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.
Skift Global Forum: MasterCard CMO on Future of Experiential Travel
The local and experiential trend in travel -- you know, the kind of trips that millennials are said to be in love with -- has gotten to the point that MasterCard and others are curating and offering these escapes for their customers. It is a natural fit as travelers knock off cities on their bucket lists, using their credit and debit cards.
Hilton to Sell Waldorf Astoria New York to Chinese Firm for Nearly $2 Billion
If you're going to go asset light, you may as well unload one of your biggest assets while collecting management fees for the next century.
No Bidding War for Concur as SAP Made the Only Acquisition Offer
What does it mean that there was only one bidder, SAP, for Concur? There are only a handful of companies -- perhaps Oracle, IBM, the Priceline Group, and American Express -- that have both the resources to pay more than $8 billion for an acquisition and have an interest in making a business out of travel technology for corporations. In addition, Concur still has plenty of skeptics.
Airlines Mull How to Measure Loyalty: Points or Dollars?
To switch to revenue-based loyalty programs or not to switch? Many airlines are just doing the math, and anticipating the outcry.
The Former Orient-Express Hotel Brand Touts Experience in First Ad Campaign As Belmond
The copy-heavy Belmond hotels print advertising campaign, its first, is an interesting experiment for the new brand. It is inspirational and experiential, but will it resonate with today's on-the-go, smartphone-in-hand travelers? We'll see.
Avis Budget CFO Weirdly Cites 3 Acquisitions in Process
You gotta love it when big companies speak of "tuck-in" acquisitions. One acquisition that Avis Budget is close to nailing would be for more than $50 million, and that's larger than its acquisition of Payless last year. Small, inconsequential stuff in the world of Avis Budget, and M&A.