CEO Spotlight: Bryan Batista of Skyscanner

Bryan Batista, CEO of Skyscanner, is just shy of his first year at the helm of the travel metasearch platform.

He shared some of the surprises of the role so far during an interview in the PhocusWire studio at The Phocuswright Conference. 

First, the business is customer-driven. And while Batista believes it is and brings the traveler into daily decisions, he acknowledged that the claim is a cliché in the travel industry. 
 
“A lot of times we will have revenue enhancing opportunities on our plate, but we will say no to them because for some reason we feel they're not traveler first.”

He went on to highlight the potential for geographic expansion for the business.

“I’ve always seen Skyscanner as a very global business. However—in [an] actually a very uplifting way from the opportunity available—there's still a lot to do. We are still under-penetrated in several markets and I see great growth prospects for it.”

The third surprise has been the challenge of artificial intelligence (AI), which although exciting, can also be difficult to navigate.

Batista went on to discuss travel’s fail grade in personalization so far and the potential for the technology to unlock tailored travel for consumers.

He also touched on the complexity created by different airline, hotel and car rental systems not talking to each other, making anything resembling a connected trip a huge challenge.

And he spoke about the perceived threat of AI platforms to the metasearch model. He said Skyscanner has spoken to the large language models (LLMs) to understand what they want to do.

“What we realized is they're just looking to provide the best answer possible. And we think we can play a big role in that ecosystem because these LLMs are not looking to contract, as far as I know, with airlines. They’re not looking to replicate what we've done.”

Watch the full interview below with PhocusWire's Linda Fox.