Call it a funnel or a sieve or whatever, let’s face it, things are changing in online travel, lines are blurring even faster than you can say 'revolution' and everyone, it seems, wants to be all things to all people.
Has specialisation died at the altar of growth â€" imagine, Airbnb getting into trips and later, hotels and flights? How do the middle guys survive the tidal wave of consolidation to come? Do they just hope they get bought out before the money runs out?
One thing’s for sure, online travel is on a growth trajectory for everyone â€" it’s just a question of who gets the biggest, best bites.
Here’s a list of key takeaways from Phocuswright last week in Los Angeles.
1/ Go, go, go â€" giants rule
Brad Gertsner: “The cycle time of innovation has never been shorter.”
At the Street Talk session, investors were bullish on the two giants, Expedia and Priceline, saying not much could derail these two with teams that know how to execute well. Both Expedia and Booking.com are 20 years old, and both are expanding horizontally, vertically and globally, with scale and resources to dominate.
As big as they are, they continue to test. Expedia is testing the meetings market, a huge sector yet to be disrupted. It was a small bet made by the European engineering team, said Expedia’s leader Dara Khosrowshahi and now they are testing the product with Best Western in Germany.
Gillian Tans: Customers remain our focus
HomeAway, under new CEO John Kim, formerly product chief for Expedia, is focused on building a transactional platform which will make it a front runner in this US$100b market.
More than half of Booking.com’s inventory is vacation rentals and it’s scaling horizontally, from experiences to its B2B product, Booking Suite. And you need not fear this accommodations giant will lose its focus â€" CEO Gillian Tans said they remain focused on customers. “We’ve always done a lot,” she said. “We’re just talking about it more.”
Brad Gertsner from Altimeter Capital, showing off his Snapchat spectacles, said it was an exciting time to be an entrepreneur. “The cycle time of innovation has never been shorter.”
Read the full article here.
