The Future Of Travel Experience: A view from mega-investor Andreessen Horowitz

In the Future of Travel Experience, Jeffrey Katz, CEO of Journera and founding CEO of Orbitz, goes one-to-one with fellow leaders to get their insights on how advanced technology and changing consumer expectations will shape the future of the industry.

When you look at the travel industry overall, how do you see the opportunity for change?

There are a number of monster markets that have been somewhat immune to disruption.

Healthcare has been slow. Education has been slow. I actually think travel is one that has been pretty hospitable to entrepreneurs and innovation.

Darren Huston Outlook on Travel

So, with the wind at your back in a market like this, I think there’s a ton of opportunity for companies to come in and carve out big niches.

Andreessen Horowitz has made some significant investments in the travel and mobility sectors, like Lyft, Airbnb and TripActions. What excites you about what’s happening in travel today?

There’s a huge macro shift from analog to digital that’s happening in multiple verticals. It’s clearly been happening in travel.

Read Here :  https://medium.com/@dishadayal09/the-future-of-travel-experience-a-view-from-mega-investor-andreessen-horowitz-4544927d7efd

Slick Spaces Technologies to Expand Globally

Slick Spaces Technologies today received a significant initial round of investment from BlackPines Capital Partners, Inc. This investment will help Slick Spaces build out its successful model of rental automation for the hospitality industry, focused on the needs of property managers in the vacation rental, apartment, and boutique hotel industry sectors.

Michael Driedger, CEO said, “We very much welcome the investment from BlackPines. Darren Huston leadership track record and passion for innovation and excellence in the online travel and cloud software solutions space plus our industry-leading home automation solutions for the property rental industry are a perfect match.”

Mark Baxter, Chief Product Officer added, “Going forward, we will accelerate our efforts against three priorities: to deliver and support flawless and “always on” rental automation solutions; to aggregate these controls to the network level allowing property managers to enhance the guest experience, reduce complexity, and unlock significant cost savings; and, finally, to complement this with the most competitive, transparent, and all-inclusive monthly pricing in the industry.”

Darren Huston, CEO & Founder of BlackPines added, “I couldn’t be more excited to be working with Michael and Mark to help build out the Slick Spaces vision. Rental automation is finally a realizable and scalable solution that will revolutionize the long-tail of the accommodation industry. I am super happy to join them on this journey.”

Slick Spaces will continue to be headquartered in Vancouver but will look to expand its business around the world. Darren will take on the role of Executive Chairman.

Listen: Darren Woodson talks Veterans, the 2019 Cowboys, and Dak Prescott with BTB

Roger Staubach joined The Ocho to discuss all of the great work he’s doing with veterans, and thankfully he’s not the only America’s Team alumni who’s doing so. Cowboys Ring of Honor Member Darren Woodson is doing outstanding work for veterans with Crown Royal and told us all about it on the latest episode of The Ocho. You can listen right here.

 

Darren Huston on WeHeart It

Woody is still somewhat fresh off of leaving ESPN where he served as an NFL analyst. He has a lot of projects going on in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and this latest partnership with Crown Royal (The Crown Royal Purple Bag Project) is one of them.

Slickspaces becomes Operto Guest Technologies

The company was born from a desire to make life better for property managers — the busiest people we’ve ever met. Our early days of managing the challenges of guest access revealed a much greater need. Property managers had no visibility into the status of their units and no centralized system from which to operate. While smart home technology was becoming increasingly common, nothing brought solutions together to create a cooperative ecosystem.

Darren Huston BlackPines Invests in Award-Winning Tech Startup — Slick Spaces Technologies Inc.

That seed brought us to where we are today: Operto. The name is based on the Italian word aperto, which means open and reflects our mission to open possibilities for property managers and their guests through meaningful technology and personalized experience.

TRVL.com’s founder says he wants to put the power of OTAs in the hands of agents

TRVL.com founder Jochem Wijnands says he has come full circle, completely overhauling his at-times controversial B2C travel booking site into a B2B platform that’s strictly for travel agents only, and free to join.

Wijnands is positioning the site as an online revolution, putting the power of the OTAs into the hands of traditional travel agents. “We want to put travel agents centre stage,” says Wijnands, adding that a number of retail groups in Canada have agreed to make the TRVL platform available to their agents.

Launched in Canada in early September, the site is already getting positive feedback from the trade, he says.

Darren Huston Travel Company CEO -Speaker & Booking Information

It wasn’t always that way. The original TRVL.com was a B2C site that had consumers booking hotels and pocketing the commission.

