Dennis Schaal Archives

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.

Online Travel

Exclusive: First Look at Amazon Travel’s New Hotel Contract

Amazon is meeting with hotels and hotel middlemen to ramp up its hotel supply, but is taking a deliberate approach and is currently conducting A/B testing of its new hotel-shopping experience. But, this is obviously just the opening shot.

Dennis Schaal | 12 years ago

Hotels

Booking.com’s Work for Marriott is a Sneak Peak Into the Future

Booking.com knows a few things about website creation and it plans on sharing these skills with hotels and becoming a key tech provider to them in the near future. The distribution business would still be primary, but Booking.com officials are bullish about its prospects in the B2B sector.

Dennis Schaal | 12 years ago

Airlines

Interview: Norwegian Air CEO Says DOT Approval Delay is ‘Purely Political’

It's unlikely the DOT will be able to stall Norwegian Air International's foreign air carrier application for much longer, and then we'll see how much fare disruption is really in the carrier's arsenal.

Dennis Schaal | 12 years ago

Online Travel

Hotel-Booking Startup Roomer Raises $5 Million in Funding

Beyond the trust issue, Roomer's challenge is to publicize the service, scale it and to provide meaningful discounts off published rates in myriad markets on an everyday basis.

Dennis Schaal | 12 years ago

Online Travel

Exclusive: Amazon to Get Into Hotel Booking With Launch of Travel Site

Well this is bound to be interesting. Amazon appears to be going it alone to launch its own travel service for independent hotels in drive markets. Amazon has huge marketing power, but don't expect Amazon Travel to turn the hotel industry on its head any time soon.

Dennis Schaal | 12 years ago

Online Travel

Auto Industry Bets on Ridesharing With $24 Million Getaround Funding

With just $40 million in the bank, don't expect Getaround to make good on its pledge to launch in "all major U.S. cities in the next year," but this latest funding round, in tandem with other fundings in this space, shows that ground transportation and ridesharing is the hottest thing going at the moment.

Dennis Schaal | 12 years ago

Online Travel

JetBlue Figures Out How to Keep Wi-Fi Free, Disses Rivals Gogo and Row44

Hotels: Are you listening?

Dennis Schaal | 12 years ago

Airlines

The New JetBlue Will Have More Bag Fees and Less Legroom

It's somewhat amusing that JetBlue states its mission is to "Inspire Humanity." As the airline's revenue initiatives highlight, JetBlue's latest mission actually is to win over skeptical shareholders and increase the bottom line.

Dennis Schaal | 12 years ago

SkiftX

Interview: Priceline’s M&A Guru on the Most Successful Acquisition in Online Travel History

These are cliches, but true: It's mostly about the team and their ability to execute. Business models help, too: As Priceline's Glenn Fogel says, "Good execution of an OK idea is a lot better than lousy execution of a brilliant idea."

Dennis Schaal | 12 years ago

Online Travel

Former Marriott Execs Raise $3 Million in Seed Funding for Hotel Booking Site

This is filled with so many people from the same team that it appears there's a very specific problem Marriott has that it wasn't able to solve in-house.

Dennis Schaal | 12 years ago