious CTOs who will insist they can "clean up the mess."
Instead, take after Tripadvisor. They keep their sub-brands in completely separate data centers in order to foster grassroots innovation.
4. Keep playing to win
Your predecessor knew how to win. He envisioned market dominance across several dimensions and built an organization to seize that dominance, piece by piece, vertical by vertical, country by country.
But why should you over extend yourself? Perhaps you shouldn't take any risks, as you've arrived at the top.
A wrong move might reverse the momentum, right?
Wrong!
The best way to lose it all is to stop making bold bets in this ultracompetitive and fast moving industry. Beware the rise of mobile and aggregators and the peer-to-peer economy.
There's no safe place to hide, even at the top.
NB: This is a viewpoint by William Beckler (aka The General), co-founder of AllTheRooms.
NB2:AllTheRooms TLabs here.
NB2:Shoes to fill image via Shuttstock.