CEO Spotlight: Gonzalo Estebarena of Despegar

Gonzalo Estebarena is just weeks into the CEO role at Latin America-based online travel agency (OTA) Despegar.

The former CTO and chief commercial officer (CCO) of the company steps into the role a year after Netherlands-based Prosus completed its acquisition of Despegar for $1.7 billion.

Estebarena said the OTA has been able to keep its "startup soul but with the scale of a big tech company."

He shared that Despegar has not only had access to more conversations and partnerships with technology companies, it has also had a "front-row seat with everything that's changing with AI and experimenting with it."

Being part of Prosus has also changed the OTA's mindset to thinking about the depth and breadth of services it can offer to a global audience.

Expansion is very much in the cards, with a particular focus on Brazil, Estebarena said. The company is also investing $100 million annually for the next three years to develop AI capabilities as it looks to build an ecosystem that provides combined Prosus-Despegar customers with everything from food deliveries and event tickets to international travel.

"It's what we call the life-decision moments like changing jobs or searching for a house. Prosus tries to create an ecosystem that captures all those different moments with different frequencies and ticket sizes in a customer’s life. So our first opportunity is to be that less frequent, more aspirational element for the ecosystem in Brazil. The opportunity is gigantic for us."

Artificial intelligence (AI) developments are also part of the investment and Prosus has created what it is calling a "large commerce model," according to Estebarena.

"It is basically like a large language model, but rather than predicting the next word in a sentence, it predicts the next action that a potential customer would take. It allows you to adapt your offering and how you communicate so that the next action leads to a transaction."

See below for the full interview with PhocusWire's Linda Fox where Estebarena also touches on Uber's launch of hotels, internal AI developments and his greatest challenges as CEO.