Skift

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My colleague Rafat Ali has a sharp piece out today on how Azerbaijan became India's fastest-growing outbound destination with no brand, no campaign, and no cultural familiarity whatsoever. He frames it as a marketing strategy failure. I'd go further and call it destination development that was never serious to begin with. The checkbox exercise. The stakeholder consultation that mistakes opinion for evidence. The strategy document shelved six months later when budget needs to be freed up for another trade show activation with little to no measurable ROI. We see this pattern at Skift across too many markets we work in. Destination development should function like a living system. Monitored continuously. Assumptions stress-tested against real market signals. And most importantly, funded with the same conviction DMOs reserve for the flashy trade show stand, courting yet another B2C PR hit and the hosted buyer dinner. The Azerbaijan story didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened in the space other destinations left unattended. https://lnkd.in/dYSFXT3U

Journos. Skift Editorial is hiring. I've got three roles open. A climate and experiences reporter in the UK, a deputy managing editor (also in the UK) and a Southeast Asia reporter based in Thailand. - https://lnkd.in/ekKQYTmi - https://lnkd.in/e4vpBv_V - https://lnkd.in/eKXTfaCW The team is whip smart, travel people are fun, and we're fully remote. I think that just about says it all. Come work with us!

Two week countdown to the Skift Data & AI Summit. Join us June 3rd in NYC! https://lnkd.in/ex3YnVvu

Come and cover Southeast Asia at Skift! You get to work with the delightful Peden and Sarah

Airbnb’s hotel push will be framed on stage next Tuesday in SF at their annual summer release jamboree as customer choice..by them. BUT…look at where they piloted it: NYC, LA, San Francisco, Madrid. Every one of those cities has imposed severe restrictions on short-term rentals. Hotels are the product that lets Airbnb stay in the markets where regulation is squeezing its core business hardest. This is a regulatory hedge, and a smart one. Chesky said on the earnings call that 55% of guests who book a hotel on Airbnb come back to book a home. The hotel is the on-ramp in markets where the STR front door has been locked. Skift Editor-in-Chief Sarah Kopit will be covering the May 20 Summer Release live and talking to Chesky. We’ll have the full breakdown at skift.com , where else…

New chapter for Skift Advisory . Really excited for Eliza taking over from Greg Klassen , who built this practice into something we're all proud of. She gets the model: proprietary intelligence plus senior consulting expertise is a combination no standalone consultancy can match. The Skift Advisory practice is entering its next phase and Eliza is the right person to lead it.

This is one of the more ambitious financial analysis pieces I've done at Skift . The premise is simple: capital allocation tells you what a company actually believes about its own future, more than any earnings call or investor prez ever will. Where the money goes is where the conviction is. Booking Holdings (NASDAQ: BKNG) is running three machines: old agency model winding down, merchant financial engine printing enormous cash, AND Connected Trip, the strategy supposed to define its next decade, still early AND explicitly lower-margin. BUT, the merchant model is working so well that it may be the thing that lets Booking avoid proving whether the strategic bet is actually on track. That's the piece. 🎤 👉 🔗 in the first comment.

Just a few hours into my Bangkok trip for Skift Asia Forum, and already found a haul. Every business trip in Asia is really two trips, the one on the schedule and the private archeology underneath it that nobody puts on the conference agenda. Meanwhile, the Forum agenda is fabulous too, check it out! See you all in a few days here. >> https://lnkd.in/eGXHjfGY