Kayak’s CEO on How Business Travel May Never Recover
Co-founder Steve Hafner says consumers are at least beginning to think about flying again and restaurants are selling every table they can.
Hafner and his co-founders sold Kayak to Booking Holdings Inc. for $1.8 billion in 2013. He’s also CEO of OpenTable, Booking’s restaurant business. Kayak generally processes more than 6 billion travel queries a year; the pandemic has more than halved that.
Source: OpenTable
As co-founder and CEO of travel search engine Kayak Software Corp., Steve Hafner was on a plane every other day. Covid-19 has grounded him. But he sees some positives.
There’s a long way to go, but consumers at least are thinking about flying again. They’re looking for trips. Query volumes have been gradually recovering. From a business perspective, one of the few bright spots of this pandemic is it’s taught people how to conduct their affairs, somewhat efficiently, online.