Introducing the Skift Power Rankings
In an industry as dynamic and far-reaching as the travel sector, power is not just about who holds the top job but who shapes the landscape, drives innovation, and sets the agenda for what comes next. It’s the whisper network. Who’s the first phone call when a power player wants to make something big happen? With that in mind, we proudly present Skift’s Power Rankings — our list of the 30 most powerful leaders in travel.
Here’s how we did it: With help from Skift Research, our editors spent months establishing a methodology, crunching the numbers and weighing each leader’s influence to create this list. We scrutinized the financials of each executive’s company — evaluating revenue, size, and market cap. We examined their track record of achievements and performance over the past year. We also combed through Skift’s daily reporting to measure factors like gravitas, clout, and sway. The result is the definitive source for measuring power in the travel industry today.
However, we’d be remiss to ignore a troubling reality: power in the travel industry remains overwhelmingly white and male. This isn’t something we take lightly, nor is it how we believe things should be. At Skift, we are committed to pushing for a more diverse and inclusive industry — one that better reflects the world it serves.
– Sarah Kopit, EIC Skift
1
Chris Nassetta
Hilton CEO
Christopher Nassetta, a Virginia native with a shock of salt-and-pepper hair, has the air of a senior industry statesman. Since taking the reins at Hilton Worldwide in 2007, Nassetta has orchestrated a dramatic turnaround in the hotel group’s fortunes while also advocating on behalf of the whole travel industry at the governmental level.
After becoming CEO, Nassetta decided he needed to fix the company’s broken culture. He moved Hilton’s headquarters from Beverly Hills to Virginia, retaining few original executives. His retooling helped set the company up for a successful 2013 IPO, which raised $2.35 billion.
2
Brian Chesky
Airbnb CEO
Brian Chesky, who co-founded Airbnb along with Nathan Blecharczyk and Joe Gebbia, changed the world – or at least how many of us travel through it.
Since its founding in 2007, Airbnb has become a household name brand around the world, and Chesky, a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, wields considerable influence in travel and tech.
3
Scott Kirby
United Airlines CEO
Whether it’s his strong stance on ultra-low-cost carriers or his brutally honest criticism on the current state of Boeing, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby has become one of the most influential — and candid — voices in the airline industry.
Under his watch, United Airlines has become one of the most profitable U.S. carriers, making up the bulk of the industry’s earnings along with competitor Delta Air Lines.
4
Glenn Fogel
Booking Holdings CEO
Booking Holdings is now the largest travel business and one of the most profitable, and current CEO Glenn Fogel played a key role in putting all the pieces together starting two decades ago.
In 2004 and 2005, as head of corporate development for Priceline, he led the acquisitions of the UK’s Active Hotels and the Dutch accommodations site Bookings, which a year later merged to create Booking.com. In 2018, Skift characterized it as the “greatest acquisition in online travel history.”
5
Anthony Capuano
Marriott International CEO
When Anthony Capuano graduated from Cornell’s prestigious hotel school in 1987, he received seven job offers — and one rejection letter. It was from Marriott International.
No matter. By 1995, Marriott saw its error and hired Capuano. Over the next quarter-century, he progressed through Marriott’s ranks in a series of development roles.
6
Ed Bastian
Delta Air Lines CEO
It ain’t easy running a profitable airline, but listen to Delta CEO Ed Bastian and you’re left wondering why others are faltering. His laser focus on simplicity at all levels of the business has helped Delta become the kingpin of U.S. network carriers.
Speaking to Skift in June, as American Airlines was struggling through backlash from travel agents over its distribution strategy, Bastian calmly said: “Our strategy is very simple, we’re going to serve our customers where they’d like to be served.”
7
Sébastien Bazin
Accor CEO
In an industry often criticized for sluggishness, Sébastien Bazin is known for moving fast. Bazin spent much of his early career as a financier at investment banks and private equity firms rather than rising through the ranks of a hotel company.
A brief role in buying and selling luxury hotel assets led Bazin to become CEO of Accor in 2013. Armed with spreadsheets, he stormed the world’s sixth-largest hotel group.
8
Greg O’Hara
Certares Founder
Greg O’Hara founded the private equity firm Certares in 2012. It now has nearly $11 billion in assets. In 2014, Certares led a $900 million joint venture to buy half of American Express Global Business Travel, and to spin it out of American Express Co.
