Informational Diary: Darren Huston Speaks On Future of Travel

Informational Diary: Darren Huston Speaks On Future of Travel - Ellec...: Darren Huston says that ten years from now, no paper work will be involved in the travel. “You’ll have no passport, no credit cards, no confirmation,” predicts the Amsterdam-based Canadian.

Darren Huston PPT on Slideserve

Darren Huston says that ten years from now, no paper work will be involved in the travel. “You’ll have no passport, no credit cards, no confirmation,” predicts the Amsterdam-based Canadian.

"You just have to have your phone in your pocket, and if you lose it, everything will be in the cloud." Unless someone invites teleportation, however, we'll still have to fly – something Darren Huston doesn't really do.





But for now, this is the only way he can access all the local experiences he craves. "I like the odd taste and taste. I've eaten ants in Nairobi, frogs in Vietnam and a lot of weird things in China - I really enjoy it during travel. "

Darren Huston Speaks on What Customer Want From Hotel and Restaurant Services

Darren Huston on CNBC said that company has the largest inventory on the planet, and also he discusses with Simon what customers really want out of hotel and restaurant services.

Simon –

CEO Darren Huston telling us in the last hour that the Priceline business, an underlying sense, remains strong and that the euro and the Euro zone weakness is why he’s warning of slower growth down Huston.

Also, emphasizing the boots on the ground effort underway way in Europe and its key booking dot com franchise to boost non hotel inventory. BMB style alternative lodging like apartments and villas. Take a listen.

Darren Huston –

We want to be the world’s leader in online booking of accommodation. So we’ve been working on building up from the biggest hotels now into apartments and pensions and various other forms of accommodations. We have the largest inventory on the planet. We’re growing our inventory year over year, over 50 percent.

ALSO READ: Hot Travel Startups!!

And this non hotel accommodation, these apartments, these special places to stay are things that our customers want. I would like to share with people that with the advent of mobile and things becoming more local, this next wave of the Internet is all about bringing technology into local marketplaces and taking the friction out of doing business all around the world.

And this is what we’re really excited about. It’s no longer about just getting a booking. I’m booking dot com or a reservation on open table. It’s about how can you improve the experience of the customer when they’re looking, booking and experiencing the local products.

Simon –

So, Darren, can you break that down for us? Can you give us an example of what life will be like 10 years down the line? I mean, where does this take us?

Darren Huston –

Yeah, I think what it is like take an example of pay with opentable. You can sit at your restaurant table; see you’ve booked an Opentable. You’re sitting in your restaurant. You’ve got your Smartphone out and you can literally see your tab on your Smartphone.

I mean, this is happening today in New York and in San Francisco. Its gonna be all across the United States soon. And then when you’re ready to leave, you just pay and leave. And they actually the restaurant loves it because the tables turn better. The waitresses and waiters love it because their tipping is a little bit better.

But it just takes a lot of the friction out of the. Hey, I just had a great meal, but I’ve been sitting here waiting for 30 minutes to pay because I need to run. These are just some examples. And in the hotel experience, it’s the same thing. It’s like arriving at the train station in Brussels and saying, hey, I want to walk or do we want to take a cab? And having all of that stuff right in front of you to take those directions, to know where all the landmarks are, to already have tickets.

Pre-booked so that you can go around the lines into the major attractions. It’s all of these kinds of things. And if you think about the way the world has changed, we used to all just have computers at home or in our office.

But now people everyone’s walking around the computer in their pocket and young people, particularly millennial, are just expecting, you know, today it’s Uber or pay with Opentable. But tomorrow they’re gonna expect that their phones will be able to do all sorts of things to just make being local a lot more interesting and fun than it is today.

Simon –

Darren Huston, the CEO and president of Priceline. Let it not be forgotten. He is one of the next twenty five on CNBC. Don’t miss our coverage of the big gala tonight starting at 6:00 Eastern. Down in Houston, we’ll be among the others. Among others will be honored at that event.

Darren Huston Interview on Fortune On Demand

Darren Huston sits down with Fortune’s Susie Gharib to talk about the places everyone is traveling to this summer.

Darren Huston discussed about the various popular travel destinations like Japan, China, Spain, Greece etc.

Watch Full Video @ https://fortune.com/videos/watch/d42fe484-e399-477e-b92e-46ce342a2ad9

Tourism Target of Various Countries!

