It’s interesting that at Phocuswright last month, I was having a conversation with a senior leader in online travel about the changes going on at Expedia Group.

I had just come from Explore ’19, the Expedia conference which, for the first time charged delegates about US$500 to attend, and jokes had been made as to whether this was a new ancillary revenue for the group that had not posted stellar results in the last financial quarter.

I was more interested in the transformation strategy Okerstrom had brought into the group, essentially breaking down the silos between business units to deliver on the promise of a “frictionless travel experience”.

Okerstorm said he believed Expedia has all the assets – flights, hotels/vacation rentals, cruise, tours and activities; insurance; tech platform; talent; and data – to reduce friction at every point of the travel experience and he spoke of “unlocking the full power of our global platform to drive change of another kind”.

And his newly-unveiled leadership team on stage had referred to this as Expedia’s “Everest”, after a keynote speaker asked everyone to think about their Everest moments.

Clearly, this Everest was deemed one mountain too high by the chairman of the board, Barry Diller who, in announcing the resignation of Okerstrom and CFO Alan Pickerill, said, “Ultimately, senior management and the Board disagreed on strategy. Earlier this year, Expedia embarked on an ambitious reorganisation plan with the goal of bringing our brands and technology together in a more efficient way. This reorganisation, while sound in concept, resulted in a material loss of focus on our current operations, leading to disappointing third quarter results and a lackluster near-term outlook.”

While I was more interested in his thoughts on the strategy – whether it would be possible to transform an organization as large as Expedia and with so many different “armies” used to doing their own thing – the industry observer (who I will decline to name), but who used to work at Expedia for several years, chose to comment more on the difference between former CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and Okerstrom.

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