Skift Take
Will the immediacy of Orbitz Worldwide's loyalty program redemption be a difference-maker in helping to build its global hotel business? CEO Barney Harford is counting on it.
Editor's Note: With this first CEO interview, we're kicking off a series on online travel CEOs talking about the Future of Travel Booking, and the evolving habits and device preferences of travel consumers. Check out all the interviews as they come out, here.
Barney Harford, the CEO of Orbitz Worldwide, has been at his post since early January 2009, with the mission of weaning a company that has its roots as a site created by major U.S. airlines off flights and deep into the hotel-booking business.
Harford has tried all sorts of strategies, from providing credits in the event of hotel-rate drops to tinkering with the hotel-booking path. But, he believes the introduction of new loyalty programs across Orbitz, CheapTickets and eBookers, all of which incentivize hotel and mobile bookings, has been the most successful initiative during his tenure.
Skift caught up with Harford to discuss the future of travel booking, including metasearch, mobile-device usage and loyalty.
The following is an edited transcript of the conversation:
Skift: What have you learned about the future of travelers' booking behaviors from all of the experiments you are doing on Orbitz sites?
Barney Harford: Testing plays a big role in our site optimization efforts. Right now, we are running more than 60 tests on our U.S. Orbitz.com and CheapTickets brands. Over the last 12 months we’ve achieved meaningful conversion improvements across a broad range of areas. Some examples of recent wins include highlighting the cancellation fle