 

In a survey by W - Hospitality, the two countries was ranked 7th &10th respectively, a global company offering advisory services for the hotel, tourism and entertainment industries.

8th global hotel chains, among them Radisson, Hilton, Sheraton, Marriott and Kempinski, plan to add 1,510 rooms in Kenya while in Uganda 9 international hotels, among them Hilton and Sheraton, plan to build 1,397 rooms.

In Nigeria, which ranked on the top, 51 hotels target 8,563 rooms. Egypt and Morocco are ranked 2nd and 3rd with plans for 6,440 and 5,474 rooms respectively.

Darren Huston said “The EAC countries should utilise social media to showcase their beaches and wildlife. Tunisia and Morocco have done this, while Egypt is rebounding because tourists choose what is easily available to them.”

Also Read: China Travel Market

Agatha Juma the chief executive of the Kenya Tourism Federation, stated the ranking indicates “that despite the challenges facing Kenya, the country and the region remain on the radar of investors and tourists. Such investments imply there is a foreseen growth in tourist numbers to occupy these rooms.”

Specialists in the travel industry said that East African countries should step up their marketing techniques to compete favorably with North and West Africa for investments and tourists.

 

Article Source: https://tmmhospitality.com/east-africa-tourism-targets/

Darren Huston discusses The Company's Quarterly Earnings

Huston talks about the company’s quarterly earnings and partnership with Ctrip.

Darren Huston says Ctrip will help them bring Chinese customers to their business around the world.

 

Promising Travel Translation Devices You Can Buy Right Now

Ideally, we would all communicate in each language known to humankind and could wander the world with little communication difficulties. Indeed, even a few languages would do, truly.

In case you’re making a beeline for remote nation and need to catch up on the nearby language, travel interpreters and interpretation applications can make life a whole lot easier.

JoneR Voice Language Translator Device

Birgus AI Translator

Read full article @ https://medium.com/@dishadayal09/promising-travel-translation-devices-you-can-buy-right-now-4268c6795b5a

Chinese tourists increasingly demand sustainable travel alternatives, says Booking.com

• China’s burgeoning appetite for sustainable travel is creating new opportunities within the world’s largest travel market, according to the chairwoman of Booking.com.
• Gillian Tans told CNBC the uptick reflects a wider shift in global travel trends as consumers become more conscious of overtourism.
• That shift is informing Booking.com’s Chinese expansion strategy as it makes further inroads into what could one day become it’s biggest market, said Tans.

China’s burgeoning appetite for sustainable travel is creating new opportunities within the world’s most lucrative travel market, according to the chairwoman of Booking.com.

Earlier, When Darren Huston was the CEO, he says ctrip will help them bring Chinese customers to their business around the world.

Gillian Tans told CNBC that the U.S.-owned travel operator, which has been operating in China for close to a decade, has recorded a recent uptick in demand from Chinese tourists looking for responsible travel alternatives, bringing the country closer in line with a wider shift in global travel trends.

Booking.com boss is clicking annoyed

Darren Huston, chief executive of Booking(.)com told an audience at ITB Berlin this week that marketing initiatives by hotels chains such as Marriott and Hilton are annoying.

Marketing initiatives by hotels chains such as Marriott and Hilton which talk up the benefit of booking direct, have not escaped the notice of Darren Huston.
“It’s annoying,” he told an audience at ITB Berlin this week. Hilton’s “stop clicking around” TV ad was shown for reference.
His response was hardly a surprise and presented in a tongue-in-cheek way (“I was at a chain hotel the other week and the wifi password was ‘book direct’, as if that would persuade me). But there was a steely resolve beneath the soundbite.

B2B is increasingly part of the Booking.com story. Darren Huston talked about its Booking Suite as “not a big money maker but a great way to build relationships with partners.”

CrowdRiff Debuts Travel Stories in Partnership with Destination British Columbia

CrowdRiff, the leading visual marketing platform for travel and tourism brands, today announced Travel Stories, the world’s first connected story experience for travelers.

Travel Stories — which provides a mobile-first, visually immersive experience for travelers to plan their trips — officially launched today in collaboration with Destination BC, British Columbia’s provincial tourism organization.