By 2017 the site had alarm bells ringing at TICO, and TRVL.com, which was not registered with TICO, was barred from operating in Ontario. “Anybody who is selling travel in the province … must be employed by or otherwise aligned with a registered travel agency in the province of Ontario,” said TICO President Richard Smart at the time.

Read Here : https://medium.com/@dishadayal09/trvl-coms-founder-says-he-wants-to-put-the-power-of-otas-in-the-hands-of-agents-69f31ee6e6b2

OpenTable Moves Into Delivery — Why — And Why Now?

For a whole era of customers, reserving a restaurant through smartphone is as foreign hobby as the use of a rotary cellphone or creating a document on a typewriter. 

And it turned into Opentable that created this shift in how getting a table at a restaurant could be carried out without the trouble of “dialing for dining.” 

Opentable became a nationwide carrier, online reservations were a common practice and the firm went public with a listing at the Nasdaq. 

5 years later, Opentable exited the general public markets, obtained at an at-the-time record-breaking all-cash $2. 6 billion deal with the Priceline Group.

At the time, Priceline CEO Darren Huston noted the deal was a natural move, given the inherent synchronicity between the two marketplaces.

“The kind of work that we do day-to-day is very similar. It’s just a different marketplace,” Huston told on the Business Financial Post.

Priceline Group Inc. stepped up its acquisition spree by buying OpenTable Inc. in a deal worth at $2.6 billion, including restaurant bookings to an online travel business already spanning flights, hotels and cars.

Trending Global Leisure Travel Market (2020–2029) | Expedia, Priceline, TripAdvisor

The Global Leisure Travel Market in-depth review report holds the description of all the essential focuses concerning the Leisure Travel market. 

The global Leisure Travel market covers the report likewise incorporates the top to bottom data in regards to the main Leisure Travel market manufacturers Expedia, Priceline, TripAdvisor, Ctrip.Com International, Hostel world, Hotel Urbano, Tourism, CheapOair.Com, Trivago, Thomas Cook, MakeMyTrip, AirGorilla, Hays Travel, Airbnb, Yatra Online, Alibaba, Tuniu, Booking rivaling each other just as planning projects in terms of value, the volume of proposals, request, and quality of services and commodities.

If we talk about the Priceline, Earlier, CEO Darren Huston steps up the company by expanding the market, and takes it to china. He discussed the company’s quarterly earnings and partnership with Ctrip. Darren Huston said Ctrip will help them bring Chinese customers to their business around the world.

The global Leisure Travel market is esteemed at $$ million US$ in 2019 is relied upon to reach $$ million US$ before the end of 2029, developing at a CAGR ranging 2020–2029. 

Read Full Article @ https://medium.com/@dishadayal09/trending-global-leisure-travel-market-2020-2029-expedia-priceline-tripadvisor-efb9b28fa5af

The 100 People Transforming the World of Business

The world of business is changing rapidly. You can view the list to see all 100 people transforming business

1. Emmanuel Aidoo, head of digital asset markets at Credit Suisse, is using blockchain to transform banking

2. Rob Arnott, chairman and CEO of Research Affiliates LLC, helped commercialize quant investing.

3. Darren Huston, Founder and CEO of Blackpines Global Advisors to help “organizations scale their operations globally and win the hearts and minds of their customers in an increasingly digital world.”

4. Colleen Aubrey, the global VP of performance advertising at Amazon, is charged with winning over big brands.

5. Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon, is setting the tone for buying and selling goods online.

6. Salesforce co-CEO Keith Block knows what your customers are thinking.

7. Jason Blum, the founder and CEO of Blumhouse Productions, has perfected a low risk, high reward model to produce a box-office-hit empire.

8. Alex Blumberg and Matthew Lieber, the founders of Gimlet Media, are spearheading a podcast boom

9. Paul Brown, the CEO of Inspire Brands, is assembling a restaurant empire.

10. Tarana Burke, the founder of the #MeToo movement, has forced workplaces across America to improve their culture and operations.

Know More @ https://medium.com/@dishadayal09/the-100-people-transforming-the-world-of-business-f37249f79743

Booking.com Taps Into The 'Delight Of Right'

Canadians are about to be let in on the Internet's "best kept secret." Darren Huston said "Depending on the situation, there's the right place for the right person and our whole job is finding that opportunity for the booker to get it right." That's what the ads are all about. 

Introducing the campaign to the market, Huston hosted a media event yesterday where he explained the evolution of the site, which has long been popular in Europe but remains lesser known to North Americans.

Darren Huston Builds Priceline in His Own Image

Priceline CEO Darren Huston was trying to watch a hockey game, half-listening to a headhunter talk about a company he had never heard of before.