At that time, Amex GBT handled about $19 billion worth of corporate travel bookings. In 2023, that number was $28.2 billion, and the company generated $2.3 billion in revenue. It went public in 2022 at a valuation of $5.3 billion.
9
Steven Udvar-Hazy
Air Lease and International Lease Finance Corporation Founder
Aircraft leasing opened up a whole new world for the airline industry, and it came from one of the most innovative minds in the business: Steven Udvar-Hazy, the executive chairman and founder of Air Lease and International Lease Finance Corporation.
Through leasing, airlines that couldn’t afford to buy jets could now operate them in a more affordable way.
10
Jane Sun
Trip.com Group CEO
In China, gender equality remains elusive, with progress in women’s labor force participation advancing at a pace that makes a sloth look speedy. However, Jane Sun, the CEO of Trip.com Group, is shaking up the status quo.
Sun’s dedication to gender equality stems from personal experience. She recalls trips abroad, where as chief operating officer and later CEO, she was often asked where her husband was. “Even in Silicon Valley, people had a difficult time imagining a major internet company CEO could be female,” she said in an interview to Tatler Asia.
11
Barry Sternlicht
Starwood Capital CEO
When Barry Sternlicht founded Starwood Capital Group in 1991, he raised about $20 million in assets. At last count, the group managed over $115 billion in assets.
Starwood founded the firm from scratch by purchasing the Doral Inn on Lexington Avenue in New York City. In 1994, Sternlicht started Starwood Lodging by merging some assets held by Starwood Capital Group’s funds. In 1995, Starwood Capital Group and Goldman Sachs acquired the Westin Hotel Company for $561 million. In 1998, ITT Corp, which owned Sheraton, agreed to be acquired by Starwood Lodging Trust for $9.8 billion.
12
Michael O’Leary
Ryanair CEO
For an airline renowned for charging customers for almost everything, Michael O’Leary is rather good at getting a freebie. “All you have to do is make noise,” he told Skift in a recent interview.
Unlike many other names on this list, you won’t find a curated corporate page for Ryanair’s CEO on LinkedIn, Instagram, or TikTok. But that doesn’t stop the straight-talking Irishman describing himself as “one of the original creators of social media.”
13
Alex Dichter
McKinsey & Company Senior Partner
Alex Dichter is set to retire as leader of McKinsey’s global travel practice this year, but he’s not leaving the industry any time soon. He’ll be board chairman for HX (formerly Hurtigruten Expeditions), which provides cruise expeditions.
Dichter has the ears of leaders in the aviation and cruise industries, along with other stakeholders in the travel industry. McKinsey’s forecast, advice and reports are the to-go for tourism boards, governments, corporations and other industry groups.
14
Sir Tim Clark
Emirates Airline President
Decades before the Burj Khalifa or even the Dubai Mall entered the global lexicon, one Brit already had the UAE firmly on his radar. Sir Tim Clark’s visionary leadership of Emirates, the Dubai-based airline, has seen the carrier grow at lightning speed in tandem with the glitzy city it serves.
Born in England in the much less flashy post-war years, Clark’s journey from young aviation enthusiast to CEO is the stuff of legend. After university in 1972, he joined British Caledonian Airways. His frustration with the color-by-numbers approach of the UK’s heavily regulated airlines led him to Gulf Air. It was here that Clark’s ambition began to be realized.
15
Jonathan Gray
Blackstone COO
Jonathan Gray is a heavyweight in finance. He’s the chief operating officer of Blackstone, the largest private equity firm in the world, which manages over $1 trillion in assets. Gray is also widely seen as a successor to the firm’s CEO Stephen Schwarzman.
But Gray is also heavily influential in the travel industry. On top of his work at Blackstone, he’s the chairman of Hilton Hotels & Resorts, one of the largest hospitality companies in the world.
16
Ariane Gorin
Expedia Group CEO
Ariane Gorin, who took the reins as Expedia Group CEO in May, is trying to make the company more global. Gorin, who’s been a member of the Expedia Group senior leadership committee since 2015 and previously headed Expedia for Business, is well-positioned for the international challenge.
