Simon Breakwell, a figure at the center of bringing the concept of the online travel agency to Europe with Expedia in the late-1990s, admitted that he didn’t foresee the fusion of travel with mobile.
But it his second admission that is perhaps the most interesting – Breakwell says that he never considered the vast the sums of money would eventually be required to build and maintain a brand so that it can compete in search.
Breakwell sees a possible shift on the horizon – Amazon‘s efforts in travel seemed to come and go almost as quickly as you could say “trip planning, social travel website”.
It launched a service in 2015 and pretty much abandoned the idea a few months later.
Perhaps Jeff Bezos suddenly got a taste of the foresight juice that others have yet to drink, but Amazon’s shift from being an e-commerce site to a search brand arguably puts in back in the game.
In addition, its shift to search is nothing to do with desktop or mobile but the introduction of voice through its Alexa service on the Echo device.
Breakwell sees an environment where travelers will eventually ask their Alexa for flight details and the technology will organize it all, based on the commands of the user.
Echo has “apps” provided by a number of travel brands (Skyscanner was one of the first) that do this already, although most cheerleaders concede that such a process is clunky at times.
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