Skift Take
Hafner once called metasearch a lousy business with slim margins. What's clear is some of the same dynamics making life difficult for TripAdvisor, including Google Hotel Ads and Trivago's substantial marketing spend, are also proving challenging for Kayak.
On April 4 in London, hundreds of the travel industry’s brightest and best will gather for Skift Forum Europe 2017, our first conference in Europe. In only a few short years Skift's Forums — the largest creative business gatherings in the global travel industry — have become what media, speakers, and attendees have called the “TED Talks of travel.”
This year’s event at Tobacco Dock in London will feature speakers including CEOs and top executives from InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), Norwegian Air, Google, Lonely Planet, Momondo Group, and many more.
The following is part of a series of posts highlighting some of the speakers and touching on issues of concern in Europe and beyond.
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Kayak CEO Steve Hafner has seen the evolution of travel metasearch first-hand since his experience at the beginning of the 2000's partnering with SideStep at Orbitz and a few years later co-founding Kayak.
At Skift Forum Europe in London, Hafner will discuss the future of metasearch and the competitive landscape. Parent-company the Priceline Group has a pending acquisition of the Momondo Group in the works.
But in the run-up to the Forum, Hafner had some very provocative things to say about some of his rivals.
Among them, Hafner, in arguing that TripAdvisor is operating in a very tough competitive environment, predicted that TripAdvisor co-founder and CEO Steve Kaufer will have to alter the way the company is handling Instant Booking, or there will be a change in leadership.
"I know I wouldn't keep my job at Kayak here for very long, if I were going down a similar track," Hafner said.
Informed of Hafner's statements, TripAdvisor spokesperson Brian Hoyt said: "TripAdvisor continues to be focused on the long-term gr