Gorin is a dual French-American citizen, and lived in London and Paris for the past 23 years before relocating to Expedia’s home base in Seattle for the top gig.
17
Sebastian Ebel
TUI Group CEO
Sebastian Ebel, the CEO of TUI Group, has positioned Europe’s largest tour operator as an even more significant player in the global travel industry since taking the helm in 2021. Ebel’s focus has consistently been on transforming the sector, widening TUI’s customer base, and enhancing customer experience with technology.
Even as its toughest competitor, Thomas Cook, collapsed in 2019, TUI, which employs over 70,000 people and served 19 million travelers in its 2023 financial year, has thrived.
18
Ahmed bin Aqil al-Khateeb
Saudi Arabia Minister of Tourism
It’s February 2020 and Ahmed Al Khateeb was just been named the first-ever minister of tourism for Saudi Arabia. He didn’t know it yet, but there was a global pandemic just weeks away. It was horrible timing, but Al Khateeb has nevertheless created one of the world’s fastest-growing tourism sectors.
When Al Khateeb took on the role, Saudi Arabia was still relying heavily on its religious travel segment – where millions of pilgrims flock each year to Makkah and Medinah. By 2023, Saudi had more international tourists than Portugal at 27.4 million
19
Pete Buttigieg
United States Transportation Secretary
Of all the cabinet positions in a presidential administration, Transportation Secretary has never been seen as the sexiest. But Pete Buttigieg, also known as Mayor Pete, has made an often-overlooked department relevant. He’s probably the most high-profile Transportation Secretary in recent times.
His actions on airline passenger rights and advocating for big infrastructure investments in airports, roads and bridges have made him a rising political star, not to mention one of the most influential voices in the travel industry.
20
Sundar Pichai
Alphabet CEO
Sundar Pichai is CEO of one of the largest and most powerful companies in the world: Google. The company’s growing Flights, Hotels, Vacation Rentals, Maps, and other businesses have made the tech giant a powerhouse in travel as well.
Booking Holdings and Expedia Group are spending billions of dollars on Google advertising annually. Why? Because they rely on Google to attract customers.
But beyond its own travel businesses, Google’s search advertising business has had a make-or-break impact on a variety of companies, like Tripadvisor, Kayak, Yelp, and Expedia, for example.
21
James Thornton
Intrepid Travel CEO
James Thornton’s father instilled a sense of wonder in him from a young age. His father was a manufacturing engineer for different car companies, came home once every three to four months with stories about the different cultures and people he had met.
“From a young age, I could recite obscure capitals,” Thornton says. After a quick stint in private client asset management, he realized that wasn’t the world for him. “I didn’t want to spend the next 40 years of my life making rich people richer,” he said. He found a sales role at a small Australian adventure travel company. “Now more than 19 years later, I’ve never once regretted that move.”
22
Amanda Hite
STR President
As president of STR, Amanda Hite oversees the hospitality division of parent company CoStar, and her 290-person team produces the hospitality sector’s most widely read benchmarking reports.
CoStar tracks performance at 83,000 participating properties, and hotel owners, managers, and brands use the insights to set room rates and make development decisions.
Hite is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and corporate events, offering insights on hotel industry trends and the impact of phenomena like short-term rentals or Taylor Swift concerts on hotel demand.
23
Luis Maroto
Amadeus CEO
Amadeus is the world’s largest intermediary between airlines and travel sellers, and there have been rumblings for years that companies in this space would become obsolete.
Luis Maroto should know: He’s been with Amadeus for 24 years, first as marketing finance director, and then as president and CEO since 2011.
Maroto told Skift in 2017 that concerns about obsolescence were overblown, and that Amadeus had a plan to transition its business along with the changing times.
24
Dara Khosrowshahi
Uber CEO
Dara Khosrowshahi, along with Barry Diller, built Expedia as we know it today. Khosrowshahi became CEO of Expedia in 2005 after it was spun out of Diller’s IAC, and spent the next 12 years overseeing multiple major acquisitions to consolidate the consumer travel industry and create a giant.
The largest deals among them: Orbitz for $1.6 billion and HomeAway (now Vrbo) for $3.9 billion.
As the CEO of Uber since 2017, Khosrowshahi is working to expand the most prominent rideshare app into a booking platform for multiple types of travel.
