Dennis Schaal

Dennis Schaal is Skift’s Founding Editor and Executive Editor. Dennis has been a reporter focusing on online travel and short-term rentals for more than two decades at Skift, Tnooz, USA Today, and Travel Weekly. He is well-known for tough one-on-one interviews on stage at Skift events, including with the CEOs and top execs of Expedia, Uber, Booking Holdings, Priceline, Kayak, Hopper, and more.

Hotels

How Booking.com Profits Handsomely From Bidding on Hotel Names

Many cash-strapped independent hoteliers have been relatively laid back and allowed Booking.com to bid on their trademarked names and are even handing over their digital marketing and website creation to Booking.com's BookingSuite division. Given their resource constraints, that's not likely to change in any meaningful way anytime soon.
Dennis Schaal |
Airlines

Virgin America CEO Has Good and Bad News for Employees

The Alaska Airlines-Virgin America deal synergies won't be of the Expedia-Travelocity or Expedia-Orbitz type, where the majority of staff members of the acquired companies got pink slips. Virgin America's front-line employees should do well from a job security standpoint but a considerable number of back-of-the-house staff will have something to worry about.
Dennis Schaal |
Online Travel

Kayak Adds a Bot to Slack to Expand Booking Via Messaging Apps

Give Kayak credit for going where the users are and building a travel-search app on top of Slack. Is Slack the optimum way to plan a trip? Hardly. But there will be some users, who are chatting at the office in Slack all day, who could find it convenient. Messaging apps such as WhatsApp would be fertile ground as well.
Dennis Schaal |