Behold, The New Expedia – “We Finally Got It Right After 25 Years”, Declares Diller
“When the traveller wins, we all win” forms heart of the Big Reset
WHEN your chairman opens your conference with a declaration that “we finally got it right, after 25 years”, you’d better deliver. Such was the case at EXPLORE 22, Expedia Group’s conference which kicked off in Las Vegas yesterday after a two-year hiatus.
Chairman Barry Diller, promising a new Expedia, said something happens when your heart stops – you reassess everything. And Expedia has had two heart stops. First, on the eve of September 11 when Diller had the opportunity to take a controlling interest in Expedia from Microsoft. There was an out clause and when 911 happened, they agonised over whether “we should get out of this thing”.
“During the debate that went on for hours, someone said, ‘When there is life, there is travel.’ We bet on life, and travel returned robustly,” said Diller.
The second heart stop was the pandemic. Billions of dollars of refunds, billions of dollars of debt taken on, 25,000 workforce reduced by a third, 95 percent of business lost overnight. “What are we going to do now? ‘If there is life, there is travel’ – it wasn’t so simple this time,” he said. “We decided not to let a mighty tragedy go to waste. We would radically revolutionise the company, come out of this nightmare and reinvent all the processes we serve travellers.”
Amid the “internal sausage wrangling that went on for two years”, one key word made all the difference – from customers to travellers. Said Diller, “We had always seen them as customers but they are travellers, and we need to deal with them uniquely. What do travellers need from us?”