Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi: Understanding Uber’s New CEO Pick
Photo Credit: Khosrowshahi speaks onstage at Skift Global Forum 2016 alongside Rich Barton (R), founder of Expedia; Jay Walker (far L), founder of Priceline Group; and Rich Barton, (L) CEO of Altimeter Capital. Skift
Skift Take
Khosrowshahi has been reflective and honest as CEO of Expedia, taking ownership of his failures along the way. At Uber, the company will have a leader who has overseen both explosive growth and clever repositioning.
As a travel industry executive, Expedia CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has seen it all.
Khosrowshahi has been a stalwart figure in the travel industry for decades, beginning with his days working with Barry Diller as the online travel sector rose to prominence two decades ago.
He got his start at Allen & Co., working in various roles at the investment bank from 1991 to 1998. Later at USA Networks (which became IAC) for Barry Diller, he helped acquire Hotel Reservations Network (Hotels.com, or 1-800-HOTELS) in 1999 and coordinated the explosive growth of the company as online travel began to hit the mainstream with U.S. consumers.
Immediately afterwards, Diller and Khosrowshahi worked to acquire Expedia from founder Rich Barton and his team, as detailed in Skift's The Definitive Oral History of Online Travel.
The rest, so to speak, is history; the creation of the first online travel powerhouse, after Travelocity's out-of-the-gate lead, that is, followed. There were growing pain
