We've been busy on the ground at the 2018 Phocuswright Conference in Los Angeles this week, hearing from travel companies big and small on how they're driving innovation and change in the industry.
For this special edition of Quote Of The Week, we've collected a series of quotes that really got us thinking - and hopefully will get you doing so, too.
We’ve stopped talking about direct bookings, and we’ve started talking about direct relationships.
Quote from Kellyn Smith Kenny, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Hilton.
I don’t believe the middlemen are going to be eliminated; to me that’s a little bit on the hype side.
Quote from Dee Waddell, general manager for global travel and transportation at IBM.
For the life of me I cannot understand what is wrong with the hotel industry in the United States when it comes to technology.
Bill Gurley, general partner at Benchmark Capital
I don’t think metasearch is dead by any stretch of the imagination. I also don’t think it’s a winner take all category, despite what Richard [Holden of Google] didn’t say.
Steve Hafner, co-founder and CEO of Kayak
When a company achieves success, when it begins to scale, it's at its own peril to start to become complacent to start to rest on its laurels.
Quote from Bryan Dove, CEO of Skyscanner
I feel confident Booking.com would not be the first place people in this audience would think of to book private accommodations.
Quote from Glenn Fogel, president and CEO of Booking Holdings
Data isn’t just the way to facilitate travel; it’s a currency.
Quote from Jeffrey Katz, founding chairman and CEO of Orbitz and CEO of Journera
What is a Power Paradox? To me it’s a tension, a contradiction shaking up the status quo, reshuffling cards, former balances, creating a potential weakness but also sometimes an unexpected new trend. It’s the clash of two worlds, requiring resilience and as it is neither strong or most intelligent who survive but the ones who know how to adapt to change.
Quote from Maude Bailly, chief digital officer at AccorHotels
