With a mission to inform, empower, celebrate and advocate for British Columbia's current and aspiring business leaders, BCBusiness go behind the headlines and bring readers face to face with the key issues and people driving business in B.C.
Issue link: http://digital.canadawide.com/i/364562
20 BCBusiness September 2014 There are countless other travel websites nowadays, from Expedia to Travelocity. What's your com- petitive edge? We plan for the moment. I run the whole business on a quarter-to-quarter basis. We have an annual plan, but it's for our board and not really how we think about things. A lot of our success is: how do we innovate against the cus- tomer's needs and can I keep the team hungry enough and humble enough to move forward? Everything we have in terms of opportunity is largely sitting in front of us. When I hear people ask- ing who's going to unseat us—honestly, we'll do that to ourselves. We'll blame it on something else, but it will be our doing. I learned that when I was at Microsoft. Bill Gates told me once that he's never won a market share battle; the competitors have only lost, because it's about staying steady with your principles, executing well and innovating constantly, and then keep- ing that focus. Can you give me a sense of how much market share the Priceline Group has in the travel arena? Travel is a $1 trillion business. Last year, Priceline did three to four per cent of this in gross bookings. So, an important player, but still small with lots of room for growth. Priceline relies heavily on Google ads to drive traffic to its sites and is one of Google's biggest customers. Are you worried about putting all your eggs in one basket? We're very data driven. We work with Google very closely and we're really proud of the business we built with them and frankly paid for; this isn't organic, we're buying marketing and engaging. I don't worry about our dependence on Google because that's how we spend our money and we are building a bigger and bigger business over time because we've got a great product. You can't do well on Google unless you have a great product because you won't get the clicks, you won't get the conversion. About 90 per cent of Priceline's business is outside of North Amer- ica, much of it in Europe. Are there opportunities in North America or elsewhere in your sights? We still have proportionately more to do to build our business in North America than, say, Europe. In Canada, this means growing the use of Book- ing.com, Kayak and Priceline.com— and now OpenTable—with Canadian consumers, and increasing the depth of our relationships with Canadian travel service providers: hotels, B&Bs, hostels, airlines, rental car providers and now restaurants. OpenTable seems to be a strange fit, given it's the only property you have outside the travel realm. Why the acquisition? OpenTable is a natural extension for us. The work they do day-to-day with restaurants fits well with the day-to-day work we do with accom- modations. Our dream is to make OpenTable a truly global business, allowing our travellers to easily book restaurants wherever they are and to help restaurants build business with people from all over the world. You've called Bill Gates one of your role models. What did you gain from working with him? I spent time with him when I was run- ning Microsoft in Japan. I just really respect the fact that he's such a curi- ous person and how much he reads. He's already solved one set of issues and now he wants to go solve global health issues. I think it's so impressive for him now to live two lives —it's pretty amazing. He's a man with very high values and a lot of very firm beliefs, but also just a very nice person. • TRavel bOOkIng habITS Of CanadIanS SOUrCe: 2012 rbC travel rewards Survey 56% Online booking 5% Other 19% travel agent 12% by phone 8% Ask someone else to book for them