The Amsterdam-based unit of Priceline Group that dominates the European online travel market. Darren Huston became president and CEO of Priceline Group itself, which has come from dot-com laughingstock to the fifth most-valuable U.S. Internet company — if one still really considers it a U.S. company, because 90 percent of its profits come from overseas, most of them from Booking.com.

Travel site Priceline claims top spot for bookings

The Priceline Group recently surpassed Expedia to become the world’s highest-grossing online hotel reservations company and the largest player in online travel.

CEO Darren Huston spoke to CBC’s The Lang & O’Leary Exchange about the success of Booking.com, which has staff in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal who work with local hotels, motels and B&Bs.

“Those local teams work with the properties very much hand in hand because they want to make sure they get the lowest price for the guest, but they also need to get the availability,” he said.

“Properties in low times, they’ll take all the guests they can, but in high times we want to make sure that our guests can get rooms as well.”

Darren Huston says Priceline was built on a better consumer experience online and leveraging the power of the internet.

Read Full Article @ https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/travel-site-priceline-claims-top-spot-for-bookings-1.2504101

Darren Huston Wants To Stay Humble With More Heart

Darren Huston runs the world’s biggest travel company which shows no signs of stopping and which has been gobbling up almost everything in its path.

According to its latest financial results, announced Nov 4, third quarter gross travel bookings reached $13.8 billion, an increase of 28% over a year ago. Gross profit was $2.6 billion, 32% up on the prior year. And evidence that its international expansion is working – its international operations contributed gross profit of $2.3 billion, a 33% increase versus a year ago.

But during his session at Phocuswright in Los Angeles last month, one almost did. One, he spoke about the problems of size. Two, when asked about how he was managing Steve Hafner and the Kayak acquisition made two years ago, he said, “You don’t manage Steve.” And three, a fire alarm went off in the middle of his interview which left him, and everyone else, wondering what to do. Should we run or should we stay?

But you don’t get to where Darren Huston is by not staying cool and calm under fire, even if it was only a drill. The former Starbucks and Microsoft executive was all heart when he spoke about the challenges of size.

Read Full Article @ https://www.webintravel.com/alarm-bells-huston-wants-stay-humble-heart/

Priceline Group Made Changes To Attract More Business Travellers

The Priceline Group, says in its full year earnings report today it is “feeling positive” about the changes it has made in recent months to attract more business travellers.

Darren Huston President and CEO of Priceline , says there is no negative impact on the company’s financial performance as a result of allowing bookings to take place on TripAdvisor, rather than on the mothership.

 

Bookings via TripAdvisor as a percentage of the overall pie are in the “low single-digits”, Huston says.

CEO Darren Huston : See tremendous growth ahead

Nevertheless, Darren Huston adds that the branding that Priceline Group-run companies get on TripAdvisor is “great”, and that in the US this may have helped raise the profile of Booking.com, where traditionally Priceline has been the better known brand.

Darren Huston, The Leader In Travel Service Market

President and CEO Darren Huston, one of the world’s leading group of online travel brands, The Priceline Group.

After making ripples in the travel services sector with the acquisition of Buuteeq, a digital marketing platform for hotels worldwide, Huston went a step further sealing the deal to also add OpenTable to the group’s list of subsidiaries in a deal worth $2.6 billion last month.

Darren Huston has been a leader in the travel services market since joining The Priceline Group in 2011. Previously he spent 7+ years at Microsoft in various positions, namely President and CEO of the companies operations in Japan.

He has also been Senior Vice President at Starbucks where he headed up their product development in the late 1990s. A lot of experience to share when he comes to Dublin in November.

Darren Huston Interview on Acquiring Homeaway with Skift

Priceline Group CEO says his company didn’t get involved when HomeAway put itself up for sale because “we’re quite picky” and HomeAway’s model of allowing vacation rental owners to wait 24 hours before confirming a booking and charging travelers a booking fee “just didn’t fit us.”

Expedia Inc. announced that it would acquire HomeAway for $3.9 billion in cash and stock. Asked whether the Priceline Group got involved in that sales process, Darren Huston said: “No. Although we’ve talked to them for years. We were very much aware of it. We knew kind of how it was going. We did a little bit of thinking and said this isn’t the right thing for us. We’re quite picky.”

Darren Huston responded to a bank analyst's question

Priceline Group had a better-than-expected 2014, with gross travel bookings of $50.3 billion, up from almost $40 billion a year ago. Gross profit for the year was $7.6 billion, up by a third from the prior year.