25
Fred Dixon
Brand USA CEO
Fred Dixon has won a lot of fans during his 30 years in the tourism industry, in large part because of his willingness to fight for the interests of travel businesses.
The support will serve him well as he starts his new role leading America’s tourism marketers as Brand USA’s CEO and President. Destinations with smaller budgets and weaker international presence will look to him for global market reach.
“Our greatest value proposition is for the lesser known, resourced, sophisticated, because we’re the quickest path to anybody getting into the international [market],” said Chris Thompson, Dixon’s predecessor at Brand USA.
26
Brad Gerstner
Altimeter Capital CEO
Brad Gerstner founded Altimeter Capital in 2008, and his first trade was for Priceline at $50 per share. Now known as Booking Holdings, the company trades at around $3,440, and has a market cap of $115 billion.
That was a phenomenal bet from a guy who knows the online travel and tech industries well; Gerstner was there as both an investor and operator during e-commerce’s first wave.
Before Altimeter, Gerstner built the technology practice at Par Capital with large early public investments in Priceline and Google, as well as private investments in Zillow, ITA Software and Farecast. He also invested in HotelTonight and Duetto, and throughout his career has participated as an investor in more than 100 IPOs.
27
Manfredi Lefebvre d’Ovidio
Heritage Group Chairman
Heritage Group chairman Manfredi Lefebvre d’Ovidio has spent decades focused on the top end of luxury travel, from ultra-expensive cruises, to private jet tours, to off-the-beaten-track safari tours for the rich.
He’s best known as being chairman and former owner of Silversea Cruises, a company founded by his father based out of Monaco. The business started in 1994 with two ships – today it has 13. In 2018, he sold two-thirds of the company to Royal Caribbean Cruises for $1 billion.
28
Ritesh Agarwal
Oyo Founder and Group CEO
The story of Ritesh Agarwal, founder and group CEO of Oyo, is pure Bollywood material: A small-town kid from Rayagada, Odisha in eastern India, drops out of college to chase the entrepreneurial dream. In India, where education is considered incomplete without a college degree, this is almost revolutionary.
At just 20 years old, Agarwal launched Oyo Rooms in 2013 as a platform for booking budget accommodations. His focus on affordable hotels quickly transformed Oyo into one of the largest hospitality chains, making Agarwal the poster boy of Indian start-ups.
29
Matthew Upchurch
Virtuoso CEO
Matthew Upchurch was born into a world of travel. His father, one of the founders of the United States Tour Operators Association, was a pioneer in the luxury travel industry. He established the first timeshare in Acapulco and was a pioneer in retrofitting motor coaches with air-conditioning for safaris in India and Africa. “I feel incredibly blessed that I was born into this industry, into the world of travel and tourism,” said Upchurch.
Upchurch is now a prominent figure in the luxury travel industry as the CEO of Virtuoso, a leading global network of travel agencies specializing in luxury and experiential travel.
30
Jason Liberty
Royal Caribbean CEO
Royal Caribbean Group CEO and President Jason Liberty makes waves in the industry with his ability to pull off industry-changing projects.
Liberty stepped into the top role in 2022 after 9 years as CFO, during which he helped Royal Caribbean survive the Covid pandemic.
Under his leadership, Royal Caribbean christened the world’s largest cruise ship, the Icon of the Seas. At $2 billion, the vessel can hold over 5,600 passengers and 2,350 passengers.
Edited by Lex Haris. Design and photo treatments by Beatrice Tagliaferri.
All photography by Skift, except for Scott Kirby (credit United Airines), Ed Bastian (credit Delta Air Lines), Jane Sun (credit Trip.com Group), Barry Sternlicht (credit Starwood Capital), Alex Dichter (credit McKinsey & Company), Jonathan Gray (credit Blackstone), Ariane Gorin (credit Expedia Group), Sebastian Ebel (credit TUI Group), Ahmed bin Aqil al-Khateeb (credit Saudi Arabia Ministry of Tourism), Sundar Pichai (credit Alphabet), Luis Maroto (credit Amadeus), Manfredi Lefebvre d’Ovidio (credit Heritage Group), and Jason Liberty (credit Royal Caribbean)
