After 26 years with the company and 10 as CEO, Priceline recently announced that
Brett Keller would hand over the reins to Brigit Zimmerman in January.
In an interview in the PhocusWire studio at The Phocuswright Conference,
Keller reflected on his time at the online travel agency (OTA) where he has held
several roles including CMO and COO.
His best advice for his successor is to surround herself with the best
possible team and be sure to retain them pointing to the longevity of Booking
Holdings leadership team.
Keller went on to discuss how Priceline came close to failing after 9/11 but
managed to reword its business model and come back stronger.
He also spoke about artificial intelligence (AI) as the next major platform
shift after the internet, mobile and cloud. Priceline has built the infrastructure
to deploy AI he said and Keller sees himself staying on the rapid pace of
change.
Fully capable AI agents, meanwhile, are still a few years away but will
reshape the distribution landscape, he added.
Keller also had some advice to new founders in the rapidly changing travel environment.
“Build something that solves a real world
problem. If you’re looking to just recreate the same thing that everyone else
has with a different skin or a different rapper, especially higher up the funnel,
when it comes to trip planning, trip research, those are a dime a dozen. The
majority of those never go anywhere,” he said.
“But the people who look deeper into the
infrastructure and the systems and build products that either solve a problem
that a supplier has, an OTA has or that the consumer is really struggling with,
it could be just a micro segment of the industry, there’s a lot of opportunity
there to help the overall infrastructure of travel to get better.”
Watch the full interview below with PhocusWire’s
Linda Fox:
The Phocuswright Conference 2025: Looking in the rearview mirror at Priceline