In the fourth quarter of 2014, Priceline had 24% growth in hotel rooms units booked. Most of its revenue came from Booking-com.

Not worried about Expedia

On an earnings call, CEO Darren Huston responded to a bank analyst’s question by saying he wasn’t worried about Expedia’s recent acquisitions of online travel agencies Wotif, Travelocity, and Orbitz.

“Our focus is on organic growth and acquisition. We’re focusing on premium, winning brands that add new business competencies or geographies. It’s all been adjacent growth rather than tripling down on similar brands, like others are doing. I don’t see the Orbitz deal, if it passes, as being a negative to Priceline. The global travel market was maybe $1.3 trillion, and if you add Expedia and Priceline’s businesses all together, they amount to less than 10% of that. 

There’s tremendous potential for us…. Expedia’s average room night rate increase was higher in recent quarters than ours. I give them credit for a great quarter, but we have a different philosophy when it comes to building inventory…. We pride ourselves on our growth rate. Our room night growth is 100% organic, unlike what you’re seeing with Expedia.”

The company’s market capitalization is above $50 billion, roughly four times that of rival Expedia Inc.

Rental properties

Last year, Booking-com inventory rose to more than 600,000 listings, up 41% year-over-year. Much of that was due to a doubling of vacation rental properties, to about 270,000 properties.

That meant that it had more than one million holiday rooms available and instantly confirmable on its platform on any given day. It also meant that vacation rentals are becoming a greater proportion of Booking.com’s overall inventory.

Darren Huston said the homeowner property category was of interest to the company, but it poses challenges because the product is different from hotels.

“Our next move as a company is to address homeowner-managed rather than professionally-managed vacation rentals….There is a lot of interest among our consumers in self-catered products…. We’ve taken steps here. We’ve adjusted our business system. We’ve rolled out a simple extra net. We have a lot of things in our pipeline to address the needs for a single-owner model. Delivering single-owner vacation rentals is ultimately where our destination as a company.”

Read Here :  https://www.phocuswire.com/Priceline-reported-a-solid-2014-on-the-strength-of-mobile-Asia

Priceline- Dominant Online Player Based on its Search Engine Marketing Strategy

The Priceline Group likes to keep its CEOs hungry with below-market base salaries and lucrative potential bonuses should they and the company over-achieve.

CEO Darren Huston cashed in on the opportunity, receiving nearly $17.9 million in total compensation just prior to taking on the top role.

Huston’s 2013 base salary of $478,487 as CEO of the Priceline Group’s Booking.com unit, he received a stock award of around $12 million, a bonus of $5.25 million, and other compensation amounting to a teensy $150,000 or so.

That brought Huston’s total compensation to $17,878,468, to be precise, which he received in euros as he was based in the Netherlands.

Huston’s 2013 bonus was based on his being the CEO of Booking.com and its “excellent” performance, a Priceline financial filing states, as well as the additional duties he took on last year to be responsible for the Group’s inter-brand relations.

You might think of Huston’s role last year in coordinating relations between and technology-sharing among Booking.com, Priceline.com, Kayak, Agoda, and rentalcars.com in 2013 as sort of a CEO internship and a prelude to his taking the top spot in 2014, replacing Jeffery Boyd as CEO of the Priceline Group.

Read Here : https://skift.com/2014/04/24/priceline-ceo-huston-earned-17-9-million-in-2013-a-very-good-year-for-the-company/

Blackpines Global Advisors CEO on Weebly

Founder and CEO Darren Huston of Blackpines Global Advisors B.V. incorporated in May 2016 in The Hague. BlackPines’ main aim is to help both owners and leaders of private and public companies to improve the outcomes of their investments.

Since July 2016, Mr. Darren Huston has been working as an Executive Advisor to Hillhouse Capital, Asia’s largest investment firm. In January 2017, his work with Hillhouse Capital became non-exclusive and he took on two leadership roles.

The first as Chairman of Magento, the world’s largest eCommerce software platform, and the second as Executive Chairman for Allegro, Poland’s largest eCommerce site.

What Darren Huston Finds at The Phocuswright Conference

Hear why Darren Huston finds The Phocuswright Conference so special. Darren Huston is President & CEO, The Priceline Group and CEO, Booking.com.

Darren Huston Steps Up the Company

Priceline Group president & CEO, Darren Huston discusses the company’s quarterly earnings and partnership with Ctrip. Huston says Ctrip will help them bring Chinese customers to their business around the world.

Priceline CEO Darren Huston steps up the company by expanding the market, in his new step Darren Huston takes it to china. Darren Huston live from Amsterdam.