Travel Stories enable Destination BC to automatically publish stories created by partners within its all-new BC Story Network in alignment with its Content Commonwealth strategy — a shared approach to content marketing, built on common tools, processes, and expertise.

Through Travel Stories, Destination BC is creating a seamless narrative for travelers that makes it easy for them to research and more effectively plan their trips to BC, Canada’s western-most province.

Darren Huston China Travel News

Participants in the BC Story Network include 29 regional and community destinations within BC, such as Kootenay Rockies Tourism, Tourism Kamloops, Tourism Whistler, Tourism Golden, and Destination Campbell River, as well as associations like British Columbia Golf and corridors like Scenic 7.

• Travel Stories are contextual and offer much more data to provide travelers with the depth of information needed in researching a destination;
• With its omni-channel approach, the same Travel Stories can be created once and shared everywhere, from a destination’s website to Google Search, Facebook, and Instagram to exponentially increase the reach of the rich content being shared;
• Travel Stories are connected across the travel ecosystem, eliminating the need for brands to manually connect with partners to source local stories. This networked experience enables a traveler interested in a particular destination to view stories from different partners — and easily connect with them if so desired — without having to actively seek out each one individually.
• The content shared through Travel Stories is evergreen.

Source: @business.financialpost.com

Travel Company Allows Customer to Book Flights with Bitcoin

Alternative Airlines, a travel company based in the United Kingdom, has partnered with cryptocurrency service Utrust to facilitate payments with crypto.

On Nov. 13, the Swiss-based digital payments processor Utrust announced a new partnership with its first merchant in the travel industry, Alternative Airlines. The two companies plan to provide customers with the ability to book flights while paying with cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Dash, DigiByte (DGB) and Utrust’s native token UTK.

Search over 650 airlines and pay with crypto

The collaboration between the two companies will introduce instant cross border transactions, buyer protection, and crypto-to-cash settlements to the clients of Alternative Airlines. The travel firm’s website allows customers to search from over 650 airlines such as Delta, United, British Airways, Virgin and Emirates, among others.

Darren Huston, reveals the secrets behind its online travel group’s phenomenal success.

Bitcoin ATM installed at Miami International airport

For those who wish to fly from the Miami International Airport and pay for their tickets with BTC, Bitcoin ATM firm Bitstop just installed one of its machines at the airport in mid-October. The airport’s first Bitcoin ATM was last reported to be in concourse G, next to gate 16.

Source: https://cointelegraph.com/news/travel-company-allows-customers-to-book-flights-with-bitcoin

Behind Booking.com’s Growing Ambitions for the Chinese Market

After its rapid ride to dominance in online travel in Europe over the past decade, Booking.com is seeking to expand in China and the U.S., its CEO said in an interview.

Darren Huston, who heads both Booking.com and its U.S. parent company Priceline Group, said Booking.com is targeting a 20 percent increase in bookings going through its website in the third quarter and still has years of growth ahead.

“Travel is growing at twice the rate of GDP. Do-it-yourself travel is growing faster than packaged travel. And online is growing faster than offline. So we’ve got three tail winds,” Huston told Reuters from Booking.com’s Amsterdam offices.

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

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

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 Ultimate List of Top Travel Startups

To keep up with the growing interests of the public, Canada has come out with some pretty intriguing and remarkable travel app and online platform startups.

1. Terra Icons: Finding Landmarks Using AR

According to the team: “All cities have landmarks or points of interest that help identify them, and that shouldn’t be missed.

2. Hopper: Tracking Prices and Booking Travel

According to the team: “Hopper is the smart way to book travel on your phone. Combining massive amounts of data and advanced machine learning algorithms, Hopper predicts and analyzes airfare and accommodation to save users money and enable them to travel more often.

3. Priceline Group

Priceline.com is an online travel agency for finding discount rates for travel-related purchases such as airline tickets and hotel stay. A Canadian Business man Darren Huston was the CEO of Priceline and booking.com, his challenge was to continue growing.

4. Betterez: Reservation and Ticketing Management Platform

Betterez offers flexible, scalable cloud-based enterprise software solutions for the Reservation and Ticketing Management (RTM) space, designed for travel, transportation and admissions companies who want to increase their direct sales and provide a streamlined user experience.

Read Full Article @ https://www.guarana-technologies.com/top-startups/travel-startups/

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.