Skift: Your Go-To Website for the Business of Travel

People who really like to travel tend to also like to learn about the big picture in the travel industry. Which goes a long way to explaining why the travel site Skift has proven such a success. The website is committed to identifying and interpreting global-wide trends in travel then offering their insights to travel enthusiasts and experts alike. We spoke to Jason Clampet, the site co-founder and current editor-in-chief, about how Skift came to be “the biggest business intelligence brand in travel” today.

Q: How exactly did Skift come about?

A: Rafat (our CEO) and I had a similar problem: We couldn’t get decent news about the travel industry. We met for coffee a few times and quickly settled on the concept, which was at that time “the daily homepage of the travel industry.” Nine months later we launched the site.

Q: What’s been the most popular content on Skift so far?

A: Original, long-form content has been fantastic. We did slideshows in the early years and it felt empty, cold, and hollow. Now we do stuff like interview the founders of Expedia, Priceline, etc. for their 20-year anniversary  or send a reporter to dive into over-tourism problems like Iceland is experiencing. Writing tens of thousands of words and getting lots and lots of readers for the work is a wonderful feeling.

Q: If you could share one piece of content from Skift as an intro, what might it be?

A: This new package sums up a lot of our current thinking, namely that the travel industry is forgetting to put the consumer first and too easily gets caught up in buzzy trends as opposed to what really matters. And we let some smart people have their say here, too.

Q: What’s coming up on the site of particular interest?

A: We just finished our annual conference (cool videos of it rolling out here on YouTube), so now we’re working on our annual Megatrends forecast (here’s a link to last year’s), which helps focus our editorial coverage for the first few months of every year.

Q: What’s the nicest response you’ve received at Skift so far?

A: There’s the “I didn’t know I needed you before I read you” response which makes me happy. I’m clearly boasting here, but my favorite response is from the early days when a potential investor asked a rival what he thought of our chances and he wrote a big, detailed response laying out why we’d fail. We no longer include his company in our competitive set because his audience is a small fraction of ours now.

– The CS Team